Cover Story - What Ails Malaysia? : Pressing issues take back seat to politicking

TheEdge Fri, Jan 03, 2020 03:00pm - 4 years View Original


MAY 9, 2018, was a historic day. The country had never known another ruling party since independence. Then it all changed, with men and women moving mountains to achieve a remarkable outcome. Throngs of first-time voters emerged, political giants switched camps and all contributed to a new dawn of transparency, accountability, meritocracy and forward thinking. Or so we thought.

You won the hearts and minds of the rakyat with your promises, your manifesto and your sheer bravery. I recall watching with pride and tears in my eyes as a man, more than twice my age, stood up to be counted and played such a decisive role in clinching a supposedly unwinnable election. No matter where your politics lay, you represented all that was missing in our society — steadfastness, diligence, conscientiousness and motivation. The new dawn was here.

That was then. Now, we are faced (still) with crippling household debt, tight lending practices by banks, rising inflation, weak capital markets and a lack of political willpower to take the proverbial bull by the horns and really make the right socioeconomic changes.

The idea was that the new government was going to be the one that did away with bureaucracy and had a clear leadership process and distinct agendas to benefit the rakyat. While the personal agendas of many may have been fulfilled with the change in government, those who have taken power owe it to the rakyat to at least ensure the platform is solid enough to sustain the change in culture they have been promised.

Pressing issues, such as accessibility to government allocations, tighter lending practices, wooing foreign investment, socioeconomic improvements and genuine grassroots cultural change, have taken a backseat to denying blame, extracting one’s pound of flesh, managing racial divides, finger-pointing and internal politicking.

What ails our country is that for too long, our youth have been slowly brainwashed to be mediocre and, what is worse, to accept it and live their lot in life. Finger-pointing aside, this has not changed despite the change in government. The competence of local graduates continues to sink year after year.

What can we expect when the main topics of discussion when it comes to rebuilding our educational foundation are the colour of shoes and whether or not calligraphy is deemed a racial subject?

A mediocre and shambolic educational system leads to a systemic illness in the working public as they grow older, and by default, the thought process of our leaders and policymakers when they get elected. The yoke under which the rakyat’s back was broken with allegedly corrupt schemes by certain members of the previous ruling party has been replaced with another type of restraint, admittedly less insidious but nevertheless just as counterproductive and regressive. 

We see it throughout the system, for instance, a lackadaisical approach to education, the inadequate experience and wages of school teachers, and self-entitled but unskilled youths who are inefficient at their jobs. Inefficiency breeds mediocrity in the workforce, and company leaders find themselves having to get used to hiring five people for the cost of three and the productivity of one. Further up the food chain, we see it prevalent in corporate behemoths and in government.

The continuing requirement by policymakers to bide their time before implementing drastic change in the system for fear of being “the one who tried and failed” is the primary legacy left by the previous government. This thought process is the end result of all the above. The argument given is that we fought for years to get into this position, and that we do not want to disrupt the due process accorded to legacy power brokers. And thus, Malaysia as a nation gets left behind.

What I would like to see in our leadership is a drastic change in impetus. The future generation needs a direction to focus on. Irrespective of whoever wins in the next election, this should be a bipartisan view. There must be regular dialogue with business leaders on how to improve the conditions for foreign investment and sustainable capital markets.

Finally, when you take up the reins, focus on fixing the problems and not on telling us why the state we find ourselves in is not your fault. In May 2018, in the warm afterglow of victory. it definitely was not PH’s fault.

Would it be fair to say then, that if two years on, the problems have still not gone away, it would then be PH’s fault?

Datuk Matthew Tee Kai Woon is group executive director of Bina Puri Holdings Bhd 
 

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