When kampung boys become big bosses

 

At a meeting of senior executives which I once attended, the big boss scolded a subordinate big boss. They were all big bosses, with some running listed companies. The scolding went on and on, but never directly to the face of the intended recipient, apart from the occasional evil-eye glances.

While this was going on I remember thinking that had I wanted to work in a kampung environment, I would never have left my kampung.

After the meeting, the big boss probably went to the golf course and told his cronies how he “whacked” the guy in front of everybody, and his adoring audience probably applauded his chutzpah.

The other guy probably went back and scolded his own subordinates, too, most likely in a similar fashion. Probably at the same golf course too.

You can take a man out of a kampung, but sometimes you can’t take the kampung out of him.

I’ve always talked about my kampung roots. I make it sound as if my kampung is the best kampung in the country (yes it was – read about it in my previous columns).

There are, however, some dark sides to the kampung life that I don’t mention. One is the proclivity to never accept any responsibility or blame for things that go wrong, and to blame others, somebody, anybody, anything – ghosts, spirits, unspecified “them”.

In a kampung, when you’re sick, you call in the bomoh and after his rites, the diagnosis would always either be “orang buat”, meaning somebody has put a hex on you, or that you offended a powerful spirit.

Nobody ever gets cured of any affliction this way, unless their problems are psychosomatic in the first place. When it’s too late, somebody might end up dying in a hospital, cementing the belief that modern medicine is ineffective.

But nobody would question whether the bomohs themselves were ineffective. It became part of our belief system, and the need to believe transcends the need to ask critical, uncomfortable questions.

In a kampung, like anywhere else, people bring politics into the smallest of things … but small kampung things can turn big. Winning the local political party branch election can lead to winning the local division election, and that can mean a state or a federal seat before you know it.

You go from managing a budget of a few hundred ringgit for the annual general meeting’s refreshments, to managing millions, even billions, of local or state or even national spending.

Politics is politics wherever you go – forming alliances, ganging up on somebody, creating alternative narratives, or as the delightful Malay proverb says, “lempar batu sembunyi tangan” (or throw a stone but hide your hands), which of course says it all.

The democratic political system is meant to regulate these behaviours with checks and balances. Nobody in a democracy should win too much (President for Life!) nor lose too much (Off with his head!).

As Winston Churchill said: “Democracy is the worst form of government – except for all the others that have been tried.” Democracy certainly isn’t perfect, though it is definitely under sustained and heavy attack.

While politics can give you power and wealth, it can’t give you competence or excellence. These have to be fought for slowly and painfully, making and learning from mistakes and with humility and grace, anathema to politics.

But nowadays people enter politics “to be somebody, not to do something”, in the recent words of a politician. Malaysians no longer get into politics because of a set of beliefs about how the nation should be run. Politics now is purely about power and wealth.

While I was growing up, one such belief was of “helping the people”, meaning of course “our people”, hence the race-based parties of the time many of which survive to this day. Leaders went into politics to fight and sacrifice for their own race.

Something funny happened along the way. Those who fought and sacrificed became rich beyond belief. Their fight was so successful that it never seemed to end. Instead of apologising for failing to reach the targets they promised, they demand even more time and support.

And along the way, something else happened too – people were dumbed down and became scared of even more enemies and challenges, whether real or imagined. The kampung habits of always blaming others, and of putting blind faith in those with power and authority, was exacerbated.

By winning a few elections, a kampung hero can become a national hero. His budgets go from a few hundred ringgit into limitless, stratospheric amounts.

When you leave the kampung behind

In the kampung, however, you didn’t have to deal with issues like global inflation, employment, educational strategy, national security, pandemics, economic policies, and international relations.

But now that you do, the lack of experience or ability is showing. National affairs are treated just like kampung affairs. National solutions are treated just like kampung solutions. And national budgets are spent just like kampung budgets too.

To be fair, no kampung on earth handles such issues well either. But if you left your kampung, conquered your fears about the big wide world, and shed the insecurity you grew up with, you’d learn and get pretty good at it.

But not if the big wide world scares you. In your kampung mindset, you only see enemies everywhere. Your failures become “orang buat” or caused by bad spirits. You don’t grow to face the challenges, but instead shrink your national theatre into a small kampung play, a size that you can handle.

You change the rules of the games you think you can’t win fair and square. You redefine success and failures. You create bogeymen. You reward or punish people based on their fealty to you. You spend money as if you don’t have to earn it, because you never did have to earn it in the first place.

And no, the games you play so well in Putrajaya or PJ Sheraton don’t seem to get played on the global stage. The sense of fright and nervousness when you’re playing the games there is almost palpable, as is the relief of returning home to rapturous welcomes at the airport.

If you’ve been following national politics, you’d see there is no difference between it and our kampung politics, apart from the budgets, where whether of Vellfires or vaccines, can run into billions.

Perhaps the real kampung people aren’t people like me who glory in it, but rather those who try to hide it by acting big, dressing fancy and splashing money everywhere. These are those who know deep inside they’re really kampung size and nothing else, and desperately try to hide it.

It makes me ashamed to call myself a kampung boy. But if it means I’m not in the same club as them, then perhaps that’s not a bad thing. - FMT

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