I expected the successor to the incompetent and do-nothing premier Abdullah Ahmad Badawi would have minimal difficulty shining as the bar had been lowered substantially.

Despite that, Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak has failed to impress us in his first 100 days. His priority is packaging over performance.

Najib may be more poised and his voice less grating, but in content and performance, he is of the same bottom-league kayu belukar timber as Abdullah. Abdullah lasted slightly over five years; it took time for Malaysians to see through his vacuity. Now sensitised, we are less tolerant and less forgiving of incompetence in our leaders. Expect Najib to have an even shorter tenure.

Najib’s two signature and high-profile initiatives in his first 100 days are his ‘1Malaysia.com.my’ website and his micro-management of Perak’s legislative politics. The first illustrates Najib’s slick packaging; the second, the empty content and his inept performance.

Najib’s website is professionally designed and maintained. It makes full use of the new media including Youtube, Facebook and Twitter. Unfortunately its contents do not reflect the man.

chedet mahathir blog 210508 When I surf the websites of Dr Mahathir Mohamad, Lim Kit Siang or Anwar Ibrahim, I know that what is written and the responses reflect the person, right down to the tone and style of writing.

I do not get that same sense on surfing 1malaysia.com. It is written as if from a third-person perspective instead of being personal, the very reason for having a blog.

Of course I do not expect Najib to write his own speeches or commentaries; he has many other important things to do like running the country. I do expect him however, to be on top of his speech writers, and to do the final reading and make the necessary changes so these truly sound as if they emanate from him. He has to leave his imprint.

rosmah and najib bakti event 070709 02 At the same time I expect his speech writers to be professional enough to study their subject’s favourite expressions and styles of writing and speech, so the final product looks and sounds like these have come from the man himself.

Not only is the style and tone of 1Malaysia.com divorced from Najib, so too is the content. When someone asked him what the 1Malaysia concept means, Najib was unable to articulate it coherently. He was unable to relate the concept to his party’s pursuit of a ‘unity government’, for example.

If his 1Malaysia website is meant to symbolise his ‘1Malaysia’ vision, then it has failed miserably. Little wonder that his government has had to launch a massive public relations exercise just to publicise the concept. Malaysians are still fuzzy about the content. I doubt very much that Najib himself understands what ‘1Malaysia’ means.

Far from being his guiding vision, Najib’s ‘1Malaysia’ is nothing more than the slick concoction of his highly-paid pubic relations personnel. It is just another slogan, again the triumph of packaging over performance.

Mess in Perak

As for Najib’s political and leadership skills, his handling of Perak’s legislature is illustrative. There was no shortage of superlatives or praise effusive enough to describe his ‘coup’ in engineering the fall of the Pakatan government.

Today, barely a few months later, Najib is desperate to distance himself from that still evolving mess. He is not in the least (or no longer) interested in trumpeting his earlier ‘triumphant’ role.

If all the Perak mess did was to soil Najib’s already mediocre reputation, I could readily overlook his central role in it. Unfortunately we are not yet even near the end of the full ramifications of that crisis.

v sivakumar perak state assembly speaker being dragged out of the assembly incident 130509 film strip To date the episode has exposed the ineptness of the state civil service and police force, as well as ensnared the sultan. Now commentators are not in the least shy in criticising the monarchy, and often in very harsh and rude terms.

They are also throwing the sultan’s own words, uttered when he was chief justice, back at him. Sultans are not used to eating their own words.

That was not all. That crisis also exposed what had been obvious to many and for so long, the thinness of talent in our political class. The sight of the Perak speaker being literally dragged out of the assembly hall has now become and will forever remain the iconic image of the country’s political leadership.

That case (or cases, as apart from the contested chief minister’s post, there is the speaker’s post that is still to be litigated) is still winding its way through the court system. Already that series has exposed the glaring inadequacies and mediocre qualities of our judges.

The exception was the initial trial judge, Justice Abdul Aziz Abd Rahim, who delivered his written judgment within days of his decision and whose legal arguments are the model of wisdom and scholarship.

As for the Appeals Court judges, who by right should be a class above trial judges, their tardiness in producing their written judgments has shown how ‘proud’ they are of their decisions. Two of them have yet to release their written judgments.

Such is the calibre of our judges, Justice Aziz Rahim excepted. How on earth were they selected, let alone promoted? Their inadequacies would have remained hidden if not for the Perak political fiasco. At least on that count, we can thank Najib.

Trash the anode

Elsewhere I wrote that Najib’s predecessor served a useful function as ‘practice prime minister’. His sheer ineptness emboldened citizens to speak out and criticise him specifically and other leaders generally.

abdullah ahmad badawi 020209 01 Previously Malaysians, like most Asians, were a dutiful bunch, hesitant to criticise their leaders, mistaking that to be an expression of disloyalty. Abdullah (right) , not intentionally of course, changed all that. At least on that point we can thank him.

Sailboat owners are aware of the importance of the sacrificial zinc anode. By installing it you preferentially divert the corroding effects of the sea water to that anode, thus protecting the other elements on your boat, like its props and engines. When the anode is corroded you would simply replace it. It is much easier and cheaper than having to change or repair your eroded props.

Najib serves as a useful metaphorical sacrificial zinc anode for Malaysia. He would attract all that is evil, bring out all that is corrupt, and let loose all the incompetence. Then when the nation has been cleansed, with all its evil, corrosion and incompetence accreted upon Najib, we can dispose of him.

So far in his first 100 days in office, Najib has served well as this sacrificial anode. The important thing to remember about this zinc anode is to know when to dispose of it. Kept too late and it would spread the corrosion to other vital parts of the boat. The next general election is as good a time to get rid of Najib and the party he leads.

It is sad but not inappropriate to use the sacrificial anode metaphor for Najib. Like many, I would have preferred him as the skipper. However, if you just do not have what it takes to be a skipper, and you do not even have the weight to be ballast, I suppose being a sacrificial anode is still better than being a dead weight.