Najib’s Farcical Presidential Speech

December 9th, 2012

Najib’s Farcical Presidential Speech

M. Bakri Musa

www.bakrimusa.com

That Prime Minister Najib Razak is oratorically-challenged is patently obvious, and a severe understatement.  The pathetic part is that Najib is determined to delude himself that he is otherwise.  His presidential speech at the recently-concluded UMNO General Assembly was only the latest example.
He confuses ponderousness with deliberateness, equates yelling as emphasizing, and thinks that furrowing his forehead as being in profound thought.  In the hands of a gifted actor, those could be great comedic acts.  Alas, Najib is also far from being that.
I learned early in high school at Kuala Pilah that if I did not know what to do with my hands when delivering a speech, to keep them in my pockets or behind my back.  Do not gesticulate wildly as that would only distract the audience.  Worse, I risked looking like a monkey on speed.  Najib apparently did not learn that at his expensive British school.
As an aside from the personal hygiene perspective, I hoped they sanitized the microphone thoroughly after he spoke; there was an awful amount of spit splattered on it during his delivery.
Najib should take comfort in the fact that there are many effective leaders who are neither charismatic nor great orators. Germany’s Angela Merkel readily comes to mind.  Najib should also be reminded that the converse is even truer.  Leaders with great oratorical gifts and generously endowed charisma can often be among the most corrupt and inept.  Sukarno mesmerized Indonesians with his mercurial personality and spellbound speeches, but that country remained a basket case economically and in many other ways during his presidency.
Had Najib delivered his address in his usual persona, without the put-on gravitas or pretensions of grandeur, he could have finished his nearly hour-long speech in half the time.  Then he and his audience would not have missed their Maghrib prayers.  Besides, there was nothing in Najib’s speech that was so urgent or important to justify that.  As self-professed champions and defenders of Islam, Najib and his fellow UMNO members do not need to be reminded of the importance of prayer.  He and UMNO might need it for the coming election!
Or perhaps those UMNO folks believed in the canard that their party is God’s choice, and thus dispensed from having to pray.
With all the daunting challenges facing Malays, Najib could come up with only two piddling policy prescriptions:  One, increasing Amanah Ikhtiar Malaysia’s (AIM) loan amount to RM100K from RM50K; and two, reviewing the country’s bankruptcy laws.  This from the leader of a party that purports to champion the Malay cause!
In announcing the loan increase, Najib looked approvingly to Wanita members, and they in turn responded in kind.  Meaning, they were the intended beneficiaries.  I have no problem giving those ladies who are hairdressers or trained pre-school teachers loans so they could start their own beauty salons or kindergartens, but simply by virtue of their being Wanita members would be folly.  Besides, if all you have is some vague idea of starting basket weaving, you do not need such outlandish amounts.
AIM is Malaysia’s government-sponsored version of “micro-credit.”  Muhammad Yunus, its pioneer, would be flabbergasted to know that a loan of RM100K is considered “micro.”  This is yet another example of Najib adopting an otherwise brilliant idea from elsewhere and then screwing it up in the implementation.  AIM’s generous program has degenerated into another massive and lucrative UMNO patronage machinery.
As for reviewing the bankruptcy laws, I would have been reassured had Najib made it part of an overall scheme to encourage economic entrepreneurialism and business risk-taking especially among Malays.  Alas, none of that!  It was prompted simply to rescue the many UMNO leaders who are bankrupt purportedly from guaranteeing loans of their members in return for their support.  With the proposed changes, those local leaders would be spared from bankruptcy, and then they could be their party’s next “winnable” candidates!  Having not learned their lesson, they would then mortgage the country’s future.
What is obvious here is that Najib and the entire UMNO leadership are bereft of ideas.  They are intellectually bankrupt.  The brilliant political cartoonist Zunar captures well this degeneration of UMNO leaders with his latest cartoon, “Evolusi UMNO.”
The only remedy for the intellectual bankruptcy of our current leaders is to have an entirely new leadership.
Fully aware what Mahathir did to Abdullah Badawi, Najib heaped profuse praise on the still powerful Mahathir.  It was sucking up performance par excellence!  Najib singled out Mahathir’s commitment of loyalty to leaders, which he (Mahathir) apparently forgot when Abdullah Badawi was in charge.
According to Najib, Mahathir had impressed upon UMNO members the importance of loyalty to leaders, presumably in contrast to fidelity to principles.  Najib readily or more accurately, desperately hung on to that!  These UMNO leaders are nothing but opportunistic characters, modern-day Hang Tuahs.
In his speech Najib was like a little kid desperately seeking approval and relishing praises from grown-ups.  Apart from gushingly citing Mahathir’s approbation, Najib reminded his audience of IMF’s Christine Legard’s praise for Malaysia’s “gravity-defying” economic performance.  Najib needs to be reminded that the IMF, World Bank, and other “respected” international bodies were running out of superlatives to describe the country’s economic stewardship right up to the day before the 1997 Asian economic contagion.
When he was not consumed with sucking up and seeking approval, Najib was obsessed with demonizing the opposition, in particular its leader Anwar Ibrahim.  Najib feigned disgust at Anwar’s alleged crime, for which he was jailed but subsequently acquitted on appeal.
Najib and others of his ilk conveniently forgot that whatever crime Anwar may have allegedly committed, no one was murdered.  Instead, Anwar suffered a black eye, literally and metaphorically.  Now compare that to the fate of the beautiful young Mongolian lady Altantuya.  She and her unborn child were literally blown to pieces.  The fact that her killers are close to Najib (they were part of his official bodyguard unit) or the explosives used are available only to his department remains unexplained.
Najib smugly let on that he had other “secrets” of Anwar which he (Najib) would unhesitatingly reveal at the opportune time.  Left unsaid are the many secrets of Najib now swirling openly in cyberspace that he has yet to respond.  The biggest remains the tragedy of that poor Mongolian lady.
It is hard to pick which part of Najib’s speech was the most obscene or offensive as there were many vying for the top spot.  His closing remarks must clearly rank high up there.
It is an accepted tradition in Islam that once you have uttered vile words or committed evil deeds, your wuduk (ablution) would be nullified.  You would then have to re-cleanse yourself (take another wuduk) before reciting any dua (supplication) or verse from the Koran.  The reason is clear and obvious:  You cannot invoke Allah’s name when your heart is filled with bile and hate. It makes a mockery of your good niat (intention).
In vilifying the opposition and uttering those ugly words, Najib had committed evil deeds.  I could also add that he had demeaned himself, but then he could not get any lower.
Earlier, UMNO folks were appalled when PAS members, led by their leader Nik Aziz, had a prayer calling for UMNO’s downfall.  Like many, I too was utterly repulsed by that vulgar gesture.
Yet there was Najib, frothing at the mouth vilifying the opposition and attributing the most evil of motives to them, and then with his instant put-on piety leading his followers to a recitation of dua calling for Allah’s blessing!  They in turn responded in kind with their collective exuberant “Amen!” and “Allahu Akhbar!” (God is great!).  Only UMNO’s carma (contraction for cari makan – lit. seeking food; fig. opportunistic) ulamas would approve of that.

Bekok

The Havoc Education Reform Inflicts (Part 4 of 5)

October 7th, 2012

The Havoc Education Reform Inflicts: Education Blueprint 2013-2025 (Part 4 of 5)
M. Bakri Musa
www.bakrimusa.com

Fourth of Five Parts: Roar of An Elephant, Baby of a Mouse

[In the first three parts I critiqued the Blueprint’s recommendations; specifically its failure to recognize the diversity within our school system and thus the need to have targeted programs, the challenge of recruiting quality teachers, and the link between efficiency efficacy, and quality. In this Part Four, I discuss the major areas the report ignores.]

Education Blueprint 2013-2025 lacks clear authorship. The document carries forewords by Najib, Muhyyiddin, and the ministry’s Secretary-General as well as its Director General, while the Appendix credits a long list of those involved in this “robust, comprehensive, and collaborative effort,” but the Blueprint itself is unsigned.

It is also impossible to tell who actually is in charge of this whole reform effort. According to the complicated box-chart diagram, the entire endeavor was anchored in a 12-member “Project Management Office” (PMO) that reported to the Ministry’s Director-General as well as to an 11-member “Project Taskforce” that in turn reported to Muhyyiddin. Both the PMO and Taskforce are manned exclusively by ministry officials. Then there are the local and international panels of experts.

Such a convoluted arrangement could easily degenerate into a morass when no individual is tasked to be in charge. Every military operation needs a commanding general; every orchestra, a conductor. That is the greatest deficiency with this reform exercise; no one was in charge, likewise with writing the report.

This is typical of the Malaysian civil service “management by committee” mode. So it is difficult to heap praise, or in this case, lay blame. That no one was in charge could be gauged by the final product. For a report that claims to be comprehensive, aimed no less at transforming the system, it is disjointed and lacks a central theme. It heaps praise on the system’s “remarkable achievements” for the past 55 years. If that is so, why reform it? The Blueprint embellishes how well our students had performed on national examinations over the years, and then cites the PISA and TIMSS reports that indicate otherwise.

There are also many technical but irritating deficiencies, as with the lack of references. The Appendix makes only general references to reports from such bodies as the World Bank, OECD, and UNESCO. Those are relatively easy to trace. However, when it quotes studies done by local universities, there are no specific references, leading one to suspect that those studies are not of publishable quality.

Those aside, my greatest disappointment is the Blueprint’s failure to address the system’s obvious and critical weaknesses that demand immediate attention: rural national schools; religious stream; and vocational education. All three regularly perform at the bottom; improve them and you improve the system’s overall performance. For another, the students affected are mostly if not exclusively poor Malays. This failure to address their problems is made more incomprehensible and inexcusable because those involved with this reform, from Muhyyiddin on downwards, are mostly Malays. While today they may live in plush bungalows at Putrajaya, scratch a bit and the kampongness would ooze out of their pores. During Hari Raya they all fled en mass balek kampong.

Surely on those trips they would hear and see the plight of the children of their cousins and other relatives. I too was once one of those children. On visiting my kampong recently, I was painfully reminded of my earlier challenges. Only now they are worse.

At least during my childhood I could dream that if I were to do well in school, I could escape my kampong. Today even if those children were to excel, their opportunities would be severely limited because their limited command of English.

Then there is the problem of school transportation. At least during my time there was a bus service, erratic though that was. Today there is none. Those children have to depend on fellow villagers who happen to have a car. If perchance he is sick or slept over that morning, then those half a dozen or so children that he normally packs into his tiny Kancil would miss school.

The biggest school expense my parents faced was their children’s bus fares. It still is for those village parents. American schools are required to provide free transportation especially for rural students. During colonial rule schools had hostels to cater for those from remote areas. If we have more such facilities then those students would not have to cross rickety bridges over dangerous rivers as often.

The wonder is that chronic absenteeism and academic underachievement are not worse with kampong kids. The Blueprint does not address this. A simple solution would be to have specific transportation allocation for each school for those pupils who live far away. The headmaster would then issue vouchers to be redeemed by the student and the village taxi driver. Better yet, the school could contract directly with individual village car owners and taxi drivers. There are other possibilities; all you need is for someone to first identify the problem and then diligently think about solving it.

The panel should be less enamored with advanced countries like Finland and South Korea, and instead learn from such poor countries as Mexico. The problems of our kampong children are closer to those of Mexico than South Korea. Mexico’s Progressa program pays poor rural families for their children to attend school. The scheme also extends to healthcare as with immunizations. The money typically goes to the mothers. The program has been modernized such that there are no transfers of cold cash as in the past, rather direct deposit into bank accounts. Yes, bank accounts for poor illiterate villagers! That also brings them into the modern economy, quite apart from bypassing petty local civil servants.

The poor are identified through direct surveys, so even those who do not register or distrustful of governments are not missed. The program is specifically divorced from the ruling political party; hence no political patronage and the associated corruption and leakage. The initiative has been remarkably effective in targeting the hard-core poor, and with low administrative costs.

Progressa reveals the close relationship between health, poverty, and educational achievements, and that all three could be simultaneously addressed effectively with a social initiative that is low cost, highly efficient, and remarkably efficacious. Progressa underscores the wisdom of former US Surgeon General Jocelyn Elders, “You can’t educate a child who is not healthy, and you can’t keep a child healthy who isn’t educated.”

Then there are the dilapidated conditions of rural schools; many lack power and potable water. If they have power then they could use computers and two-way videoconferencing so that one teacher centrally located could serve several classes from different schools. This is particularly useful for small schools as they can be combined online. Similarly, the shortage of teachers for specialized subjects like music could be overcome by sharing one teacher rotated among many schools in one district. Both strategies are effectively used in rural America.

As for vocational education, we cannot be an economic power unless we have well trained and skillful workforce for manufacturing as well as for the service sector. Specifically for Malays, the only way for signs like “Mahmud Motor Repairs” and “Halimah Hair Saloon” to appear on our main streets is to train these skillful workers. Again, we do not have to re-invent the wheel. Germany provides an excellent example of industry/school collaborative apprenticeship programs.

Then there are the religious schools. They share all the challenges of national schools, only worse. Physically, the standard of hygiene of their canteens is atrocious while their hostels are death traps, lacking basic safety features as sprinkler systems. They lack even mosquito nets.

Beyond the awful facilities, the religious stream faces an even far daunting challenge. Its educational philosophy, pedagogical approach, and learning psychology are archaic, misguided, and simply wrong. This is an affliction peculiar not only to Malaysia but also most Muslim countries, and from the highest institutions like Al Azhar to the lowest local Al Arqam preschool.

Abdullah Munshi best described the approach and philosophy of modern education: It treats the human mind as a knife to be sharpened. Current Islamic education on the other hand considers the human mind a dustbin to be filled with dogmas.

The possibilities with a sharp knife are limitless. In the hands of a surgeon it can cure cancer; a sculptor, an exquisite work of art. With a dustbin all you could get out of it is what you put in, nothing more. That assumes nothing gets stuck or crushed at the bottom. Yes, a sharp knife in the hands of a thug is a lethal killing weapon. This is where religious education comes in so that when we send our young abroad to study nuclear engineering they will come home to manufacture radio-pharmaceuticals to cure cancer, and not build nuclear weapons.

What goes on in those religious schools and universities is indoctrination masquerading as education. The emphasis is on mindless recitations and the quoting of earlier scholars and luminaries. The strength of your argument is not based on logic or data but the pedigree of your quoted authorities. Religious education as presently practiced entraps rather than liberates Muslim minds.

The irony is that modern education has all the hallmarks of early Muslim practices and philosophy, at least until the so-called “closure of the Gate of Ijtihad” in the 12th Century. Many would attribute the decline of the Muslim world since then to this “closure of ijtihad” and with it, the closing of the Muslim mind. Those longing for an Islamic Renaissance would do well to first critically examine current religious education.

The other irony is that only in America and Singapore, two secular countries with Muslim minorities, have Islamic schools been modernized. Blueprint 2013-2025 does not even address religious education in Malaysia.

Religion is now a major influence in national schools. That is one reason why non-Malays are abandoning the system. Removing religious studies from national schools, as some are advocating, is not the solution. Then we would be back to my childhood days, where I was put in the hands of the pondok ustads in afternoon schools. The only way I survived that intellectual dissonance was to strictly compartmentalize my mind between my morning secular school and afternoon religious one. Sooner or later I had to reconcile the obvious contradictions. We should never burden young minds with such heavy dilemmas; instead we should guide them in reconciling the two and thus benefiting from both.

We should teach our young early that there is no contradiction between secular and religious knowledge, and that the division between the two is false and artificial. Keeping religion in our national schools would best demonstrate that unity of knowledge. Metaphorically put, modern education sharpens the knife while religious education guides one to use it as a surgeon or sculptor would, to good purpose. I do not suspend my rational capacity on reading the Koran or listening to a sermon, and I do not shelve my religious convictions when I conduct scientific experiments or operate on my patients.

Before we could bring religious studies into national schools, the manner, objective and philosophy of teaching it would have to be revamped. It should be taught as an academic subject, not as theology.

After discussing these major deficiencies, it would seem petty if not anti-climactic to cite the Blueprint’s other omissions, which pale in comparison. However, I will include two more. Though seemingly minor, they reflect the panel’s lack of diligence and failure to critically analyze data.

The Blueprint quotes at length in the text and appendix both TIMSS and PISA. Malaysia paid considerable sums to participate in those studies. They are well designed and tested a broad spectrum of students so as to get as representative a sample as possible. However, its report presents only a composite of the nation as a whole.

As is obvious, there are vast differences between the students at Penang’s Chung Ling versus Kelantan’s Madrasah Al-Bakriyyah, between SMK Ulu Temiang versus SMJK (Tamil) Ulu Tiram. Those differences would be captured in the data of TIMSS and PISA but Malaysian scholars and policymakers have not analyzed them.

In America, Singapore, and elsewhere those statistics are pored over, with reams of papers published. Not so in Malaysia. That is all the more surprising as the data are in the public domain. Had that been done, the disparities within Malaysia would have been shocking. Perhaps that was why the panel contends itself only with the composite findings.

The one chapter missing from the Blueprint would be, “Lessons From The Past.” There is no attempt at critically looking at past reforms, their successes and especially the failures. If we do not examine them we are no likely to learn and thus likely to repeat the same mistakes. Then when the next Minister of Education arrives, he too would once again embark on another “bold, comprehensive, and transforming reform.”

If I were to be tasked with this awesome responsibility of reviewing our education system, I would approach it differently. And that will be the focus of my next and last part of this commentary.

Next: Part 5: Cannot Be Part of the Solution if You Are Part of the Problem

Dr Ahmad Azman Mohd Anuar
Universiti Teknologi MARA (UiTM) Johor
Tel: +60136668334

Kalau anda Islam, pastikan calon2 MCA kalah di kerusi2 ini

Kalau anda Islam, pastikan calon2 MCA kalah di kerusi2 ini

Why listen to the Vice Chancellor?

Why listen to the Vice Chancellor?

Undilah - Afdlin Shauki feat. Namewee, Kuli & Pete Teo

Undilah [Versi Pakatan Rakyat]

PRU13-Undilah PAKATAN RAKYAT (ubah-malay version).mp4

Merdeka 55 tahun - Janji Dicapati

Selamat Aidilfitri...........to ponder...

“Listen to the Exhortation of the Dawn!
Look to this Day!
For it is Life, the very Life of Life.
In its brief course lie all the
Verities and Realities of your Existence.
The Bliss of Growth,
The Glory of Action,
The Splendor of Beauty;
For Yesterday is but a Dream,
And To-morrow is only a Vision;
But To-day well lived makes
Every Yesterday a Dream of Happiness,
And every Tomorrow a Vision of Hope.
Look well therefore to this Day!
Such is the Salutation of the Dawn!”
-Kalidasa

Selamat Aidilfitri Maaf Zahir Batin.

Dr Ahmad Azman Mohd Anuar
+60136668334