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Libya Elects Engineer To Acting Prime Minister Post
PolygamousRanchKid writes in with this quote from CNN: "Libya's transitional government picked an engineering professor and longtime exile as its acting prime minister Monday, with the new leader pledging to respect human rights and international law. The National Transitional Council elected Abdurrahim El-Keib, an electrical engineer who has held teaching posts at the University of Alabama and Abu Dhabi's Petroleum Institute, to the post with the support of 26 of the 51 members who voted. ... El-Keib emerged victorious from a field that initially included 10 candidates. ... He is currently listed as 'former faculty' on the website of The Petroleum Institute, which said he served as chairman of its electrical engineering department and lists him as an expert in power system economics, planning and controls."
PRK adds: "Has there ever been an engineer in the top spot? ... Is this a good idea? Or are techies doomed in politics?"
Does Jimmy Carter count?
Jimmy Carter was a nuclear engineer. I always thought it was funny in a depressing sort of a way that he chose to portray himself as a peanut farmer instead.
Equine Mammals Are Considerably Smaller
the record for humanities is horrific:
Hitler was a painter.
Mao was a librarian.
Stalin was a preacher.
Yours In Moscow,
K. Trout, C.I.O.
..is because those not normally in politics are surrounded by people who wish to maintain the "status quo" and are fearful of change. Regardless of how amazing an idea is, regardless of how well it would work, those that are in power are afraid to lose it and stymie what could be real progress from an out-of-the-box thinker.
Just my .02 microns worth.
Dream as if you'll live forever.
Live as if you'll die tomorrow.
~Anonymous~
was an electrical engineer (PhD).
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
You will note that it was 26 out of 51. I would say that he will have a difficult time passing anything. Hopefully, others will work with him, rather than opposed to him.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
There are several engineers some of them are good leaders and some of them are not.
Ahmadinejad (Iran) is a civil engineer and has a PhD.... Doesn't keep him from spouting nonsense.
when they leave the PM's office with their envelopes still stuffed with cash, but with reconstruction plans scribbled on the back.
IIRC, the last two US Presidents that started from an engineering background were Herbert Hoover and Jimmy Carter. Depending who you ask, they were either awful leaders or they were screwed by fate.
Both were defeated after one term by orators, who became legendary leaders in the US mythology.
Saddam Hussein was an engineer...
https://engineering.purdue.edu/Engr/AboutUs/News/Announcements/egyptian-prime-minister-earned-two-engineering-degrees-at-purdue
Go Boilers!
They're all engineers.
It's not that uncommon at all. Also, the majority of the members of the executive committee of the communist party of China (the center of power in China) are eng. too.
Engineering tends to attracts the best and the brightest in dictatorship as it's seen as safer profession where there is less risk of angering the regime. And well, law of example is less important when you have mostly political trials..
was a mining engineer. His administration took a lot of the blame for the Great Depression, but it was really the result of a bubble from a former administration popping, same as the Great Recession we're in now.
Considering that one of the crisis Libya faces involves oil production and gaining control of the resources generated from it, having an engineer who knows the industry is quite possibly the smartest decision they could make. Much of the corruption of the old Libyan government involved the oil production industry and misappropriation of profits by the companies that drill there. Hopefully this dude is honest and will help put an end to the worst of the oil abuses.
Occasionally living proof of the Ballmer peak.
Turkmenbashi, aka Saparmurat Niyazov was an electrical engineer. Arguably was a pretty bad idea to let him get that position.
Attitudes make the difference between Space and Time: we want to MAX our temporal, and MIN our spatial extension.
Dr. Ian Malcolm: God help us; we're in the hands of engineers.
Of the the few that attend college. Its family pressure on sons. In response, college rename many more majors as "engineering" than in the US. Almost everything vocation, business, architecture, computing is called engineering.
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad , the current president of Iran, is a civil engineer.
When you don't have absolute power and need to get things done, you have to build a coalition. But building such a coalition requires compromise, often moral compromise. Thus if you're not a politician when you enter government, you will become one soon enough, if not by desire then by necessity.
Don't get me wrong, dictatorships and oligarchies are far worse, but having someone with technical ability in politics won't make any difference -- what makes a difference is some with a clear sense of values and the ability to project it, and that's not a trait exclusive to any field of study.
your thin skin doesn't make me a troll
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was a civil engineer. How's that working out for Iran?
I trust an engineer's ability to do politics about as much as I trust a politician's ability to do engineering.
This post expresses my opinion, not that of my employer. And yes, IAAL.
and look how "bad" is their economy ...
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad - Civil Engineering undergrad, PhD in Transportation Engineering. I am surprised I do not readily see his name yet. Though his actual level of power in Iran may be disputed he is certainly one of the most high profile engineers in politics that I know of.
The key word is actually longtime exile.
I think Scott Adams pretty much covered this all the way back in 1991... The week of November 4th thru November 11th to be specific. I guess now we get to watch and see if reality imitates art, yet again...
In the Middle East, dictatorships made sure that no one can emerge as a competitor to the incumbent tyrant, and that has gutted two generations worth of politicians. Either they become servile to the tyrant, or they are eliminated (physically, politically, socially, or otherwise ...)
Also, remember that this is a transitional government still. He has not been elected by a public ballot. That will take around 8 months to happen.
Outside of the USA, there are lots of engineers, doctors, university professors, ...etc. who make it to be top political post.
It will take time to built a political cadre again in these countries, and many will be professionals, not only managers or lawyers.
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Indian Prime Minister.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manmohan_Singh
Carter had been greatly influenced by a sermon he had heard as a young man, called, "If you were arrested for being a Christian, would there be enough evidence to convict you?"
Jimmy Carter is a, let's say,"complex" subject.
In the real axis he's a nuclear engineer. In the imaginary axis he's a Baptist preacher.
NYC Mayor Bloomberg: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Bloomberg
EE from Johns Hopkins
John Sununu Sr.: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_H._Sununu
John Sununu Jr: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_E._Sununu
Both MechE's from MIT
I don't understand why we include blurbs like this in summaries: "Has there ever been an engineer in the top spot? ... Is this a good idea? Or are techies doomed in politics?"
You can start here: The German chancellor is a doctoral Physicist. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angela_Merkel#Early_life
And there are others. Maybe you are asking why engineers have a lower representation then lawyers? Sounds like an interesting question. Why don't you do some research and come back when you got something meaningful to discuss?
Angela Merkel, head of government aka Chancellor of Germany, a physicist.
Branko Crvenkovski served as Prime Minister, and later as President, of the Republic of Macedonia.
In 1986 he obtained a bachelor's degree in Computer Science and Automation from the School of Electrical Engineering at the St. Cyril and Methodius University in Skopje.
it seems like tons of other countries have hired post-graduate level engineers to run their countries and for the most part its turned out okay.
here in america i cringe at the thought of an intellectual or scientist leading the nation. they would predictably be branded an out of touch elitist.
Good people go to bed earlier.
Herman Cain has a Masters in Computer Science from Purdue. Not in charge, but leading the Republican pack as of this writing.
According to this article from The Economist the most common background for politicians word wide is Law (surprise!) and then comes (in order) Business, Diplomacy, Military, Journalism, Economics, Medicine, Academia, and Engineering.
Almost 20% of the politicians had a Law background while about 7% had an Engineering background.
Herbert Hoover graduated from Stanford with a geology degree and became a mining engineer on the job. Even brief biographies make it clear he was skilled in the technology of the time.
Let's face it, we want our Presidents to wheel and deal, cajole, compromise, maneuver, and most important, Get Things Done. Carter and Hoover clearly brought engineers' mindsets to their terms because they were problem solvers. This limited them but it's not hard to make the case it also made them excellent ex-presidents. Hoover organized food relief in Germany after World War II. Carter has worked for fair elections worldwide.
Being an engineer doesn't necessarily disqualify a person for high political office, but never forget that a good engineer has a narrower focus than a good politician.
Much akin to the 80's and 90's where everyone was slapped with an engineer title. I was a Customer Engineer for a while but in reality an electronics technician. So an EE can now be a Citizen Engineer. Wonder who he knows/is related?
China's current premier has a background in both geology and engineering. His predecessor was an electrical engineer. I don't know how that affects their political capability or decision-making, but I have difficulty seeing the skills and thought processes of an engineer translating well into the leadership of a global super-power. On the other hand, I don't think our politicians have much aptitude in that regard either, so who am I to judge? Different cultures have different leadership requirements, perhaps a state in the midst of reconstruction really needs an engineer to get their infrastructure back online.
Herman Cain is not president yet, but he has a master’s degree in computer science
http://www.hermancain.com/about
Merkel was a physicist before getting swept into politics around the time of reunification.
So it appears that it's quite common that engineers and scientists run foreign countries. It's only we Americans who find this noteworthy, because our country is almost always run by lawyers - and I don't just mean our presidents. Sixty of our 100 senators are former lawyers. I can't help but think that lawyers have a very different approach to leadership than do scientists and engineers, and the thought doesn't exactly fill me with confidence. I'm not saying that lawyers can't be good and wise leaders. But what I am saying is that when government becomes an institution of lawyers, they inevitably import the institutional culture of lawyerism into government. Maybe that's why their governing feels more like a shifting battle of prosecution v. defense (though the sides occasionally change) where most of the energy is devoted to matters of procedure, rhetoric, strategy and "winning" rather than just doing the right thing for the country. Lawyers are people who are used to working on behalf of paying clients, and they must defend those clients to the hilt, not caring about whether they are actually right or wrong. That's as it should be. Now, of course the lawyers who move into government will tell you that "the American people" are their new clients, but in effect, I think it's the paying interest groups who buy our governing lawyers. So government is a battle of interest groups, each armed with a paid group of politician-lawyer-advocates who are expected to not worry about who's actually right. Their job is to win, or at least to keep "the other side" from winning. My foreign friends often ask my why the US only has two viable political parties. Could it be that because in the courtroom there are only two sides, and our politicians couldn't wrap their heads around a system that works differently? I feel like when the history of the decline of our country is written, something like this will be a part of the analysis.
As colleges and university Political Science departments decide that perhaps they can attract more students if they renamed their major to "Political Engineering". Sadly, these same people that consider PolySci to be "science" are the same idiots that would consider it to be "engineering" in an attempt to artificially boost their salary above minimum wage and hope for a job that doesn't involve asking people if they want to super-size their order of fries,. . .
so what?
Electing an engineer to a public office means exactly jack-shit. After graduating with an engineering degree, I can say that I've known plenty of engineers who were assholes, idiots, or both.
If someone is passing you on the right, you are an asshole for driving in the wrong lane.
El-Keib is an expert in education and 'Islamic Banking'. He's the perfect person to introduce the kind of debt terrors the west are facing now in order to control and mine Libya.
A blog I run for the wealth
If he hadn't failed his exams.
But then it's his failing that made him perfect for the communist movement promoting ignorance as the ideal. The Killing Fields may never have happened had ol' Saloth been more dedicated to his studies.
Yasser Arafat was a civil engineer.
Oh, and that Herbert Hoover guy. He was a mining engineer.
Leopoldo Calvo-Sotelo y Bustelo, 1st Marquis of the Ría of Ribadeo was a Spanish Prime Minister. He had studied civil engineering.
H. D. Deve Gowda also studied civil engineering and was Prime Minister of India.
José Sócrates, actually worked as a civil engineer and was Prime Minister of Portugal.
And let's not forget Pierre Tirard was a civil engineer that became Prime Minister of France in the 19th century.
I am sure there were a few others. Also, let's not forget those Roman Emperors who dabbled in civil engineering and architecture.
I'm kind of split, on the one hand, I think this guy will be good for physical reconstruction of oil infrastructure, water, power, sewer, roads, etc.
However, having him as the very first PM might not work so well, because in addition to the physical aspect of reconstruction, an equally pressing issue in terms of having a clock which will run out quickly, is establishing a viable political system in the country - constitution, parliament, elections, etc.
I wish him the best of luck with that.
While technically not an engineer, Merkel studied Physics in school has a PhD in Quantum Chemistry.
You don't see many of those running for office in your hometown do you?
is this a serious question? Angela Merkel (Chancellor of Germany) After being awarded a doctorate (Dr. rer. nat.) for her thesis on quantum chemistry,[10] she worked as a researcher and published several papers.
Is it just me or is it just a little funny that former US professor and former hotshot in the oil industry was put in there? We borked up in Iraq, so lets just see if we can sneak this guy in to power in a country with a ton of untapped petroleum potential. While wikipedia does say that the level of education is commendable, they are 97% Muslim. How many nations out there that have such a high level of "citizens" who are religious, that has an engineer as King/PM/"President"?
Portugal had a number of engineers in it's top spot. António Guterres, former Portuguese prime-minister and current United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, is also an electrical engineer. Another one is José Sócrates, former Portuguese prime-minister and President of the European Council, which is supposed to be a civil engineer but allegedly his degree was attained through shady backroom clerical works from corrupt business associates.
Slashdot, fix your code or at least hire someone who is competent at it to do it for you.
was a civil engineer by training.
was a chemist. Not a good advert for them was she?
I'll see your Constitution and raise you a Queen.
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, current president of Iran is an engineer. Margaret Thatcher, former prime minister of the UK is a scientist. I'm sure there are plenty of other examples.
,,, of China
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahmoud_Ahmadinejad#Administrative_and_academic_careers
Know this as truth before my post is modded out. The guy before you said EXACTLY what you said. What the fuck are you, an aspie!?
The previous prime-minister of Portugal (José Sócrates) was a civil engineer (though a bad one, from what I heard). The one in the late 90s (António Guterres) was an electrical engineer. And the first female prime-minister in Portugal - in the 80s - , Maria de Lurdes Pintassilgo, was a chemical engineer (and, quite frankly, seems to have been the only effective statesperson of the three).
He actually has a PhD in civil engineering (transportation emphasis) from the Iran University of Science and Technology. I'm not sure if he ever actually worked in the field. His biography lists some administrative positions, then he taught for a while, was appointed a provincial governor, and eventually mayor of Tehran. I shouldn't have been as surprised as I was when I first learned Ahmadinejad was a civil engineer. After all, I know quite a few uncivil civil engineers.
While not engineers, Golda Meir, premier of Israel, and Margaret Thatcher, Prime Minister of England, were both Chemists.
Both were quite successful.
Also, Herbert Hoover was an engineer.
António Guterres, United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees
and former Portuguese Prime Minister is an Electrical Engineer and was a Professor of Engineering.
I believe he specialized in Signal Processing...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ant%C3%B3nio_Guterres
... wasn't it ignoring international law and and human rights that allowed the US to invade and perform 'regime change'?
They will move from Sharia Law to Kirchoff's Laws.
Keep Doing Good.
That's why they are kicking our asses economically. They know how to write policy.
Hello People... what part of "Oil Economy" are you not getting. Now that we've had our cup of "Instant decapitated Kadafi", its time to get down to business, and after spinning the big wheel, the business iiisssssss.... OIL PRODUCTION!!! go figure.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sukarno
An engineer would most definitely do a better job than a lawyer...
Eduardo Frei Ruiz-Tagle, a hydraulic engineer, was Chile's president from 1994 to 2000. He's widely considered a mediocre president at best, and failed miserably in an attempt to get reelected in the 2009 election. His engineering skills weren't a factor in this, though: his lack of real political weight (other than his name, being the son of the well-remembered Eduardo Frei Montalva, Chile's president from 1964 to 1970) and his lack of charisma and authority were the real reasons he wasn't a good head of state.
"Trust me - I know what I'm doing."
- Sledge Hammer
Graduated in civil engineering from University of King Fuad I