Can we trust any politician?

 

Trust is a pivotal component in the smooth operations of most things.

Relationships and marriages hinge on the fulcrum of trust. If you haven’t figured that one out, you are heading for a tempestuous time or eventual decoupling.

In business, only enterprises that are firmly rooted with partners trusting each other, actually survive the test of time. The same goes for employer-employee relationships. Promotion and growth come when baseline trust is established between the parties.

Heck, in running my restaurant too, customers need to trust that our service standards, and the quality of our offerings actually match our advertising and marketing narratives. The longevity of The Fire Grill restaurant is solely dependent on my customers believing that they will get good value for their money, great service and tasty food, each time they visit us.

When you think about it, pretty much every single thing we do in life is very much reliant on trust.

Yet, for the most important influence over our lives; the governance of our nation and its resources, there seems to be a massive trust deficit.

Ipsos, a French multinational market research and consulting firm, has a Malaysian chapter. Ipsos Malaysia did a nationwide study in 2020 to understand how much trust Malaysians place on institutions like the government, media, blue chip companies as well as fellow citizens.

The study paints a definitively bleak picture of trust-deficiency in Malaysia. Malaysians think that trust is on a downward spiral with our government. The study revealed that our government has only 59% trust among its citizens.

And, the lowest echelon of trust is reserved for politicians. Only 44% of Malaysians actually trust our politicians. Comparatively, teachers received an 89% trust rating.

This is a tell-tale sign, if I ever saw one.

Many people, including me, have had an anecdotal feeling that politicians intrinsically cannot be trusted. But when a reputable market research organisation conducts a survey that covers the whole nation and includes all key demographic groups to produce this result, the information is even more pronounced.

Why don’t we trust our politicians?

Isn’t trust at the heart of any connection we have with another person?

Perhaps a good starting point is to decipher what makes someone trustworthy.

The first and perhaps most significant human trait that underpins trust is that a person is consistent in their dealings with you. A trustworthy person will roughly exhibit the same behaviour and language in any situation.

They maintain character and follow through on what they say they’ll do, even when they are tempted to make U-turns. They won’t wear different faces, or pretend to be someone they’re not, to impress.

Just based on this one characteristic alone, most of our politicians fail miserably.

Let’s take the current opposition in Malaysia. Until 2018, they were in loggerheads with the government for decades. They stood up for many marginalised citizens and communities; they were vociferous in their objections to government wrongdoing and malfeasance; they rallied the masses; and reached out to the hearts and minds of so many of us.

This is why they secured the highest percentage of seats in our parliament, in the last general election.

But who can forget the 22 months they were in government?

Former tigers who roared and marauded, ended up behaving like well-trained domestic cats. It was almost as though they tasted the trappings of power and got intoxicated with their newfound fandango.

They seemed to immediately forget that they were swept into power because citizens explicitly trusted that change will come thick and fast to a sinking ship, which was our nation at that time.

Instead of rewarding the citizens for their trust by working with determination and speed to offer victories for the people who voted them in, they spent time molly-coddling each other, cloyingly sucking up to certain anointed leaders, planning and plotting coups, and eventually hit the self-destruct button.

So, how to trust these fellas again, now?

Currently, the former government that led the nation from the time of our independence right up to 2018, a whopping 61 years, tells us to re-trust them.

Of course, everyone deserves a second chance. But let’s just look at what they have been up to since losing their grip on the nation some four years ago.

They have simply acted in their own self-interest. Period. All talk about “returning the mandate back to the people” is literally hogwash. In the last election, the citizenry decided and elected 55.86% of parliament seats to the then opposition.

That is the “will” of the people. All they have done is to work covertly and in a clandestine manner to dismantle the will of the citizenry. And to make matters worse, they have chosen, as their poster boy to lead their so-called renaissance and resurgence, an internationally acknowledged disgraced leader.

I reckon the vast majority of most Malaysians do not trust politicians of any ilk. Our past “hurt” is visceral, and still fresh in our memory. We have developed a low propensity to trust because of a combination of factors. But chief amongst them is that none of these politicians are role models, and we have had terrible experiences with all of them.

So, if we ask ourselves “can we trust any politician?”, there is only one real answer; a resounding no! This is such an unacceptable and deeply unsettling response for us citizens, isn’t it? - FMT

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