A different kind of leadership

Not one word out of step: Ardern leaving a gathering to honour victims of the massacre at Hagley Park in Christchurch. — AFP

MARTIN Luther King Jr said, “A genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus but a moulder of consensus.”

Jacinda Ardern did not try to search for consensus in her reaction to the horror and tragedy that struck New Zealand. She did not equally blame Muslim extremists whose hate and violence could have led to the violence by a white supremacist against the Muslim community.

Instead she moulded a national consensus by speaking with clarity, firmness, and resolve.

“They are us,” the New Zealand prime minister said simply. She embraced the Muslim community. She wore a long black dress and a head scarf to show respect as she visited the families. She hugged and listened to share the grief of the community and the nation.

And of the suspected mass killer, an Australian national, she said, “You may have chosen us – we utterly reject and condemn you.”

She spoke of a New Zealand that represents “diversity, kindness, compassion, home for those who share our values. Refuge for those who need it. And those values will not and cannot be shaken by this attack.”

And she promised action: Introduce gun control laws. Cover the funeral expenses of the deceased and financial support to the affected families who have lost their breadwinners.

Those who distributed the video of the mass killing were arrested and charged as the Censorship Board had declared it an objectionable material as “it is a terrorist atrocity, specifically produced for the purpose of a hateful terrorist agenda.”

Face of compassion: Ardern consoling a woman during her visit to Kilbirnie Mosque in Wellington. — AP  

More have been arrested for their hateful postings on Facebook aimed at inciting racial disharmony.

Not one word out of step, not one action of line. She did not search for consensus. She shaped and built the consensus through her compassionate leadership and her clarity of values. The Muslim community is a part of us. Diversity, kindness, compassion is a part of us. Gun control laws to make New Zealand a safer place is about us.

Words matter. Love matters. Empathy matters. In a time of national crisis, Ardern brought light and showed how a leader is able to bring her people together, to comfort the grieving, to provide language to embrace a community of immigrants and refugees who chose to make New Zealand their new home. She chose love and unity, over hate and division.

At a time when the world is led by so many leaders and politicians who spew hate, exclusion, racial, ethnic and religious supremacy, Ardern provides hope that a different kind of leadership and a different kind of world is possible. Not only the people of New Zealand and the immigrant Muslim community responded to her compassion, her resolve, and her message of inclusiveness, the world, too, responded.

Even the tallest building in the world, the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, lit up with a giant image of the prime minister embracing a Muslim woman at a mosque in Wellington.

Why do so many of us get all teary at the sight of Ardern showing such strength of leadership and compassion to do what is right for her country and her people?

It’s because we are sick and tired of leaders who tear nations and peoples apart to serve their own political agendas. Who spew hate and manufacture fear and insecurity with seeming impunity in order to gain support as they lose their legitimacy to lead. Who show no courage of conviction and cave in to populist attacks. Who are too lazy to build their knowledge to explain what is right and what is just and what is good for the nation and maintain principled positions in the face of opposition. Who have no skills to mould a consensus and provide the leadership needed to do this. Whose indecision means more harm and more suffering on the ground of those discriminated, marginalised and Othered.

Ardern brought her country together based on love, inclusion and action to do what is right and fair. That’s the kind of leadership we want to see in Malaysia, and in this ugly world we live in today.

Her people responded back with love. I pray her model of leadership will inspire more kindness and courage among our own political leaders whom we voted into power on their promise to rebuild our nation and fulfil our hopes for a more just, inclusive, democratic Malaysia.

It is obvious that the new opposition will not stop using race and religion to divide the nation and sow fear and insecurity among the Malays in order to win back power. It is obvious they will continue to be relentless in their tactics to draw attention away from the charges of kleptomaniac behaviour and betrayal of the very people they proclaim to protect. Abuse of race and religion is the only strategy they know to incite racial hatred and whip up tensions to destabilise the country and make it difficult for this new government to deliver on its reform agenda.

We need to see the Pakatan Harapan leaders show courage, principles and a clarity of vision of the kind of Malaysia and the kind of values we need in order for a multi-ethnic and multi-religious Malaysia to survive and thrive. Ardern provided that clarity and that vision for her people.

The correct response by the Pakatan government to the continual manufacturing of hate and fear cannot be a strategy of proving that it is more ethno-centric and more Islamic than the opposition. The same tools that brought the master’s house down cannot be used to rebuild a new inclusive and just Malaysia.

Obviously, the challenge before this new government trying to overhaul the many wrongs of the past 61 years and meet the raised expectations of the rakyat is not easy. Soon, it will celebrate its one year in power. Pakatan needs to get urgent about governing for a better future and delivering on its promises.

About building a new narrative of inclusion, of justice and of equality. About plans to alleviate the economic hardships of the B40 and the fears and insecurities of the Malays left behind. About finding the right ministers, the right leaders, the right experts, the right messaging, the right language and the right processes and strategies to deliver the changes they promised.

This government must inspire us Malaysians that there is a place and there is hope for a better life for every single one of us in all our diversity and differences.

Let not this new government behave like the old one by Othering those who don’t think like them. Let not this new government turn its back on the best Malaysia has to offer in terms of brain power just because there have been differences in the past or differences in approach and policy choices. We all want the best for Malaysia and we want to see this new government succeed in delivering on its promises of change.

For we are all Malaysians. And Malaysia is for all of us.