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ARCHIVES 2013

By admin-s On Sep 1, 2013

Yes Mahathir is right! We must kongsi. For every ringgit that we make, we must kongsi a percentage with culprits that masquerade as politicians, government servants and their machais.

CT Ali, FMT

What we can all agree to is that the leaders we have today are lacking in the values and graces that we would like them to have.

In my view, Abdullah Ahmad Badawi has brought himself down just a notch by breaking his elegant silence on the arrogance and the self-serving persona that is Mahathir Mohamad!

There is nothing new in what Abdullah, lovingly known as Pak Lah, has to say on his quarrel with Mahathir in the book ‘The Awakening’.

What he does is only to confirm that as prime minister of Malays, he was powerless to put Mahathir in his place – the same problem that the present prime minister, Najib Tun Razak now has.

What does that say about these two leaders? What does it say about Umno? What does it say about the state of politics in our country today?

There is much to be done if we are to put people and country above the needs of an old man who is past his prime, past his use by date in politics and certainly past any hope of redemption in the eyes of many people of this nation.

There was fear and loathing for Mahathir many years ago. Today only loathing remains. There is no need for Pak Lah to confirm this, unless, like all of us, he needed to give vent to all the frustrations and dislike he had for Mahathir.

Like of all us he had his regrets about what he should have done. Like most of us he had no second chance to make right what he thought he had done wrong while in the highest office of this land.

But Pak Lah forgets he can still council his son in law Khairy Jamaluddin. That upstart, too big for his boots, Khairy did much to make us all think just that much less of Pak Lah!

Before Khairy does much more damage to himself, to others and to his potential as a future leader, Pak Lah should do something about it.

I hope this time Pak Lah will make the effort and not again have regrets as to what he should have done and never did. Only by so doing can Pak Lah make Khairy understand the damage that arrogance and corruption do to the very psyche of our people and our nation.

Those of us who have been in business and have worked in Malaysia will know what arrogance and corruption is all about. We all have a heighten awareness of what we have to do with politicians, with government servants and with others who approach us to offer their services to help us in our business.

We look upon them with contempt and loathing and yet we know that without these dregs of society our business will suffer. Their ‘expertise’ could mean there is food on the table for our family or there is none.

It could mean success or failure to our life, work and all that goes with it – the employment of our staff, education for our children, the well being of our family.

In the early years when I started doing business selling burgers at the hawker’s center at Padang Brown in Penang (beside the Penang Prison) I had no problems.

It was only later when I started a trading company in KL and began doing business with the Defence Ministry, DBKL, RISDA and other ministries that I started to understand what the ‘kongsi’ part of business meant.