Great Wisdom And Trivial Wits
When the leaders of a country have frequent slips of the tongue, it is just natural for people to grow skeptical of the country's development level.
By CHONG LIP TECK/Translated by DOMINIC LOH/Sin Chew Daily
Malaysian Politicians Say the Darndest Things by local film-maker Amir Muhammad has been carried in a local magazine for some time, and is now compiled into a book.
It appears to me that Amir enjoys an inexhaustible source of inspiration for his writing, simply because local politicians too often "say the darndest things."
Of course, it is by no means a phenomenon exclusive to this country that politicians will come up with the darndest remarks. Any politician making foolish remarks in any part of the world could potentially be made into a book, but by making such comparison, it appears that we would rather rival others in fatuity than display our more exceptional merits.
Politicians tend to exhibit their gift of tongue in public, attesting to the fact that many of our politicians are indeed endowed with some trivial wits but not great wisdom.
A person with great wisdom will be able to let others see that he has farsighted plans in everything he does, while those with trivial wits might display some shortlived smartness but fumble in the long run.
It doesn't really matter if we lack the great wisdom, but many of our politicians do treat trivial wits as great wisdom. A dentist-turned-politician said during a recent party election debate that other than Selangor, BN was also badly bruised in Kedah, Perak, Penang and the Federal Territory. So, he should not be singled out for the flop, he concluded.
We have seen that politicians like to twist and turn when saying things, thinking that they are humorous while in the actual fact they have just unveiled their most uncultured aspects.
Saying the darndest things has slowly developed into a kind of infectious epidemic among politicians in this country, even the public servants are not spared from its scourge. As a consequence, some enforcers have forgotten about their professional ethics, passing their own verdicts even before giving others a fair trial, while some others tend to disseminate information which they are not supposed to divulge, whether on purpose or unintentionally.
When the leaders of a country have frequent slips of the tongue, it is just natural for people to grow skeptical of the country's development level.
That said, we should still pay tribute to those eloquant politicians for what the country has achieved so far. We simply cannot evaluate an individual based on what he says, for this could at times be biased.
But, if our politicians would move their hands more often instead of their mouths, perhaps we could have made even more glorious accomplishments today. Unfortunately, politicians seem to have a passion for talking unceasingly to please or to be remembered by the public instead of doing something useful that will immortalise their names.
