Opinion: Please take a salary, Anwar and Nurul Izzah
26 Feb 2024
TheRealNehruism
Writer. Seeker. Teacher
Image credit: Focus Malaysia
The Finance Ministry has issued a statement debunking viral claims that former Permatang Pauh MP Nurul Izzah Anwar served as a paid advisor to one of its agencies, the Economic Stimulus Implementation and Coordination Unit Between National Agencies (LAKSANA).
This clarification has effectively put to rest widespread rumors suggesting that the Prime Minister's daughter was receiving substantial monthly compensation of RM35,000 for working three days a week within a ministry headed by her father.
Image credit: Ministry of Finance X
Coincidentally, her father, PM Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim, has also opted not to receive a salary since taking office in late 2022.
Hearing the news that Anwar and his daughter have been serving the nation for free makes you feel as good as getting some misguided person put a ringgit in your hand as a gesture of charity while you wait outside a restaurant for your friend to arrive. You are not touched by the gesture, you are insulted.
There you are all dressed up and excited to meet your friend for a great night out, and this misguided person with their misguided intentions has ruined your night by making you feel like a beggar for no reason.
I won’t blame Anwar and daughter for wanting to feel like they are great people by being charitable – I actually believe that being generous and charitable is the best way of knowing that you are a good person, and the knowledge that we are a good person is one of the most valuable treasures that a person can have in their life – but it is not right for Anwar or his daughter to make themselves feel like they are a good people by making 30 million plus Malaysians feel small and humiliated.
We are not a country of beggars.
When you are serving in the highest office of a middle-income nation like Malaysia, that has enough money to build some of the tallest building in the world and which has a mall every couple of kilometres for its people to spend their excess money at, to say that you have to work for free without taking any salary, doesn’t make you a big person, it just makes us feel like poor and desperate people, who require a handout to survive.
There is a right time, right place and right crowd to be charitable. The people in war-torn countries of Ukraine or Gaza are the right people to be charitable towards. An orphanage, a place of worship, an old folk’s home, are examples of right places to be charitable. When you happen to see somebody become a victim of a crime, tragedy or accident, this is also an opportunity for one to be charitable.
But if you give the money that you deservingly earned to a person who is driving a Lamborghini, you are not being charitable, you are just being delusional or you are doing what you are doing to serve an ulterior motive.
You are delusional if you actually think that you are helping the multi-millionaire driving a Lamborghini by giving them your money, when just the tyres of their car are probably equal to a year of your salary or you are actually just aiming to help yourself, by disingenuously claiming that you are helping them.
In all likelihood, you are probably just hoping that by giving them a few thousand ringgits today without asking for anything in return, will someday entitle you to take a few million ringgits from them, without them being able to say anything.
If Anwar and his daughter truly want to be charitable, I seriously suggest that they go find people who are truly deserving of charity to cultivate their desire to be charitable. There are many people in this world who will appreciate one’s charitable gestures, so why not just help them, instead of helping people who do not require any charity.
If Anwar and his daughters truly want to make Malaysians appreciate them, don’t look at us like beggars and give us your salary, when we neither asked for it or need it. Instead, actually do something difficult and great. Achieve something that others cannot achieve. Make things happen. Win glory for the nation and welcome fortune to our shores.
In the meantime, just take your salary. Everybody in this world wants to be paid for the services they render. For you to say that you don’t need to be paid for the service you render, is forcing us to look at you as if you are somebody who is special and extraordinary, who is above the wants and desires of regular people. Don’t force us to see you in this light. Let us decide for ourselves whether we want to look at you in this light. If you are truly great, trust us to recognise your greatness, not shove the idea that you are great in our throat.
You not drawing any salary is also making us uncomfortable about judging your performance. You can’t judge the performance of someone who is serving you for free. When we accept the service of someone for free, we feel forced to take whatever they offer without complaint.
We most definitely don’t want to take whatever you have to offer without judgement, because what we require from you is excellence. We have a demand that those of us in the highest positions must perform at the highest level. If you can’t perform, then we will at least want to judge you harshly.
Finally, don’t force us to be indebted to you. Your relevance to us is based on your current performance, not your past sacrifices, which we didn’t even ask from you. If you don’t perform well today, we will dismiss you tomorrow, and not be beholden to the fact that we have to show our gratitude to you, because you have served us yesterday without any remuneration. We didn’t ask you not to take any remuneration. We will not consider you not taking any remuneration as a form of sacrifice that we have to be grateful and indebted to.
Instead of cultivating this idea that the government is a place where you can perform in subpar manner as long as you work for free, we want you to cultivate the idea that the government is a place that you should come to if you wish to achieve greatness by doing difficult things, because the people of Malaysia will reward you handsomely if you can achieve excellence and greatness on their behalf.
Please correct your thinking for the country’s sake and also your own sake.
Nehru Sathiamoorthy is the author of “While Waiting for the World to end”. He was a columnist at FMT and a frequent contributor to the South China Morning Post, The Star, Malaysia-Today, MalaysiaNow, MalaysiaKini and Focus Malaysia.
There you are all dressed up and excited to meet your friend for a great night out, and this misguided person with their misguided intentions has ruined your night by making you feel like a beggar for no reason.
I won’t blame Anwar and daughter for wanting to feel like they are great people by being charitable – I actually believe that being generous and charitable is the best way of knowing that you are a good person, and the knowledge that we are a good person is one of the most valuable treasures that a person can have in their life – but it is not right for Anwar or his daughter to make themselves feel like they are a good people by making 30 million plus Malaysians feel small and humiliated.
We are not a country of beggars.
When you are serving in the highest office of a middle-income nation like Malaysia, that has enough money to build some of the tallest building in the world and which has a mall every couple of kilometres for its people to spend their excess money at, to say that you have to work for free without taking any salary, doesn’t make you a big person, it just makes us feel like poor and desperate people, who require a handout to survive.
There is a right time, right place and right crowd to be charitable. The people in war-torn countries of Ukraine or Gaza are the right people to be charitable towards. An orphanage, a place of worship, an old folk’s home, are examples of right places to be charitable. When you happen to see somebody become a victim of a crime, tragedy or accident, this is also an opportunity for one to be charitable.
But if you give the money that you deservingly earned to a person who is driving a Lamborghini, you are not being charitable, you are just being delusional or you are doing what you are doing to serve an ulterior motive.
You are delusional if you actually think that you are helping the multi-millionaire driving a Lamborghini by giving them your money, when just the tyres of their car are probably equal to a year of your salary or you are actually just aiming to help yourself, by disingenuously claiming that you are helping them.
In all likelihood, you are probably just hoping that by giving them a few thousand ringgits today without asking for anything in return, will someday entitle you to take a few million ringgits from them, without them being able to say anything.
If Anwar and his daughter truly want to be charitable, I seriously suggest that they go find people who are truly deserving of charity to cultivate their desire to be charitable. There are many people in this world who will appreciate one’s charitable gestures, so why not just help them, instead of helping people who do not require any charity.
If Anwar and his daughters truly want to make Malaysians appreciate them, don’t look at us like beggars and give us your salary, when we neither asked for it or need it. Instead, actually do something difficult and great. Achieve something that others cannot achieve. Make things happen. Win glory for the nation and welcome fortune to our shores.
In the meantime, just take your salary. Everybody in this world wants to be paid for the services they render. For you to say that you don’t need to be paid for the service you render, is forcing us to look at you as if you are somebody who is special and extraordinary, who is above the wants and desires of regular people. Don’t force us to see you in this light. Let us decide for ourselves whether we want to look at you in this light. If you are truly great, trust us to recognise your greatness, not shove the idea that you are great in our throat.
You not drawing any salary is also making us uncomfortable about judging your performance. You can’t judge the performance of someone who is serving you for free. When we accept the service of someone for free, we feel forced to take whatever they offer without complaint.
We most definitely don’t want to take whatever you have to offer without judgement, because what we require from you is excellence. We have a demand that those of us in the highest positions must perform at the highest level. If you can’t perform, then we will at least want to judge you harshly.
Finally, don’t force us to be indebted to you. Your relevance to us is based on your current performance, not your past sacrifices, which we didn’t even ask from you. If you don’t perform well today, we will dismiss you tomorrow, and not be beholden to the fact that we have to show our gratitude to you, because you have served us yesterday without any remuneration. We didn’t ask you not to take any remuneration. We will not consider you not taking any remuneration as a form of sacrifice that we have to be grateful and indebted to.
Instead of cultivating this idea that the government is a place where you can perform in subpar manner as long as you work for free, we want you to cultivate the idea that the government is a place that you should come to if you wish to achieve greatness by doing difficult things, because the people of Malaysia will reward you handsomely if you can achieve excellence and greatness on their behalf.
Please correct your thinking for the country’s sake and also your own sake.
Nehru Sathiamoorthy is the author of “While Waiting for the World to end”. He was a columnist at FMT and a frequent contributor to the South China Morning Post, The Star, Malaysia-Today, MalaysiaNow, MalaysiaKini and Focus Malaysia.
No comments:
Post a Comment