Can you name our ministers?

“Ma, what’s the name of our minister of science and technology?” my son asked the other day.
I went blank.

“You forgot is it?” he nudged.

I tried very hard to remember.

“It’s okay Ma, I Googled. It is Datuk Seri Panglima Wilfred,” my son said.

“Ah!” I responded, pretending it was a eureka moment.
I lied.

At that instance, I realised I had no clue who the science and technology minister was. Heck, I couldn’t even visualise his face.

Dumbfounded by my own ignorance, I tried doing a mental quiz.

“Who is the minister of consumer affairs?” I asked myself.

Nope, I did not know the answer to that one either.

“How about the minister of public works?”

Nope. Not a clue.

Sigh.

When I was growing up in the 80s, I knew all the names of our cabinet ministers by heart.

My mom had a habit of gluing a newspaper cutting of the Malaysian cabinet to the kitchen door. Every time the cabinet was reshuffled and the newspaper published a new line-up, she would religiously replace the old paper cutting with the new one.

“Tell me, who is the minister of public works?” she’d give me and my brothers pop quizzes from time to time.

Whenever we could not give her the correct answer, she’d explain to us the importance of knowing our leaders and encourage us to keep learning their names. As my brothers and I got older, we had the entire list of cabinet ministers at the tip of our fingers.

Back then, my family took great pride in our ministers and our government.

Somehow, over the years, keeping the names of our ministers close to our hearts seemed not that important any more.
Likewise, the pride we once felt, no longer existed – just like the newspaper cuttings.

Between the 1990s and today, so many things have happened to change the way we perceive things, and also the way we feel about certain people.

I took a deep breath.

Refusing to admit that I no longer remembered the names of the ministers, I began making a mental list of all the heads of the ministries I know.

“Najib, Zahid, KJ, Rohani, Hishamuddin, Nazri, Subramaniam, Shabery, Mahadzir, Ku Nan – ah, not too bad,” I thought.
But then again, that’s only ten out of twenty-five ministries. A pathetic 40% pass rate.

Sigh.

I wondered if my friends knew any better so I buzzed a few of them.

“Reza, do you know who is our minister of public works?” I asked.

“Fadillah something I think,” he replied.

Not bad. So I continued to ask him, “Minister of education?”

“No idea.”

“Minister of science and technology? Minister of agriculture?”

“I am fed up with the government la, I don’t bother who is who anymore,” Reza explained.

I then reached out to another friend, Trent.

“Who is the education minister?” I asked.

“Kamalanathan? Oh wait, he is the deputy!”

“Minister of consumer affairs?”

“Hmm, I don’t know that one.”

“Minister of public works?”

“First name that came to my mind was Samy Vellu but I know that’s not it. This is embarrassing.”

“Minister of transportation?”

“Wait, is it still Liow Tiong Lai? Phew, despite my shameful ignorance, at least I got one right,” said Trent.

I continued asking the same line up of questions to quite a number of my friends. As expected, they too could not recall most of the names of our cabinet ministers.

“Why do you think you do not know their names despite keeping in touch with the current affairs of our country every single day?” I asked some of them.

“They are unworthy of being remembered.”

Ouch.

I suppose not knowing the names of our ministers speaks volumes about how we perceive them.

I guess it is not necessarily about our brain’s ability to remember names but instead it is about our level of interest in people.

We need a reason to be motivated to remember somebody’s name. The more interest we show in a person, the more likely their names will imprint itself upon our brain.

Oh well, I guess it’s a good thing we have information from the Internet at the tip of our fingers these days.- Mkini