Apathy

It has been pointed out to me recently that being a doctor isn't the best way to make a difference to people's lives. During a career spanning a few decades, you won't be affecting as many lives as compared to a politician, a central bank governor or someone with the economic clout of Bill Gates.

While this may be true, one thing the medical profession allows you to do is to be up and close and personal with the people you affect. Patients aren't mere statistics that need to balanced out, their lives aren't disposable in order to balance an equation. It would be great to be in the presence of men in politics/public life etc who seem to have the sort of vision or ideal that would be able to arouse society to a higher level, but looking around at the current state of affairs, I can only despair. Sometimes, I feel like wanting to go out and do something about this crappy world we live in, but I guess it's too early to actually make a difference. So I guess I will just have to bide my time.

Granted, there are individuals around with the charm and eloquence to stir the masses and get them chanting and what not. But I long ago came to the conclusion that an enigmatic speaker does not necessarily make a good leader. Examples? Look at Bush and AI. Both are remarkably adept at the art of manipulating popular thinking. They'll definitely get votes and diehard support, but to what aim? Bush...well, you either love him or hate him and I hate him. AI... for all his talk about democracy, fair governance, a just judiciary, an open economic policy blah di blah blah - it just smacks of hypocrisy when a politician talks the talk when he has lost out politically, but never walked the walk when he had the opportunity to do so. Why complain about the judiciary when he kept mum during the whole Tun Salleh Abbas crisis? Why criticise the government's fiscal policies when Bank Negara recorded an enormous loss in foreign currency trading during his tenure as the Finance Minister? And let's not get into the policy changes that were in place when he was the Education Minister or his own dabbling with cronyism.

Whatever else you might say about him (and there are loads, I suspect!), I respect DrM 'cause he had the brains (and the balls to match), and he never pretended to be something he was not. I guess people will never really know how much he did for us by exerting capital controls and not accepting the IMF's help. And this in addition to the 2 decades of economic boom that preceeded the '97 crisis.

At the end of the day, politicians are politicians. Riding whatever wave that will help them rise to the top. I look forward to AI joining the opposition party, 'cause that will give the opposition a relatively credible leader, and as much as I am a supporter of BN, we need a check and balance measure 'cause heck, we all know things aren't as rosy as they could be. I have to admit, for all his faults, AI doesn't seem to have anyone else around who is capable of matching his stature or personality at the moment, and that's probably why AI might eventually re-join his old party instead. But heck, politics is a fickle field, and who's to know what's gonna happen tomorrow, let alone 10 years down the road?

Watching the documentary on Muhd Ali the other day made me realise just how much of an icon he was to the people of his time, and I was suitably impressed. No doubt he had many faults, but here was a man who stood by his ideals and principles in the face of such adversity, and made the world stand up and take notice. (Applause)

The lack of such individuals, or even political parties that espouse such principles, only leads to political apathy among the voters. Or even worse, it leads to goverments reverting to policy-making decisions that amount to the divide-and-conquer routine that was used back in colonial times, albeit in a modern setting. And so we see the rise of fanaticism and extreme leftists or rightists that only serve to fuel already flammable situations. Yes, I'm cynical, but can I afford not to be? I guess it's true that politicians have the opportunity to make a difference to the lives of many, but more often than not, this 'difference' is something they'd rather do without.