LETTER | Imagine as a parent, your baby just starts to learn to walk. It wobbles. It staggers. It trips. It falls. Despite its failings, you never criticise your baby. You never condemn your baby. You never lose faith in your baby. 

You just encourage it. You shout words of encouragement when it starts to succeed. You applaud and jump with joy when your baby just takes a few steps forward. You believe, totally, in your baby - it definitely can walk with success.

Now back to reality. Our newly formed government - Pakatan Harapan - is still a baby who has just started to learn how to walk. There will be traps, pits, and potholes along its path. We, the parents, should encourage our baby to walk. Surely, our baby, Harapan, will walk, stagger, trip, and fall. But each fall will make the baby stronger, and more determined to walk again.

But sadly, in reality, we do not, as a parent, encourage our baby, Harapan, to walk again when it falls. We just condemn our baby as a total failure, and worse still, we want to throw our baby away.

The iconic inventor, Thomas Edison, made 1,000 unsuccessful attempts to create the light bulb. Had he been condemned and scoffed by his friends and employees during his failed attempts, would he have been successful? If Edison had lost faith in his first few attempts, would we have seen the invention of the light bulb?

As Arnold H Glasow aptly says, “The key to everything is patience. You get the chicken by hatching the egg, not by smashing it.”

Remember, our newly formed government, Harapan, is still fragile, is still delicate, like an egg, like a baby. We have to see it grow stronger, day by day, not by smashing it, not by throwing it away.

Remember, Harapan is our hope for New Malaysia. We cannot afford to throw it away while it’s still learning how to walk. We also cannot afford to smash it while it’s still being hatched.

Remember, Harapan is just more than one year old, whereas its brother, BN, is more than 60 years old.

We can’t compare the new baby to BN, its former brother, who has become a drug addict, cancer, who has failed and ailed our nation. Never should we, as a parent, expect the new baby to become a drug addict, or cancer, like its brother again.

Remember, if we throw our new baby away, then surely its brother, BN, Najib Abdul Rajak and Co, would come back to rule the country, to haunt the country, to loot the country, beyond the point of no return.

The views expressed here are those of the author/contributor and do not necessarily represent the views of Malaysiakini.