Why the Abdullah Hate?

Being Malaysians, our first impulse has been to look for a scapegoat, and Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi has proven to be a convenient one.

Of course, being PM, Abdullah has the power to set things right. If he really wanted to, he could set us back on the right course. It makes sense to blame him at least in part for the country's woes.

But there is so much hate and anger directed toward Abdullah. It is almost as if he is not just the cause of our woes continuing, but also the one who sowed the seeds of these troubles in the first place.

I find this point of view simply untenable, and totally illogical. The fact that we have woken up to these problems only now does not mean that these problems did not exist before.

After UMNO leaders threatened violence and to abrogate the Constitution, there was a lot of consternation at a perceivedly new problem. But this language, as the leaders later noted, was par for the course in any UMNO AGM!

The fact is, most if not all ofr the problems we are confronted with in the Abdullah era were not caused by him. Their seeds were sown by the disastrous leadership of the man who preceded Abdullah — Mahathir Mohamad.

As Mahathir's supporters love to point out, unlike Abdullah, he actually took the initiative and actually led, rather than letting the country run on autopilot.

But if you judge both leaders by results, and not by potential, the gap disappears. Both are pathetic failures; both are not suited to lead the country.

All these scandals coming to light under the Abdullah administration — even those raised by Mahathir himself — can be traced back to Mahathir's time.

Who was it that instilled the culture of money politics in our political parties? Who was it that refused to brook any dissent? Who was it that set the failed paradigm of our affirmative action policies, which have gutted our economy to the point that we need to relax them to attract foreign investment?

If we want to blame someone for our country's problems — not that that is a particulary productive course of action to take — why blame Abdullah alone? Why hate him?

Abdullah is the kind of leader who would continue whatever his predecessors came up with. He is the administrative civil servant type, not the maverick like Mahathir was.

What Abdullah is doing is simply carrying on with whatever Mahathir had been doing. That is why our country is plagued with mounds of problems that are becoming harder and harder to ignore. That is why we are moving closer and closer to the death of Malaysia. So why the Abdullah hate?

Source: johnleemk
Infernal Ramblings