I respect Anthony Loke for agreeing to step down from his position as chairman of DAP Negeri Sembilan after losing the state constituency Chennah, which he has held for three consecutive terms.
It is a wise decision considering that he is shouldering so many responsibilities, by virtue of his position as General-Secretary of DAP at the federal level.
Over the past few years, he has spread himself too thin, that he hardly have time or the patience to listen to the grievances of the people.
By just stepping down as state chairman of his party is not sufficient. My advice to him are as follows, which is also applicable for all other political leaders:
(1) Start to work on positive initiatives that benefit the rakyat.
(2) I suggest that the Economy minister work on possible initiatives that can help the T20 segment of our community and help owners of SMEs to thrive in their businesses. The T20 must not be neglected as well, as they pay high taxes.
(3) Announce all the corrective actions to past policies that went wrong like what Hannah did in her first 100 days: it was like a bout of fresh air when we hear that her announcements about water retention ponds, gazettement of open spaces. Announce these new reform initiatives in the next 12 months before dissolving the parliament. People will be angry with UMNO if it seeks to pull out of the Madani government while this is going on.
(4) When the Sumbangan Asas Rahmah, explain that it is a bottom up priming of the economy to benefit everyone in line with PH’s promises to use the country’s resources to benefit the people first, not the cronies or buying votes.
My mother-in-law commented about so many red flags (PH) on the streets in Seremban recently, but she did it fondly compared to those days when she was a staunch MCA supporter as one of her relative is an MCA strongman in N9.
(5) By implementing corrective actions, people can once again look forward to a very positive future.
(6) Help create jobs for the retirees like in Singapore where retirees are given all sorts of roles. Let’s say start with Mata-mata or troubleshooters for the state governments by just walking around to audit the facilities managed by the local authorities like I always do it for Datuk Bandar of Petaling Jaya. Sometimes, the state will learn more about the root cause of problems to ensure that they are not being lied to by the local council directors in charge of a specific project.
A timestamp camera downloaded on the mobile phone is all that is needed to report potholes, clogged drains or illegal dumps that need to be attended to before those become complaints and issues in the media. Sometimes, I jokingly told him, “Datuk, my ‘complaint’ today is I don’t have any complaints now! MBPJ is too efficient to fix all the manhole covers. I highlighted on manhole cover, but they fixed all the manhole covers along Jalan Datuk Abu Bakar.” Now, he is promoted to be the director-general of the Department of Human Resources (JTR).
(7) Clean up Kebajikan to make sure that the officers are people who really have compassion for the disabled, the underprivileged. Go on a reward system. If they can go out to find people whom the government should help, they should document it and process the applications, and be rewarded on a point system that will eventually lead to their promotion.
(8) Loke should also appoint someone to work on revamping KTMB, and if necessary remove the old hats. There are younger KTMB staff whom I met at the tribunal whom I think understand more about customer service than any of their bosses. What I went though over the senior citizen’s discount is really unnecessary, and I am not surprised that many other senior citizens, including the Tribunal’s own wife (!) had faced when dealing with Little Napoleons at different levels, especially those at the counters.
(9) Improve the network of first mile, last mile network to ensure more reliance on public transport system. The same should be done for the city of Kuala Lumpur. In the early years of our nation, we had many mini buses that ply different routes. If this is matched with today’s DRT vans, I would not mind taking a long-haul coach from the depot at our town to a depot in KL, then do a Super Mario, hop on hop off like the way we used to do taking Melbourne trams, provided the network is supported by an app such as Moovit.
(10) Ministers should have teh tarik sessions - or bersembang with ordinary citizens - to gather their feedback how the government can do better next. Make this a regular thing and you will want to solve their problems like my late grandfather and Lee Lam Thye used to do.
(11) It is also time that the people who drafted the PH manifesto to explain that PMX was still in prison when the manifesto was drafted.
I suspect the so-called promises were thought through thoroughly. For example, if the local council elections are held, do we want to see proxies working for the underworld to stand an a candidate for mayorship in the local election? What happens if they become mayors since their campaign would be well-supported by the underworld? I suspect PMX probably read the manifesto and decided it was too late to change anything; instead, like me, he would leave the manifesto as it was, only to see what can be implemented after the election is won. While I can understand that there are certain reforms that cannot be implemented now, there are some fruits that are already ripe to be plucked. For example, since the UEC students are already doing SPM Bahasa Malaysia, there is really no other obstacles except for the political pressure from a group of people. Most people agree that UEC students are generally more disciplined with their academic performance, and university admission panels welcome them especially into their engineering degrees.
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