Pasir Gudang MP, Hassan Merican, is touting PKR vice-president Nurul IzzahAnwar as the next leader of the country.
“She should lead the party in the 16th general election to reclaim parliamentary seats lost in the last nationwide polls,” Hassan said, before comparing her to Benazir Bhutto and Megawati Soekarnoputri.
I am not sure whether comparing Nurul Izzah to Benazir Bhutto or Megawati Soekarnoputri is confidence-inspiring, but otherwise, I heartily support the move to make Nurul Izzah the leader of the country.
You can tell the quality of a person by their bearing and countenance, and Nurul Izzah, to me, looks like a person who has the bearing of a leader. Although I, like many others, have criticised her for taking appointment as a Special Adviser in the government-run by her father earlier this year, I also think that the way she reacted to the criticism is proper and speaks well of her leadership quality. Not only can she realise her mistake, but she also has the character and the capability to correct her mistake once she realises it, in a way that not only not reduces her splendour and potential, but enhances it.
I have always believed that a big part of our political problems is the overabundance of geriatric ministers who populate the corridors of power. The top leaders of the country, be it Anwar Ibrahim, the leader of the government or Muhyiddin Yassin and Hadi Awang, the leader of the opposition, are 76 years of age. Mahathir Muhammad, who is nearly a hundred, also still harbours the ambition to lead the country. Considering that the life expectancy of a Malaysian male is 73 years old, it does not bode well for our nation that all of our potential prime ministers are past their expiry date.
An old politician is like an old car. They will ask too much, are capable of too little and by nature will cause all sorts of problems. As a rule of the thumb, I believe that if a politician is caught too often saying: “this generation doesn’t remember our history anymore, but in the past we did this and that and that and that,” it’s time for the old horse to be put to pasture.
You are young when you are focused on the future. You are old when you are focused on the past. To be focused on the present, you have to be neither old nor young, and the best person to lead a country is one who is focused on the present because it is only in the present that you can do something.
Nurul Izzah is 43. Khairy Jamaluddin is 47. Rafizi Ramli and Anthony Loke are 46. I don’t even like Rafizi, but I will gladly support even Rafizi if that is what it takes to reduce the mean age of our leadership.
With all my heart, I truly believe that we are at a point in our history where we should aim to have leaders who are in their forties or fifties. At this age, you are aware of the past and the future, but you will focus on the present. You will not harp about things that happened in a world that no longer exists or dream about things that might not happen in a world that has not yet come to pass. Instead, you will invest your time, energy and attention on what can be done today.
Other than being at the right age, I also feel that as Hassan Merican said, Nurul Izzah has the right “capabilities and experience” to be a leader of the country. I don’t think she had the right experience or capability to be a special economic adviser to the prime minister earlier this year, but I do feel that she has the capability and experience to be a top political leader in the country. We have known Nurul Izzah since 1998 when she was thrust into the limelight on account of the ordeal of her father. In these 25 years, we have seen that she is a daring person with a never-give-up spirit, who can resist the temptations of power, who has a conscience that can be counted on to tell her the difference between right and wrong and who has the strength and desire to do what is right and correct her mistakes.
Nurul Izzah is a woman, and we have not had a woman as a top leader before, which might make us uncomfortable with the prospect on account of its novelty, but our deteriorating circumstances today indicate that perhaps it is time that we try out options that we have not tried out before because it might be the case that it is in new ways that that we will find the solutions that we are seeking.
In a more supernatural sense, the RAHMAN prophecy that every Malaysian is familiar with is also an indication that we are in a stage where to find the way forward, will have to do something significant to take a break from the old ways. The N in RAHMAN stands for Najib. Since Najib was toppled, no government in Malaysia has been able to reign for a full term. From R to N, all our leaders in the past carried on the torch that was passed to them from the previous leader. Now that the RAHMAN era has ended, it might be the case that we will need a new leadership, whose legacy doesn’t depend on the previous leadership, to take charge, so that we might again be able to form a government that lasts for a full term.
Although Nurul Izzah is the daughter of Anwar Ibrahim, there is enough originality in her being, to convince me that if she takes charge, she will be a leader that will break away from her father’s legacy, in a significant manner.
Nehru Sathiamoorthy is the author of “While Waiting for the World to end”. He was a columnist at FMT and a frequent contributor to the South China Morning Post, Malaysia-Today, MalaysiaNow, MalaysiaKini and Focus Malaysia.
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