Leaders must uphold morals
The Star 25/10/2005

TUN Hanif Omar’s Point of View,“Walk the beat, department heads, or face the music,” (Sunday Star, Oct 23) was a thought-provoking one.

There was a great sense of duty and morality in all the civil servants’ names he mentioned. I cannot imagine any character that is even remotely comparable to Tun Hanif’s calibre.

As we leap into the future, pushing the boundaries of technology and modernisation, human civilisation as we know is dying a painful death.

History has defined civilisation as the moral conduct of a society, the fabric which holds in perspective human desire for physical advancement, comfort and gratification.

A civilised society speaks well of the captaincy of a leader.

A morally-right leader with zero tolerance for inefficiencies of his subordinates will make any system work, even if the system has its limitations and flaws.

Tolerance for inefficiencies breeds a morally-corrupt workforce and failure of even an efficient delivery system, a favourable milieu for corruption.

If leaders were morally-right with zero tolerance for inefficiencies, we would not have encountered countless horrendously-ugly “beautification projects” by local councils, which ran into mind-boggling hundreds of thousands of ringgit.

We would also not have cracks in various bridges and flyovers costing millions of ringgit, cracks in newly-completed buildings which the poor paid through their noses for, rude service at counters and developers short-changing the police force of decent living quarters.

We would also not have encountered flash floods in Kuala Lumpur, dry taps almost everywhere despite Malaysia being a tropical country and the blatant destruction and rape of the last frontiers of green foliage in Kuala Lumpur.

If only the leaders were truly leaders, to serve the people they lead and not themselves.


DR KATHIRAVAN CHINNIAH, Kota Baru.

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