We can't go back in time to undo what Mahathir, Anwar and others have done or not done.
by T.K. Chua
The country is in limbo while we are indulging in endless blame games of who was more responsible for the malaise we face today.
Mahathir, Musa Hitam, Tengku Razaleigh, Anwar Ibrahim, Rafidah Aziz, Muhyiddin Yassin and Najib Razak have been mentioned as culprits on various occasions.
We often heard arguments as follow:
In politics there are neither permanent friends nor enemies. Self-interest and self-preservation are the rule of the day. We like to harp on how Mahathir disposed of his deputies and in the case of Anwar Ibrahim, how it has ended up with severe acrimony.
We also argue that many of those critical of the present administration were once the “insiders”. They have abused and benefitted much from the system they are now criticising. It is therefore hypocritical for them to claim that they are now standing on the side of the people.
Hence, the other day we had Musa Hitam and others blaming Mahathir and we have Mahathir and others hitting back. We have heard about Tengku Razaleigh still harbouring ambitions but we are never sure.
Then of course we have the evergreen Anwar Ibrahim remaining tenacious in his resolve.
Rafidah Aziz, once a powerful minister, is now being labelled as “a nobody” for her opinions.
Muhyiddin now wants to stand with the people fighting against tyranny although he once declared himself a Malay first DPM.
Even Mukhriz Mahathir, who hassled Penang over water and lease payments when he first became the MB of Kedah, now tries to seek sympathy and support among Malaysians.
Typical of most Malaysians, we love to go back in history. We love to blame and counter blame former leaders for causing the malaise we face today. We complain there was no inculcation of leaders to become worthy successors. We blame past leaders for allowing corruption, cronyism and ill-conceived privatisation to thrive. We blame past leaders for condoning racism, parochialism and bigotry.
I have a simple question: by blaming and analysing who was more responsible, can we ever solve an iota of the problems in 1MDB or SRC International today? Can we get closer to the problems of the donation, trust deficit, crippling leadership, depreciating ringgit and inflation we face today?
Why do we talk about all and sundry but keep missing the elephant in the room? We can’t go back in time to undo what Mahathir, Anwar, and others have done or not done. That is history and at most we can only draw lessons from it.
We are now confronted with a set of critical problems right here and right now which if left unattended would cripple all of us. I suggest we stop the blame game. It is time to be united and do whatever that needs to be done to solve the problems at hand.
If we do nothing, we will all be history. And then would it matter who among our leaders was most culpable?
T.K. Chua is an FMT reader
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