From Asian Gatsby to Gabfest? The buck stops here!

"The buck stops here” is a phrase that sits on the table of former US president Harry Truman. While he is not the favourite leader of many, his creed says it all: all final decisions rest with me.

Not surprisingly, Truman Doctrine was known as the beginning of Cold War. He helped Greece and Turkey to push back the Communist incursions. He blocked mainland China from taking possession of Taiwan in 1950, and he fired General Doughlas MacArthur when the latter crossed the Yalu River in pursuit of the destruction of the North Koreans only to be told by Truman (photo, above) to stand back. This then led to an armistice that paved the way for the creation of the North-South divide in the Korean Peninsular that still stands to this day.

More ominously, one can say that Truman stopped the land invasion of the United States and mainland Japan, an act which would have caused the lives of more American soldiers, when Truman agreed to the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Pernicious and tragic as they can be, all of Truman's decisions brought home the point that nothing can be done unless there is someone to do them.

There should not be any Truman-like leaders in Malaysia. Even Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad, contrary to many misperceptions, thrives on listening. Pakatan Harapan is able to gell together as an entity of four disparate and different parties by virtue of Mahathir's ability to listen to all sides.

Anwar Ibrahim, as the prime minister-in-waiting, has been known to listen well when the issues are pressing. It was his ability to understand the cries of the people, as recently as the first budget of Pakatan Harapan, that has restored the integrity of the government. By agreeing to help the farmers and fishermen who are hard hit by the drop in the prices of their commodities, Anwar has displayed the uncanny ability to connect, not merely with his constituents in Port Dickson, but with the rest of the country. As this is written, more financial assistance may yet be in the offing to offset the sufferings of the people.

However, having the ability to listen does not mean throwing caution to the need to do serious and more important work.

To be sure, much of the people's victory of May 9, 2018, was spurred by the sheer excesses of Jho Low, what authors Bradley Hope and Tom Wright at Wall Street Journal called the "Asian Gatsby".

The flamboyant and flatulent lifestyle of Jho Low - enabled as he was by Najib Abdul Razak and wife Rosmah Mansor - brought the house of BN and Umno crashing down.

To talk and talk and talk

Harapan has no equivalent of an Asian Gatsby at the moment. No politician is flaunting the trappings of his or her office and wealth. Not yet anyway. But the fascination of many politicians on the importance of town hall sessions is another faint indication of their inability to helm the burdens of their office. In turn, they have transformed the full weight of their office into a gabfest, to talk and talk and talk.

Yet what people in the streets want are not more more speeches and drivel. The Sungai Kandis by-election, and others of the like soon after May 9, for example, averaged a turnout of less than 45 percent. People were tuning out to focus on the importance of making their lives matter, by extension, that of Malaysia.

It only underwent a fillip when the voter turnout for Port Dickson went up to more than 73 percent again, as people were hoping that Anwar can lead the country to strong parliamentary reforms, ideally good governance that can lead to a strong spur in jobs, jobs and more jobs.

To be sure, there is a psychological term for those politicians who have become somewhat addicted to perennial town hall sessions. The exact phrase is: projection.

When certain individuals or parties cannot perform, they resort to holding endless series of talks to "showcase" the extent to which they have done.

Yet, as Fareed Zakaria of CNN World correctly pointed out, before, when commenting on the presidency of the Trump Administration, no leader should confuse "motion" with "progress".

A rocking horse is constantly rocking back and forth. There is even the sense of forward motion too. Yet the truth is the wooden horse is NOT - emphasis mine - moving. Thus leaders and politicians who are enamoured by townhall sessions, and the mere feeling of standing in the podium, should not be confused with actual work. They must get cracking by coming out with real policies that can be tabled to the cabinet.

Indeed, true leaders are defined by the extent to which they can help people to put food on the table. In the words of former US Secretary of State James Baker, "it's all jobs, jobs, jobs" when he was asked about the necessity of launching the First Gulf War.

Malaysia does not need to go to war to make things happen. There is no industrial military complex that requires the military to invade or attack anyone to keep the military machine churning.

Malaysia, with a gross domestic product (GDP) of US$320 billion - this from a base of US$47 billion in 1957 - has always been a trading country. It is regularly within the top 20 export nations of the world.

A country like Malaysia needs a strong inflow of foreign direct investments (FDI). Of the US$55 billion that comes into Asean each year as FDI, close to 50 percent have found their way into Singapore. Malaysia has to upend the table to be the one that is receiving 50 percent of the annual FDI - without which the 600 percent growth that saw the expansion of Malaysia from 1957 to 2018 can well stop.

All of the above requires Malaysian politicians to talk less, to showmanship less and do more to invite more FDI into the country and to capture them indefinitely.

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RAIS HUSSIN is a supreme council member of Bersatu. He also heads its policy and strategy bureau. - Mkini