“Hop, grasshopper.
Jump, grasshopper.
My dear grasshopper.
Piti-piti-piti, grasshopper.”
This folk song was constantly on my mind as I wrote the article “Young Fleas” the other day.
I believe it would be beneficial to take motivating actions—“nudging” actions, to put it in more colloquial terms—to help young people, whom we have hemmed in with invisible glass walls, overcome the discouragement their attempts have caused them.
After all, the grasshoppers we have created undoubtedly need this!
So, how can we make it happen?
As the much-discussed issue of giving money to the Casino has been debated in recent days, I kept asking myself: “If we have that kind of money, can’t we create investment opportunities for young people?”
If we have an institution with that kind of money, it could launch a “Bring us a project, get a loan” campaign for young people, with a serious public announcement! This could create job opportunities for many of our young friends! In fact, let’s move beyond “could” and put it in numbers: A simple calculation: if we convert the 4 million dollars said to have been given to the Casino into Turkish lira at an optimistic rate, we get 8 million TL. Again, taking an optimistic view, if we had distributed this money among young people with good projects and given each of them a loan of 50,000 TL, 160 of our young friends could have owned a business. If each of those 160 friends had taken on two others, jobs would have been created for 480 people.
Now let’s get to the key questions:
• Is the economic value the Casino in question would create equivalent to the contribution 160 businesses would make to the national economy?
• Will the Casino in question provide jobs for 480 young Cypriots?
• Or will the Casino in question create a gambling habit among the 480 young Cypriots living in our country?
• Is the investment made with the loan given for the Casino to purchase the ship important for this country, given the possibility that the ship could sink?
• Or would the investments made if we distributed the loan given to one person among 160 people be more important for this country?
• On the other hand, is there a greater risk that one person will fail to repay the loan, or that 160 people will?
• And what if the 160 young friends we gave the opportunity to realize their dreams did not repay this money?
We can supposedly spur our young people into action by “turning them into grasshoppers” with verbal encouragement—that is, motivating words—or, to put it more plainly and colloquially, by “getting them fired up.”
But there is little point in writing these words here!
After all, many of our politicians have tried this approach and said these things on the eve of elections…
Until we meet in a country with more reasonable politicians and administrators…
Pay attention to your surroundings, keep them clean, and please be respectful in traffic!
Note: I should say that I do not take seriously the claims that funds of this kind exist in our country. I do not understand what purpose campaigns like these serve when they do not reach the young people in our country who have dreams and are waiting for an opportunity to realize them—and are therefore not properly publicized.
Dirty Politics ---3.03.2009
The headlines on a website that publishes our country’s news online caught my attention, and I wanted to share them with you: Soyer: “UBP has nothing to say” Eroğlu to Avcı: “You’re not a man!”
Avcı: “Eroğlu will fail and bid farewell to politics” Serdar Denktaş: “April 19 is court day” Çakıcı: “TDP will be the kingmaker” Pertev: “We have no problem clearing the threshold” The political atmosphere is growing increasingly tense!
The rhetoric is getting harsher; anger is pushing the limits.
Politicians who don’t know what to do are trying to drag politics into a tense atmosphere or voice their wishes instead of talking about their projects.
On the other hand, when you analyze the matter in depth, something rather comical emerges!
Let’s recall the opposition’s demand for an election before the early election date was announced: at every opportunity, opposition leaders spoke of the government’s inability to run the country and called for an early election. What they were really saying was: “We’re ready for the election with our program and preparations…”
So what happened? Here’s what:
As we have seen above, all the political party leaders are either accusing one another or voicing their wishes.
What should have happened?
Normally, immediately after the election date was announced, opposition leaders seeking to govern the country would have presented their previously prepared party programs and projects at a press conference, sharing with the public how they would govern and demonstrating that they understood citizens’ problems.
So what happened here?
It has been almost two months since the election date was announced, and opposition leaders who were calling for an election still have no qualms about saying their party programs are being prepared.
Meanwhile, the even more comical part is that there has been not a peep about their parties’ programs from the coalition partners in the government, who say they jointly made the decision to hold an election!
In other words, confusion reigns in the country. We are heading to the polls, and we know nothing about what the parties will do beyond their rhetoric. There are still no written documents to hold them accountable to the very voters whose votes they are seeking!
Is a party program really that important?
In my view, it isn’t! What I mean by party programs and projects is how prepared our political parties are for the election; we can see that none of them is fully prepared! Besides, when the party programs are announced, we will see that almost all of them are alike. What matters here is that the parties put forward candidates capable of carrying out the actions set out in their programs!
The conclusion?
To govern, or to attempt to govern, means accepting criticism from the outset. But critics have responsibilities of their own! You should offer solutions along with your criticism so that you can contribute both to the people you criticize and to the issues you care about that prompted you to criticize them. In politics, which is the art of solving problems, there should of course be criticism on both sides—but within the framework we have described…
The problem is that when our politicians try to criticize, they either resort to accusations, launch personal attacks, or raise the issues they criticize using hearsay rather than scientific data.
As a result, political discussions become scenes of dirty arguments.
Until we meet in a country with politicians who are better prepared for politics…
Pay attention to your surroundings, keep them clean, and please be respectful in traffic!
Sloganism ---5.03.2009
We have so many slogans in our lives, don’t we?
Instead of talking, we now prefer sentences made up of certain words.
I suppose repeating ideas that have already been produced comes more easily to us than coming up with ideas of our own.
Even our political debates consist of nothing but slogans.
We turn the issues raised by the party we support into slogans, then use them in political conversations with our friends as if they were our own ideas.
Don’t political party leaders come out with slogans?
Of course they do...
Let’s give a few examples:
“The old guard will go...”
A bold slogan used by someone in almost every election! I can’t say whether it will happen or not! It’s worth looking at previous elections on this matter... But whether they are people trying to steal the limelight on the political stage by using this slogan, or people in the street trying to make it the focus of their conversations, they may have to answer some questions.
Sample questions:
Who is old?
Who is new?
Is the person saying it new?
Old by whose standards, and in relation to what?
Let’s move on to another slogan.
For example, the slogan “...the status quo will be toppled!” that was constantly raised in the previous elections... There were extraordinary levels of debate around this slogan, and a book was even written about it. Bearing in mind that those who put forward this slogan in previous elections have held the power of the state in recent years, let’s ask some questions.
Sample questions:
Was the status quo toppled?
Who or what was the status quo?
If it was toppled, how?
Why couldn’t it be toppled?
Again, in recent days—in other words, on the eve of the election—political party leaders can’t help repeating one of the world’s most popular slogans: “...change is essential!”
The interesting thing is that the very person and/or party that could have brought about this change at one time uses the same slogan. But there are questions here, too!
Sample questions:
Why should things change?
Why didn’t you change them?
Perhaps you are the ones who need to change?
We could multiply the examples, but why bother? We are already surrounded by slogans...
There is no denying the importance of slogans in promoting a product and conveying its meaning!
Slogans will always be with us!
And they should be!
What matters is being able to give slogans substance...
In other words, instead of speaking in slogans, you should be able to explain the reasons that led you to use them!
Otherwise, you will go through life as an individual with no ideas of your own, continuing to speak in stock phrases produced by others...
For this reason:
“Our dear politicians, while we acknowledge your success in coming up with slogans, we would also like you to know that we will pursue those empty slogans...
Yours sincerely...
Your citizens...”
We should be able to say this—and, indeed, we do...
Until we meet on Tuesday...
Pay attention to your surroundings, keep them clean, and be respectful in traffic!