“IGNAVUS”!

By Ahmed M. EL NAHAS – Montopoli, February  the 11^th 2012.

A highly respected figure of the Italian intellectual and political panorama, his undisputed integrity and refined sense of honour, crowned by his sharp political analysis and thorny but wise interventions in parliament secured him the appreciation and gratitude by all political and intellectual streams and colours. He’s the Honourable Furio COLOMBO. On today’s issue of the daily “Il Fatto Quotidiano” he wrote: (and I’m quoting here the original text in Italian)

“Gli onorevoli costretti all’obbedienza quando il governo detta l’agenda. Ma liberi di dare sfogo alle proprie smanie appena il vincolo cessa: così muore l’istituzione”.

Literally meaning:

“Honourable Parliament Members are “compelled” to obedience whenever the Government dictates the Agenda, but “free” to vent their agitations and itches once the bond ceases: thus dies the institution”.

A phrase that rang a million bells, inside that cavity on top of my shoulders called brain, so loud and strong that I had to quit breakfast and hurry to switch on my PC to scrawl down the next few lines, for which I chose that Latin title: “Ignavus”. A word that in English could mean “Sloth” qualifying an individual as “insensible to pain;  a coward who escapes from confronting danger or responsibility manifesting fear that morally is unjustifiable”.

A definition which brought back the heavy burden of social paranoia, institutional mistrust and civil indifference through decades of consecutive “Military Dictatorships” that ruined my country and bent it to its knees. Because the many “Sloths” that were in charge everywhere and for over 60 years: in politics, in media, in parliament, in civil administration, in security forces, in education, in health, in every ministry, in every office of public service, in every factory and company; all that array of hundreds of thousands of “Tail-bended Yes-Men” whom cowardly have ravaged my country’s wealth allowing all the wrong doings they have witnessed to pass on unpunished, inventing all the reasons one can imagine to make them pass as inevitably necessary for the “Collective Good”!

And when the time has come to give me some new hope for a better tomorrow, I found out that the “Sloth” is still there sitting comfortably in his chair waiting for his moment of glory.. When the sloth would regain his hold on the destiny of the mass: “the helpless free citizens of Egypt”.

Identify that character whenever and wherever you find, and disclose his or her true identity everywhere, and only as such we may have a chance to reunify our aims and means in the forthcoming fearsome and long battle for true democracy.. First step by a “Democratic Revolution”.

Pass On The Word.