Abdullah Ahmad Badawi : The Best Prime Minister We Could Have Had. That will be how we remember him. Not now, not soon. But surely one day.
For those of you who visit www.firstcoffee.blogspot.com , you will know that I rarely touch on political issues except during certain critical times. In my almost 3 years of blogging, I have probably wrote something related to politics in less than 5 postings.
Now, is one of those critical times. This is one of the times when one needs to make a stand even if that means nothing in the bigger scheme of things. But, ,make a stand one must as that is the least one can do in this maddening era.
At last….finally…the wolves have retreated back into the dark sinister forests from which they had emerged since March 8, 2008. But they have retreated in victory and their prize is the head of the man who could have been the best prime minister this country could have had.In their wake we have a wasted land bathed in hate,suspicions and fear. They drew blood. Oh yes, they drew much blood. Blood of the innocent and the principled. Datuk Zahid was the first. Abdullah followed and there will be more.
The sheeps, the people of this country, sighed in relief when Abdullah Ahmad Badawi announced his decision not to contest for UMNO’s presidency and thereby effectively relinquish his post as the Malaysian prime minister. We thought this will at last bring some semblance of sanity to our political landscape. History will judge our assumption wrong.
I must say that the people, us, have erred.
Did we realize that there were in fact two packs of wolves making our lives miserable these last year or so. One is the opposition and the other is from within UMNO it self. The former was visible and we could hear them snapping at our heals. The latter was among us, or more precisely among the majority of well meaning UMNO members. This pack was led by the master Wolf himself, Mahathir Mohamed. A great man once said that all it takes for evil to flourish is for good men do nothing. We have done nothing and we have helped sow an evil seed in this nation and we will reap its foul returns in the years to come. We have given new life to those original ‘divide-and-rule’ con-artists who have paraded themselves as statesmen and nation builders. Yes…it was not the British that employed the divide and rule tactic it was those from among us. Now, they have awaken. We will be divided and they will rule us.
Politicians are politicians just as wolves are wolves. The few non-wolves in some of the political parties and administrations today will not last long. Wait and see. Do we seriously think that a man who has dedicated his life to fight for the rights of the underprivileged can continue to serve the prince of wolves, Anwar Ibrahim? Can the scion of Abdul Razak overcome the surrounding wolves in the form of UMNO divisional war-lords constantly emboldened by Mahathir and his scions? They, despite their sincerity and good intentions will not be able to protect us. Only our collective wisdom can save the day.
In allowing Abdullah Ahmad Badawi to be cowed into ‘resignation’ our wisdom has failed us. Or is it our will that have deserted us?
There is probably a whole new generation today in Malaysia. This generation is not one distinguished by age but one differentiated by it’s weltanschauung and its believe that this nation can be more than it is now. This is the generation that has swept away 50 years of widely accepted truisms in many aspects of the Malaysia psyche. I reckon, since I am also a member of this generation, there is now a new awakening taking place which will probably be realized sooner than any of us might dare to believe.
This is the awakening that the post of our nation’s Prime Ministerhip is far too important to be decided by two men or a group of men (and a woman). There has to be a better way of doing this while maintaining the status quo as enshrined by the constitution and the sacred social contract as has agreed upon by our founding fathers. UMNO members has to find a better, more enlightened way, of deciding their supreme leader as their choice affects the entire nation.
In the form of Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, UMNO had within its grasps a man with a form of servant-leadership qualities that could have given this nation a soul and which would have leap frog us into a mature developed nation. Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi could have been the best Prime Minister we could have ever hoped for in our nation’s quest for a deserved place among the most modern and progressive Muslim majority nation on earth. It is devastating, at least for me, that UMNO (and the rest of us) have missed this chance and this man is being hounded by those from within and without.
What has this man done wrong?
He could have very easily continued the legacy of his predecessor and basked in the glories that would have surely followed. He could have announced mega projects after mega projects which would have kept the wheels of our inflated economy spinning and with it the existing bands of political and business warlords would have continued with their death grip on this nation. He could have erected a memorial for his predecessor and kept running back to him for advice. He could have made his predecessor his ‘minister mentor’. He could have been a ‘care-taker manager’ for the previous regime.
More importantly, he could have continued to stifle freedom of the press and extent his tentacles into the deepest recesses of the judiciary. He could have continued to stifle civil voice. He could have continued to aggravate relationships with our key partner nations to divert attention away from his own shortcomings. He could have done so many other things that could have avoided the situation that he is in now. He could have, simply put, continued with the old.
But, he refused to ‘continue’. He wanted to change.
Who has lost out in this change? The nation? The BN? The government of the day is still the BN and everything we see and enjoy today is the product of the BN government. The people as a whole thank only the BN for the good tidings in their lives and of course blame the BN for the bad fortunes that seem to visit them every now and then. But, having a stronger opposition is not a misfortune that the people in general are blaming the BN or the Prime Minister for. It is the people who have decided for a little change and this ability to dream about a vastly different direction of how this nation should move forward is a direct result of Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi’s magnanimous leadership style and his courage to take on entrenched parasites in our national institutions.
So, this change that is sweeping the nation now is a bane to only the old guards, the bourgeois and the political and economic cronies of the previous administration. It is a pain only to those who can flourish in a closed, racially divided and ethically corrupt environment. Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi struck at the heart of the cancer that is eating away national institutions and structures.
The next question that begs to be asked is: What will his successor do differently as be different he must. Otherwise why the rush to change the leadership in the first place? If Abdullah Ahmad Badawi’s style of leadership is to be rejected than what is the alternative? A return to Mahathirism? God forbid!
I shudder at the thought of where the nation is heading. I emphatize with Rear Admiral ( R ) Tan Sri K. Thanabalasigam who was the first local navy chief and the one and only non-Malay navy chief. In his column in the NST recently he wrote : “ I have never seen us more divided than we are today, except perhaps immediately after May 13”. I did not experience that dark day my self but being a student of History in my undergraduate days and for having the privilege of being tutored by some of the best History professors in USM I can say here that the real and unvarnished truth about May 13 is still hidden from mass view. For the students of un-biased History, you will know that just as now, back in 1969, there were two packs of wolves, one from the opposition and one from deep within the labyrinth of UMNO’s feudal war-lord driven political structures.
The wolves are out…..again. Brace for their onslaughts.
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