When everything is going against you, remember that the airplane takes off against the wind, not with it.
— Henry Ford, American industrialist and business magnate
There are many who curse and condemn the Covid-19 pandemic as a pestilence that has ruined their daily lives.
Then, there are those who feel it is time to take stock of the situation in the hope of finding remedies and solutions desperately necessary for the future.
And then, of course, there are those who believe that this bio-warfare is a “good crisis never to be wasted,” paraphrasing Winston Churchill who coined this phrase towards the end of World War II when bigger, better and brighter opportunities awaited to be exploited.
This pandemic is an ideal time to visit and fix our national state of affairs especially the education system that could be tailored and designed by educationists and teachers to use online schooling with minimal school attendance until a vaccine is effectively made available to stem and prevent the deadly virus.
Teachers must be adequately trained to meet the new standards of teaching care. The west has come up with a hundred reasons why the vaccine has attacked us based on ethnocentricity which have no foundations in medical science.
School-going children must be protected at all costs knowing how filthy school washing rooms can be.
Another golden opportunity is here for our leaders to reduce wastage by slashing high salaries and lofty perks when all the pundits and prophets of profit are wailing about the slowing economy with the attendant unemployment and loss of wages that have affected blue collar workers and private businesses.
This is the time to get creative and innovative. Subsidised food, shelter, clothing, water and electricity are urgently necessary until the vaccine becomes available. Banks and tax collecting agencies ought to freely offer moratoriums until the pandemic is a thing of the past.
Tightening the belt should not affect political leaders who must lead by example. Austerity leads to prosperity.
Our traffic system is deplorable no thanks to our semi-conscious, senseless, totally rude and inconsiderate road-users. I believe there are far too many vehicles vis-a-vis streets, roads and highways to accommodate the daily traffic avalanche during daily peak periods or the much-awaited long holidays.
Our uneven, patched up roads, byways, streets and highways are in a mess with the ubiquitous potholes, and poor drainage that cause dangerous hydroplaning. We need leaders who ought to emulate neighboring Singapore for motivation and encouragement.
Now may be the time to introduce staggered commuting times for school-goers, public sector and private sector workers to drastically reduce the constantly worsening traffic jams. And heavy-duty vehicles must operate only after 11pm when traffic is less in terms of obvious hazards.
Road works must be planned for the graveyard shift. Monitoring and enforcing traffic rules, regulations and laws have become maddeningly mind-boggling. Bouquets for those leaders who have made drink-driving a serious offence. We are getting somewhere.
Our food producing industry should be able to make trebly sure that we never go hungry, and to hell with trade deficits or balance of payments as predicted and indicted by unemployed and unwanted economists and experts.
We should never have to import food items as we have one of the healthiest soil systems in the world. Throw a seed in the ground, and we are sure to experience a sprout in no time with our ample rainfall and sunshine.
Politics should never put its head in the food producing industry with some amateur economists advice swayed by the idea of generating revenue through imported food items.
Our healthcare state of affairs should not stop with public and private hospitals sprouting up in the urban areas. Those preferring to live in the interior regions enjoying rural and rustic lifestyles are equally entitled to enjoy medical, dental and educational facilities that the government must go all out to make available.
The excuse that we don’t have enough money to adequately supply rural areas is maddeningly silly and a total falsehood. Lest we forget, all natural and non-natural resources of the country belong to the People, not to the government.
Leaders in the public service, as guardians and custodians of the people’s trust, must not lose sight of this truism while on a self-inflicted frolic for power.
And, anti-hopping laws are long overdue to uphold, defend, protect and validate the people’s choice in a candidate to represent their constituency under a particular political party ticket.
Politicians wanting a party switch must resign their seats, and go back to the polls to get re-elected in order to serve under a different party.
Yes, to serve the people and nothing more. Remember the time when the phrase “government servant” meant something to be proud of.
We must strive to drive a wedge between democracy and hypocrisy with intellectual humility and honesty. That would be the new normal.
The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the New Sarawak Tribune.
