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History doesn't repeat, but it does enjoy a good remix. The Loony Left had its turn playing council-level foreign policy. Now the Loony Right is giving it a go with environmental policy. Same schoolyard energy, different decade, fresh set of headlines. One can only wonder what the right-wing papers will call them. The Sensible Pragmatists? Or will the satire wheel turn full circle?
The prosecution says he cannot be trusted because he once faced disciplinary proceedings in another jurisdiction decades ago. Yet even if every fact of that matter is accepted, the question before this court remains simple: what relevance does an event from more than twenty years ago have to allegations made today?
Donald Trump’s return to the White House marked the triumph of image over expertise. Cabinet positions increasingly resembled casting decisions. Loyalty became more important than experience. Television skills became more valuable than administrative competence.
This intersection of libido and governance is deeply rooted in history. In When Sex Threatened the State: Illicit Sexuality, Nationalism and Politics in Colonial Nigeria, 1900–1958, Professor Saheed Aderinto documented moral degeneration among the ruling elite, showing how men of power have long been implicated in what he called the “commoditization of sex.”
Suspension is a civil service instrument. It exists to protect an officer's rights while an allegation is tested, precisely because civil servants have due process protections built around tenure and pension. Commissioners have no such tenure to protect, because they were never promised any. Subjecting them to the ritual of suspension does not protect them it borrows the aesthetics of bureaucratic discipline and drapes them over an office that was never meant to carry that indignity.
