In any field—business, politics, education, government—those in power should be required to step down after five years.Write a response in which you discuss your views on the policy and explain your reasoning for the position you take. In developing a

Revitalisation and change is one important aspect for development in any field. People with power in almost every fields should surely be changed every once in a while. That being said, creating a policy to require those in power in all fields to step down after five years will still be harmful to the development and growth of those fields. Five years is sometimes too short of a time for even the powerful people in a certain fields to create real and lasting effects. Most policies or ideas needs more than a mere five years to be fully developed or implemented. Requiring those on top to step down after five years might thwart the progress of certain ideas and policies before they could reach their potentiality, thus putting into waste the last five years dedicated to them. Therefore, the proposed policy should not be implemented.

In most of the fields, especially in politic, government, and education, creating lasting effects tends to include a big change in the current system. To change the system, one would need to go through quite a lot of different stages: from analysing the problem in the status quo, proposing a change of policies in certain problematic aspects, bringing the proposal to be accepted on the congress floor, to the arduous works needed to ensure that the policies are being implemented in the intended way. With only five years in hand, the risk of those changes being thwarted and abandoned before completion is very high. With a constant change of leadership, there will also be a constant change of visions, missions, and agendas. The changes of prioritised policies are a given due to the inherent difference of each individual and the natural human desire to be seen as better and uniquely different from their predecessors. When this happens, no lasting changes could be made in any of these fields.

To illustrate the stated problem, let us look at the example of constant changes in the Indonesian Ministry of Education. The ministry has undergone a constant and non-stop change of leadership for the last few decades. Unfortunately, each new minister had their own perspective on what would constitute a good national curriculum for the nation. Every one of them created a new curriculum and tried to implement them—along with new textbooks, exam formats and standard mark—in all thirty-three different provinces in the country. At the end of the day, all of these well-intentioned changes only overwhelmed and perturbed the works and progress made by teachers and students all across the nation. In the case in which a constant changes is ensured by the proposed policy, whether or not one lasting effect was made could not even be evaluated because none of the changes were implemented long enough for us to see the effects.

Aside from ensuring that lasting effects are being made in these fields, we also want to make sure that those in charge have the needed experience and practical knowledge on how the system works in their field. Insightful experience and understanding usually takes more than five years to be acquired. At the end, a limit of five years for all of those in charge would limit the lasting changes and developments that could be made in a certain fields. For instance, a brand new supreme court judge would of course have no more understanding of both the law and the practical implications of those law compared to a standing judge who has served in the supreme court for at least ten years of time. If the policy is being put to place, there would not be any experienced judges to compare to in the very first place. Requiring those in power to step down once every five years will diminish the chances for many of them to have enough experience and understanding of the system to be able to grow to their full potential.

Of course with the benefit of experience and ability to create bigger changes, extended period of power also comes with their own risks and problems. The ones in power sometimes also have the tendency to love the feeling of those powers in their hands. More than a diminutive numbers of them would be tempted to try to do whatever it takes to keep the power close to their hand. This was what had brought many countries to put the limit of two serving terms for those in power—especially those with the executive power such as presidents. For most of the time, this system has been proven to work as intended. Two terms of power was just about enough to be experienced and to make a certain lasting effects. At the same time, the system manages to ensure that the country would not be put under an autocratic dictator that we would not be able to easily remove from power when the need rises. To implement the proposed policy and reduce the time limit to five years would only harm the current harmony in these countries with no additional benefits.

In conclusion, the policy being proposed by the topic should not be implemented to ensure that those in powers would still have the ability to create practical changes with lasting effects in their fields. The hunger for power is sufficiently managed in most countries with the currently common two-term system. Implementing the policy will only bring more harm than good for the related fields.