During a phone conversation I had earlier today the topic landed on Dr. Mahathir Mohamad, the true firebrand "father of Malaysia," in my opinion. Tunku Abdul Rahman declared Malaya's independence and everything, but Dr. Mahathir showed the world that we are.
No leader of a country is free of faults, obviously, but let's state the even more obvious fact that only a rare number of leaders are actually leaders because they love their country, regardless of what state it's in. You see it in their actions, words, and commitment to the long and arduous process of development. And in a genuinely multiethnic, multicultural society like Malaysia this endeavor becomes even more insane.
So the recent comments made by Mukhriz Mahathir, Dr. Mahathir's son, and who is widely perceived to have ambitions of becoming Prime Minister has pissed off some people, and might work against him. Unaware of what he said during the phone conversation, I googled his name on the laptop in front of me.
“When we travel abroad or perform the umrah, if we are asked which country we are from, we would feel embarrassed and say we are from Brunei.
“(Because) if we answer Malaysia, people would ask us why there are so many problems (in Malaysia), it was magnificent and great (in the past), but (in a) terrible (state) at present,” reads the quote. (Malaysiakini)
Speak for yourself, Mukhriz.
And allow me to refer to a past post I'd written after Fidel Castro's death, concerning great leaders, romantics, and those of weak character who look for a different flag to wave when hardship falls on their native country. Mukhriz is echoing the same pomposity exhibited by Americans today who seek to distance themselves from the Trump presidency by announcing their intent to become Canadian (although many Americans said the same during the Bush administration).
What's also amusing about Mukhriz's ill-contemplated comments is that he refers to Brunei as the preferred country of choice for embarrassed Malaysians.
Ummm....the country whose leader has been known to be a barefaced hypocrite, controlling the population with threats of shariah law and other restrictions while he sips his wine, holds sex parties and chums it up with Donald Trump – that Brunei? He might as well just use Saudi Arabia as the country embarrassed Malaysians can claim to be from when asked by strangers.
The problem with Mukhriz's rhetoric is that he comes off as a weak individual. Weak individuals don't make good leaders. Weak individuals don't love their country when it's suffering and needs love the most – they give up and start calling themselves something else, not just to feel better about themselves, but to sound more pleasing to others. He is not like his father, but children aren't extensions of their parents anyway. They've been influenced and conditioned by a different generation of ideas and people.
When people in the States ask me, and they often do, where I'm from, I tell them. The general response is of admiration for Malaysia, even though many of them have never even been there. If any of them comment on the problems going on there at present, and they rarely do, because we're in the US, and the problems here are profound and endless and incomparable in many ways, I tell them, yes, like all countries, we need to work at it. And most importantly, we need strong leaders of the romantic breed, because love cultivates, and love is a battle, and a leader who exercises power without love is a leader without wisdom.
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