The day was going along well. I had a few glasses of plain water from our trusty labu sayong. It kept the water cool and clean. I much prefer that rather than Coway or Cukoo. It has that signature taste you can’t get anywhere else. So to get he best of both world, I have the Coway feeding the water to the labu sayong and I’d drink it off of that. Although nowadays I’ve been having a bit of a problem, ants. I’d find ants in and around the cap edges. I guess they love that signature taste as well. If this keeps up, I’ll probably skip the labu sayong and drink from Coway filters directly.
After the drink, I got ready for office and head off. The traffic to the office was super smooth. The day was A-OK and thinking that Raya is just a day away, it’s looking like an oh-so-happy day ahead.
It went south pretty quickly after that, the few WhatsApp groups I am a member of suddenly starts giving out multiple notifications. I was thinking something bad must have happened, probably on the same level as the recent shooting in Christchurch.
Scrolling through the endless chat, I realised it’s something far worse than that. It’s what I’ve been fearing all this while, our Defence Minister, Mohamad Sabu or his rather his street name, Mat Sabu, speaking at an international forum. I’ve always thought he’s more suitable to be taking care of a more local issues than international ones. Probably because he’s so close to the ground and can really feel what the public is feeling. But alas, what I’ve feared have happened, so let me put it here so we can unpack it.
Let’s get the elephant in the room out of the way first. It’s his English. Now we all know English is our second language. We can’t write or speak it as fluent as our mother tongue. Going through my articles, you can see thousands of grammatical errors, wrong choice of words and whatnot. Having said that, his advisers or his aides, if they really are his advisers that is, should’ve advised him to just speak in plain Bahasa Malayu and use a translator instead. There’s no shame in that. We see countless great world leaders do it. The gender mistakes, the helter skelter English, and the humiliation can be altogether avoided. In fact, he can be seen as a proud Malaysian who insisted to use Bahasa Malaysia as it’s our national language.
I find it odd that his aides and advisers didn’t insist that he speaks in Bahasa. His forte isn’t speaking to such crowds at the IISS Asia Security Summit Shangri-La dialog. He’s a local man who commands a very good oratory skill speaking to the common folks, not to foreigners. The foreigners can’t understand his rather peculiar choice of words that the local folks finds captivating. The fader and mader, soft way and hard way, saluting him/her, these are words and phrases only locals can connect. If any of the dearest Mat Sabu advisers or aides are reading this. You guys failed miserably on this. You guys better take a good look at these turn of events, realise your mistakes and learn from it. And if you are reading this Bro Rafizal, it’s because I love you as a friend, him as a person and wants PH to succeed that I write this up.
Now that the elephant in the room is out of the way, let’s unpack some of the things he said. First off he sent his utmost regards to the Prime Minister of New Zealand. The choice of words again was rather peculiar but we’ve gone through that already. What really ticks me off was his comment that we share our border with China. That’s a factual error. He’s either jet lagged or just plain confused with his facts.
Prior to that, he mentioned the kidnappings in and around Sabah waters. Paraphrasing, “We reduced the kidnappings as we works closely with Indonesia and Thailand”. Again, it could be the jet lag or it could be that he just couldn’t wrap his head around it. Why Thailand when the topic is Abu Sayyaf and the Mindanao province? Probably the topic he’s covering that day is too hard for his to study by himself. He did say that he’s not a university graduate and in fact, he’s a dropout. I’m not one who dis folks without a university degree. Some of the greatest minds are university drop out. In my line of work, we thrive with folks who never set foot in a university. But they are all expert in their field, and my dear Mat Sabu, you just doesn’t look and act like one.
You can’t take it too easy. You can’t just pretend to do it. You really have to do it proper. We had dozens of pretenders back in the day under BN. We also had Ali Baba who only knows how to swindle money back in the day. We had celebrities who only want to be famous back in the day. You have to do your homework, you have to burn the midnight oil and get it up to snuff, you have to get your people to read up and tell you how it’s going that day. People that can do the job, not just some guy who don’t even know where Thailand’s border is. You just have to buck the hell up and own this shit.
On the China bigger ships, it doesn’t matter if China, US, Russia or the damn aliens from Planet Zargon69 have bigger ships, bigger planes or bigger cojones. What matters is that we have the biggest, baddest, meanest muthatrucking soldiers, navy, paskal and etc. Just say that lah at least, make our lads land ladies in the force feels proud la sikit. If Mat Sabu can’t even realise that, he surely isn’t assisted by his aides and advisers.
Clearly his aides and advisers are not up to the standard that he requires. We have seen so many leaders fell because he surrounds himself with people who only serve to make him feels good rather than to make him proper good.
Finally, if he can’t wrap his head around the topics, if he can’t pick and choose aides and advisers that really works for him, if he can’t detect that his aides are just plain useless, it’s his damn fault. The buck stops with him. It’s what leaders are made of, buck that stops on their table. He needs to own the damn decision and be ultimately responsible for the screw up his aides and advisers did as his own screw ups.
If he and the advisers are still on their high horses and ignore what the public think of them, then face the downfall very very soon. He might face the same fate as my labu sayong, just because of the ants feeding off the signature taste of the water, I’d throw the whole thing out. So please Mat Sabu, don’t go ayoyo again on us.
Thanks and peace be unto all.
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