Ban

Let me start this article with a document similar to the ban that died in the “balut” stage - the regulation that pigs are not allowed to eat water hyacinth and banana stems. Honestly, when I heard this story, I was excited because at least there was an agency that dared to innovate the approach towards soft skills with a document in the spirit of “April Fool’s Day”. What a joke! There is no such thing as a ban on people switching to a ban on pigs. There is no ban, just not eating water hyacinth and banana stems.

I thought on April 1st, they were just trolling to relieve stress, but it turned out to be true, so true that it was hard to believe. The press and netizens had a chance to relieve stress with comments that were also very... "banana tree water hyacinth". Someone commented that pigs are not allowed to eat water hyacinth, which is right, water hyacinth is water hyacinth, and water hyacinth blooms beautifully, such beautiful flowers, if pigs eat them, what elegance would there be? Yeah, the author must have loved Nguyen Khoa Diem's ​​verses:"I have gone through unexpected years/ So carefree that now I am moved/ Water hyacinth is vast with purple ink/ The handwriting of my youth flows as fast as a river…".Oh, the water hyacinth of the time, tilted like the strokes of a handwriting on a river, pigs dare to eat it? How rude! Another opinion is that such a regulation shows that people understand and love pigs very much. This year is the year of the Pig, issuing a document to protect the zodiac animal is also the right thing to do. Not to mention equality, how many years have passed, when people have changed from eating enough to eating well, from eating well to eating delicately, or in other words, people have changed from potatoes and cassava to lobsters, bird's nests, shark fins, why are pigs still forced to eat food from before the 19th century? How backward and unequal!

There is another opinion, the ministry is just missing a little bit, it should have been written in full as “prohibiting pet pigs from eating water fern and banana tree trunks”! With the spirit of all for beloved pets, prohibiting pet pigs from eating banana tree trunks is so right because no matter what, pet owners will not let their pets eat water fern, but if people actively do not let them eat, then we will issue a document prohibiting it… effective! That document will “come into life”. Not only that, there is also the opinion that preventing pigs from eating banana trees and water fern is a long-term and wise strategy with strategic vision. Simply because not letting pigs eat water fern will allow pigs to wholeheartedly eat watermelon, radish, sweet potato, purple onion… eh! Pigs eat agricultural products without having to rely on society to rescue them like the recent times. See, there is absolutely no vested interest, no animal feed company involved, and of course there is no such thing as “arsenic-contaminated” water fern like the traditional fish sauce case. Speaking of the ability to stir up a ban story, it is not just this case of “suspending” pigs from enjoying water fern. We have witnessed documents with the word “prohibition” slipping past the people’s ears several times… There is a ban on drinking illegal alcohol, a ban on selling meat after 8 o’clock, even a ban on flat-breasted women riding motorbikes on the street… Every prohibition is worthy of being included in the Tao Quan script. The regulation that pigs are not allowed to eat water fern is nothing.

A few weeks ago, a leader enthusiastically proposed that all those who lost their driver's license must retake the test, the literary meaning is... to ban it! As a National Assembly delegate said, these are ridiculous proposals! How effective these documents are in real life can be seen when you go to a drinking place every afternoon. Perhaps 99% of diners are diligently drinking "cuốc lụi" wine, if anything, it is colored by soaking in banana seeds, or hawthorn or something. Even professional drinkers who bring "hand-carried goods" are still cuốc lụi. Before drinking, no one checks to see if the "cuốc lụi" wine has been registered according to Decree 105/2017/ND-CP!

Prohibition means not allowing something to be done. This is one of the oldest and most popular management measures. The old law even forbade people from going out when the King went for a walk. Prohibition always has binding power, high effectiveness and all violations are necessarily handled with strict sanctions. Remember a few years ago a Vietnamese man was fined 26 million VND for violating the smoking ban, of course in… Singapore! If it is banned and violated, it means paying a fine, doing community service, and even going to jail. Also, let me remind you that we are talking about Singapore! Of course, they are not so free over there as to research the issue of pigs eating water fern!

I can ban anything, but banning anything can be done carelessly. Sometimes the word "ban" is abused indiscriminately. The district has a ban from the district, the commune has a ban from the commune, even the hamlet has a ban from the hamlet. In the past few days, some villages in Giao Thuy district, Nam Dinh province even banned taking leftover food from weddings. Any house that allows guests to take food home will be fined. Don't joke! The widespread, arbitrary and careless use has lost the meaning of the ban, worse, it has created the opposite effect. A few years ago, in one of my articles, I also told a story: A man wanted to fill up a fish pond to make room for a house for his son, but unfortunately he didn't have the money. "One night gives birth to a hundred plans", after a long night of tossing and turning, the next day people saw the owner put up a sign with the content "strictly prohibit dumping soil and rocks in this area". Who would have thought that just a week later, suddenly there would be a traffic jam, some people would be sneaky, some would be brazen, trying to find ways to dump dirt and rocks into the pond. After a few months, the muddy fish pond had become a completely leveled plot of land. Of course, that was a made-up story, a sidewalk joke that anyone could see the author's intention to defame. But, thinking back, that story that was never true made sense, the more it was banned, the more excited the violators became!

There are probably few places in the world that have as many prohibition signs as ours. They are everywhere, if you keep your eyes open you will definitely see “No bathing and washing”; “No littering”; “No going the wrong way”; “No cutting in line”; “No smoking”; “No market”; “No street vending”; “No parking”; “No fishing”; “No grazing cattle”, in hospitals there is even “No giving envelopes”. In addition to those very official prohibition signs, there are countless other spontaneous and humorous prohibitions: “No bringing boyfriends into the rented room, if you catch them, don’t blame this girl for being cruel”; “No peeing in public, whoever violates will have their evidence temporarily detained”! There are so many examples that I can’t even finish them. It’s just a prohibition, but if urinating in public is handled like that warning sign, where would we get enough insulated boxes to temporarily confiscate the evidence! People are making nonsense of the word “no” in an entertaining way like that.

Returning to the story of pigs not being allowed to eat water fern, this is clearly a document that demonstrates bureaucracy in the policy-making process. A regulation that is far from reality and has no feasibility, yet it still passed many rounds of review to reach the final signature. We have had too many lessons in policy making, we do not need to continuously have another similar lesson. Whatever the regulation, do not let it be issued to have a regulation… prohibiting laughter!