In publishing and designing websites, there is a paragraph of Latin that designers use to demonstrate a space where text should go, and how much. That paragraph could be:

Lorem Ipsum dolor sit amet mi id ligula amet morbi tellus sollicitudin dolor pellentesque. Morbi accumsan lacinia velit metus morbi ipsum sit sollicitudin consectetur. Ullamcorper viverra sollicitudin sit mauris posuere auctor praesent id lorem. Tortor elit facilisis sit ligula tellus ac sollicitudin facilisis sollicitudin.

There are supportive sites on the Internet where you could generate this amount of text depending on the space on your website or page you want to fill.

While watching our parliament session last night (and of course watching them in general), I wonder if they get trained in their own little academies on how to fill the time given to them to answer questions, with meaningless Latin. Of course Latin is not meaningless to those who understand, and I am not sure who is meant to be the audience for these politicians when they start with their filler speeches!

Last night, a question was put for the home ministry, an apt question considering the recent display of the audacity and the ineffectiveness of the police force. The question was not so well stated, due to what I think is the attempt (of all in parliament) to be theatrical. Since the home minister was not present (?), the second-in-command was asked to answer. That is what inspired this post.

The filler speech could be broken down to two things, and they have 2 or 3 minutes usually to fill:
  1. - Draw attention to the failures of the past regime with lots of emotional appeals, hand gestures, pauses - things that will put many stage actors to shame. This works too, since our two major parties almost without fail have cyclically come to power and have found it enough time to take whatever it is they need to survive the years they are to be out of power
  2. - Speak highly of the dreams, goals and steps taken by the founding father of the party.
I was happy when the law & order question was asked, since, I and many citizens believe that the home minister should have stepped down or been fired for her inadequacies. Even on the evening this question was posed, there was a report in all the morning papers of a policeman beating a judge outside a courthouse somewhere.

While the fillers were being delivered, I felt like laughing out loud (LOL) like the lunatic I am, and I did to some extent. I could not believe the answer I was getting! Then he also pointed out that they increased their salaries and so and so forth.

We have managed to really turn our heads from what is the root of a problem and just throw money around as if the problem was that they didn't have enough toys or enough to eat. He mentioned they bought pick up trucks too. An editorial was also published which asked if we need to spend even more money on them to get them to do their jobs! A lot of people say they have a tough job. I don't disagree, but I think, so does a farmer, a rickshawala, a thela-gariwala (men who transport heavy goods on pull carts) and so many other people who live on less than them. Who will rise up and put us in perspective? Thanks for asking the question at least MP Fazlul Azim. Don't know what kind of a person you really are, but thanks for the question last night indeed.