MAY 9, 2018, a date to remember for Malaysians. As if the country was filled with poisonous gas for almost five years and on that day, a team led by an old familiar face arrives with turbo charged vacuums to suck out every newton square metre of the hazardous smoke and every Malaysian rose with fresh air and oxygen, with hope for a better liveable nation.

The breath of fresh air and oxygen didn’t last long though.

In fact, it was so short of a time that a standard four student will immediately end this paragraph with “Bedebom! Saya terjatuh dan baru saya sedar ini hanyalah suatu mimpi” (I fell and realised it was just a dream).

So, what went wrong, where and why?

The most impossible and difficult thing to do, which is bringing down an arrogant and corrupted 60-year-old regime, was done rather easily.

On the other hand, straightening up and governing a nation of wonderful citizens, which is ought to be easy, is now becoming a nightmare for this bunch of “ghost busters”.

First and foremost, one needs to understand, Malaysians or even the citizens of the world in some sense, do not have much choice or influence in deciding how a government behaves or decides.

The only time fellow Malaysians are given any respect and attention and coincidently showered with so many gifts and love and fake promises in manifestos, is during an election.

In an ideal situation for Malaysians prior to May 9 would have been the removal of Najib Razak and few of his fellow selfish ministers and staff.

Had that been done, that same government would still be ruling, we would be in a much better economic situation and growth is driven and steered, not shaken like what the current conductors are doing.

Let’s focus on the “ghost busters” team. The main man himself is much loved and respected but he is no longer relevant.

In fact, every day that he opens his mouth, two years of his version 1.0 legacy diminishes into thin air.

Why? Well for a start, nothing productive has been announced or been done.

Black shoe white shoe, flying car, smoking zones. These are petty issues that should not be the main agenda of the day, unless of course if we are a stable income nation with average income per month per person is US$2,000, unemployment is very low and almost zero crime rate, then for real we should spent three hours a day in Putrajaya discussing smoking areas and where ministerial staff can do drugs and party.

Other than these “major” milestones that the country has achieved, the failure of us moving forward in any direction even until yesterday is deemed to be “Najib’s fault” and between the old man and the tunnel expert guy managing finance, “Najib’s fault” is the answer to all of yesterday, today and even tomorrow’s problems.

“The major problem we have today is incompetence”, this would have been an ideal way to start a speech by the economic minister to fellow Malaysians but unfortunately it is the other way around. Both the finance ministry and economic ministry has been busy with covering up tunnels, or making new tunnels, everything that they have announce have been either denials or plans to deny future problems today and both does it with full of arrogance.

They do not accept the fact that Malaysian economy and finance are going downhill, even if you provide a legitimate video showing the sufferings of fellow Malaysians, they will deny and say its Malawi or some other country. 

Millions of fellow Malaysians who are unable to even put food on the table today are ignored totally or even if being made known, is immediately being responded with… “Najib’s fault”.

The bunch of ministers in the cabinet are disgraceful, not only that they lack subject matter knowledge, their behaviour of late, the arrogance and ego have grown twice bigger than the nitrogen filled balloon heads we had before.

Sports minister should learn to use the photocopy machine to humble himself and focus on sports rather than selling drinks in 7-11 or which Malaysian company to fight with by backing up foreign company’s domestic intrusion attempt.

We can continue and dissect each and every minister, what they have done, what they are doing and what has been achieved over the last year but it will only legitimises our assumption that they should be driving the Proton Perdana, while both their driver and bodyguard should be sitting at the back – if equality in opportunities ever exist and KPIs are used as a tool to decide positioning in a ministry, then definitely this would be the case across all ministries.

No doubt if we were to ask the old man, why have the ministers been doing nothing and not driving the country to the desired destination, everyone would know the answer by now, “this is because apa nama… apa nama… Najib’s fault”

How do we move forward?

The country is blessed with talents, knowledge and really smart citizens. Unfortunately the worst of them lot are now ministers.

We need to emulate Indonesia and other first world countries where professionals run the ministries.

We have many turn around strategists, we have many who saved the country’s economy during the currency crisis, we have many brilliant engineers and scientists who should be given the role accordingly in deciding the fate of Malaysian science and environment.

We should give our legendary sportsman or sportswomen the role of running the ministry, even if they refuse, the least they should do is to give this young boy a slap in the face and tell him to wake up, we are light years behind in sports from his two-year stint.

Politicians should just bicker in Parliament. Professionals and technocrats should govern the ministries.

That’s the way to save this nation. If this fails, we can always blame it on Najib. – January 22, 2020.

* Ridzuan Nor reads The Malaysian Insight.

* This is the opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of The Malaysian Insight. Article may be edited for brevity and clarity.