State Reform and Apple Polishers!

Muawad Mustafa Rashid

One of the public services tragedies is that many qualified fellow Sudanese who tend not to polish the apple are faced with malicious dismissal and replacement by persons connected or loyal to those on top.

Such practice has become commonplace in most state institutions with hundreds of professionals, whose expertise the country needs, are staying idle after being marginalized for not toeing the lines of those in power or their abhorrence of boots-licking.

Isn’t it strange to drop the efficiency and sophistication standards to be replaced by fragile measures such as (likes and dislikes)?

It is a reality we are living in that most of the top officials are not concerned about efficiency measures, rather they concentrate on loyalties and on those who obey orders without any comment or voicing their objections to violations in the public work.

The public service is plagued by those apple polishers and they have become the gatekeepers of the top officials.

In most institutions, particularity, innovation, and success at work are missing or no longer a big deal.

Certainly, discontent with the government and the state is a product of such lamentable legacies in public service.

The state reform is not just decisions, studies, and legislations because those are just a branch of the reform tree.

The soil of the state reform tree has to do with behavior – as to giving the citizens due respect as valued citizens and fellow human beings.

The state reform program should start from this point because the problem lies therein, and if we fail to remedy it, then our dream of becoming a civilized nation would evaporate.

God bless Sudan.