by TK Chua
Although he likes to label others as nobodies, to me Minister Nazri Aziz is a leader with a leadership role that he must take seriously. After all, he was once a youth leader and now an elected MP and has been a full Cabinet minister for many years. As such, Nazri must try to talk sense and logic, not just politics. He must remember it is easy to be a politician, but difficult to be a leader.
To Nazri, loyalty is absolute. Leaders can do no wrong. Worse still, if leaders do wrong, they must still be supported, regardless. This is the logic he holds on to dearly. This is the argument he used to support former prime minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad during his battle with other Umno leaders. The support is blind, regardless of the issues and the severity of the wrong committed.
Many have argued that Mahathir is not blameless in regard to our present predicament. So, based on Nazri’s logic, are we trying to create another “Mahathir” today? Is he trying to perpetuate today the same blind loyalty of seeing, hearing and speaking no evil as he did during Mahathir’s era?
Loyalty to leaders is never absolute or without conditions. If, in the past, we were stupid enough to support Mahathir despite his “wrongdoings”, should we be stupid enough to repeat that stupidity now? Perhaps that is the reason why Malaysia can never change – we want to do the same thing again and again and expect different results.
It is time for us to do things differently if we expect different results. Leaders must be evaluated and assessed constantly. We elect leaders for five years, but that does not mean that for those five years, we can do nothing to assess their performance. That is an act of stupidity yet again. Why do we need Parliament sittings, the media, the Auditor-General, MACC, the Public Accounts Committee, and the judiciary to adjudicate governmental actions? Just hold elections once every five years and voila we have democracy!
No one is advocating backstabbing or sabotaging our national leaders out of spite. No one is advocating violence. That would be wrong. But when there are complaints of wrongdoings, of malfeasance, gross incompetence and the likelihood of massive abuses of power as well as corruption, surely leaders like Nazri and others must ask questions and the rakyat be allowed to talk and petition for change.
Asking and mandating our top leaders to account for, to explain and to come clean when there is alleged wrongdoing is very much part of democracy and our way of life. Without it, there is nothing left.
TK Chua is an FMT reader.
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