Too close to the Sun

Too close to the Sun
25/8/389

Senator-Emeritus Marina lied on her hospital bed. At age 73 she did not have much life left in her, and with no children to carry on her legacy it seemed everything would end in this hospital. Looking back, it all seemed so useless - all those debates, sleepless nights, endless paperwork, days of waiting for telegrams that would never arrive. And this is what she was leaving behind? She sighed; she had thought that after so long it would not be possible to dwell on her career anymore but, yet the memories returned again.

The Department of Health, Welfare and Social Spending. This name strikes fear into any politically inclined person in Mesea. ‘The Department’ as it is ominously known, constitutes as the largest Mesean government department in terms of budget and human resources. At best it is described as a nightmare of bureaucratic nonsense, with legislative dead ends, budgetary black holes and endless loopholes and gaps in its statutory role. ‘The Department’ fills textbooks as the worst showcase of the national system of government, demonstrating almost every flaw in the legislative and executive processes in Mesea. ‘The Department’ operates almost every aspect of physical and social health services dispensed by the government including Pensions, Healthcare, Childcare, Aged care, Unemployment and State housing. The country shamefully hosts one of the lowest graduation rates for medical workers in the world, some of the longest hospital waiting times, continuously failing pension funds, unlivable social housing and constant teacher shortages. Suffice to say most people’s opinions on ‘The Department’ were short of glamorous. There was no simple explanation to describe how ‘The Department’ had reached such a state, but despite multiple attempts over decades to fix it the situation had only seemed to worsen.

Senator Marina was elected to the Senat in its infamous 68th election in 349 as the Respublian Party’s 24th candidate. From the very first weeks in the Senat, Marina oversaw the passing of almost the entire Respublian agenda with its mammoth majority. Only a quarter of the way into her term the Respublian Leader asked Marina to step in to oversee ‘The Department’ as its head. Immediately ‘The Department’ began to consume Marina. No matter how much she tried there was simply no way to dig through all of the layers of rot that had eaten at the health system. No way to fund enough teachers for the number of schools in the nation. No way to give everybody a pension without a complete re-write of the tax system. Oh god the tax system! It was simply impossible; no person could defeat that. She would for the rest of her life blame the Respublian collapse on their failure to “gut that fucking department.” Like a hydra, solving one problem would simply cascade into more as its internal machinery outputted more complicating disgusting messes for the Janitor-in-chief to band-aid.

Marina sighed and scrunched up her eyes. Gazing out the window at the forest, she tried to think about something a little nicer.