Charisma and communication challenges for Anwar

 

From Rozhan Othman

The video of a Form 6 student pointing out to Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim the weaknesses in the government’s communications with the people has been going around social media.

It is good that Anwar admitted to this shortcoming at the town hall meeting. However, it is bad that even a Form 6 student could see the problem and yet the people around Anwar could not seem to fix it.

To be fair, this weakness did not start with the current Pakatan Harapan-Barisan Nasional (PH-BN) unity government. There were already concerns about the failure of the first PH government to manage its communications strategically in 2018.

Attempts by some insiders to push for a more strategic approach mostly fell on deaf ears. More accustomed to being in the opposition and being reactive to issues, most PH leaders simply did not have the farsightedness or sophistication to understand strategic communications or manage it.

The outcome of the recent state elections should have been a wake-up call. To understand the setbacks for PH-BN, it is important to understand how racial politics became entrenched in Malaysia.

Until 2018, Umno was the main ruling party, which legitimised its existence by harping on the insecurities of the Malays.

One of its mechanisms was to establish an entity to indoctrinate Malay youth, students, community leaders and civil servants in the notion of “Ketuanan Melayu” and perpetuate this sense of insecurity among Malays.

DAP was often used as a bogeyman, the tip of the spear of the non-Malays out to destroy the Malays. A study by Iman Research after the 2018 general election shows that this anti-DAP sentiment remains entrenched even among the urban middle-class Malays as the result of such indoctrination.

These beliefs became the dogma that shaped the worldview and voting behaviour of many Malays.

PAS was able to tap into this entrenched dogma, having transformed itself in 1982. The then president was ousted.

A key justification for this ouster was that the party had become too much of a Malay nationalist in its message and thus needed to be “purified”.

The Iranian Revolution had just taken place and many of PAS’s younger leaders brought ideas from Shia Islam. This included the notion of “leadership of the ulama” and the establishment of its own Majlis Syura Ulama in 1982, which did not exist in PAS previously.

However, by around 2013, the mood in PAS had changed. A number of leaders started advocating the need to incorporate the Malay agenda and became intensely hostile towards DAP and PH, which ultimately led to PAS leaving the opposition coalition.

PAS began to preach a Malay-Islam narrative and its mantra became one of championing “ketuanan Melayu-Islam”, metamorphosed into its more race-based pre-1982 version.

It could win over the Malay voters, who were not particularly religious and did not subscribe to an Islamic agenda.

By the time of the 15th general election, it was able to tap into the unhappiness of Umno supporters disillusioned over the 1MDB scandal.

This enabled PAS to fuse its traditional base among the more religious Malays with the more ethno-centric Malays.

Yet, PAS pretty much jettisoned its Islamic agenda once it was in the Perikatan Nasional (PN) government, failing to advance any issue it considered sacred during its time in government.

No one will dispute that Anwar is a charismatic leader. Unfortunately, no amount of personal charm during ceramahs and walkabouts before Friday prayers is going to completely undo years of entrenched dogma.

It can provide some sway, but it will not be enough to reverse the toxic tide hammered home through a systematic long-term process.

Research examining the limits of charismatic leadership indicates that it is easy for charismatic leaders to succumb to hubris, with a lack of critical discussion and feedback leading to communication blind spots and the failure to learn from mistakes quickly.

This, in turn, leads to the failure to adapt and innovate in messaging. Leaders need to innovate to improve.

They will only seek improvements when they understand their shortcomings.

Only followers who are willing to voice unvarnished truths and raise bad news are going to create the impetus for improvement.

Leaders don’t learn something new from followers who fawn and adore them.

Research also finds that charismatic leaders often enjoy the power of their personal charm and stature too much.

As a result, they tend to not spend much effort in developing successors and capable people around them.

Charismatic leaders need to find and develop competent followers, not the fans around them.

This is the folly of relying on personal charm to communicate the government’s agenda.

Anwar should consider building a communication approach that is system-based – not person-based. Then, align the various government apparatus and staff them with dedicated and competent people.

Anwar’s strength is also his competency trap. His personal charisma and charm make him appealing to some, but it is also a strategic impediment.

He is trying to win a football match while competing like a golfer. Reversing the hate mongering and toxic politics that is entrenched today requires more than just personal charm.

It requires a system-based approach and strategic clarity as well as high-level leadership.

Make the Madani message simple. Don’t make it sound like Malaysians need to have PhDs to understand.

Explain it in terms of how people will benefit from it. Remember the Reformasi movement. Anwar’s persecution and imprisonment triggered the Reformasi movement, which grew in his absence.

It gained momentum because the message it communicated was simple. The movement grew because it consolidated itself through a network of selfless people, some are known, most are unknown, who persisted and made sacrifices.

Anwar managed to reach the final mile only because of the path cleared by this movement. Tap into this network and learn from those who built the foundation that enabled Anwar’s political success.

Critical to Anwar’s strategic communication is explaining clearly the Malay and Islam issue. Malays want to see how it will impact them.

They need to see it at the programme level and not abstract policy pronouncements. Otherwise, they will continue to be held back by their insecurities.

The current hate politics and dogma are the products of extensive and prolonged indoctrination, as well as socialisation.

A programme to develop future leaders needs to be in place to socialise them with the Madani aspiration and the original spirit of Merdeka.

Treat overcoming the toxic hate-based politics as social engineering and not just public relations. The old dogma has to be replaced with an enlightened worldview.

It is time for Anwar to take a hard look around him and assess the effectiveness of those he appointed to manage communications.

Rethink and possibly rationalise the current apparatus to make them more effective. Create a unified leadership to steer the government’s strategic communications, which have to be more innovative.

The failure to innovate in communications is most evident in the messaging during the recent state elections, especially in Kelantan.

The approach used by PH-BN was to highlight underdevelopment there and how a change in state government will bring more progress.

However, this was Dr Mahathir Mohamad’s message as prime minister – and it didn’t work for him either.

Many Kelantanese do not consider their life to be problematic and do not care much about development.

The psyche of rural Malays is very different from urban Malays. Rural Malays tend to vote for candidates based on the candidate’s perceived piety and conviviality.

In a society where progress and achievement are not considered important, a candidate’s competence and ability to deliver results is hardly a criterion in voting decisions.

A Facebook post from someone in Kedah about a week after the elections reflects the outlook of rural Malays.

It showed a picture of a rice field and a mountain in the background, with the caption: “Enjoying the panoramic view and my leisurely life. Who cares about development?”

After the hard-fought win at the last general election, Anwar should have developed a communication strategy with multidimensional long-term programmes to reverse the tide of hate-based toxic politics.

Anwar may be the most intelligent and cleanest prime minister Malaysia has ever had, but if he keeps taking the same old approach in dealing with this corrosion in our politics, history may remember him the same way it remembers Admiral Kimmel at Pearl Harbour.

The Form 6 student will be looking back in 10 years and will say: “I told you so.” - FMT

Rozhan Othman is an FMT reader.

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