COMMENT The premiership of Najib Abdul Razak is now where his predecessor, Abdullah Ahmad Badawi’s, was when faced with a threatened revolt of senior police officers to his signature reform - a revamp of the management of one wing of our criminal justice system.

Instead of being resolute for the reform of the police force, Abdullah backpedaled when confronted with the threat of an insurgency. His premiership never recovered from that vacillation.

Najib’s almost certainly won’t recover from his now craven acquiescence to the demands of the Malay right wing that a hoary, old holdover from the colonial era, the 1948 Sedition Act, be retained and worse, is going to be fortified.

Three times in the past few years he had said the law would be replaced by a National Harmony Act, a replacement that would, albeit feebly, signal he was staying the course of liberalisation he pledged to undertake at his administration’s start in April 2009.  

More than Abdullah (left), Najib started his tenure as prime minister on a promise of change to a country beset by the economic stagnation and political sclerosis that was behind voters’ denial to Umno-BN’s of its traditional supermajority in Parliament a year before the new PM took charge.

Almost immediately he began to pussyfoot as the waves of reaction beat against a package of reforms he proposed on the economic front.

These concerned changes to the ubiquitous ethnic quotas that governed rules on equity in the private sector.

These efforts at economic liberalisation were accompanied by the use of the savvy jargon of modern management methods.

Terms like ‘Key Performance Indicators’ (KPI) and ‘National Key Result Areas’ (NKRA) were liberally sprayed to adorn a campaign of broad ranging change which would make the use of the word ‘transformation’ to describe what would take place as not just a publicist’s hyperbole; it would be for real.

Wide ranging change to the administration and the economy was intended and indeed ‘transformation’ was touted as the conceivable outcome.  

A modernisation-thirsty claque, in the private sector especially, must have been elated at the economic and administrative reforms initiated by the man at the helm of the country.

Of course, a certain amount of the hype was attributable to the ‘new-broomism’ that accompanies the advent of a new leader.

The public allows a new helmsman to set the terms and markers for the paradigm change he wants to ring in.

It takes special qualities to be able to lead a party and the nation it rules into a major shift of direction.

The turn can only be accomplished through the personality of the leader and the ideas he stands for.

Ascent paved by pedigree

In both aspects, the new PM was lacking: his ascent in Umno was paved by pedigree than actual performance, depriving him of the experience of adversity that is often a wellspring for creative response.

Also, his ideas were notable only for their aura of ‘new-broomism’, not for their perceptiveness in how to get the party and country to go in a direction he wanted them to.

He seemed unaware of the utility of the first office in the land as ‘bully pulpit’, the platform available to anyone at the top of the pole of national leadership, to persuade, cajole and beguile a people to follow the leader’s vision.

Worse, when the waves of reaction rose to thwart Najib’s attempts at liberalisation on the economic front, he did not think that he had to fight for his vision against its doubters.

Leadership to him did not entail a measure of front running; he thought he could lead by following from behind rather than setting the pace upfront.    

He should have swapped the management books he had read for chronicles of inspirational leaders who battled for their vision of things against formidable odds.

Perhaps the PM felt he could wait out the reactionaries, by dint of blandishments hurled their way, and then rely on the people’s tendency to give a new helmsman a generous serving of time to realise his vision, to move and outflank opponents.

Rhetoric about abolishing the Internal Security Act and moves like the creation of the National Unity Consultative Council helped to keep alive the notion he was for liberalisation and that it was only a matter of time before the raft of measures aimed at attaining that goal would overcome reactionary opposition to it.

Absent a desire to engage in grand persuasion of the public by the use of the ‘bully pulpit’, this view relied on optimism about the pliability of reactionaries, a rose-tinted view unsupported by examples from history.

Once emboldened the reactionaries became, when Najib backpedaled on his economic liberalisations, espousers of the regressive on the political front, such as maintaining the Sedition Act.

Holdover from the colonial era

Never mind that selective prosecutions under the Act had given it a bad name besides its reputation as a holdover from the colonial era when it was used to defend colonial economic interests from  the rising threats of communists.

A country can hardly be considered politically modern if it has on its statute books a law that was formulated to combat an ideology and force that has perished in the very countries where it incubated and rose.

Matters are worse off when instead of being jettisoned, the law is fortified to counter sundry new threats.

The jury can come in with a final finding on PM as liberal. It is likely to be that the emperor has no clothes.

TERENCE NETTO has been a journalist for more than four decades. A sobering discovery has been that those who protest the loudest tend to replicate the faults they revile in others.


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