Common thread in the fates of Gorbachev and Najib

 

From Terence Netto

There’s symmetry in the fates of Mikhail Gorbachev and Najib Razak, though one has just died and the other has just been consigned to jail.

How are their fates similar? The cessation of a life and the amputation of a career are different orders of things.

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Yet, when the life of a world-historical figure or the career of a national leader is ended, their images, even without the lapse of ruminating time, become simplified and summarised, standing sharply, for a few estimated things, rather than vaguely, for a swarm of possibilities.

Gorbachev and Najib were alike in that they both tried to reform a dysfunctional system, and both failed.

The former tried, through perestroika (restructuring) and glasnost (openness), to reform a socialist project: provision of goods and services by the state to its citizens.

The latter attempted to, via a host of socio-economic liberalisation measures, reform the New Economic Policy (NEP) which was essentially a socialist scheme: state allocation of special privileges to a group, thought to be disadvantaged, to help them compete.

But as noted by the writer George Orwell, himself a socialist, all socialist schemes for the betterment of society fail.

Why?

Because – and this is a 20th century discovery – the state, in the long run, is a poor provider of goods and services, except on the big-ticket items of health, education and public transport.

The state as provider is prone to misallocation of resources, corruption and, as safeguard of its know-all stance, repression.

Gorbachev tried to reform a system that was based on a flawed premise: an ideological belief that a coterie of individuals (read: politburo) can decide wisely, allocate equitably, and govern for the good of society.

Najib tried to reform the NEP that, after some four decades of implementation, had ingrained a sense of entitlement among its beneficiaries.

Nothing is more pernicious of good governance than an entrenched sense of entitlement among large swathes of the population.

The attempted reforms of both Gorbachev and Najib set off the forces of reaction, confirming the truth of the thinker Alexis de Tocqueville’s admonition that the most dangerous time for a sclerotic government is when it reforms.

Both leaders tried to pursue some form of justice and the common good of their societies under overall frameworks that were far from perfect – in fact, some were iniquitous.

Gorbachev tried to give communism a human face, in the manner in which Imre Nagy, Josip Broz Tito, and Alexander Dubcek attempted to do in Hungary, Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia respectively in the 1950s and 1960s.

Najib tried to remind Malaysians that the NEP had an egalitarian dimension to its social engineering schemes – the eradication of poverty irrespective of race.

Personally, both Gorbachev and Najib were good guys; Gorbachev by testimony of western leaders and journalists who knew him at close quarters; and Najib, in the telling of people who interacted with him.

One concedes the notion of Najib being a good man may strike many as sentimental mush, given the enormous size of his alleged crimes. But he is, in the narrative of many who mingled with him, a good chap.

For perspective, we know from Lord Acton, author of the greatest insight about power (power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely), that leaders who successfully attempted great changes in their societies were almost always “bad men”.

Acton held that: “Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority: still more when you superadd the tendency or the certainty of corruption by authority.”

The German Otto von Bismarck and the Turk Mustapha Kemal, who brought great changes to their countries, were illustrations of Acton’s “bad men,” probably from adherence to Machiavelli’s advice to leaders that they ought to have the courage of a lion and the cunning of a fox when pursuing epoch-making change.

Gorbachev’s failed effort at reforming communism led to the ending of the Cold War.

Najib’s failed attempt at reforming the NEP eventuated in freeing us from bondage to a stifling orthodoxy, that Umno-BN must rule to ensure Malaysia’s peace and prosperity.

In great things, wrote Desiderius Erasmus, it is enough to have tried. - FMT

Terence Netto is a senior journalist and an FMT reader.

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