Airy-fairy Slogan May Suit Najib Well

ARCHIVES 2013

By admin-s On Aug 23, 2013

As a slogan per se, it’s lame. It’s not action-oriented. Compared to it, ‘1Malaysia’ has at least a semblance of concreteness. It symbolises an ideal state – of national unity and racial harmony, even equality.

Kee Thuan Chye

I’ve said before that Najib Razak is a prime minister who does things by halves. Now there’s talk that he’s going to junk his ‘1Malaysia’ slogan for a new one. Online news website The Malaysian Insiderreported this on August 21, based on information from sources. If it turns out to be true, I’ll be able to say that Najib is also a prime minister who doesn’t see things through.

A brand needs time to be developed. Najib’s ‘1Malaysia’ has been around for only four years, and that’s not long enough to win it acceptance and pulling power. Work has to be done to imbue it with more substance – work that includes making Malaysia a truly inclusive nation, which wholeheartedly embraces all its races, religions, cultures, languages without placing any above the rest – so that in the longer run, it can come to be trusted. If Najib discards it for a new slogan, it would show that he’s not willing to put in the work; he has no staying power.

And what might that new slogan be? How more potent will it appear? How more meaningful? If you haven’t heard it yet, hold on to your seats. Just in case you fall off laughing. Or faint. It’s called “Endless Possibilities”!

Many Malaysians will be wondering what it means. “Possibilities” is a big word. It’s also an abstract word. You can’t picture anything when you come across it. It also has five syllables, which is not appropriate for any slogan. Combine that with “endless” and the meaning is even more abstract. Not only that, it sounds pompous.

And of course it’s vague. But then vagueness seems to cohere with what Najib prefers. Last year, he reportedly said of ‘1Malaysia’, “I didn’t define the concept very clearly, but that was by design.” He said he wanted to give it an “element of strategic ambiguity” so that it could take in other views, including those from the public.

Perhaps his advisers told him to say that, but it doesn’t sound like good advice. One would think a slogan that has something concrete to impart works better. ‘Bersih, cekap dan amanah’ (Clean, efficient and trustworthy) which Mahathir Mohamad touted during his early years as prime minister may not be the best of examples, but at least it was something that people could relate to. His successor Abdullah Badawi’s ‘Work with me, not for me’ also made some earthy sense, even though it was also broad.

But ‘Endless Possibilities’ … what endless possibilities?