The ongoing debates over the new manifestos unveiled by the
Workers' Party perhaps has opened up a certain pandora box of sorts
- are the existing manifestos of political parties including those
of the incumbent party in power adequate to address today's needs
and aspirations of the citizens.
For example, do they provide guidance and inspirations to the
parties to strive to fulful fresh challenges in the new age. In my
personal opinion, the new party Manifestos of today should cover
the following basic needs and aspirations of the people:-
(1) Identify new challenges, set new directions and create social
and cultural aohesiveness among the people to bring about a vibrant
and caring classless society free from elitism and
discriminations.
(2) Set high standards of morality among leaders e.g. leading by
personal examples so as to more effectively mobilize the people to
accept new challenges and sacrifices, acceptance of long-term pains
for the sake of preserving competitiveness and survival, fiscal
prudence through creating annual budget surpluses and reserves and
charging of full market costs through corporations of essential
medical, housing and transportation services.
(3) Regular review of policies that may cause problems and hardship
among the less endowed section of the population e.g. meritocracy,
granting of benefits like scholarships, employment or investment
opportunities to foreigners etc.
In the light of the problems uncovered in the NKF saga and the
white elephant fructus, it would appear necessary to re-examine
basic policies and solve diverse problems, set direction so as to
find new common grounds to better unite people into accepting
discomforts of certain good but painful policies for the collective
good of all. It is only through the new challenges that all
citizens can be expected to strive for maximum good of the maximum
number.
LEADERSHIP QUALITIES
Leaders of the new age in particular should be selected and groomed
to lead people with personal examples and good corporate
governance. Leaders in particular should be expected to possess
certain basic qualities :-
(1) Passion,
(2) Ability to Motivate followers,
(3) Ability to get people to work with coordination and apply
knowledge.
(4) Ability to translate complex goals and ideas into
implementation processes to bring about competitiveness, technology
start-ups and jobs etc.
(5) Invest monies and perform tasks with Accountability and
Transparency
(6) Collective leadership by core team to make major
decisions,
(7) Sense of integrity free from theoretical assumptions or
controls that stifle mass participation in knowledge
application.
PATIENCE AND DETERMINATION
Many a times, past policies failed not because of lack of
intelligence or academic abilities but because of lack in other
areas e.g. patience and determination to motivate and persuade
people to common platforms for the collective good of the nation.
Such beliefs should be practicable and attainable and of benefit to
the people not just in the long term but short and medium term and
should be free from conceptual stuffs which might cause wastage of
time and resources and hardship.
HUMILITY AND RELIABILITY
:eaders should be selected from people who are in possession of
visible humility of servant, reliability, sense of justice, empathy
to attain social and economic wellbeing of all.
HONOUR AND INTEGRITY
He should be honourable, possess integrity and not engage in money,
coflicts of personal or interest in contracts or self-reward or
self-promotion or assumptions based on fallacies or rhetorics or
empty promises.
SOCIAL AND CULTURAL VIBRANCY
Beside the above-stated basic qualities, leader should cultivate
in-depth understanding of the intimate relationship between social,
cultural and economic characteristics of the people so as the
people could be made to nurture and unleash their skills and
talents of the people through interactions to reach ultimeate
vibrancy and excellence.
BROAD-BASED EDUCATION AND KNOWLEDGE APPLICATION
Leaders should strive to be practical and result-oriented not just
on account of personal efficiency but the overall efficiency of the
whole team. They should constantly equip them with skills and
knowledge application abilities through broad-based practical
education.
USUAL MISTAKES - JUSTIFICATIONS AND DENIALS
Finally, leaders should avoid resort to justifications or excuses
or denials of problems thereby blurring the accountability or
transparency in implementation of correct and equitable major
policy or performance mistakes.
IMPLEMENTATION ABILITY THE KEY
Above all, leaders should be concerned with efficiency of
mplementation and results of whatever policies and beliefs through
carrying them out in tangible work processes to enable all to
participate in innovation and knowledge application and compete
together as a team.
Leaders shoudd not just be concerned with taxing and collections of
revenues or accumulating them as surpluses but the wise use of such
surpluses to benefit job creation or lowering of costs of basic
services to his people.
Leaders shoudl practise people-friendly policies and avoid using
petty controls and regulations, or artful creative accounting,
double taxing and recovering of costs to avoid causing hardship to
the people.
Leaders should treat people as true partners so that all will have
a part to play as a team and all will be totally involved in
decision making and effective implementation working towards
results.
Above all leaders should work towards maximizing utilization of
available resources e.g. empty properties, vacant lands, idle
capitals to create jobs and realize innovations, entrepreneurship,
application of knowledge and value-add competitiveness.
When leaders have identified all challenges, such challenges should
be laid down in objective and accountable tangible work processes
to empower staff so that the whole team will work towards attaining
the objectives and goals without being hindered by any forms of
self-centred or intuitive policies or assumptions.
Finally when over time, leaders should be prepared to "let go" and
let his team manage tasks from overall perspectives and committed
processes to produce team efficiency and productivity to attain
larger results and objectives.
