The Malaysian Insight

THIS past week and six months after winning power, Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad met Malay ministers and deputy ministers in his second coming as the country’s chief executive

State news agency Bernama, which reported the closed-door meeting, quoted Dr Mahathir as saying the pow wow was to remind the ministers of the country’s history. 

“I have to remind them about the history of our country, so that they really understand how we began, so that we will not repeat the bad things that had happened before,” said the prime minister.

The Malaysian Insight understands that Dr Mahathir basically lectured about past Malay leaders who had failed the community and advised this current batch of ministers and deputies to be honest and to fix the problems.

It would be fair to assume that he did not include himself as a Malay leader who had failed the community in the 45-minute monologue with his ministers and deputies.

The meeting ended inconclusively. Sources said the meeting had showed Dr Mahathir’s concern that he himself cannot fix the problems in the time he has left in the prime minister’s office.

Hence the lecture to a group of ministers where the majority have never been in government or even held a job that paid mandatory contributions to a pension fund. Some have not even run a burger stall to know what risk in real life means.

That the Malay community specifically and Malaysian society generally have a host of problems and issues is not a surprise. Fixing the problems is another matter as the slew of proposed solutions finally merely profited a few and left the rest none the wiser and all the poorer.

When Dr Mahathir first took office as prime minister on July 16, 1981, Malaysia was waiting and prepared to go all the way beyond the agrarian and nascent industrial economy to greater heights. It did.

Politicking got in the way a few years into the Mahathir Administration and then it became just a parade of deputy prime ministers and finance ministers with their education and economic  programmes to push Malaysia forward.

Malaysia went forward, stumbled, picked itself up, raced on, faltered, fell and meandered from an Asian tiger to a fat cat kleptocracy aptly symbolised by 1Malaysia Development Berhad  (1MDB) and its rather prescient tagline – Forging Partnerships, Advancing Growth.

It forged a lot and advanced growth for the few.

Today, six months after Pakatan Harapan won the polls on May 9 and formed the government a day later, Malaysians see a fractious election in the pact’s biggest party PKR.  And ministers from other parties within the pact make headlines about themselves rather than their jobs.

Dr Mahathir has cause for concern, as do other Malaysians too. The ministers need to know what their job is all about – fixing problems rather than finding ways to hold on to power.

They need to fix this new Malay dilemma of running for election for power instead of to actually serve the community as many profess to do – even without a political or ministerial post.

* Jahabar Sadiq runs The Malaysian Insight.
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