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Saturday, January 21, 2017

Avoid the negatives, not just doing the positives



It seems to me a hallmark of many third world countries is to constantly talk about grand designs like national missions, visions, and transformations. It does not matter in the process they have achieved anything meaningful. All they need is to keep talking about it and if necessary, to replace one vision with another.
You know what; I could have envisaged the vision of a country in one Saturday afternoon - economic resilience, good paying jobs, reasonable income equality, safety and security, competitive education, respect for environment, national unity and cohesion, excel in sports, music and arts, good infrastructure, decent housing and efficient public transportation, and freedom without dominating others, liberty with responsibility, and democracy and rule of law.
Seriously, it does matter we have formulated all these motherhood statements from top down, as in the case of Vision 2020 or bottom up, as in the case of the proposed 2050 National Transformation (TN50). Basically, these are grand ambitions usually backed by little concerted efforts. In fact, these could even be red herrings aimed camouflaging the massive failings of the government.
For Malaysia it is not just Vision 2020; we have endless five-year Malaysia Plans, Multimedia Super Corridor, Knowledge Economy, Industrial Masterplan, Education Blueprint, the numerous Growth Corridors - Northern, Eastern, Southern, Sabah and Sarawak, Tuna fishing, and ‘Mata Kuching’ planting. Now we want to look even further to TN2050, even though we are already ‘half-blind’ and ‘short-sighted’.
Let get real; the government can’t decide and determine the ingenuity and the enterprise of the people. What it can do is to create the environment for the people to unleash their potential without excessive bureaucratic interference, holier than thou dispensation and massive mismanagement.
I live in this country all my life and have watched its development over many years. Sometimes, it is unnecessary to waste time and money to formulate and talk about grandeur stuff. Proclaiming motherhood statements and ideals is not going to help us to achieve much.
Also, instead of trying to do the positives, sometimes it is more productive and useful for us to control and avoid the negatives.
Why formulate sophisticated budgetary programmes when it is more useful to cut wasteful spending?
Why give aid and welfare, when it is more effective to provide more equitable wages?
Why encourage business with incentives when it is more useful to cut bureaucratic red-tape and corruption?
Why talk about TN2050 when we have massive malfeasance?
Why spend money and energy on national unity when bigotry and racist politicking are allowed to roam free?
Why talk about new growth and new ‘frontiers’ when we can’t even manage our GLCs engaging in rudimentary businesses like plantation, airlines, basic infrastructure, land and real estate development?
By all means be ambitious, inspirational and visionary. But it is useless to have all these without realistic means of achieving them.
Sometimes, the greatest stumbling block to our national goals is not lack of visions, plans or ambition. It is national malfeasance. We do too many bad and stupid things and as a result of that, they negate or overwhelm all the good things we do.- Mkini

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