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My ideal politician PDF Print
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Monday, 29 June 2009 10:43

By Dr Farish A Noor
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THE historian's lament is that he or she is often witness to mistakes of the past, and yet is unable to prevent them from recurring. In the end, the historian is cursed with the Cassandra complex and accused of being a tiresome doomsayer.

At the risk of being black-balled from dinner parties, I would like to restate that our country's current state of affairs should remind us of our collective errors in the not-too-distant past. For example, just when we thought that talk of a unity government was dead and buried, this wearisome poltergeist has been resurrected to spook all and sundry.

One is forced to raise, yet again, the most obvious of questions: How can we work towards national unity as long as there remain politicians who continue to harp on and on about the myth of racial-ethnic unity?

How can we ever dream of a Malaysian nation that is Malaysian in character as long as we cannot make that simple leap beyond communitarian and sectarian politics?

 

With age, I have begun to feel that the fight is lost and that our efforts are akin to the absurd labours of Sisyphus. But let us entertain a glimmer of hope at least, and in that spirit I would like to state my own preferences for what I would like to see in Malaysia.

The ideal politician

1 For a start, I would like to see a Malaysian politician for once.

By this I mean a Malaysian-minded politician who can genuinely claim to be blind to the distinctions of ethnicity, culture, language, religion and gender. A politician who is first and foremost a Malaysian citizen. And whose labour and effort are dedicated to upholding, defending and promoting the livelihood, well-being, honour and integrity of fellow Malaysian citizens, on the basis of a common Malaysian citizenship.

In other words, I would like to see a Malaysian citizen assume the role of politician in this country, rather than have communitarian representatives of sectarian interests dominate the political landscape.

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written by truthbespoken, June 29, 2009 11:47:08
Dear Dr Farish,

For your ideals to come into fruition, we must first scourge the base of all race-based parties and dig them out completely with the roots! UMNO, MCA, and MIC must be rendered incapable of ruling the nation. They must be held in disgust and voted out in the next elections before we will see some light spawn on our Malaysian Dream. Only then will there be any remote opportunity of a Malaysian emerging to become a true Malaysian leader. Corrupted and arrogant UMNO remains the main obstacle to true Malaysian Unity to this day!
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written by Taiping60, June 29, 2009 12:00:49
Thank you Dr Farish. Malaysia is a country where our politicians are more interested to divide us than unite us. This is how they kept their power. They champion their own race to stay in power but doing things which I believe their race will be ashame of. They spoke about religion so much so even God will probably impressed but unfortunately, they don't mean it.

We have Sultan to claim he is the defender of a race but expecting all Malaysians to respect him. We have PM who talk race again and expect the country to be united behing him. We have politically parties form with intention of helping their own race and yet they fault others for causing the country to split. We have corrupted leaders and government servants but we did almost next to nothing to get rid of these people. We have so much wealth and yet we have so many living in poverty. We work together, eat together, drink together and sign together, but we still associate ourselve to our race and not Malaysian.

Yes I agree that it is our dream to have our politicians passionately wanting to make Malaysia a better place. Yes I agree that we are still a long way. So we hope and we pray that these politicians surface and take charge. Meanwhile, Malaysians cannot just pray and hope without doing anything. We must show to all those politicians who are the real boss in the end. We need to use our votes wisely to ensure we change Malaysia to a country we can be proud of.
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