The State Minister for Agriculture, Vincent Sempijja, reportedly told an audience in Rakai District recently that many ministers fear our dear leader and, as a result, don’t talk to him candidly. He’s reported to have said that very few ministers can call our dear leader and he too only calls a few of them. Surely things aren’t good if our nation’s ministers indeed don’t have open communication lines with our fountain of vision.
To be fair though, on the bit about our dear leader only calling a few ministers, I imagine he has so many phone numbers in his phonebook, he can’t save any more without first deleting some *cough* Tamale. Just wait a while for more numbers to be erased then yours can be added. Also, you know how sometimes you can’t quite remember what you saved someone as? I imagine this problem isn’t unique to you and me – maybe our dear leader faces it too.
Then, let’s not forget that not so long ago, some prominent person wasn’t taking our dear leader’s calls. Something like that can leave you less excited about making calls willy-nilly.
Our dear leader not calling you isn’t what we’ll address today; we’ll look at the much bigger issue at hand –ministers fearing him. A fear of that sort means a lot won’t get done in the country because you don’t have audience. So, how do you, dear minister, get over that fear? Here are a few techniques my research revealed:
Awareness. This is the first and most important part of this journey. Your admission of the issue is a testament that we are halfway to the Promised Land. It won’t be long now before you and our beloved leader are trading jokes and all your messages to him are getting blue ticks.
WTWTCH? What’s the Worst That Could Happen is the second technique you should use. Using this, when faced with a fear, you overcome it by picturing the worst case scenario. For you who fear approaching our leader, one scenario could be him ignoring you as you talk (or not shaking your hand even when you repeatedly stick it out to him). Or he could call guards to carry you out. Or he could play Sitya Loss and ask you to do all its dance moves. As you can see in all these scenarios, you are still alive. So don’t be afraid, go for it!