Keadilan’s (and Malaysia’s) Shining Stars
M BAKRI MUSA
Great organizations have great leaders. Everyone recognizes that. Less appreciated is that to maintain its greatness an organization must actively nurture its next generation of leaders. Failure to do so would doom the organization.
The late Tun Razak was acutely aware of this crucial aspect of leadership. In his frequent visits to the districts he was always on the look out for talent. On spotting one, he would bring that promising individual back to headquarters for what we would call today “fast tracking.” Likewise Jack Welch, the legendary chief executive of GE. Whenever he toured the various units, he would ask those divisional heads to name two or three of their promising underlings. He would then ask those managers what they were doing to nurture the talents they had under their wings.
As a corollary to my observation, you can tell much about the potential for future greatness of an organization by looking at its next tier of leaders. It is for this reason that I am bullish on the future of Keadilan. The party is blessed with an abundance of young talent.
Currently in the news is its chief strategist, Rafizi Ramli. It is a measure of the caliber of the young leaders in Keadilan that Rafizi’s rising status does not diminish the other shining stars. Nurul Izzah Anwar, Nik Nazmi Ahmad and Sim Tze Szin are among the many stars that glitter Keadilan’s sky. That augurs well for the future of not only Keadilan but also the nation.
The challenge for current Keadilan leaders is to keep these bright stars shining, for they in turn would attract others into their orbit. Bright talents attract other even brighter ones. They are not like dim candles; the only way to make a dim candle shine brighter (or appear so) is to snuff out the other candles. Bright stars welcome competition, for together they form an even brighter galaxy to light up the evening sky.
Except for Tze Szin, now Penang state assemblyman, I have never met the others. I knew Tze Szin when he was a graduate student and later an engineer in Silicon Valley. His quiet, unassuming but effective leadership clearly shone even then. I recognized his exceptional qualities when he sought my advice on attending an American law school. Such an enquiry from an American would not have surprised me, but for someone from Malaysia who had been brought up under our regimented education system with its trademark forced early streaming, that reflected a mind capable of extraordinary thinking, unencumbered by traditions and expectations. Even more remarkable was the fact that he already had a graduate degree in engineering at the time!
Tze Szin aspired to play a major leadership role and knew the supremacy of the rule of law; hence his interest in pursuing law. I assured him that one need not have to be trained as a lawyer to appreciate this fact. On the contrary we have many examples of those formally trained in law and yet would later be as leader its greatest abuser. Philippines’ Marcos was not the only example, though he was easily the most egregious.
I knew Nik Nazmi, a King’s College honors law graduate, through his book, Moving Forward: Malays of the 21st Century. In my review of that volume I wrote, “At the risk of discomfiting Nik, I am tempted to compare his book to one written nearly 40 years ago by another not-so-young politician. It is not so much a comparison as a contrast. Where Mahathir’s The Malay Dilemma is shrill and emotional, Nik’s Moving Forward is cerebral and rational. While Mahathir irritates, Nik Azmi persuades; while Mahathir excoriates, Nik conciliates. Nik beckons us to share his dreams of Malaysia.” Mahathir on the other hand, imposed his on us. Nik is now a state assemblyman in Selangor.
I judge political leaders not by their soaring rhetoric or oratorical flourishes but on the merit of their ideas and the clarity of their thinking. Nik Nazmi is definitely a promising political leader.
As for Nurul Izzah, she, like Nik Nazmi, is barely 30 and already a Member of Parliament. She won it on her first try at elective office, trumping a veteran and then-popular woman minister. It is to be noted that Lembah Pantai, Nurul’s district, comprised the University of Malaya campus and the upscale Bungsar area. Meaning, her well-educated and sophisticated constituents were swayed less by titles and promises, more by substance and capability.
