Morality and Politics

The recent events unfolding in our political landscape serve as a clear indication of lack of morality among all quarters in our political circle. Morality while varies in it's importance to individuals as morality is subjective to the respective individual such as what can be perceived as an immoral acts to some like the issue of abortion and gender change may seem like a norm or human rights to others.

Having said that however, the importance of moral values, or a moral compass to be exact in individuals especially those eyeing public office cannot be misconstrued as unimportant as this should guide the individual and the public in assessing his or her character in the performance of the duties entrusted to them by us.

The first big event that shock me to a certain extent is the MCA Presidency victory by former Health Minister Dr Chua Soi Lek despite him being involved in a sex scandal which video was an eye sore to some and entertainment to many speaking with candour if I may as that the reality we are dealing with here.

It surprises me as I believed that Ong Ka Ting should be the winner as despite claims of cronyism which involve his brother, Ong Ka Chuan and the fact that he's the leader in MCA when MCA suffered a massive loss of Parliamentary seat in the last General Election which can't be blame solely on him rather the behaviour of UMNO, which I think was the major reason MCA suffered such loss and not so much of Ong Ka Ting's failure to steer the party. Nonetheless public figures like Dr Mahthir all call for the results to respected as the delegates have chosen their man despite it being a reflection of how they feel about Dr Chua's immoral act.

The second event regards the Hulu Selangor's by election where some in UMNO Selangor made a suggestion in nominating former MB Tan Sri Muhammad Muhammad Taib which again surprises me as he was involved in a case involving currency irregularities amounting to 3.8 million in Australia. He's was found innocent simply because he claimed he didn't understand English and so couldn't understand the rules and regulations. Then he lied to his royal highness the Sultan of Selangor about his marriage with his highness daughter.

So with such a character of his, it surprises me as to why some in UMNO Selangor is suggeting him rather than someone with better character and moral values not to mention possibly younger except possibly that he can probably guarantee and win for UMNO. So, now winning is indeed everything even though you put crocks and criminals in office or the state legislative assembly.

To be fair however, such act is nothing new in Malaysians politics as a whole, as we can see from the case of Bukit Lanjan assemblywoman Elizabeth Wong whose pictures and videos of her sleeping wearing only some sort of gown circulated on the web believed to be taken by his boyfriend which happened to be in her bedroom while she's asleep despite the fact that they're not married. PKR didn't take any action so the precedence in morality failed to be set up as there's nothing much PKR or Pakatan can say about Dr Chua when they themselves failed to act on Elizabeth Wong.

In conclusion, it's up to the public now to enforce moral values to our politicians by punishing them through rejection of not only the individuals, but also the party so that they will get the message that Malaysians want a morality based society and we demand them to give it to us eventhough it means political liability for them as only with morality in center stage in our government can it be spread across to other sectors in Malaysia and since politicians control the government, it's with them that this morality issue should begin with. If we the public act, we can give birth to a Malaysia that is a moral based society that we can all be proud of.