Time to act firmly against underachievers, saboteurs

Republished from New Straits Times, Jul 14, 2021,
with the author’s permission. Read the original here.

By Yong Soo Heong

FOR THE past few weeks, I’ve been feeling numb, not so much from getting those precious vaccine shots, but more from the idiocy that has enveloped our beloved country.

I don’t find any comfort from witnessing the unproductive actions of certain people in positions of power and decision-making as many matters could have been avoided.

If only people had common sense to act rationally. Perhaps too much information on a single day has caused us to lose our common sense, as alluded by novelist Gertrude Stein.

When the Emergency was proclaimed earlier this year, there were high hopes that we would be seeing strict lockdowns to get the coronavirus off our backs. But it was not to be.

Waves upon waves of dithering have caused the country to be nowhere it wanted to be as seen from the daily Covid-19 cases that surpassed 11,000 yesterday! The numbers could even be higher as some cases go unreported.

An audio clip of frontliners in government hospitals in the Klang Valley crying for help from their never-ending toil from last year choked me to tears. Think about it seriously — they have been firefighting daily and yet, there are parties who are feeding the flames by being lax about the pandemic.

From the audio clip, a doctor could be heard saying: “When is this going to end?”

This will not end if we are still unsure of what to do next amid the pussy-footing with the Covid-19 standard operating procedures as this column had emphasised in the past!

We are now in a war against Covid-19 and yet we are not on a war footing, so to speak. Politicians and policymakers have always said that the country has always been battle-ready, but what readiness is there when our Intensive Care Units are overwhelmed, coupled with a severe shortage of medical staff and oxygen supply?

And in the midst of this, we can’t even handle the issue of the country’s more than 23,000 contract doctors, who have been toiling since Day One. They will always be useful to our country. The "dog-in-the-manger" attitude among top administrators can't go on forever.

This also brings to mind the issue of the recent felling of 15,000 durian trees in Raub, the country’s musang king hub. While the authorities may have their reasons — as they claimed that the trees had been illegally planted on government land — it was tantamount to economic sabotage and bodoh sombong.

Why now? Why didn’t they take action when the land was initially cleared? Why fell fruit-bearing trees? Some win-win solutions could have been found, but common sense didn't prevail.  

Vegetable farmers in highlands have also been dumping their produce of late because they can’t send them to markets in the lowlands as lorries have been stopped from travelling by the authorities.

This is despite the fact that some Malaysians do not even have enough to eat because of the prolonged lockdown, which has led to people losing jobs and sources of income. Why do we allow this state of hopelessness to fester?

Brigadier-General Dr Mohd Arshil Moideen, who heads the armed forces’ Health Service Division, courageously called a spade a spade recently.

I salute him for being forthright when he said: “In a war, like the war against Covid-19, we need a single standardised strategy line of command that everyone can abide by.” A clear chain of command is certainly lacking for the rakyat’s wellbeing.

Malaysia needs to see light at the end of the tunnel. We can’t go on like this with ministers going off on a tangent on their assessment of the economy.

We can’t have little Napoleons ruining businesses and the lives of the rakyat from frequent raids, dodgy summonses and flippant SOP.

Dear prime minister, please act firmly against these underachievers and saboteurs. Sometimes the hardest thing and the right thing are the same.

You know you have made the right decision when there is peace in your heart. The rakyat await.

• Datuk Yong Soo Heong is a former chief executive officer and editor-in-chief of Bernama. Read more about him here.