Tuesday, January 25, 2011

When the answer to a question is already known.

I have a friend who is a keen photographer like me. He is even better in this department because he heads a photographic association in Negeri Sembilan where I am a member. At one time he was also active in politics and was once appointed as a councillor in my department.

As the head of the photographic association he used to conduct courses and seminars about photography and I used to attend them. I remember after one session he asked the audience if they have any questions. When nobody asked anything he said it is alright to ask questions even if we know the answers. This is because others may not know the answers to certain questions and by asking them we are in a way helping the others by imparting our knowledge to them. He further said from his experience that this 'asking questions when you already know the answer' used to occur in politics.

Politicians like to be popular, so one way of enhancing their popularity is by asking questions they already know the answer. This was proven right in a state assembly yesterday when the answer to a question was answered. The question was whether the state assembly will get enough votes to amend their state constitution. To amend the constitution a two-third majority of votes from the state assembly was required. The ruling party knew all the while that their total number would not be enough to get the required votes. They also knew that their  opponents will note vote for them. 

To cut a story short the proposed amendments to the state amendments did not happen. There goes money spent in hiring experts to prepare clauses of the proposed amendments. There goes time wasted when the time wasters could go campaigning in a bye-election in another state. There goes this, there goes that and so on and on. Happy for me when the exercise in futility occurred I was watching the Australian Open tennis tournament on television. 

All these happened because the answer to an obvious question is already known. It reminds me of a quotation from one of The Godfather films, 'Politics and crime, they are the same'. In other words politicians are criminals. 

I am happy that my friend mentioned above has left politics, and thus crime. Beside photography that he loves he now heads the government pensioners association in our state where I am a member too.    

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