Iconic photo of Pak Lah, mother worth a million votes

 

From Terence Netto

Truly, it was a picture that was worth a thousand words.

Now that former prime minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi has died at the age of 85, after an illness that robs victims of their memory, it serves to reflect on the iconic image of him visiting his mother days after being installed as the country’s fifth prime minister on Oct 31, 2003.

Emblazoned across the front page of newspapers that captured the moment, the image of Pak Lah, as he was popularly called, bending over to kiss the hand of his mother at their family home in Kepala Batas, was wonderfully evocative of the mood of the times.

For an iconic moment, the tableau of a filial son paying respects to an age-weakened mother, who must have been keeping tabs on the ups and downs of her son’s political career, nicely conveyed the sense of a hopeful nation poised at a defining juncture.

In fact, the tableau was so winsome that incoming Indonesian president Susilo Yudhoyono replicated it with respect to his mother when he took office in 2004. As they say, imitation is the highest form of flattery.

However, an Abdullah administration that began with a collective sense of relief over the end of the Dr Mahathir Mohamad era and with the hope of refreshing change and liberating reform to come soon stumbled to disappointment and defeat.

The whole saga reminds of a line from the great movie, Shawshank Redemption, when one of the protagonists opines that “hope is a dangerous thing.”

Why “dangerous”?

Because it strips you of the courage to face reality when hope turns out to be delusive and the one in whom it was placed becomes a nullity.

The lesson to be drawn from Pak Lah’s administration — which was not, to be sure, without some redeeming features — is not to make excuses when the saga ends in failure.

Instead, we should pluck the courage to call failure by its name and usher the failing to the door.

Anything else invites the adding of insult to injury. - FMT

Terence Netto is a senior journalist and an FMT reader.

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