Reformasi’s broken promise: A plea to Prime Minister Anwar

Dear Prime Minister,

I write this weighed down by personal hardship, but the concerns that besiege the nation compel me to speak out regardless.

As someone who loves this land, I am deeply distraught, devastated and utterly disappointed by what I see around me.

These concerns are expressed directly to you.

There was a time we felt sympathy towards you in the quagmire of your political situation. The black eye, the incarceration and separation from your family undoubtedly resonated with people across creed and culture.

We did not look at the potential skeletons in the closet of your personal behaviour and judge or condemn you.

We may have had moral or ethical differences, but we looked beyond that and responded to what we saw as common injustices. Now let me point out the obvious to you.

The temple crisis

The Rawang temple controversy has unfolded before us. You made public remarks that many feel failed to calm a sensitive issue. There is a perception among some that your words may have even aggravated the unease.

What if someone were injured – or, in a worst-case scenario, killed? Such an outcome is not an impossibility, and this possibility should weigh heavily on the conscience of those in leadership.

Do you truly understand this? Was not the 1978 Kerling temple incident enough of a tragic lesson for this nation?

I feel that whoever holds the position of prime minister must be held accountable for how he or she discharges the responsibilities of office. The way this has been handled is both questionable and objectionable. This is not some flippant triviality that one squabbles over.

A pattern of concern

A perceived pattern of nonchalance is troubling to many people.

There are too many occasions piling on top of each other which, to many people, scream of manipulation or malicious conduct. One cannot ignore the cases that flood the conscience like a blinding light.

If the country were managed like a professional organisation and one failed, one’s service would be terminated.

Where is the leader we elected? He who was supposedly unstoppable, sharp, fearless, unmatched, remarkable, resilient, who had the gumption to expose truth with grace? Eloquence alone does not cut it. A prime minister has to be more than his words.

The disquiet around the MP for Pandan, who publicly alleged he has been targeted, reflects deepening disillusionment with your leadership. Rafizi Ramli’s  young son was attacked in a shocking syringe assault at a Putrajaya shopping mall. As of the time of writing, no arrests have been publicly announced. Is the law-and-order situation getting from bad to worse?

The continued appointment of a deputy PM who faced numerous corruption-related charges in court – and was granted a discharge not amounting to an acquittal on 47 of those charges, while separately being acquitted of 40 others – remains a source of deep public unease, even after those legal proceedings concluded as they did. To many people, it represents an incomprehensible breach of trust.

The Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission chief’s situation is another deeply contentious matter. From the outset, this has been mired in controversy. There is a widespread public perception of selective investigation and a lack of visible, convincing accountability. To many observers, this institution appears untouchable and beyond reform.

There are other administrative appointments where the primary qualification for the position appears to be mediocrity. It is a travesty. A professional organisation would not entrust some of these individuals with routine tasks, yet in ministerial positions they are handed considerable powers.

The Reformasi mirage

Policy implementation has impaled the Reformasi agenda. There are so many self-made impediments and obstacles. Talk is cheap. The determination to roll up one’s sleeves and take the nation forward seems to be largely missing.

The administration appears to be stumbling, fumbling and mumbling the usual excuses. The bungling is unmistakable. The reformasi image has become a pipe dream – shattered, tattered and torn.

One can strut on the catwalk of the global or local stage like a peacock of politics. But how many are now mocking reformasi openly? It has become a caustic, comical and embarrassing farce.

We have the longstanding issue of missing individuals, those who have been kidnapped and those who have been murdered. The relative silence around these cases raises uncomfortable questions.

Several possibilities come to mind.

Could it be that we have a system embedded with powerful and unaccountable rogue elements?

Perhaps it is a plain couldn’t-care-less attitude. Once a government is elected on a platform of a reform agendas, that very agenda can become useless and inconsequential if there is not enough political will to implement it.

Plain incompetence cannot be discounted. Or what if a duly elected government simply doesn’t care? Or is there a toothlessness and spinelessness that suggests we may have a government of cowards?

Then there is the darkest possibility of all – that certain individuals may be bound to one another by the weight of shared wrongdoing. Could each be holding the other in a compact of communal self-preservation – an intertwined web of partnership and complicity between alleged criminals and those complicit through their silence?

If there are said to be rogue elements embedded within the administration or its agencies, they could and should be identified and weeded out. The PM has significant power to remove such elements and hold them to account. If such elements exist, is this being done?

Is all this merely the product of a fertile imagination? What else are people supposed to think when seemingly straightforward cases remain unsolved?

As uncomfortable as these questions may be, they are not beyond the realm of reasonable concern. Any of these possibilities may represent practical reality. After all, if one can get away with an attack on even a child, how many others are getting away?

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