From Terence Netto
Leading, especially steering a nation, must necessarily be done from the front.
Otherwise, the forces of reaction will drown you before you can even get going.
Youth and sports minister Hannah Yeoh got it right on the issue of racial slurs spewing from the mouths of national sports personalities.
Yeoh came out speedily and forthrightly by reading the riot act to national sports persons.
It did not matter that the offender was a prominent hockey player like Hanis Nadiah Onn or an obscure shuttler like Bong Guan Yik, Yeoh blew the whistle on their verbal misconduct, signalling her ministry’s zero tolerance for racist speech.
In spite of the apologies tendered by offenders and pleas by assorted members of the public to temper justice with mercy, Yeoh did not swerve from the pedagogical aspects of her role as a minister.
Contrast this with her colleague, home minister Saifuddin Nasution Ismail who only yesterday came out with a comment on another issue that has sizzled the past few weeks in the public arena.
This concerned the question of proper attire for people who want to lodge reports at police stations.
Assorted police officials said that government guidelines required persons, women in particular, to abide by the requirements of modesty in their attire when lodging reports or seeking service at government offices.
Others held that attire was a secondary consideration, particularly to people who want to lodge police reports as they could be in fraught situations where proper dressing is not as important as quick redress.
To the police, then, service must necessarily come before punctilio.
Saifuddin took his time to weigh-in on the issue. Even a former inspector-general of police thought it fit to chime in on the public discussion by stating that exigency outweighs the importance of sartorial propriety.
Perhaps, Saifuddin believes that it is better for an issue to stew in the public arena before he interjects with his advice.
For some issues where the merits of it are somewhat ambiguous, it is better that parties be allowed to vent their opinions before those in power supervene with their conclusive take.
The question of proper attire when someone wants to make a police report is not of this equivocal nature.
The issue of racial slurs uttered by prominent sports persons in a multiracial society is also a matter that does not lend itself to equivocation.
Yeoh recognised the danger and smacked offenders down. Saifuddin could use her dispatch. - 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.
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