When politicians drift towards the extreme right, their capacity to think becomes straitjacketed – inevitably constricted, narrow and diminished.
In their quest for power, bigotry and racism become the only tools they reach for, deployed without restraint, to run down minorities.
Without realising it, they find themselves atop a slippery slope – one that leads, sooner or later, into the abyss of kakistocracy.
Kakistocracy is where political incompetence, shallowness and nonsense thrive in the running of governments. It has now entrenched itself in many governments across the world, and Western countries are not spared.
In Malaysia, things are no better.
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Plenty of incompetent and parochial leaders are stepping into the forefront of politics, and the chances of them forming the next government are frighteningly high.
If that happens, Malaysia will be badly governed and will unavoidably become a kakistocracy.
A podcasted wake-up call
A recent Keluar Sekejap (episode 188) interview featuring Dr Akmal Salleh, hosted by Khairy Jamaluddin and Zaidel Baharuddin, exposed this very reality – that incompetence and parochialism are very much alive and kicking in Malaysia.
Akmal’s performance in the interview, in my opinion, fell short of expectation. His grasp of Malaysian politics struck me as shallow, with what seemed like only a few intellectual moving parts in his political repertoire.
Zaidel’s pointed questions exposed his difficulty in keeping pace with the fast-moving political landscape in Malaysia.
None of his ideas, it seems to me, offered any intellectual wisdom or novelty that people keenly seek from a youth leader. His proposed ideas came across as unsophisticated and parochial – well-suited, perhaps, to the yelling-right politicians and right-wing NGOs, but little beyond that.
Extreme-right racial politics is a dying trend. I do not understand why Akmal makes it a priority.
The extreme right is never an ideology of compromise or intelligence. For this reason, I am not keen to have Akmal charting a path for the future of the people of Malaysia. I cannot separate his trajectory towards Malay nationalism from that of ultra-nationalism.
A new path forward
Our path to the future should not be cut from the same cloth as the Nazi political agenda, where the concept of Volksgemeinschaft (national community) was crafted exclusively for the Aryan master race.
Let us not get bogged down in the extreme-right formula [which Benito Mussolini made infamous]: “Everything within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state” [– a totalitarian creed that crushed pluralism and paved the way for the persecution of minorities].
On a final note, Malaysia needs intelligent and competent leaders – not too far to the left or to the right – to steer its future away from kakistocracy.
AGENDA RAKYAT - Lima perkara utama
- Tegakkan maruah serta kualiti kehidupan rakyat
- Galakkan pembangunan saksama, lestari serta tangani krisis alam sekitar
- Raikan kerencaman dan keterangkuman
- Selamatkan demokrasi dan angkatkan keluhuran undang-undang
- Lawan rasuah dan kronisme
