'Ignocracy' impeding change in Malaysia, says Ku Li

Umno maverick Tengku Razaleigh today said that even though the people have power to change the country's future, they are unable to make wise decisions.

This, he said, is a product of the country's education system which has created a generation of "captive minds" entrenched in racial world views.

"We have the power to cast away our misfortune by casting our votes for the right candidates, but our captive minds are unable to guide our hands in making the right choices for our future and the future of our children," he said at a book launch in Ipoh today.

Quoting the late Gerakan founder and academician Syed Hussein Alatas, the Gua Musang MP described the leadership as an “ignocracy” where a government deliberate keeps its people ignorant.

This, Razaleigh (above) said, has created instances such as the failure to intellectually inquire into why the race-based New Economic Policy had run opposite to its intent of bridging the income gap.

"The longer we try the policy, the farther we are from the original goal," said Razaleigh, fondly known as Ku Li.

Gov't cannot be trusted

He gave the analogy of a doctor who keeps on prescribing the same medicine that produces results opposite to that intended.

In such a case, he said, something must be wrong with the doctor, and something more seriously wrong with the patient who keeps on trusting the same doctor.

To break free from the ‘ignocracy’, he said, would require the people to educate their fellow comrades as the present education system cannot be trusted to do this.

"Today we can longer trust them (the government) to act as purveyors of truth. It has become our responsibility to hold the future in our own hands."

“Therefore, through our efforts at educating and promoting political consciousness, let us hope that the people of this country, in the rural and urban areas alike, will cast away their slumber, and wake up to greet the dawn of a new day, as we did fifty five years ago when Tunku Abdul Rahman (the first prime minister) called this nation into being in the name of God, the compassionate and the merciful, a nation that ‘ever seeks the welfare of its people’,” he said.