Is it true PH’s New Malaysia will inevitably be no different from the Old Malaysia?

 

IF YOU are talented, your chief satisfaction and happiness in life comes from exercising your talent and developing your skills to its fullest potential. When you are untalented, your chief satisfaction and happiness in life comes from possessing material things that other people do not have.

When you have a talent, you will only sell your talent for money in the early part of your career in order to secure a degree of financial freedom. Once you are financially free, then you will be less inclined to sell your talent.

When you become less inclined to self your talent – paradoxically – that is when your price will get higher. It will get higher because you have to be “coaxed” into compromising your standards and values with the need to coax you being costly.

When you have little or no talent however, your desire for material things is limitless. No matter how much wealth you have, it will never be enough because you will equate happiness with wealth and because one can never have enough happiness, you cannot be satisfied with any amount of wealth.

Regardless of what they claim, our politicians and ministers are all untalented people in the sense that they have not reached a level where they are able to derive satisfaction or happiness from honing and perfecting the discipline of their choice.

If a politician is talented, they would know how to move the heart and mind of the people with their expressions, character and gestures, Moving the heart and mind of the people requires great talent because the mind and the heart needs to move first before the world can be moved.

‘NATO (no action, talk only)’

If a politician is not talented, then all they will do is talk. Nothing will move.

Whenever you see a politician who is unable to move anyone’s heart and mind to obtain power, he/she is almost certainly going to be corrupt. This is because he/she will inevitably seek happiness by hoarding limitless wealth and having the authority to move the nation’s wealth to their pocket while using the power in their possession to avoid punishment.

This is why Pakatan Harapan (PH) is not going to be any different from Barisan Nasional (BN) or Perikatan Nasional (PN) because PH is also basically made up of talentless ministers or politicians.

Human beings are hardwired to seek happiness in life. When you put a talentless politician or minister in a position of authority or power, that talentless minister or politician will somehow or other move the nation’s wealth to their pocket in order to make themselves happy.

If we want real change, it doesn’t matter whether if it is PH, PN or BN – what is important is that we have talented politicians who are capable of moving the heart and mind of the people into positions of power.

For as long as we think that what is important is to put people who represent our colour in positions of power – especially if they have little to no talent – then what will happen is that we will be permanently stuck in this Sisyphean circus.

Component parties of Pakatan Harapan (PH) (Image credit: Bernama)

No matter which party we put in a position of power, we will still remain a corrupt and backsliding nation.

The stunt that the likes of Youth and Sports Minister Hannah Yeoh and Penang Deputy Chief Minister II Jagdeep Singh Deo have pulled in this last couple of weeks is just the beginning.

Just because these ministers did not succeed with their shenanigans this time, it doesn’t mean they will not attempt to do it again in the future.

They are likely not the only ministers and politicians involved in the shenanigans either. It takes a cartel of ministers and politicians to pull off a stunt like this.

From their shenanigans today, we already can see what their intentions are. This episode is just going to be a learning experience for them. In the future, they will learn from their mistakes today by further improvising their methods until they succeed in getting what they want.

You just wait and see.

Nehru Sathiamoorthy is a roving tutor who loves politics, philosophy and psychology.

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

- Focus Malaysia