Political leaders and their selfish games

The highs and the peaks of holding political power intoxicate them and they lose touch with reality – and the people around them learn not to confront them with reality.

COMMENT

Rightly or wrongly too many of us think of wealth as a sign of greatness. And money is the root of all evil – even more so in politics.

In as long as that view prevails, our political leaders will have problems of morality because the political leaders we now have are not honourable men. They are not men upon whom we can stake our future and the future of our country.

They are not men who will do what we need most for our country – to restore political accountability and social justice.

It is one thing to tell a white lie to gain an immediate or temporary political advantage over your opponent and for the most part the public can understand and possibly forgive this transgression.

But we are less likely to forgive a hypocrite. These are leaders who deceived and made deliberate efforts to continue to deceive the public over a lengthy period of time to gain political advantage.

In other words they take the public for a fool. Inevitably when truth prevails and these leaders are exposed for their wrongdoings, the public will react with contempt and disgust and forgiveness will not be possible.

Both Najib Tun Razak and Anwar Ibrahim have done this many times in their political life and the public has had enough of their duplicity.

If we cannot believe in the honesty of our leaders than how can we allow them to lead us?

The turmoil our country is now in is because our people do not see the leaders that they want in either Najib or Anwar.

Their political past reeks of duplicity, deceit and a denial to do what they themselves have promised their electorates they will do – good governance, openness and accountability while in public office.

The political realities after the 13th general election promises nothing more than continued turmoil that has allowed the opposition to question the legitimacy of the electoral process.

The opposition has chosen to do this not in a measured and structured manner. It has chosen instead to take its grievances to the people via its rallies on the premise that public opinion is the highest court in the land.

And so the stage is set for the massive June 22 rally.

The self-serving belief
As far as I am concerned, Najib and Anwar can play at their selfish games but do it in their own time.

Our country, our people, our future must take precedence before their personal mind games. For every action that they now take, they must ask themselves what their motives are.

The people are counting on the two of them to ensure that they are able to take care of their family, the community and country’s needs and will hold them accountable for their sins of commission and omission.

Unfortunately our leaders lost their moral compasses many years ago. They have not made enough effort to develop their moral and ethical compass to face True North! True North requires them to see themselves not as heroes but as servants of the people they lead.

For Najib and Anwar, power and prestige are the obvious attractions and yet they fool themselves into believing that they are serving something bigger than themselves – the people, King and country – not forgetting religion.

And they have the audacity to believe that the people, King and country cannot do without them.

This self-serving belief drives them to keep going no matter what, and this will eventually lead to them breaching ethical and moral standards by which they have once held themselves accountable to.

The highs and the peaks of holding political power intoxicate them and they lose touch with reality – and the people around them learn not to confront them with reality.

In the lead up to the 13th general election, Anwar had convinced himself that he will win the general election. When he lost he could not accept the reality and so he continues to seek ways and means to secure that elusive win.

It is time Anwar confronted the fact that he has lost the election – however painful the reality is – before everything gets out of balance, and he will lose not only the respect of the Malaysian public but also his position within the Pakatan Rakyat coalition as its leader.

Where is Najib now taking us and our country to? It cannot be denied that there has een many irregularities and fraud in the election process, aided and abated by a compliant Election Commission.

The question now is this – if Najib and BN are already involved in these fraudulent activities to win the election, how will they now conduct themselves when in government? Can we trust them?

If a pact existed between Najib and Anwar – brokered by the former Indonesian vice-president Jusuf Kalla to accept the results of the election whichever way it went – then our question has to be “why was a pact needed in the first place?” And why was this pact not made known to the public?

The long goodbye

All this and more boils down to moral leadership or the lack of it.

You cannot abandon all those promises of open, accountable and good governance that you have both previously elevated to lofty prominence simply because it is no longer convenient for you to do so.

What separates good men, good leaders are the morals by which they live their life. Hubris and isolation from the real world is no excuse.

For Najib and Anwar, the long goodbye has started. Najib will have another five years to make good the promises he made to the people of Malaysia to gain him that five years.

Anwar has the task of seeing that Najib does make good those promises. But more critical, Anwar has to make ready the next echelon of Pakatan leaders who will once again give the people of Malaysia a viable alternative.

CT Ali is a reformist who believes in Pakatan Rakyat’s ideologies. He is a FMT columnist.