The two things that people expect from their leader and their government

We basically want just two things from our leaders and government.

Nehru Sathiamoorthy

As I was listening to Raja Petra’s Gerakan Tolak Anwar: Apa formula mereka? video earlier, where he refers to the nascent Gerakan Tolak Anwar and wonder out loud what is it that people want from their leaders (at least, this is what I thought he was pondering in the video), a thought arose in me, and it inspired me to write this article.

I think what the people want from their government and leaders is pretty straightforward.

We basically want just two things from our leaders and government.

The first thing that we want from our leader and government is to provide us with the opportunity to keep ourselves busy.

Keeping busy is the easiest way to make you feel that your day has been well spent and having many well spent days is what will in turn make you feel that your life has not gone to waste.

To keep busy, what we basically need is a robust and healthy economy.

A robust and healthy economy is an economy that will equip us and all of our neighbours, friends or family members with a business worth minding. When we have a business worth minding, not only will we be busy minding it, we will also not feel shy in meeting our friends and family, which will also keep us busy with social activities.

People can only meet their family and friends if they are making money or if their family and friends are making money. If you don’t have money and your family and friends are not making enough money, you will not be eager to meet them and they will not really be happy to see you.

A lot of people think that what the people want is  a corruption-free economy, but the truth is that people don’t really mind corruption in a healthy economy, where they and the people around them are able to keep busy with a business worth minding. People are only against corruption when the economy becomes unhealthy, that not only are they unable to keep busy, their family and friends are also unable to help them keep busy, because they themselves don’t have a business worth minding.

In other words, when you hear people saying that they want corruption to stop, it doesn’t really mean that they want corruption to stop. What it actually means is that they are not busy, because the economy is not healthy enough to keep them busy, and they think that the reason that the economy is not healthy is because corruption is rife.

When people see everybody around them is busy, they also tend to lose interest in racial issues or religious issues, because the more time they spend on racial or religious issues, the less time they will have to join the people around them and keep themselves busy.

If everybody is busy, as they would be in a healthy economy, people also tend to not want to be engaged in things like racial or religious issues, because racial and religious issues tend to be divisive, and the more deeply you are involved in a divisive issue, the smaller will be the pool of people that you can engage with, which will impede your ability to keep yourself busy.

If for some reason, our leaders are unable to lay the foundation of a healthy economy, then the second thing that we expect our leaders to do is to find us a noble cause that will stir us to sacrifice ourselves for the sake of something that is greater than ourselves.

Keeping busy is not the only way that people can find meaning and purpose in their life. People can also find meaning and purpose in their life through sacrifice, and in times of when the economy is not doing so well, a skillful leader will find a way that will allow people to find meaning and purpose in their lives, by sacrificing their wealth, time, energy and even life itself, for a worthy cause.

Look at Russia today.

The Russian economy today can’t possibly be doing well, considering all the sanctions that has been imposed on it by the west, but the Russian people themselves are standing solidly behind their leaders and government, because their leaders and government has succeeded in making them feel that their economic loss and suffering is meaningful, because it is done in the defence of their nation and motherland.

I am not saying that our leaders should invade a neighbouring country like Russia in order to satisfy the people – I am just saying that if our economy is not doing so well, rather than pretend it is doing well, maybe our government and leaders should follow the example of the Russian leaders and government, and conjure up a worthy cause for the people to participate in, so that we will feel like our lives is not going to waste, even if we are unable to keep ourselves busy in a healthy economy.

During the Kennedy era, I remember that President Kennedy created the Peace Corp to imbue the young people of America with a sense of meaning in their lives by giving their time and energy to volunteerism. These are the sort of things that a skillful leadership and a capable government should be able to come up with, in order to give the people a sense of purpose or meaning in their life.

The above are basically the only two things that we expect from our government and leaders, which none of our government and leaders have been able to provide us for more than 25 years.

The last leader that was able to provide it was Mahathir, who in the late 80s  and 90s, gave us both a healthy and robust economy that allowed all of us to remain perpetually busy, while at the same time coming up with a vision to make Malaysia developed in the year 2020, which prodded many of us to sacrifice for our country, by doing such things as buying an overly expensive national car or forcing ourselves to study for a course that we had no interest or aptitude in, just because our country needed engineers to become a developed nation by the year 2020.

At the end of the day, the people will only praise a leader that can keep them busy or provide them with something worth sacrificing for.

Anwar might be running helter skelter trying to show us that he is busy doing all sort of things to make things happen for the country, and he might be using all the words in the dictionary to make it sound like he is good person with a noble mission, but all that he is doing and saying is meaningless, if it is only he that is busy, not us, and it is only he that is on a noble mission, not us.

Until Anwar is able to do either one or both of the things that I have mentioned above, not only will no one praise him for being a good leader, in the current political calculation, he will forever be in danger of being toppled before his term runs out.

If his successor is unable to do either one or both of the things that I have outlined above, his successor will also face the same problem as him.

You can take my word to the bank – the people will keep changing their leaders and their government, until they finally find one that is capable of keeping them busy or arouses in them a desire to sacrifice themselves for the sake of something that is greater than themselves.