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Monday, April 13, 2015

Advice for Malaysian Politicians–Think Before You Speak

by Scott Ng @www,freemalaysiatoday.com
Ahmad-Maslan-GST
There have lately been ministers who were “misquoted”, especially when their statements caused an uproar for – well, let’s face it – the sheer utter inanity of their own words. It’s become quite par for the course for a BN minister to make a statement and then realise that he has put his foot in his mouth after social media and civil society inevitably erupt with criticism. And then he would say he had been misquoted to make him look bad.
And these eminent people would be right to complain, had they actually not said those things. This makes me wonder about the quality of some of the biggest names in power. All claim to be highly educated or qualified in certain fields, and yet cannot seem to string together sentences in an inoffensive manner.
Perhaps this comes from not doing research on the matter at hand or not thinking long and hard before speaking. Nonetheless, you’d expect an elected representative to do better when addressing the public. After all, a politician lives and dies by his words, and mastery of public relations skills is a must for anyone who attempts to address a group of people, much less a nation.
It doesn’t matter that you spoke for X amount of hours on topic Y, because when you say something so undeniably ridiculous the people and the media cannot resist pouncing on such an easy target.
One example is Ahmad Maslan’s suggestion to university students to cook their own meals. Now, this would be a perfectly sensible suggestion, if one did not consider the extenuating circumstances around campus life. For one, you can cook only if one is in a kitchen, and rented house or not, universities tend to be some distance from a house, and classes are sometimes at odd hours. We also have to remember that whatever spare time a student has is usually put into studying.
Of course, there’s also the teensy, tiny little fact that you can’t cook on campus or in campus housing, where the other half of the student population stays.
Now, the brickbats hurled at such an ill-considered suggestion have led to Maslan complaining on television that we’re being unfair to him. To a certain extent, of course, trial by public opinion is often an unfair process. But can you blame people who are struggling to make ends meet for being frustrated with our ministers being so seemingly out of touch with the real world when what we need are men of the people who can give out well-reasoned advice and show sympathy with us in difficult times?
Don’t even get me started on how much ministers will protest about being misquoted when the GST inevitably causes horrible inflation.
It’s almost mind blowing, really, for our ministers to continually use the term “misquoted” in defending themselves. That speaks of a careless, laissez faire attitude that is endemic to being privileged and pampered, and our ministers and politicians ( of both sides of the political divide) really need to get in touch with the people if they want to have any hope of public approval. Until that fateful day, it is going to be a fact of life for our politicians that they will be castigated and reviled for failing to recognise the needs of the people.
Ismail Sabri on Najib
We’ve gone on time and time again on how we need a better class of politicians, and this is proof beyond proof that pampered elites need to get their shoes scuffed and soiled once in a while, or else they will forget how real life plays out for a normal person. One can only hope then that we won’t see the word “misquoted” bandied about by those who fail to properly consider the words coming out of their mouths.

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