If the Foreign Cat Can Catch Mice, Let It!

Kee Thuan Chye

I think some of us may have misunderstood former prime minister Mahathir Mohamad’s intention in saying that Malaysians are stupid and can’t manage aviation when he responded to Khazanah Nasional’s hiring of Christoph Mueller as the CEO for Malaysia Airlines.

The meaning is not in the face value of the words; I think Mahathir was being typically sarcastic. I think he was actually saying, “Are we Malaysians so stupid and incapable of understanding aviation that we have to hire a foreigner to set things right?” He was being critical of the hiring. And well he would be too, judging by his current orientation.

The same thinking is reflected in the criticisms of others who have also hit out at Khazanah’s move. One of them is Umno Supreme Council member Reezal Merican Naina Merican, who questions whether Mueller would make decisions in line with the Bumiputera Agenda. He doesn’t think they should be based simply on profit and loss.

He wonders whether Mueller would understand the “national responsibility” of handling the RM6 billion that would be injected into the company to aid its recovery. Well, Mueller has had extensive experience within the aviation industry, having held a senior position in Daimler Benz Aerospace, been Executive Vice-President at Lufthansa AG and CEO of the Sabena Group. And as CEO of Aer Lingus since 2009, he reportedly turned the airline around within a year of coming on board. Would such a person take any kind of responsibility lightly?

You can be certain when people like Reezal say that there are Malaysians who would be qualified to do the job and uphold the “national interest”, they are not thinking uppermost of merit but of safeguarding the Bumiputera interest.

Would you seriously think, for instance, that if a non-Bumiputera Malaysian who was really the best person for the job were recommended for it, he or she would be accepted? And if he or she were, do you think there would be no criticism of the selection?

Umno would for certain go to town ringing alarm bells proclaiming that the Malays were under threat and that non-Malays were taking over everything. They would blow it up big enough for the simple-minded to believe that the job of MAS CEO was “everything”!

Reezal speaks volumes when he says MAS is “a symbol of our ability to manage the entity” (my italics). Let’s be brutally honest;  by this, he is of course referring to the ability of Malays (not Malaysians) to manage it. In a nutshell, he is claiming Melayu boleh, and that this ability must be displayed in the mission to turn MAS around.

I agree that many Malays are very capable. I have Malay friends who prove that to be so. But insisting on upholding the Bumiputera agenda in all situations and at all times is a syndrome that is badly affecting Malaysia. This is what holds us back from progressing. Almost everybody knows it, and some will not admit it, but this is the reality.

A Malay/Bumiputera must be the top man or woman in any field of endeavour, in any public institution, in any state-owned corporation. A Malay/Bumiputera must portray the frontline image of who’s in charge. Never mind if he or she is not the best person for the job. Find a Malay/Bumiputera no matter what, especially if it’s to head a high-profile national entity. Make sure Bumiputera interests are upheld above all else.

We haven’t learned from our neighbour Indonesia yet, I see. It is entering a new era of progressiveness that augurs well for its immediate future. But we are still lagging behind, stuck in the mud with our outdated concerns.

And yet by taking that kind of attitude and imposing constraints, we expect MAS to be turned around soon enough? Have we not thought of the longer-term effect – that if the turnaround doesn’t come about within a reasonable period, the national image, the national interest would suffer even more? That is not of greater concern than the worry over Bumiputera interests? And so we quibble over the hiring of a foreigner when he might save our national airline and, by extension, our national image and interest?

This is a globalised world, for goodness’ sake. To think in narrow ethnocentric terms is foolhardy. Mao Zedong said it doesn’t matter if the cat is black or white; as long as it catches mice, it’s a good cat. That’s something to take wisdom from.

More importantly, MAS is a business. The livelihood of its employees depends on its financial health and sustainability. Let it be run as a business – without political baggage.

And if we want a business to succeed, shouldn’t we get someone who is likely to make it happen? So what do we look for in the candidate first and foremost? Whether he is black or white, or whether he has the ability and the experience to pull it off?

It seems we haven’t learned from our neighbour Singapore either. We saw it becoming a first-world nation with none of the vast natural resources that we have, we now see it as “one of only 10 countries in the world with top ratings from all three major credit rating agencies: Moody’s, Fitch and Standard & Poor’s” (from the new book 50 Things to Love About Singapore, Straits Times Press, 2014), and we don’t want to see that it has gone so far forward because it’s not obsessed with whether the cats are black, white or even Singaporean.

Others have streaked ahead of us with progressive ideas and practices and yet we are still whining over our regressive concerns. We talk of becoming an advanced nation with a per capita income of US$15,000 by the year 2020. That’s only one-third of Singapore’s current per capita income of US$45,000. And the way we are going, I’m not sure we can even achieve that target.

We need to stop feeling insecure. The world has moved on and will continue to do so. Let Mr Mueller do his job and shut up. Don’t even try to interfere. Unless Khazanah has been irresponsible, which is unlikely, it must have done thorough research to find a man who “has a strong record of transformation and turnarounds in the aviation industry”. And now that they’ve found him, let him run it as he sees fit. If he fails, then we can roundly condemn him, but until then, we have to give him a chance.

Meanwhile, if his critics need a bright side to this, they might take heart that if he fails, at least it would be a Mat Salleh that failed. And nobody could say Melayu tak boleh. LOL!