Covid-19 exposes decades of cracks in our institutions

 

It is often said that the worst times bring out the best in people. This may be true in many cases but unfortunately we are not seeing that now.

I am talking about the political and government leaders entrusted with running our lives during the pandemic. It is generally felt that there has been much bungling, which is making the citizens angry and upset.

I mean if two ministers coming out of the same meeting, make contradictory statements on the same matter, something is terribly wrong. To be honest, we are seeing more of this lately. There are so many decisions, explanations and implementations of policies that make people wonder what is going on in the corridors of power.

Covid-19 and the unseating of an elected government in February last year have left an impact on us and in the incompetence seen today. But the pandemic has shown us much more. It has exposed the depth of degradation in the competence of key institutions over the decades.

It may have been nature’s way of showing us how so many of our solid institutions built during the first two decades after independence have been systematically destroyed by incompetence, corruption and flawed social engineering policies.

Some may not agree but there is one school of thought that says decades of total disregard for quality and merit in most aspects of our lives has made us weak in our administration today.

I am pretty sure that if we had had a strong civil service, government, Cabinet and state authorities during this pandemic, we could have bounced back better, and not kept going deeper into the morass.

One of Malaysia’s greatest setbacks must be the massive drop in the quality of education when the nation decided to push for quantity at the expense of the quality that is central to any institution or organisation; when standards went down, key institutions were “cracking up” internally but those in power blithely ignored it for decades.

Much emphasis is placed on critical thinking and thinking out of the box in all educational institutions so that we can have a rich human resource of innovative and inquisitive problem solvers.

We need responsible leaders and civil servants at every level to think on their feet, and make efficient decisions based on integrity and high moral standards in any moment of crisis.

At the receiving end of the current shoddy planning and flip-flopping in decision-making are our hardworking frontliners who have been making huge sacrifices, being away from their families and loved ones and working long hours. Lack of manpower, personal protective equipment and the slow roll-out of the Covid-19 vaccination should not have happened if there had been competent planners and executors.

If only from the 1970s we had developed a pretty strong education system as well as universities of quality without seriously compromising on entry requirements, we would have produced competent graduates who would have been the key drivers of our economy, government and politics today.

We failed here and the culture of mediocrity set in. Although academics and politicians were openly complaining about the deteriorating standards, it did not stop. The politics of the land dictated where we were heading, albeit knowing it was the wrong way.

Malaysian leaders were in a state of denial as politicians shamelessly continued to push for the supremacy of one racial group without realising that one day, the failure of the education system would show up. And this is quite obvious now.

Studies have shown that the institutions of higher learning are pretty solid in countries which have emphasised a high standard of education where no one is offered a “short-cut” based on ethnicity or non-academic attributes.

As a result, technocrats who lead many of the institutions in these nations tend to be able to handle any crisis in a much better and professional way. South Korea, Singapore and Australia are shining examples here.

Although the deterioration in Malaysia started decades ago, a solid bunch of academics, a strong civil service and a strong private sector at that time kept the nation going forward. This plus the nation’s wealth in raw materials then also helped keep our economy solid. This actually mitigated the rot that was taking place deep inside.

The country’s early years also saw a culture of efficiency and non-corruption among Malaysians at all levels, keeping the nation respectable and leading us to be among the top performers in Asia. However, with industrialisation and development at a frenetic pace since then, corruption and the rush to churn out graduates to fill up the quotas took its toll on our system.

The present Covid-19 crisis has indeed become a terrifying phenomenon for most of us and has served to remind us that we are mere humans at the mercy of nature.

But like in every disaster, we must learn our lessons. This pandemic has shown us how our policies and politics of old have destroyed the nation’s key institutions. Only the best should be allowed to run the nation at every level.

It’s now in our hands to set things right by letting people with the right qualifications and aptitude to bring Malaysia back on the right track. - FMT

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