LEADERS should always try to learn as much as they can from those who know more than they do, so that they speak and act more clearly. – Dwight D. Eisenhower
The definition of meritocracy is not up for negotiation. Nor for arbitrary interpretation. Leaders should be chosen on their merit, efficacy and intelligence. The surest sign of a country’s success is dependent on the leaders’ commitment to action plans that are merit-worthy.
As I write this, the Home Ministry has declared that health workers will report undocumented migrants to security forces if they show up for vaccination. Not surprisingly, the public is outraged as this move will cause the coronavirus to come back with a stronger virulence and infect innocent children and babies who are yet to be vaccinated.
This is exactly what the virus is looking for – a collaboration with the Home Ministry. It has already mocked immigration controls and digital surveillance, and reached every nook and corner with a mission to infect all.
To combat this, National Immunisation Programme did the unthinkable “looking for a needle in haystack” search and is managing to weaken the virus’s proliferation. As more and hidden undocumented immigrants are being hunted down and vaccinated, we are getting closer and closer to ending this pandemic.
Now this sudden move to instil fear and push the unvaccinated back to their crowded home to breed the virus, will reverse the eight intense months of vaccine equity.
What is happening here?
It is the legacy of our sevent prime minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad that has led us to the horror of the present leadership.
In his 22-year tenure, Dr Mahathir was obsessed with a “meritocratic system” that “gave one person a Ferrari and another a bicycle” and called it an even playing field.
To date, this brand of meritocracy is kept alive and healthy by politicians, policy makers and even educationists. It is ‘legitimately’ justified without any effort to even conceal it with a transparent veil.
And this is how Dr Mahathir’s history was rewritten.
In 2018, Dr Mahathir himself decided to address the issues he created and “right the wrongs” he did. Unfortunately, he failed again. We too failed. We forfeited our votes on Pakatan Harapan, which did not deliver.
From then on, all we have witnessed are leaders who have been busy making secret pacts with diverse parties with new manifestos and personal agendas. The pendulum has been swinging back and forth with a mismatch of the same group of leaders, with a slight makeover.
Fundamentally, what we needed fixing remains unfixed. Even worse, we noticed new broken things that we did not notice before.
The biggest crime is the politicisation of education and the maintenance of an un-educational system that is pitifully behind the times. Our national school curriculum excludes world knowledge, creative skills and right methods of teaching maths and science. The main focus is on localised and doctored history where real heroes have been replaced by imaginary heroes.
While private and international schools have better syllabuses, the national school children are victims of a highly politicised education system that has undergone contentious reforms in over 60 years.
The very educationists who deny poor children the right to learn English, are English-speaking elites who send their own children to private or international schools, while the disadvantaged are left with proficiency only in Bahasa Malaysia.
To date we hardly have a mandate on providing quality reform for education as a campaign slogan. Policies were decided by the minister in charge at that moment.
When Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin was education minister, he launched the Malaysia Education Blueprint (2015-2025) with 10,500 stakeholders, which prioritised a global and creative thinking approach in education.
This blueprint remains hidden along with many other well researched policies.
As for university admission, Dr Mahathir had created a controversial system based on a race-based quota system, where 90% of the places are reserved for Bumiputera students while the remaining 10% were open for non-Bumiputera.
To this end, two differential courses – STPM, a two-year course, evaluated by an external examiner, and Matriculation, is a two-semester programme run by the Education Ministry. The very opposite of meritocracy confused the aspiring students. It was not about meritocracy. No more about comparing apple for apple – ceteris paribus – but an orange with an apple!
In the past 1,000 years, the Chinese university entrance examination has been based on one single civil service examination. For 1,000 years! It lasted because it worked.
Another trending flaw in the system is the treatment of junior doctors who were not given equal and fair treatment or a permanent post and to clear the path for postgraduate specialisation.
While all of us were safe at home, during the Covid-19 pandemic, it was the sleep deprived doctors wearing uncomfortable and claustrophobic PPEs, gloves and eye-goggles who worked night after night, to save lives. They had put their own lives at risk.
If at all, this is the time to reward and appreciate them and not drive them to the streets.
While politicians are paid generously for a cameo appearance in Parliament, these doctors who were there when we needed them most, were treated shabbily by the Public Service Department.
Who are the leaders who caused this mess? Were they chosen on merit?
Again, I quote China, which invented the civil service examination system or the ‘Keju’ system, and it’s great strategist Sun Tzu introduced xiaxiace – ‘‘selection and election’’ – where competent leaders are selected on the basis of performance in line of meritocracy. There is also an exit plan for weak leaders who performed poorly.
If this system is imposed for choosing Malaysian leaders, the wind might just change its direction to give us a just and equal society where genuine meritocracy is recognised without being polarised.
Since we do not have any such exams, it is the people who must empower ourselves with the option of choosing leaders on their individual merits, rather than be grouped under various ethnicities. We should demand for a defined mandate on issues that matter like education and recognising human value.
There is no election that will take place that is more crucial than the next one. We should work on choosing leaders who are ready to put aside all prevailing prejudices and focus on meritocracy to move the nation forward. – The Vibes, September 28, 2021
Vasanthi Ramachandran is an author, columnist and runs the NGO Helping Hands
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