Whether in real life or the comment section, whenever I say something the least bit critical of PMX Anwar Ibrahim, the most common defence that his supporters will provide: “ It is too early to judge him la. He has been in power for just 8 months. Rome is not built in a day. Give him time. Give him a chance.”
Whenever I hear that, I will become suspicious whether the GodKing concept is still lurking in the hearts of Malaysians today.
In Ancient times, the Southeast Asia region was rife with GodKings. These GodKings were called Dewa Raja. Under this Dewa Raja concept, the masses will have supernatural awe for an individual who they will hail as their king, worship as an infallible god and vest this individual with the abilities to do superhuman feats.
Now we might be thinking, “ No la, these kinds of outdated concepts will surely have no place in this scientific age that we are in,” but you will be surprised by how atavistic cultural concepts can survive into modern times.
In the Tamil country of South India, from whose people I derive my lineage, the concept of GodKing has survived in the cinema field, where the leading male movie stars like Rajnikanth, Vijay or Ajith are feted in the same way that the kings of past Tamil dynasties were feted.
In China, you would think that the communist would have no place for such feudal concepts as an Emperor, but the concept of Emperor-hood might have survived into modern times in China. When you look at President Xi Jin Ping of China, don't tell me you don't sometimes feel like you are looking at the Emperor of China.
President Putin of Russia and Erdogan of Turkey sometimes look and sound more like a Tsar or a Sultan than they do a leader of a democratic country.
Even in ultra-modern Singapore, the late great Lee Kuan Yew used to rule like a Kapitan than he did as an elected representative of the people.
In Malaysia also, rather than the concept of parliamentary democracy, don't you sometimes feel that maybe we are still running our country by the concept of the Dewa Raja of the past, where authority is vested in a single person, who we hail as the Prime Minister, and who we expect to perform in a godlike manner.
When he was in charge, Mahathir was often accused of being a firaun, the Egyptian equivalent of GodKings.
Is it any wonder that Mahathir cannot accept a life as a regular person after ruling like a firaun for 22 years?
A democratically elected leader might lose an election or resign, but by hook or crook, a GodKing will always aim to stay on top . Losing is for mortals. Gods rule forever.
The way some people speak of Anwar, sometimes I also wonder whether after Mahathir, Anwar is also going to be hailed as some sort of GodKing of Malaysia, that will single handedly be a “saviour" and “avenger” for the entire nation.
Although the Dewa Raja concept of Southeast Asia did manage to perform some great feats like building such grand monuments as the Candi Borobudur in Indonesia or the Angkor Wat in Cambodia, as a rule, I feel that having an affinity for such a concept is counter-productive and detrimental to our overall well being.
Rather than place our faith in any individual and vest them with GodKing-like awe, I feel that the right place to place our faith is on time-tested values that have been hailed by humanity and civilisations from time memorial.
Rather than trust this person on that person under the premise that they will be able to act like a Superhero GodKing who will defeat evil, invite fortune and save the day, I think the better thing to do is to trust such values as being truthful or being consistent or keeping things simple, to keep us safe, happy and prosperous.
I think the best for us is to choose leaders who are truthful, consistent and who practise making things simple, not call whatever our elected leader does as truthful, consistent and simple, even when the things that they do and say cannot stand the test of experience, are unnecessarily complicated and involve a lot of U-turns.
Treating leaders like they are some sort of superheroes with supernatural abilities and deeming whatever they do as a good value is like playing a game of Russian Roulette.
If by chance you get a Leader like Lee Kuan Yew, who embodies many positive values, that is fine, but we probably have a better chance of winning the 4D this week than to get someone like Lee Kuan Yew as our leader. Even if, by a stroke of luck, Anwar is to us what Lee Kuan Yew was to Singapore, the chances that we will be just as lucky with his successor are next to nil.
If we don't get a Lee Kuan Yew level leader with each successive leadership transition, treating a leader like they are some sort of superhero GodKing and conditioning ourselves to be blind to their vices, is only going to get us a bullet in the head at some point.
Remember, an elected leader might lose an election or resign, but by hook or crook, a GodKing will always aim to stay at the top. Once we condition ourselves to accept GodKings, one wrong GodKing is all we need to undo everything that took generations to achieve and set us on a path of perdition for generations to come.
Virtues, values. This is a good way forward. Let us practise these good and time-tested values, and let us demand that our leaders practise them too. It is by doing this that our best interest is secured in the present and the future.
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