MORE than 5,000 people have died of Covid-19 since last year, and at least 4,500 deaths have been logged since the emergency was declared this year to keep the country safe from the rampaging virus.

In some hospitals, the containers serving as temporary morgues are so full that the dead are kept in the wards until space becomes available.

In many hospitals, doctors are forced to play God and decide who gets a ventilator and who doesn’t. Who lives and who dies, to put it more starkly.

This is happening in Malaysia.

But you wouldn’t know if you tuned in to the prime minister, his cabinet or the MPs who keep his flailing and failing administration in power.

These people speak about contracts, vaccines, recovery phases, the MCO and every imaginable alphabet-soup acronym, but have an allergy when it comes to paying attention to the fallen.

They have time for durian feasts, enrolling kin in a Parisian school, getting married for the third time, and plotting political survival in late-night meetings, but they offer not a squeak about the haemorrhaging of precious lives.

Why this callousness? Why this indifference? Why this selective amnesia?

Because the number of dead is the clearest evidence of a government that has failed miserably in keeping the citizens and guests of Malaysia safe. 

Because drawing attention to the number of dead will be to indict an administration that asked for and received unprecedented powers to tackle the pandemic. 

Because speaking about the dead will force the government to accept that it squandered the year it had to build up capacity in hospitals.

So, best to keep as quiet as possible about the grandparents, fathers, mothers, and young ones who have succumbed to Covid-19.

There is another possible reason the Muhyiddin government tries to distance itself from the dead.

It is called lack of empathy.

Ministers and politicians in power are detached from the pain of ordinary Malaysians. They can’t and won’t walk in the shoes of the other. 

They should be crying at the hopelessness and helplessness Malaysians are feeling. They should be galvanising a national response to alleviate the hurt and loss felt by so many families 

They should be leading.

They are not.

Thankfully, Malaysians know the score. We know that we have to do the heavy lifting and be a balm to the wearied souls in our country. And hopefully, unlike the leaders, we will not shirk our duty. – July 5, 2021.