Selective accountability of leaders who thrive through 3D

 

The PAS commissioners seem to be in the news a lot lately. What a lovely title, commissioners! You commission things, meaning you dictate and others scurry around making things happen for you. Sounds like a nice job.

Not being a political commentator, much less a political commissioner, I can’t claim to understand much about what’s happening in the lovely state of Kedah. I wish them well in all their undertakings.

Well perhaps not all their undertakings. Being a Penangite, I’d rather they go and find their millions for their state coffers elsewhere, and not at Penang’s expense. Get some money from Perlis. They’ve been hiding up there keeping very quiet all this while.

I’m not surprised, though, at the nature, and the tone, of what’s happening there in Kedah. Lots of noise, excitement, demands and finger-pointing. In so many ways it’s very kampung, and kampung is what I know well.

Most of our politics start in the kampung. That’s what is meant by the saying all politics are local. Kampung can mean any community not big enough to be a town or city or it could just mean a state of mind.

Let’s go with the state of mind hypothesis. Malaysian politics, especially the Malay Islamic side of it, require you to establish credibility as a “learned” person as a starting point. You don’t need any track record or any other kinds of accomplishment.

Given that the kampungs are generally very under-educated (we’ll come to why it is so later), learned means being pious, having some religious credentials, and holding strong and simple opinions that don’t require your audience to think too much.

The strong conviction that many such leaders have comes about because they believe they’re accountable only to God, and not to anything or anybody else on earth. With such a belief, there’s no fight from which they would shy away, especially those where they have the advantage of size and power.

It’s very convenient when God is the one to whom you’re directly accountable. Many other pious and God-fearing people also believe that, but they also believe they’ve accountability on earth too, especially to society at large in a democracy.

The great thing about being accountable only to God is you get to choose what those accountabilities are. Since you get to pick and choose, you’d choose those which you think you can ace.

The secret is – don’t choose the big tough ones! Forget about fighting corruption, abuse of power, betrayal of trust and judicious use of resources, because these are hard and risky.

Those who are guilty of these big ones tend to be very powerful, and usually very nasty, too. They can easily throw you into prison, or persecute you in so many other ways, or at the very least deny you the success you seek.

Not many would willingly choose being incarcerated in Kamunting prison on His Majesty‘s pleasure as a badge of honour or a proud entry into their resume. Politics is now a career and taking such enforced breaks could be bad for your future.

Leave the powerful be, and if you’re challenged on this, say that we can’t accuse people of being guilty without any proof, and then of course ignore any and all proof given.

There’s another reason though.

Deep inside these leaders, there’s a huge desire to emulate those supposedly guilty parties. Their power, wealth, popularity and seeming invincibility are alluring.

While sucking up to power is an old habit, sucking up to wealth is a relatively new phenomenon for the Malays. It wasn’t that long ago when Malays were almost incorruptible, and political power was something that many only reluctantly took up.

Nowadays you could be a school teacher one day, win a few party branch elections and you’d be rolling in money within months. Being rich in or through politics now is literally measured in millions or even billions.

If that wealth is used in the service of the rakyat, in the form of development or healthcare or welfare or subsidies…but how could they forgo this wealth when they’re trying to leave it behind for their own next seven generations?

In the old days when wealth was almost the exclusive domain of the powerful and the privileged, we at least had the luxury of having leaders who were better educated and smarter than us. Our earlier leaders were truly giants of their generations.

Now even with the deteriorating education system that leaves many of us under-educated, we still have many leaders whose IQ scores aren’t anywhere as high as those they claim to lead.

But their PQ (Political Quotient) scores are off the chart. They know which hot buttons to press to get their base energised. They create a hyper-partisan political environment, and have no care, concern or respect for anybody or anything else.

Fair enough, that’s what politics is all about: taking care of your own people. But when, through some lucky accident or some political shenanigans, you get to where you’re supposed to take care of all the people, then things get problematic.`

The feudal part of the Malay society, which seems to have worsened while feudalism seems to be disappearing in much of the world, dictates that age, title, wealth, breeding and piety is to be respected without question.

If you’re a Malay leader nowadays, your path to success is to ensure the Malays remain feudal. Educate people enough to be literate and functional, but not so much that they start asking tough questions on things like accountability for example.

I’d call the goal of Malay politics is to reach the 3Ds – keeping the Malays Dumb, Docile and Delirious.

Dumb is by dumbing down the education system with parochial and nationalistic elements which keep us backwards. Throw in tons of ineffective religious education with a focus on rituals rather than principles, and you’ll get there.

And, some exceptions to the rules aside, we’re indeed already there.

The dumbing down of the education system resulted in a docile populace, not daring to question injustices and abuses. This is the second D. The Malays are kept permanently sedated by unending spoon-feeding and unearned privileges from the public coffers, supposedly because it’s ours by birth right.

Delirious? They’re continuously kept at the edge of hysteria with scaremongering tales of how, in spite of being the overwhelming majority and controlling every aspect of life as well as the levers of powers in the country, they are still afraid of being overwhelmed by the other races.

The sad truth is the injustices happening in Malaysia will never cease until the Malays throw off the shackles imposed upon them by dishonest leaders who exploit them for the only things of value they have – their number and their votes.

It would be extremely difficult to do that if the Malays are smart and well educated, challenging and critical, chill and confident and not brainwashed to create huge unsustainable families.

Hence the 3Ds factories will continue to operate and thrive, even if the 4D shops are banned and abolished. - FMT

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