I have a question. “Who is shaping who?” – Is it the politicians that are reflecting the people or is it the people that are reflecting the politicians.

Are they an image of me?

This is a good question for me because, whether or not I like their politics, in some nations the personality of the leader is so apparent that the question becomes whether we like their moral standard, their way of speaking and their personal charisma.

Many years ago, I was bitten by a dog in Constanta and at the hospital the doctor told me that the dogs reflected the politicians of the City. I was thinking that was a bit rude but, when I gave it some thought, I could see it had some truth. If the politicians in the city had served the people, there would not have been dogs in the street to bite anyone, such was the scale of the problem at the time.

So lets look at the different elections we have around. What are they a picture of? Leadership in the nation? Are we as people tolerating leaders that are corrupt, talking down to women and different people groups, even running a one man show?

Big nations are run by one man (or woman) and it seems that we tolerate that opposition is suppressed. In another big nation, there is a two-party system (at least practically), limiting the democratic process to just two people that can run for power. Are we tolerating politicians or are we a part of making them?

I see in my own nation a big change in the years I’ve spent away; a huge shift from being almost impossible for an extreme nationalist party to obtain power, to today where they are in charge together with our right wing party. We have become ‘every man for himself’, which our culture was never based upon before.

Who then, at the end of the day, is influencing who? Is the politician just a reflection of where society is going, or are they leading us into this way of being?

I’ll leave you to draw your own conclusion.

But I dare to say that if some of today’s politicians are reflections of the people, including myself, then we have a job to do: to foster respect, love and unity in society.

Rune Saether