Situation vacant: Useless world leaders no longer fit for duty

Please wake up, everybody out there? Who are these people leading us? Where are we going? Is this what we want for our future, for our children’s future?

Let us look at modern society, stop and think for a second. In the Muslim world, because of a historical issue some 1,400 years ago, followers of the Prophet were divided on the manner of selection of the Prophet’s successor. But everybody prays to the same God and the same Prophet. A historical event, which has nothing to do with religion, has brought us to witness Shias killing Sunnis, and vice versa. Today’s Middle-Eastern conflicts in Yemen, Bahrain, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia are primarily based on this. Where does Islam tell you to do that? All these royal highnesses, mullahs, muftis, spiritual guides and other self-proclaimed leaders have no clue what believing in God means.

The Christian world is not doing much better. The opulence of the Vatican, the splendour of the cardinals’ robes and hats, the Pope’s finery and the wealth of the churches co-exists with over 2 billion people starving and who are supposed to be represented by this crowd. Scandals are ruining the beliefs of those still courageous enough to be believers. Protestants fight Catholics and racism continues to spread around the entire world, although none of the Holy Books contain any trace of racism. 

The Jewish community is no better than the others, and the nonsense triggered by the lobbies inside the superpower governments does not help improve the situation.

We set up organisations to better control misdoings; we created the United Nations, the IMF, the World Bank and the European Parliament. But we immediately set up exception rules; we have the United Nations but we have veto power for some of its members. How important today is the influence of the UK or France, which both have seats on the Security Council, when huge nations like Brazil and India have no veto right? 

Why are the World Bank and the IMF located in the United States of America, when everybody knows that it is the most bankrupt country in the world? Why is Unesco located in Paris, when the country that claims to be the defender of human rights has expelled so many foreigners lately and where the extreme right is gaining votes every day? Why is the International Court located in The Hague, the Netherlands, when the extreme right is so powerful in that country?

What about our education systems? What are we teaching our children? Are we teaching them that the only value left is money, and that they should forget all other values? Do we teach them to respect punctuality, compassion, knowledge and historical values from the past? Are we teaching them that there are millions of kids who do not have food, while ours need a new mobile phones or Ipod?

Double standards are killers. Why should some countries have nuclear weapons whilst others are not allowed to? Why don’t we collectively ask to get rid of them, for everybody, everywhere? Environmental problems also need to be addressed properly. Our present leaders do not seem to understand that catastrophes will happen more and more frequently if we do not stop upsetting Nature.

If we look at our banking system – which is actually running our countries, our continents, and is determining the future of all people – we should put whole the system on pause, rewind and start thinking about how we reached this desperate situation. It all started with dear Mr Richard Nixon, who told the world that the USA did not need to abide by the standards of parity between one’s currency and gold, and that the US was a superpower and did not need to abide by this law. So he started printing money without any backing. Today each and every American citizen owes to the government over US$75,000. Total debt: $14,000 billion. 

Let us go back and impose the same rule on everybody, no exceptions anymore. See where we are with Greece, Ireland, Portugal, Spain and others. How about establishing a single world currency, and stop all this speculation, the invoice for which is paid by us?

Let us look at the wealth that came to the Middle East over the past 50 years, and what happened to it? When we have over 1.5 billion people living on less than a dollar a day, shouldn’t somebody tell our friends in the Gulf that this is not the time to invest in 12 air-conditioned soccer stadiums simply to host a month-long World Cup competition, and that maybe they could do something more useful with the money.

The word diplomat comes from the Greek, diplos (double), matos (face), literally meaning double-faced. We should remember this, the next time we listen to speeches during election campaigns.

We will get nowhere with the people who are leading us today. Presently we are all heading towards a fiasco, wherever we are. 

We should each of us apply for the job, leading our own lives with the values that our ancestors, our prophets, our parents, our poets, our friends left for us. All the leadership jobs are really vacant, and it is up to us to fill them. Let us build a real future before it is too late.

Wish yourself luck and success.

 

Saleh Miri is a “travelled architect” who currently resides in Muscat and Paris.