With the royal commission of inquiry (RCI) report having been released publicly, and with the non-indictment in the Michael Brown case in Missouri, and now in the Eric Garner case in New York; my respect for the American justice system and most public inquiries has taken a serious and severe nose-dive.
More importantly, what can we in Malaysia learn from all this fiasco in the US as it is obvious that criminal enforcement by the police has gone awry. It completely reminds me of the Umno-leadership of BN, and the recent circus at the PWTC.
And now, with our version of the other clowns’ report it looks like all such “serious inquiries;” whether labelled the grand jury in the US, or the royal commission in the British Commonwealth; they appear to both be designed to be a clever public hogwash of truth matters because there was no political intent to seek truth matters.
To me, it is simply a case of every system’s uninformed incompetence. What else can you conclude; when a royal commission cannot identify the true cause of the root problems, and is unable to identify the ‘known criminal suspects’, and to recommend serious action against all the wrong-doing but instead only recommends another study, and more talk.
RCI report and documented incompetence
After 215 hours of hearings and two years of time, and more than 1,000 pages of evidence, and with six well-qualified and competent individuals on the royal commission, why is it that they cannot identify truth matters in the ‘facts related to Project IC, or sometimes called Project M and make relevant charges?’
My conclusion about such matters, and I must caution that I am an extraversion, intuition, thinking, judgment (ENTJ) type under the Myer-Briggs classification of personality-types, is that most ‘public systems; whether private, public, or civil society, have a tendency towards ‘self-seeking self-preservation rather than truth seeking’. My professor of organisation and management dynamics at George Washington University (GWU) called this phenomenon ‘taking the trip to Abilene’.
My previous column addressed the issue of intentionality. I propose that both; in the US cases, and in our RCI report, the failure belongs not only to the individuals of the RCI but especially the chairperson and secretary for poor problem analysis and not digging deeper on the core issues.
Most of us who undertake doctoral studies face similar situations in our hypothesis development; when we face facts and information which are incomplete, the way forward is to not avoid those contributing factors but to pursue them more diligently. This the RCI did not do.
The Abilene Paradox
Professor Jerry Harvey wrote his first book called ‘The Abilene Paradox and Other Meditations of Management’. Yours truly was his research fellow at that time and did much research for the book.
Harvey developed his ‘theory about individual behaviour of human beings in organisational decision-making’. He uses a real experience of him playing cards with his in-laws to reflect on what happened and it became his ‘Abilene Paradox theory.’
The theory argues that in all organisations, most individuals in decision-making situations within official settings choose not to speak out about truth matters in the given situation because they do not want to be ‘isolated from the new community’s understanding and agreement about truth matters’. Isolation from even the new found community is the enemy of truth seeking and truth telling.
They do not want to be excluded from their community of truth and therefore choose to overlook some aspects of the facts related to the truth of the matter. They, in real effect, all collude ‘to make the trip to Abilene’ and temporarily ignore the truth of the matter in focus. Text loses focus upon context and intent of the search for real and true answers.
Probably the most classic example of this was captured in the movie, ‘The 12 Angry Men’. The movie starts with a coloured person being found guilty at first vote of jury, but one person stood in the way of 100 percent consensus. He slowly but surely asks questions about truth matters related to the case, and one by one the jury change their views and finally all vote to free the individual of criminal charges.
The jury avoids the potential trip to Abilene, because of this one person who asked questions for the sake of truth-finding, and made the answers become real for each jury member.
Malaysia’s trip to Abilene
Malaysia is and always will be a race-conscious country. After all, we may be the only one country in the world which defines itself in terms of ethnic privileges and rights. Now, even the Jews of Israel may be following our bad example by actually attempting the same agenda.
Nevertheless, while recognising these realities about ethnicity, and religious differences which result in cultural differences, the way forward, as articulated in the Rukunegara as our historical compromise after the May 13, 1969 riots is not exclusionary but rather inclusionary.
Therefore, while we recognise ethnicity, religion, and cultural difference; no one challenges the Malay rulers or their religious rights, or even the selected privileges for Malays historically, as has been articulated by many opposing Malays. The real issues are not about Malays and their rights, but rather how we can manage the cultural, ethnic and religious diversity in this country so that together we can move forward as one community in a universality of nation-states.
Whoever is future political leadership of this nation-state, what is needed is leadership with integrity. Such integrity cannot come with doing the same old things in the same old ways, but really doing things differently for the real needs of those who need such help.
Currently such a leadership paradigm is totally missing in this nation-state, and within all systems; sadly, on all sides! Menteri Besar Azmin Ali has shown some small glimpses of a different paradigm. So has Joko Widodo (Jokowi) of Indonesia and Narendra Modi of India. Can they sustain their agenda and momentum?
Let us learn from the affairs in the US and actions of the multi-ethnic protestors in New York. Issues about truth of such matters are no more simply the domain of power systems and authorities. Power and authority alone cannot define truth any more. We need a 360 degree awareness of truth appreciation about such truth matters.
Maybe the governments of the day better understand issues and concerns on the ground before they make false assumption; as they did in the US.
