Kam Raslan’s Talking Edge

(Reprinted from The Edge – Options pullout, 21 July 2014 issue)

Dear Kam,
The World Cup is over. I don’t know what to do anymore.
Football Widower

I don’t get many things right, but I did predict that Germany would win the World Cup (I have proof). Congratulations to Germany, they were easily the best team. But now that the whole thing is over, so is my four-week internal holiday. Now I have to face Malaysia’s political nonsense again. I’ve been trying to ignore it all because some of the stuff that is being said and done is reaching new lows of amazing stupidity. Oh well, let’s start reading the news again.

Dear Kam,
Is it my imagination or do we have some really poor quality politicians?
Getting Real

Although the quality of the office holders is often way too low, I, nonetheless, have respect for the actual office itself. These are ministers of the government of Malaysia and somebody voted for them. Don’t think it’s only Malaysia that has poor quality politicians. I grew up in Britain and I was very often shocked by the sheer inanity of ministers and, especially, deputy ministers. Whenever one of them said something really stupid, I wondered why they didn’t just get rid of that moron. But then, I read a British ex-minister’s memoirs where he explained that candidates for government cabinet postings can only be chosen from members of parliament, and that people who are good at winning elections are not necessarily well suited to running complex ministries. MPs are not necessarily the brightest people and they might be driven to become politicians because of a crusading bigotry, a simple desire to tell people how to live their lives or by a basic lust for power. Right now, a political storm is brewing in Britain because of investigations into the sex lives of mostly Conservative politicians in the 1980s. Rumours are circulating that the offences were hushed up by Thatcher’s Conservative Party but then used against the offenders to keep them politically compliant. Basically, they were blackmailed. It’s going to be interesting to see how the story develops.

Malaysia and Britain have the parliamentary system, so the cabinet has to be chosen from elected MPs and, unfortunately, unelected members of the upper house. The US government cabinet is made up of unelected appointees. This way, the hope is the best people from outside the world of politics can be given the job of running ministries. It sounds great but I abhor Ivy League arrogance and I’d want my ministers to be accountable to an electorate because that is the cornerstone of a democracy.

I have respect for the office even if I sometimes despair at the quality of the office holder. The office is permanent but the holder is temporary. But I have no respect for the offices of the Federal Territories ministry or Kuala Lumpur’s mayor because these are appointees. The FT minister might be an elected MP (which is a good thing), but the very existence of the ministry denies people their second vote. I live in Selangor, so I can vote for an MP and a state representative. If I lived in nearby KL, I would be able to vote in a bloated parliamentary constituency and, er, that’s it. KL needs an elected mayor. Somebody who is accountable to an electorate and who can harness the energy and aspirations of the city.

Unfortunately, Malaysia’s city dwellers have proved themselves to be incapable of voting the right way. They usually have running water and they no longer have to live in fear of communists and yet they always vote the wrong way. What more do they want? Clearly, they cannot be trusted with a second vote.

And yet the examples of elected mayors in New York, London and Paris show that city dwellers do not always vote the, er, wrong way. New York always votes Democrat for presidential elections and yet almost always votes right-of-centre for mayor. The present New York mayor is the first Democrat mayor since 1994. London votes heavily Labour Party at general elections, but since 2008 has twice voted convincingly for the Conservative candidate. The saying goes that all politics is local and no more so than when voting for a mayor. City dwellers vote for the candidate they think will be the best advocate for their city, and that person will probably be the one who can have direct access to the national purse strings.

There’s nothing to fear from having an elected mayor and there’s everything to gain. An elected mayor would inject excitement and urgency into how we think about KL’s future, because at the moment, it doesn’t appear to have much of a future. The city is floundering and steadily degrading and instead of being viewed as the most important and potentially dynamic patch of Malaysia, we are encouraged to ignore it completely because it exists on the same par as Labuan.

The day will eventually come when we will have an elected mayor of KL, of that there can be no doubt. It might take 10 years, but it will happen. But until then, let’s kick out the homeless and helpless. That is surely a sign of quality leadership.

Dear Kam,
Hitler’s name keeps coming up these days. I don’t know much about him, but I get the sense that he wasn’t a nice guy.
Stalin

There is far too much ignorance out there about Hitler and today’s Germany. Israel’s disgusting onslaught on Gaza seems to be giving far too many the notion that there might be some value in Hitler’s views. Maybe you know nothing about European history, so let me tell you just one single fact that you must know: Hitler was a very, very bad man and today’s Germany is deeply ashamed of what he and Germans did during the Second World War. That’s the only thing you must know: Hitler was bad and Germans are not proud of him or of their nation’s Nazi past. Even if you’re one of those crazy people who don’t believe that the Nazis murdered eight million Jews (they did and it was a very bad thing to do), there is no doubt that the war led to the deaths of at least 20 million people in the Soviet Union, including the deliberate starvation of at least five million Soviet prisoners of war, mass enslavement, the destruction of countless cities and much more. Please believe what I’m saying, Hitler was bad. Do not send tweets praising him or say that he might have been right about the Jews. Praising an attempt to deliberately and completely exterminate a people, any people, merely exposes your own ignorance. Israel’s disgusting attack on the people of Gaza must be condemned, but there can never be a justification for finding common cause with Hitler.

I visited Berlin a few years ago and was shown around by a young German who was probably given the task of being my host because he could speak Arabic. My name suggested this might have been useful but it wasn’t. He hosted many people from the Muslim world and he told me that definitely not all but many of his guests would get off the plane and immediately start saying how excited they were to be in the land of Hitler, a leader they admired and whom they assumed all Germans also admired. Germans do not admire Hitler. Hitler remains the darkest of stains at the centre of German history and today’s Germany is to be congratulated for facing up to the tragedy that he and his Nazi Party inflicted upon Europe.

I asked my host why his guests admired Hitler. I assumed that it was because Hitler hated the Jews, but my host said that was a very minor factor. Mostly his guests admired Hitler because they believed he was a strong leader who did what he thought was right for Germany without bothering to answer to any opposition. Bearing in mind that these visitors were from governments that didn’t allow any opposition and had to justify their monopoly on power by saying that they alone knew what was best for their countries then, well, they would say that.

Reprinted with the kind permission of