Touch of Evill Rosmah the Pirate Queen Her Royol Highness

Imagine you're a princess adopted as a baby by pirates who slaughtered your parents, ransacked the palace, and set themselves up as the new government of the land. They spared your life because you were cute and harmless and posed no threat to them (even pirates must have some vague memory of almost-forgotten human feelings). In fact, the pirate king saw that you were destined to blossom into a true beauty and fancied he could acquire royal status by marrying you once you were of age.

In other words, you grew up knowing no other authority apart from this band of brigands who began to dress quite well and were soon able to pass themselves off as "respectable folk." Nobody dared inform you who your real parents were and as time passed you came to regard the pirate king as a beloved uncle and trusted him implicitly. After all, he did possess a sort of rakish charm and was actually quite a clever chap (though some might call it "rat cunning"). He told you stories about how he had heroically rescued you from the evil clutches of an ogre and now you owed your life to him and were duty-bound to wed him.

One day, walking through a forest, you chance upon a humble cottage and out of curiosity decide to find out who lives there. As you approach the cottage, the front door swings open and a smiling old man steps out to offer you a cup of tea. You accept and soon find yourself engaged in deep conversation with this mysterious hermit of the woods, who reveals the truth of what happened to the land when you were just a newly born.

The old man shares with you a secret that forever changes your destiny. He was the loyal adviser to your biological parents, the King and Queen of this land, who were cruelly murdered by the marauders. He managed to escape the massacre and fled to the forest along with a handful of others who have long awaited the day you were old enough to rule the land as the rightful Queen. For years this band of survivors have lived in hidden caves, dreaming of the day when they would be strong enough to reclaim the land and liberate it from pirate dominion. He concludes by asking you if you are ready to take your place as the leader of these true patriots who desire to see the end of pirate misrule and justice restored.


Now, this is your current dilemma, Lisa. Having known no other form of government apart from the piratic (and parasitic), can you remember what true leadership is all about? Pull the wool from your eyes and you will see that for decades the Barisan Nasional has attracted mostly those seek to aggrandize and enrich themselves at the expense of the land and of the people. They care little for the sufferings of the common folk and even less for the health and well-being of the land itself, having inherited the rapacious tendencies of their pirate ancestors who understood only rape, pillage and plunder.


In the name of greed, these self-serving parasites continue to destroy the landscape through mining, logging and insensitive "development." They support those who share their own destructively uncreative urges - namely, ruthless businessmen with megalomaniacal tendencies - while suppressing, through barbaric and repressive laws, all those who desire to see the wealth of the land equally and wisely shared.

In effect, dear Lisa, the simplistic scenario I have outlined is a parable for the sort of misgovernance we have been subject to on this planet for countless generations - a top-heavy Humpty-Dumpty sort of power structure wherein the most aggressive and unprincipled amass the greatest amount of wealth and then proceed to hijack the processes of government via almost absolute control of the mass media, education and financial systems, even religious institutions (I mean especially!).

However, the time has come for those who truly love the land - and I mean Planet Earth - to reclaim our sovereign power as conscious individuals, liberating ourselves from generations of inherited robotism (living our lives according to factory defaults) and fatalism (believing it is our lot to suffer in this "vale of tears").

We must think globally (nay, universally) and act locally. So in Malaysia our foremost duty as true patriots is to remove Barisan Nasional completely from power - because they have abused the power entrusted them for too many generations.

In the most basic terms, BN must not retain control of the police force, the national purse, and the mass media. Those are the mechanisms by which they have ruled us through fear and greed - a powerful combination of intimidation and bribery. Any population subject to such misgovernance eventually becomes infantilized, demoralized, and dehumanized.

Ultimately, we shall be turned into a nation of human robots while our energy and spirit are vampirically depleted by an elite cabal of demonically possessed humans devoid of compassion and empathy... UNLESS we succeed in booting out these piratic and parasitic entities and replacing them with open-minded, open-hearted leaders who genuinely believe that being a public servant means precisely that - you serve the public, not private interests!

There isn't a single individual in Umno/BN I can name as somebody I love, respect and trust.

On the other hand, there are many in the various component parties of Pakatan Rakyat I wholeheartedly applaud and support in their candidacy to lead and govern. Among these I would unhesitatingly name Anwar Ibrahim, Wan Azizah, Mat Sabu, Azmin Ali, Syed Husin Ali, Sivarasa Rasiah, Tian Chua, Chegu Bard, Elizabeth Wong, Khalid Ibrahim, Guan Eng and Kit Siang, Karpal Singh, Teresa Kok, Teo Nie Ching, Charles Santiago, Tony Pua, Hannah Yeoh, Tok Guru Nik Aziz, Abdul Hadi Awang, Husam Musa, Mohammad Nizar, Mohd Prasad Hanif, Dr Nasir Hashim, Dr Jeyakumar Devaraj, and S. Arutchelvan (I may have omitted a few others but these are the ones that immediately spring to mind).

Apart from the professional politicians, we now have the Barisan Rakyat - a loose coalition of public intellectuals and true patriots led by none other than Raja Petra Kamarudin consisting of popular figures (mostly bloggers and columnists) like Haris Ibrahim, Bernard Khoo, Malik Imtiaz Sarwar, Art Harun and Azmi Sharom; and politically aware citizens like Vijay Kumar Murugavell, Duke Cheng, Ee Chia, Danny Chua, Boom and Rodi, and countless others (including myself). And, don't forget, there are outstanding political figures like Zaid Ibrahim and Din Merican who will certainly play a significant role in reshaping the new Malaysia once the country is free of this stubborn and debilitating disease called BN.

Lisa, the only people who will be terribly upset when BN loses control of the police and Petronas are an overfed coterie of fat-cat capitalists who have enjoyed more than 30 years of monopolistic access to the nation's resources and established huge empires based on political patronage. The competent managers amongst them will be able to adapt and continue doing well under a new government - so long as they genuinely serve the public good. Those who have corruptly made their money as crony rent-seekers will either be allowed to retire in comfort (if they donate a fair portion of their ill-gotten gains to charity) or face a therapeutic spell in prison.


When Pakatan Rakyat takes over as government, it will not exactly be a one-party management. Since Anwar invited DAP and PAS to join PKR as equal partners, there will effectively be at least three different political ideologies - many more if you include a few independent parties from Sabah and Sarawak, plus the remains of Gerakan and PPP - working together (preferably in perfect harmony and hopefully with minimal friction) towards one common goal - the rescue of Malaysia from the economic and ethical doldrums and the creation of a healthy national ethos in which every citizen regardless of skin color, culinary preferences and creed can at last feel a sense of belonging - and therefore a sense of authentic pride.

It remains to be seen whether Umno will survive as the Opposition. Without its reactionary and dangerous Ketuanan Melayu agenda - and suddenly deprived of the chance to carry on robbing the nation - these descendants of pirates will almost surely disintegrate as a political party. Those individuals amongst them with any intelligence and ability whatsoever will swiftly realize that the horse is DEAD - kaput, finito, expired - and proceed on foot till they reach the next oasis where they will rest and reassess their lives and, insyallah, come to their senses and become decent human beings.

No, Lisa, we don't want Malaysia to become like America or Britain where the illusion of democracy, not the real thing, prevails. We don't want a Tweedledum and Tweedledee type of two-party system (like the Donkey and Elephant parties or the Tories and Whigs). In fact, we don't want to be obsessed with government and politics any longer than we need!

What we want is a clean, efficient administration that will work quietly and with minimal histrionics to ensure that everyday life just keeps getting easier and pleasanter for more and more of the population. Ultimately, the government of a country ought to be just like the plumbing in your house - we don't want to be distracted by it or even notice it. A properly designed plumbing system carries out its functions unobtrusively, without complaint, and with negligible maintenance problems. Indeed, the plumbing in a well-built house ought to last at least a hundred years!


With government out of the way and internalized, we will at long last become a nation of self-governing individuals with nothing to stop us from each fulfilling our true destinies as free citizens and achieving our maximum potential as evolving humans.

And, take my word for it, Lisa dear. It's NOT going to take another two generations. Perhaps two terms under a new, enlightened government!

 

Would the world be more peaceful if women were in charge? A challenging new book by the Harvard University psychologist Steven Pinker says that the answer is "yes".

In The Better Angels of Our Nature, Pinker presents data showing that human violence, while still very much with us today, has been gradually declining. Moreover, he says, "over the long sweep of history, women have been and will be a pacifying force. Traditional war is a man's game: tribal women never band together to raid neighbouring villages." As mothers, women have evolutionary incentives to maintain peaceful conditions in which to nurture their offspring and ensure that their genes survive into the next generation.

Skeptics immediately reply that women have not made war simply because they have rarely been in power. If they were empowered as leaders, the conditions of an anarchic world would force them to make the same bellicose decisions that men do. Margaret Thatcher, Golda Meir and Indira Gandhi were powerful women; all of them led their countries to war.

But it is also true that these women rose to leadership by playing according to the political rules of "a man's world". It was their success in conforming to male values that enabled their rise to leadership in the first place. In a world in which women held a proportionate share (one-half) of leadership positions, they might behave differently in power.

So we are left with the broader question: does gender really matter in leadership? In terms of stereotypes, various psychological studies show that men gravitate to the hard power of command, while women are collaborative and intuitively understand the soft power of attraction and persuasion. Americans tend to describe leadership with tough male stereotypes, but recent leadership studies show increased success for what was once considered a "feminine style".

'Masculine style'

In information-based societies, networks are replacing hierarchies, and knowledge workers are less deferential. Management in a wide range of organisations is changing in the direction of "shared leadership" and "distributed leadership", with leaders in the centre of a circle rather than atop a pyramid. Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt said that he had to "coddle" his employees.

Even the military faces these changes. In the United States, the Pentagon says that Army drillmasters do "less shouting at everyone", because today's generation responds better to instructors who play "a more counselling-type role". Military success against terrorists and counter-insurgents requires soldiers to win hearts and minds, not just break buildings and bodies.

"Women still lag in leadership positions, holding only 5 per cent of top corporate positions and a minority of positions in elected legislatures (just 16 per cent in the US... 45 per cent in Sweden)."

Former US President George W Bush once described his role as "the decider", but there is much more to modern leadership than that. Modern leaders must be able to use networks, to collaborate, and to encourage participation. Women's non-hierarchical style and relational skills fit a leadership need in the new world of knowledge-based organisations and groups that men, on average, are less well prepared to meet.

In the past, when women fought their way to the top of organisations, they often had to adopt a "masculine style", violating the broader social norm of female "niceness". Now, however, with the information revolution and democratisation demanding more participatory leadership, the "feminine style" is becoming a path to more effective leadership. In order to lead successfully, men will not only have to value this style in their women colleagues, but will also have to master the same skills.

That is a trend, not (yet) a fact. Women still lag in leadership positions, holding only 5 per cent of top corporate positions and a minority of positions in elected legislatures (just 16 per cent in the US, for example, compared to 45 per cent in Sweden). One study of the 1,941 rulers of independent countries during the 20th century found only 27 women, roughly half of whom came to power as widows or daughters of a male ruler. Less than 1 per cent of 20th-century rulers were women who gained power on their own.

Woman's world

So, given the new conventional wisdom in leadership studies that entering the information age means entering a woman's world, why are women not doing better?

Lack of experience, primary caregiver responsibilities, bargaining style and plain old discrimination all help to explain the gender gap. Traditional career paths and the cultural norms that constructed and reinforced them, simply have not enabled women to gain the skills required for top leadership positions in many organisational contexts.

Research shows that even in democratic societies, women face a higher social risk than men when attempting to negotiate for career-related resources such as compensation. Women are generally not well integrated into male networks that dominate organisations, and gender stereotypes still hamper women who try to overcome such barriers.

This bias is beginning to break down in information-based societies, but it is a mistake to identify the new type of leadership we need in an information age simply as "a woman's world". Even positive stereotypes are bad for women, men and effective leadership.

Leaders should be viewed less in terms of heroic command than as encouraging participation throughout an organisation, group, country or network. Questions of appropriate style - when to use hard and soft skills - are equally relevant for men and women, and should not be clouded by traditional gender stereotypes. In some circumstances, men will need to act more "like women"; in others, women will need to be more "like men".

The key choices about war and peace in our future will depend not on gender, but on how leaders combine hard- and soft-power skills to produce smart strategies. Both men and women will make those decisions. But Pinker is probably correct when he notes that the parts of the world that lag in the decline of violence are also the parts that lag in the empowerment of women.

Joseph S Nye, Jr., a former US Assistant Secretary of Defence, is a professor at Harvard and the author most recently of The Future of Power.