Angan Angan Mat Jenin, Or, The Delusions of a Walter Mitty
Angan angan Mat Jenin
Or, The Delusions of A Walter Mitty
M. Bakri Musa
Hardly a day goes by without some minister, including the Prime Minister, announcing a brave new initiative. One day it could be, “Love our Rivers!†on another, “Cultivate a culture of maintenance!†Lower-level leaders too are aping this. Thus, the vice-chancellor of one public university proclaiming, without even a trace of embarrassment, that his institution would be the “Harvard of the East†within a decade! Such pretensions reflect blissful ignorance.
Many of these ideas end up being nothing more than what we Malays would put it as Angan angan Mat Jenin, or the delusions of a Walter Mitty.
Mat Jenin is the ageing “has been†jagoh kampong (village champion) who never tires of expounding his daring plans to save his race. Meanwhile he is busy idling his life away beneath the swaying coconut fronds. Walter Mitty is the fictional character in James Thurber’s short story, The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, a meek old man who fancies himself a wartime pilot, a daring surgeon, and a ruthless killer, all in a few paragraphs and while driving his wife shopping.
The vivid imaginations of a Mat Jenin or a Walter Mitty are harmless if not mildly entertaining; the wild delusions of our leaders are dangerous and cost us a bundle. It would humble if not silent these leaders if only they would pay some attention on how they would carry out their ideas. That would disabuse (or at least discourage) them of their grandiose schemes, and in the process spare us – and them – the embarrassment.
The most damaging aspect is that because of these leaders’ poor executions, hitherto excellent ideas would now become discredited, making their later resurrections by more competent leaders that much more difficult.
Ignorance and Incompetence
Ignorance and incompetence are the twin factors why otherwise good ideas failed. In particular, ignorance of the magnitude of the problem and of the power of existing forces in maintaining the status quo. This is quite apart from the sheer force of inertia; people just do not like change.
This dilemma is further complicated by the fact that the gains from any new initiative, even if it were to benefit many, would remain only a promise until the project was fully implemented and successful. Meanwhile those currently benefiting from the status quo, the loss for them would be immediate. They may be in the minority but they can be expected to mount a vigorous challenge and to make themselves appear as the voice of the majority.
This is a familiar public policy dilemma, and explains the difficulty in eliminating public agencies that have long ago ceased to serve any function. They have acquired entrenched constituencies, foremost the civil servants.
A leader does not need to be knowledgeable in all fields. President Kennedy knew nothing about aeronautics or planetary science when he ambitiously declared about sending a man on the moon (and back) within a decade. He knew enough that that was an achievable goal, and then sought competent personnel to run the project. Had Kennedy declared that he wanted to land a man on the surface of the sun, Americans would wonder what their president had been smoking.
Goals must be achievable; unrealistic targets would merely be a set up for failure, and its attendant negative consequences. Better to have a modest and achievable target, once you reach it, then you could build on it. Success builds upon success.
My advice to the Malaysian vice-chancellor would be simple: Do not try to make your institution the “Harvard of the East,†whatever that term implies, instead have specific, quantifiable, and achievable goals. For example, strive to have at least half your faculty members with terminal qualifications, double their research grants, and triple the volumes in your library. That may not produce a Harvard in the rice fields of Kedah, but at least you – and the nation – would have a much better university than what it has today.
Currently, Prime Minister Abdullah’s preoccupation is with the poor maintenance of public facilities. Instead of endlessly sermonizing and whining about it, why not mandate all departments allocate a specific budget for maintenance?
I participated in the planning of an addition to our current hospital here in California, and we allocated a generous budget for maintenance and renovations for the first year of operation equaled to about 20 percent of the capital costs. We understood that the architect, no matter how competent and visionary could not anticipate all the specific needs of all the building users, and that there would be an inevitable need for changes once the building was occupied.
Contrast that with the typical Malaysian project. The budget would have been exhausted in building the structure with nothing left for the subsequent needed alterations and landscaping. The access road would remain narrow and unpaved, and there would be no upgrade to the power grid or drainage system. The consequences would be predictable: flash floods, traffic jams, power failures, and of course, falling ceilings!
Downstream Analysis and Failure Analysis
Many of the problems can be anticipated by doing “downstream analysis,†that is, by imagining or modeling what would happen if the project were fully operational today. Consider a housing project. With hundreds of new families moving in, you could imagine the increased in vehicular traffic, the need for more utilities as well as social services like clinics, shopping, and schools. By anticipating these problems, you could more easily solve them.
The various projects in Malaysia go through impressive vetting processes and environmental impact studies. Unfortunately they are impressive only on paper; there are too many exemptions or variants because of corruption and influence peddling. There are many ready and obvious examples.
When things fail, there must be a thorough failure analysis. In America this is done less to find the cause rather to assess liabilities and who would be responsible for paying the attendant damages. The process thus often gets entangled in expensive litigations, with the learning opportunities consequently diminished
Failure analysis means going through the process from start to finish and finding what and where the deficiencies are. Major catastrophes often are not the result of one major bungle, rather the cumulative and compounding effects of minor and seemingly unrelated errors, all working in the same direction. As the old saw would have it, “For lack of a nut … the war was lost.â€
In Malaysia, the problem is compounded because decisions are often made by committees. It would be hard to nail the responsible individuals when failures happen. Even when the responsible parties could readily be identified, the government is unwilling in naming the culprits. It has yet to name the responsible contractors and engineers for the various projects that have collapsed. These professionals have their reputation to protect; therefore revealing their names would have the desired effect not only on the responsible parties but also on others. In the fiasco over computer lab constructions in schools, the ministry has yet to publish, let alone blacklist, those incompetent contractors.
Prime Minister Abdullah recently unveiled his ambitious plan to take the nation to 2050. I would be happy if he could execute his current Ninth Malaysia Plan first, and well. His 2050 Plan sounds very much like Angan angan Mat Jenin.
May 14th, 2007 at 1:50 am
The problem with funding the projects in Malaysia is that corruption is rife. So, a large proportion of the money is siphoned off in bribes. When a project fails spectacularly, the culprits are not made known publicly, because some ministers would also be implicated. Therefore, everything is hushed up. What we need are public enquiries where the panel members consist of politicians from both government and opposition, NGO members, judges, lay members etc..In other words, we need transparency and accountability to the people, and not just to a closed circle like the cabinet ministers.
May 14th, 2007 at 8:00 pm
Dear Hammerhead,
The Government knows how to win voters (read recent by-elections in Melaka and Ijok). It does so by bribing them with promises, undertaking flash repairs to roads and broken bridges, and neglected canals and polluted rivers, and giving some duit raya or wang ihsan. On top of that, “phantom” voters were seen in Ijok, for example. Ask Strategist-in-Chief, Khairy Jamaluddin as he knows.
Now the Government is going to raise the salaries of civil servants on the grounds that they are doing a great job (this contradicts the PM’s criticisms of them for poor public service delivery) and, therefore, deserve the raise. Surely, Government servants and spouses,relatives, etc will vote the BN.
What we need is a strong opposition, but apart from KeADILan, we cannot rely on PAS and the dynastic DAP with its ageing leaders like Lim Kit Siang and Karpal Singh. They are a far cry from the likes of Dr. Tan Chee Khoon and the Seenivasagam Brothers of Ipoh. They are opposing for the sake of opposing, if you know what I mean.
If we do not have a viable opposition with a clear manifesto for our country, the next elections, slated for October this year after another giveaway budget, will be a walkover to the Barisan Nasional. It is for this reason that the Barisan Nasional is confident of winning convincingly. They can continue to perpetuate this “culture of impunity” ( zero transparency and accountability). I think they understand Malaysian voter mentality.
So we deserve the government we get because we keep voting in the same party for the last 50 years. Yet we complain endlessly.
May 14th, 2007 at 10:16 pm
Din Merican says:
They are opposing for the sake of opposing, if you know what I mean.
But the issues raised by these dinosaurs(as some people would like to call them) were pertinent. I don’t hear a lot of issues from PAS MPs or even Wan Azizah. I wonder what these PAS/PKR MPs are doing in parliament.
Take for example the insult by Bung and Said, did Wan Azizah come out to defend her gender? Not a whimper was heard anywhere. Who’s the dinosaur?
These people are a complete waste of our time and tax-payers’ money if you know what I mean.
May 15th, 2007 at 3:33 pm
Dear Din Merican,
I hear what you are saying. In part, I do agree with you. But do you think that in the mentality of Malaysians, is it ever likely that an alternate party apart from BN will be government? I think that the memory of May13, 1969 is very much still imprinted in people’s consciousness that they do not dare vote in an opposition party. So, even if the bribes to voter is not there, it will still be a BN government. Their majority may be less, so perhaps we may have a more effective opposition.
I think 2 things need to happen. Firstly, the oppositions parties need to present the people with a “tangible” alternative government. So, they cannot have the lone hero in a party e.g.Lim Kit Siang, but have a whole line up of shadow cabinet members; something like that in British politics. Secondly, the people need to have frank discussions about various issues in the country amongst themselves. Political blogs are one example of how this can be done, but it need to be more widespread.
May 16th, 2007 at 3:29 am
Dear Sirs,
Dont give them the idea of increasing the maintenance budget because it will only end up in their pockets.
I dont know why we keep harping on May 13. I am 43 and i know nothing of May 13 apart from what I read and heard. We need to engage our populace in a more intelligent manner. Sending more students overseas may help. The way I see it, its only the Malays who can change things.
May 16th, 2007 at 2:18 pm
I think the whole BN Govt offering miraculous upgrade in infrastructure is a bit overplayed. A practical Govt will provide the people with what they want much like First World Country promising jobs to constituents, European countries promises subsidies for certain protected industries and the ultimate insult, PAS offering an express ticket to heaven for voting them into power. We are after all discussing politics. I don’t blame any government providing what you call “bribes”.
If a political party facing election would have to be confined to ideals alone, we will be facing no confidence vote in Parliament as regularly as we find pot holes on the road.
The Opposition like to cop out from their dismal failure to mount a serious challenge by constantly claiming bribes (as if they dont practice it !) phantom voters etc. If phantom voters are a serious threat, Kelantan would have fallen under BN without much of an effort.
The Opposition would like to believe that the number of people who attend their Ceramah and the thunderous applause they received every time slanderous accusation frothing out from their mouth as a good indicator of the support they receive. What they fail to realise is, just because the people like to watch the circus doesn;t mean every one who attend aspire to be a clown.
May 17th, 2007 at 4:26 pm
By “tangible” you mean “credible”. Isn’t the DAP a credible opposition - except that it is unable to garner support from the Malays who feel they need the NEP. And what with PKR and their leader who has not got over the credibility gap after all these years he has been out of prison.
May 17th, 2007 at 4:32 pm
Talking about the circus, our Parliament has been a circus for time immemorial and we do not need another circus and another clown to rival those we find occupying seats in our Parlimant.
And talking about pot holes in our roads, there are more potholes in the brains of some of the MPs. And talking about leakages, there are more that is bocor than meets the eye.
May 18th, 2007 at 8:49 pm
Due to the country’s wealth (which goes to the budget of every govt dept, municipals) our politicians and planners don’t believe in prevention being better than cure: just look at the fiascos at the wetland, bukit cerakah, and lately our court and parliament buildings. The same with our rivers - dirty and clog them - then we can always allocate millions to clean them up.
It will cost RM22 million just to inspect the leaking parliament. Now samy velu says the damage is ‘very serious’ and will cost ‘a lot of money’ to repair - this after spending RM90 million recently on ‘minor repair’! wtf
May 21st, 2007 at 9:27 pm
Why don’t they just keep the money and build a new Parliament House in Putrajaya. After all every government department have moved to Putrajaya so why not Parliament. That way the Ministers don’t have an excuse for being late or absent in Parliament.
Secondly thay have a problem seating the Ministers as there are more Ministers than before. Perhaps after the next general election, Parliament will have more seating problems as there will be more opposition members.
There is also the probability that BN afraid of losing will create more parliamentary constituencies and thus need more seats to accommodate all these extra YB’s (yes why be)
Last but not least since election is around the corner why not give out a contract to build a new Parliament House. More giveaways and more goodies. If the new Istana Negara cost well over RM 400 million why not Parliament House costing RM 1 billion. Must spend that kind of money as the PM, Ministers and MP’s will all be using the Parliament House to entertain Heads of States, Official Banquets and other merry ganderings.
10-4
May 27th, 2007 at 9:26 pm
Dear Suneel,
I’m 44 and I have a part of your view too. Unfortunately, you now know that only Malays are given “all the time they need” to change things. Thus has been the plan for prospering the Malays and bumiputera’s with regard that Malay’s are the superior ruling party. Therefore we can see that there is no need for voting or opposition parties to exist. It is all done in name only. We are all fools playing into their hands. All opposition parties are just for personal name, gain or fame. When will we all realize and stop opposing; rather it would be better to support and work things out together, be in the same boat with the rulers and judiciary and you will see your dreams come true- little by little.