Editorial - Finishing schools for politicians

When the line between the genuine leaders and imposters becomes blurred; the absence of the former urges the emergence of the latter. One look at the current system of governance one would realize the country’s predicament at the hands of the dearth of statesmen; a breed that has extinct from the House long before Parliamentary traditions and democratic fundamentals started chipping from its walls.

The topic of leadership training for university undergraduates has resurfaced with Minister S.B. Dissananayake’s comment that the students in the private institutions have requested for a similar training.

Whoever takes the effort to breed leaders should be appreciated; only the future leaders who come out of these training sessions would be able to show how they differ from the rest. There would be no point in pouring down lorry loads of public money and that of the parents, if the children who walk out of these training camps would be damaging properties inside their higher education institutes or ragging their juniors.



Leadership training for university students attracted many a criticism from the parents, students’ organizations and sometimes the participants themselves, who viewed it as a time-devouring exercise where more sustainable pre-university training ought to have been introduced. The Higher Education Ministry, without heeding to the outcry, went a step ahead and made a bunch of school Principals as Colonels, at the end of their leadership training programme.

Do these programmes teach the bare essentials such as integrity, transparency, equality, fundamentals of democracy and of course basic courtesy. If so, the question remains whether it is the students and the principals who need the training most.
The definition of leadership of the contemporary politicians is reflected in their mien and talk inside the House. If the so-called leaders of the country feel the strong urge to show their fist power at every heated argument, Adam-tease the female MP’s and dodge the vital questions, it is entirely someone else’s call to polish the leadership qualities.

If a leader fails to lead from the front, nurtures pet thugs to induce fear in people and holds tight to his seat when resignation needs to be rendered, such politicians should be sent to a finishing school, before the government thinks of training other sects of society.
After all, no amount of leadership training for children, principals and parents for that matter, is going to serve a purpose, if those who are elevated above the rest let loose their animal instincts at every tense situation.

Some real training would have saved all of us the trouble of suffering the consequences of the majority’s bad political taste. Better still, one should have tested the leadership qualities in them before appointing them to higher echelons.
After all, how would one judge whether the children are getting a proper training, when those who advocate it know very little about the subject.