About 10 years ago, I sent a proposal to Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM) to undertake a study on why Malays appear insecure as a community and too often seek and need assurances not to accede to such inherent fears. It was my request for support from the Nippon Foundation to fund the study and travel costs. I was not successful with the funding and therefore the study never took place; although I had two excellent advisers for the project and study.
Today, allow me to reframe the same agenda of studying this phenomenon to understand leadership of organisations and to see when they fail to provide requisite leadership; and become disabled leadership which then leads to failed organisations.
Leadership without authority
Most NGO leaders provide leadership without authority because the followers are mostly equally others who willingly and voluntarily choose to follow the causes articulated by their selected leadership. Leadership is never a single-person phenomenon. Leadership is always defined by followership and needs many other resources, support and assistance.
Leadership of most formal organisations (legally constituted or instituted) carry some authority with the specific appointment, or, even if it is a ‘calling’ like with pastoral or spiritual roles (imams, priests, etc) within other such formalised non-profit institutions.
The main difference is that the formal leader (elected or otherwise) has a term of reference which comes with the appointment or election, either in written or unwritten form, which dictates what can and cannot be done by the person in authority. Violation can be seen as non-compliance. This often defines roles and responsibilities. This also defines the moral leadership of formal leaders.
The challenge of all leadership of all organisations (formal or NGO) is to transcend institutional and personal limitations to still provide transformational leadership. What do I mean?
Leading Bersih 2.0
Bersih started in about 2007; as a political initiative to bring about changes to the electoral system within Malaysia. Please read Raja Petra Kamarudin’s article to understand one version of this recent history. I am sure others will write their side of the reality of what happened as most of the initiators are still alive today. I pray and hope this gets done. Current understanding of recent history always defines hope for the future.
We, the Oriental Hearts and Mind Study Institute (OHMSI), an NGO registered under the Companies Act, became part of the Bersih 2.0 movement by endorsing the agenda of the elected/appointed committee of unpaid volunteers/actors of Bersih 2.0. We became a formal part of the movement, much like with Negara-Ku; the other people’s movement, by simply agreeing to collaborate to make the agenda happen with our effort and resources.
No funding or financial support, it is simply a co-alignment of causes and resources.
NGOs have annual meetings and some kind of AGMs but most of the participants are volunteers, and usually speak their mind and heart at such meetings to speak on behalf of their constituencies. Bersih 2.0 is therefore more like a federation of NGOs who come together for a common cause.
The primary cause for now is: free and fair elections in Malaysia. Often, we add other issues and concerns as our lists of demands to complete our means-ends storyline. Today’s No 1 issue is the lack of credibility of Malaysia’s leadership.
Leadership without integrity
So, when does the leadership of any organisation or system lose its integrity and capacity to lead or provide leadership? A Professor of Psychiatry and Political Science at George Washington University once presented a paper entitled, ‘The psycho-social profile of disabled leaders’.
He posited, after a 100 year term study of political leadership worldwide, that “disability sets in when the advisers around the leader stop telling the truth regarding matters of concern to the constituents!”
Malaysia is today faced with a serious issue of integrity and credibility with current leadership of the country because “of the transfer of some RM2.6 billion into the PM’s private account through the Malaysian banking system. This fact became public knowledge through a Sarawak Report revelation. It has not been disproven.”
Having initially denied the veracity of the allegation, and having sent a lawyer’s letter of demand; it appears now that even the request for extradition by the country’s inspector-general of police (IGP) of the owner of the defaulting website in UK, was rejected by Interpol as a frivolous request.
All organisations and systems face the dangers of ‘such disabled leadership’ which I define as the moment, ‘they stop getting truth reports from the ground regarding matters of serious concern’.
Transformational leadership
Any transformational leadership style moves and mobilises current and new resources to collaborate with an agreed agenda and to move it forward. Transformational leadership never uses people for their own agenda, but rather co opts new resources to move or mobilise the existing agenda of the organisation in new and different ways.
Usually such leadership is able to cast a vision to the followership and allies about new ways of achieving the same agenda or goal. Followership consequently choose the direction they want to travel willingly and voluntarily; never under any compulsion.
Unexplained matters include the sacking of the former attorney-general (AG), the removal and then reinstatement of the two Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) officers, and the unexplained continued silence of the MACC’s chief commissioner over these matters, and with now the charging of then Special Branch former deputy director with ‘mis-speaking truth’.
Even the BNM governor seems to be waltzing around the core issue of illegality of the so-called fund transfer through the Malaysian banking system. It is obvious that the current leadership of the country and ship is about to sink.
We, the rakyat, will know this is happening when the rats and mice (the rodents in any system) all start to abandon the ship, sooner rather than later.
Therefore, all efforts at so-called ‘change today’; whether it is called another Economic Council, or a new Election Political Funds Committee, or even the soon-to-be-announced electoral boundary review, to me, they are all only efforts to still rearrange deck chairs on the Titanic; after the iceberg was sighted. It is all too little too late.
This column is consequentially dedicated to my good friend and ally as he faces the change of leadership in defining and refining the word ‘integrity’ at the Integrity Institute of Malaysia, at such a time as this. My free advice is as follows: please be ahead of the curve or the wave; because simply riding the wave may be too little too late. May God bless Malaysia.
