By Terence Netto
In remarks made in conjunction with the state-level marking of the National Integrity Plan (NIP) in Ipoh last week, Sultan Nazrin of Perak rued the “disheartening gap” between noble aspiration and grubby reality.
He said that in all the indices of national well-being that the NIP sought to raise the country’s standing, Malaysia has fallen distressingly short.
His Highness mused on the “disheartening gap” that had opened between aspiration and reality.
He lamented the daily diet of woeful news that depicted the national malaise and how this would have been mortifying to the statesman, Malaysia’s fifth prime minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, the initiator of NIP.
Those who remember the beginnings of the Badawi administration in late October 2003 will recall the mood of hope and optimism that attended the takeover of the reins of power from Dr Mahathir Mohamad.
When within a month Badawi announced the creation of a royal commission of inquiry into the management of the police force, it seemed like the incumbent prime minister had his finger on the nation’s pulse.
By March the following year, Badawi had led the Barisan Nasional to a commanding majority in Parliament which saw the reversal of the impressive gains made by PAS in GE10 in November 1999.
Shortly after this rout of the opposition, the NIP was announced.
Purportedly it was a plan to rid the body politic of the ills that plagued it, the royal commission on the police force being its most significant manifestation of a determination to rid the country of corruption.
When the commission, headed by a retired chief justice, came out with its recommendations in March 2005, PM Badawi, in an immediate reaction, called for its swift implementation.
Badawi underestimated the forces of reaction within the police force which was a mistake.
A cabal of senior police officers banded together to signal that the commission’s most significant reform — the formation of an independent panel to investigate cases of abuse within the force — would be opposed.
Badawi wavered in the face of this threatened mutiny which was his second mistake.
From there on it was downhill for Badawi all the way right up to the Bersih and Hindraf rallies of November 2007 which saw the incumbent PM practically on the ropes.
Three months later, at GE12, a prime minister that had reversed the gains made by the opposition in GE10, was faced with the breaking of the BN’s traditional supermajority.
Just over a year later, he was compelled to relinquish the reins of power, learning the lesson that — in the words of the poet A E Housman — “early though the laurel (power) grows, it withers quicker than the rose”.
In his speech marking the 21st anniversary of the launch of the NIP, Sultan Nazrin quoted the philosopher Georg Santayana that those who forget the lessons of history are condemned to repeat it.
This scribe recalls a conversation with a PKR stalwart who was asked for his opinion on why Abdullah Badawi did begin his premiership in optimism before decelerating into despondency. He offered this explanation:
“He is someone who could talk a good game but those who know him know he can’t deliver.”
Sultan Nazrin’s resort to Santayana’s wisdom holds a lesson to those who can similarly talk a good game but defer on delivery.
Terence Netto is a senior journalist and an FMT reader.
The views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect those of FMT.