Leadership is the No. 1 issue

 

I seldom read Mingguan Malaysia but an article last Sunday attracted my attention. Readers who are interested in political honesty on Malaysian politics, itself a very rare commodity these days, should read the article, an interview with Johari Ghani.

This piece, “Negara perlu pemimpin berwibawa, dihormati” (The country needs leaders with authority, to be respected) is one of quality, another rarity in Bahasa Malaysia mass media.

It contains a framework on how Malaysia should and could move away from its current self-inflicted problems. It is frank, honest and not laced with any political rhetoric.

There were several key elements in the interview that synchronised well with my line of thought on politics, social and economic issues.

The interview brought up issues in a direct, to-the-point, sincere and helpful manner to enable readers to understand what has gone wrong with the current administration.

As George Washington put it, honesty is the best policy.

To me, the three key pillars which the present government has failed to deal with are: health, politics and economy. The points were clearly made and succinctly put forward in the interview.

As a backdrop, the current administration has been given these freedoms:

• to manage the country freely via the declaration of emergency,
• the closure of parliament whereby no accountability (or check and balance) are required from the executive branch; and
• the use of the slightest excuse of Covid-19 positivity data for the imposition of movement controlled order restrictions.

And yet, this government still failed.

When measured over a timeline of 17 months, and the quantum of funds that they had spent without any recourse to any form of transparency, I would add that this current government has indeed failed miserably.

On leadership and empathy

Interestingly, being a politician himself, Johari highlighted the failure that revolves around the lack of leadership.

He said not only has the prime minister not shown a grain of leadership quality during this period of crisis, but the members of his Cabinet have also failed him, and the rakyat, too.

I think many readers would agree.

The inability of his own cabinet members to lead by example by following the government’s own SOPs has been rather glaring. To make matters worse, the PM himself never spoke about this matter at all, let alone reprimand them or to take action against those wrongdoers.

This is where leadership by example has failed us.

I observed the PM’s own reaction during the launching of the food basket last week, when he dwelled on the issue of white flags, laughed at it, and suggested that people put up a blue flag instead.

To me, that is an example of a complete PR disaster, fully captured by the media. It clearly showed a lack of empathy with those people who have raised the white flag.

Any lack of sensitivity towards the poor reflects very badly on his leadership.

Therefore, I tend to agree with Johari on the lack of leadership in the present government line-up.

Leadership is the single most important element in the hierarchy of management and national administration. To me, leadership is an art. Similar to painting; either you have the talent to paint or you don’t.

The art of motivating a group of people (or the population) to act towards achieving a common goal, is a tough one.

For Malaysia to get out of its current predicament, perhaps a change in leadership is in order. - FMT

The views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect those of MMKtT.