Najib - Man of Steel

As he surveys the country, either from the pristine grounds of Seri Perdana or whether on the ground mingling with people from all races and all backgrounds, a sense of unease overcomes Malaysia's 6th Prime Minister. Having tasked himself with uplifting a third world nation into the leagues of a high income, mature and modern society, instead he finds his attention drawn to comment on many needless "win-lose" issues.

Meet Malaysia's 6th Prime Minister - Dato Seri Najib Tun Razak. 

As a man, even his political enemies admit that there is little to dislike. His affable personality and easy going nature has won him many friends as he slowly climbed up the ranks in UMNO and Government. On his way to the top, Dato Seri Najib had served in many different capacities, as the Chief Minister of Pahang, Youth and Sports Minister, Minister of Education, Minister of Defence, Deputy Prime Minister and finally culminating in being sworn in as Malaysia's 6th Prime Minister on the 3rd of April 2009.

When he became Prime Minister, Dato Seri Najib wasted no time in outlining his vision. He was boldly going to challenge the status quo and mediocrity in the country and stated that on his watch, he will take Malaysia from wandering the no man's land of middle income serfdom into a high powered dynamic economy. He recruited the smartest brains in the country into a think thank unit called Pemandu, which would provide the policy input required to transform the nation. Pemandu's task was to implement the vision through a well detailed and well thought of plan. Nothing was left unanswered nor up in the air. The target was clear - achieve per capita income of USD 15,000 which would meet the World Bank definition of a High Income society.

The plans Pemandu came up were bold and brand new. The plan required every Government Minister to deliver on the respective Key Performance Indicators. Nothing was sacred and everything was open for transformation. "People First. Performance Now" was the ethos of the Najib administration.

5 years on and now Dato Seri Najib faces a different kind of headwind. The economic policy is iron clad in terms of its logic and requires liberalisation so that foreign companies are willing to invest and so develop local expertise. An open , transparent and just society required that suspected criminals be given the right to a fair trial which led to the abolition of repressive laws such as the Emergency Ordinance and the Internal Security Act. Such tools gave the holder immense power, but Dato Seri Najib was willing to sacrifice power for principle.

But those moves are now being roundly criticised, unjustly perhaps. People whom Dato Seri Najib had appointed to positions of power and influence have turned on him because they feel threatened and challenged by the bold transformation moves. Disgruntled elements in his own party, UMNO, are beginning to emerge from the woodwork to incite his Deputy to challenge him at the upcoming party elections. But when pressed for an actual and definitive answer as to why Dato Seri Najib has deemed to have failed, they come up short or offer simplistic excuses.

One such excuse is that BN did poorly in the last General Election. That is complete rubbish as the party wrested away 2 key states, Perak and Kedah that was lost to the Opposition Front in 2008. More ever, UMNO, the party of which Dato Seri Najib presides over did tremendously well in spite of its image of extreme corruption, feudal nature and arrogance. The reason for UMNO's strong showing need not any Merdeka laced analysis - for it was Dato Seri Najib's picture on the billboards urging voters to give him the mandate for him to take the country forward.

  

But nothing is quite so simple in Malaysia. Politics is a 24 hour business and does not thrive on vision, hard work and excellence. Politics instead is a dirty power play game as those who are interested in securing personal power are driven by jealously and begin to incite wide spread angst against the Najib administration. All manner of flimsy excuses are offered but none have any concrete substance.

The source of this attack are usually a few. They are born of a different generation, where the rules of the Cold War made it easy to understand who are allies, who the enemies of the allies were and how to trade one against the other. They grew up a time when the focus of economic growth was towards Asia, making any Government look good as economic growth came together with low inflation. 

But today times are different. We live in a multipolar world with extremely complicated trade flows. At the start of the year, Asia was heralded as the force that will drive the global economy in the light of weakness in the United States and a deep recession in Europe. Today, the same countries that saw massive capital inflow are witnessing exactly the reverse and suddenly the world has declared that a new crisis is imminent. Such extreme volatility requires leaders who are flexible and not those who are rigid. These require leaders who define the situation and not leaders who are defined by the situation. These require leaders who seek allies and not leaders who seek to blame others.

In that sense, these times are made for Dato Seri Najib. And in great tribute to the man and to the country, the President of the United States has decided to honour Malaysia and Dato Seri Najib with an official state visit slated in a couple of weeks time. This is a historic occasion never before bestowed on Malaysia and reflects the great strides Dato Seri Najib has made on the international front. Now if only, the rancid voices in his party could return the favour.