Doctor Mama Amon
JF-Expert Member
- Mar 30, 2018
- 2,089
- 2,725
The Statue of a limping Achilles trying to pull an arrow from his injured heel.
Dear President Samia, after having assessed your performance for months now, I am about to make a rounded conclusion about your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOTs).
However, before doing that I should prefer to pose a polite question to you, if you allow:
Do you really know the location of Achilles' Heel in the body of your predecessor's government which you inherited from the late President Magufuli and the political dangers associated with it?
Very few will doubt the claim that, by whatever standard one would use, President Magufuli would be classified as a dictator, and like all dictators he could manifest strengths and weaknesses.
Many dictators often appear invulnerable for many reasons.
As a rule, intelligence agencies, police, military forces, prisons, concentration camps, and execution squads are controlled by a powerful few.
A country’s finances, natural resources, and production capacities are often arbitrarily plundered by many dictators and used to support the dictators’ will.
In comparison, democratic opposition forces often appear extremely weak, ineffective, and powerless.
That perception of invulnerability against powerlessness makes effective opposition often unlikely.
That is not the whole story, however.
A myth from Classical Greece illustrates well the vulnerability of the supposedly invulnerable dictators.
According to this Greek legend, the great warrior, Achilles, was invulnerable against attack, except for one spot of weakness—his heel.
That weakness would be exploited near the end of the Trojan War by an enemy soldier called Paris.
As the story goes, Paris shot Achilles in the heel with an arrow, killing his seemingly undefeatable foe.
To make this background more illuminating I propose to tell this story in detail.
Against the warrior Achilles, no bullet would penetrate his body, no blow would injure hims and no sword would cut his skin.
Why? When still a baby, Achilles’ mother had supposedly dipped him into the waters of the magical river Styx, resulting in the protection of his body from
all dangers.
There was, however, a problem. Since the baby was held by his heel so that he would not be washed away by running water, the magical water had not covered that small part of his body.
When Achilles was a grown man he appeared to all to be invulnerable to the enemies’ heavy weapons such as billets and bombs.
However, in the battle against Troy, instructed by one who knew the weakness, an enemy soldier aimed his simplest weapon, an arrow, at Achilles’ unprotected heel, the only spot where he could be injured. The strike proved fatal.
Still today, the phrase “Achilles’ heel” refers to the vulnerable part of a person, a plan, or an institution at which if attacked there is no protection.
The same principle applies to many ruthless dictatorships.
They, too, can be conquered, but most quickly and with least cost if their weaknesses can be identified and the attack concentrated on them by using the right weapons.
The fifth phase government had many weaknesses that made it unpopular to rational voters, and this unpopularity had two stages of evolution.
In a word, its Achilles' Heel between 2015 and 2020 was overt INJUSTICE to the innocent many while from 2020-2021 it was plausible ILLEGITIMACY by reason of pre-marked ballots which, allegedly, were systematically channelled into many ballot boxes.
You have inherited this heel and it is a part of your government's body.
There are many simple weapons which can be used to succesfully attack this heel and hence force your government to start a limping walk to its final downfall.
That having been said, I can now restate my original question as follows:
Do you President Samia, the successor of President Magufuli, know the SWOTs of the government you inherited from him, and if yes, as you take off and aspire to become a successful president, how prepared are you regarding the urgent need of turning opportunities and weaknesses into strenghts?
