Willy-nilly leadership.

 

Many of you are familiar with this tale.

There are two crab vendors selling the crustaceans from a basket. You will quickly notice the baskets. The Malay seller has an open basket. The Chinese covers his basket with a lid.

The Malay crab seller has no worries about his crabs escaping. So he sells his crabs from an open basket. The Chinese seller on the other hand, worries if he doesn't cover his basket with a lid, his crabs will escape.

Why the difference, you ask? Well, the crabs in the Malay basket will never be able to escape. Because at any time any crab wants to climb up, the crabs below will pull it down. The Chinese on the other hand continues to worry. Because if anyone crab wants to climb over, the crabs below it will help push it up.

I find this comparison most apt to describe the leadership pattern in UMNO. My friend Aspan Alias wrote another interesting piece. He describes the ascension of leadership in UMNO as being the luck of the coconut husk or the luck of the stone. The husk floats, the stone submerges.

Picture this. Rumors that Khairy Jamaludin is to be appointed as deputy finance minister have created some sort of panic among UMNO circles. Here is an UMNO fellow- leader of an organization within UMNO whose any development affecting him is met with hostilities. And they come from the crabby UMNO people. We are talking about 1 Malaysia where we can't even achieved 1 UMNO. Those were just rumors, we can't imagine if it actually takes place.

UMNO is still caught up with its own internal politicking. And I doubt seriously, if this places UMNO in a state of readiness to do battle in GE13.

UMNO has never been great at nurturing leadership. We don't have a system. Our leaders rise up because of fortuitous events. The most common being, you are the sons and daughters of previous leaders. Accidental you may say.

UMNO is caught in the conventional wisdom of expecting good men coming forward willy-nilly, shashaying down the catwalk. Maybe this is why we do have some aw aw leaders. In other words, we expect good leaders to emerge naturally.

We don't replicate the old ecosystem anymore. Nationalism, the quest of independence, social awareness of the old days nurtures natural leaders. We can't replicate them.

We have seen the outcome too. Most of these leaders fell on the way side letting the trappings of power overwhelmed them. Thus we have leaders who encases his leadership with material decadence, cars, mansions, phalanx of bodyguards, trophy wives etc.

So it's a sad day, when a true blue UMNO like Aspan asks the question. If we were to replace people like Mat Hassan in Negeri Sembilan, Adnan Yaakob in Pahang, any other UMNO leader at state and national levels, he asked- who can we find to replace them?

Is there a famine in UMNO?

Is UMNO thinking, in the next 10 years, how do we allow a new generation of leaders to take over? There are those who belonged to the school of leaders being born kind of thinking. That is just a rehashed version of leaving it to chance. Or choosing leaders by bloodline on the basis of who they are NOT on the basis of what they can do.

What will UMNO have then? It will have a system that is self-perpetuating. A political cloning exercise. Hence DR Mahathir can't tolerate leaders after him who don't share his thinking and feelings. We don't need this kind of system. We need a self-continuing not a self-perpetuating so that, in the event of the exit of a previous leader, the system is intact to allow the country to continue. UMNO is choosing its leaders on the basis of I like this fellow, so I will groom him.

We wait for leaders to be born and accept unquestioningly that scions of previous leaders are so obvious candidates as future leader, that their shortcomings are often overlooked. Hishamudin Husein Onn's qualifications appear to be that he is the son of a former PM. His performance this far has been lackluster but no one will contemplate removing him, because he is assumed to carry the genes of leadership. We have so many in the UMNO line up.

Right now, UMNO attracts the second careerists- those better and able don't want to join UMNO. They can't rise to the top because of the Malay crab mentality. So unless, this leadership assumed an enlightened role, it will have to promote the deserving people through a system. We can't leave it to chance and hoping willy-nilly somebody, born from well to do families will emerge as leaders.

A careerist does not make a good leader. What he has, is the professionalism of a politician. Now, a politician's main vocation is how to get over his next rival. That often involves intrigues and plots here and there. He lacks the vision of how to propel the country forward.

We have an acute problem here. Most of the leaders now have no past to fall back on- I mean, the first generation leaders had idealism of nationalism urging them on. Leaders emerge through a process of natural selection. Those with profound feelings of nationalism, naturally rise up.

We don't have that ecosystem anymore. The challenge is to create the ecosystem. The components of that system will be (a) identify those potential leaders and (b) attract them into government.

Is the UMNO leadership thinking along these lines?