Reform – you cannot get it with a click of a button. — 123rf
EVERYONE loves the idea of political reform – in theory. New leaders promise it. Protesters demand it. Voters dream about it. But when it comes down to the reality, real reform is slow, painful, and often invisible for years. And that’s exactly why governments have difficulty pulling it off.
In his book On Leadership, former UK prime minister Tony Blair lays it out plainly: “It takes ten years to change a country. Fifteen is better. Twenty is optimum.” That’s not just cynical wisdom from a career politician – it’s a hard truth that reformers, activists, and voters alike need to take seriously.
Governments don’t change easily because they’re designed to provide structure. Layers of laws, habits, bureaucracies, and power structures stack up over decades – and none of them move without a fight.
Reform means battling vested interests who are quite happy with the way things are. It means outlasting bureaucratic inertia and repeated committee meetings that grind new ideas down to dust. It means surviving the inevitable backlash when the first painful changes hit people’s lives.
And it means something even harder: asking people to change themselves.
Real reform almost always demands a change in individual behaviour. It’s not just the government that has to do things differently – it’s all of us. And human beings, it turns out, are spectacularly bad at changing, even when we know we should.
Look at health, for example. We know exercise is good for us. We know smoking kills. We know junk food destroys our bodies.
But awareness doesn’t equal action. Knowledge alone doesn’t drive change. Even when people fully understand the risks, they often keep doing what they’ve always done – out of habit, fear, laziness, or just plain inertia.
Government reform faces the same psychological wall.
You can show individuals every statistic, every expert report, every “undeniable” fact about why a change is needed – and they can still resist it bitterly if it threatens old habits, comforts, or identities. Refor-mers who underestimate this human factor are doomed to fail.
And that’s before you even deal with your own side.
Blair’s experience in government points to something many reformers underestimate: your biggest challenge isn’t your enemy, it’s your coalition.
Real reform brings together uncomfortable alliances – progressives, moderates, technocrats, activists – each group with its own priorities, timelines, and egos. If you can’t keep them moving in the same direction, reform collapses from the inside. Every faction thinks its issue is the most urgent. Every group wants to go faster, or in a different direction. Every ambitious player eventually asks: “Why not me?”
Managing all of that without losing momentum is an art most leaders never master. It’s the difference between shouting slogans and actually changing a system.
The world is littered with examples.
Singapore’s rise from chaos to competence wasn’t the work of a single prime minister, but a generational effort. Rwanda’s government didn’t rebuild itself overnight after genocide; it took ruthless focus on delivery and zero tolerance for corruption, year after year.
Even today, India and China show how fragile reform can be without deep, lasting commitment – and how quickly old habits reassert themselves when reformers lose control of the political narrative.
Blair emphasises four essentials for any reformer: prioritise ruthlessly; build good policy; pick the right people (not just the loyal ones); and obsess over delivery. It’s not glamorous work. It’s not the stuff of viral speeches or inspirational quotes. It’s quiet, difficult, stubborn labour.
And that’s precisely why so many reform efforts fail.
Because we want revolution. We want fast results. We want magic – not the grind.
But governments don’t transform because someone knows how to go viral on social media. They change because someone kept pushing, kept fixing, kept managing fractured coalitions, kept tweaking policies, kept refusing to quit – even when nobody was paying attention anymore.
Real reform isn’t heroic.
It’s exhausting.
It’s boring.
And it’s absolutely essential.
If we want better leadership, we need to stop rewarding the fireworks and start valuing the people willing to put in the thankless work – for years, for decades if necessary – to actually get it done.
Dr Helmy Haja Mydin is chairman of the Social & Economic Research Initiative (Seri), a non-partisan think tank promoting evidence-based policies.
