OUR political culture is fraught with the predator syndrome, a wild animal instinct that constantly looks out for prey. It is a survival mechanism of the animals but, for the political human, it is a fault-finding compulsion. Such predatory attitude was recently seen on both sides of the political divide.
In the first instance, the opposition misrepresented Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak’s encounter with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the United Nations headquarters in New York. The opposition tried to give the impression that it was not kosher for Najib to be consorting with the man said to have slaughtered thousands of Palestinians.
Does that mean that Najib is in complicity with Netanyahu? Of course not! When confronted with the unexpected encounter, Najib did the accepted diplomatic gesture of greeting Netanyahu.
Likewise, Nurul Izzah Anwar’s meeting with Jacel H. Kiram Hasdan, daughter of the late self-styled Sulu Sultan, Jamalul Kiram III, who was involved in the Lahad Datu incursion. According to Nurul Izzah, Jacel was a guest at an official function hosted by the vice president of the Philippines. Like Najib’s case, it was a chance encounter and should be accorded as such.
Politicians need to reorient their perceptives and intellectual faculties to be consonant with good political acumen. But such politicians are a rarity today.
Efforts should be made to breed such species to be elected as law-makers. Then, we would have progressed from a Third World political mentality to an enlightened political landscape.
n MOHAMED GHOUSE NASURUDDIN, Penang