How old is too old to hold political office?
Unlike the script of some sepia-toned spaghetti Western, where the lone cowboy, having cleared the town of its bullies and miscreants rides off into the sunset, some old fogeys refuse to fade into the background gracefully. No Ennio Moriconne music for a job well done as the credits roll (I see Clint Eastwood; who’s 93 in May this year by the way!)
Oenologists venerate Chablis, Chardonnay, or Beaujolais, which age into vintage – the longer, the better. Not a squeak is heard as they sit still, stacked in some quiet dungeon in a basement bunker. Until time to pop the cork, the only demand made is that the bottles are occasionally given quarter turns every so often to ensure optimum maturation.
Unlike vinification, the political process is less ‘cultured’ and more cut-throat, to the extent that ‘old dogs’ still can be seen running around patrolling – or is it terrorising – territory, however ragged or rabid a state they are in.
Oh dear, am I already tweaking the tail of some venerable ‘old dawg’ whose persistent barking is keeping the neighbourhood awake?
But that is getting ahead of ourselves. With the election due next year to elect POTUS #47, it is rather concerning to the rest of the world that making the running for the American presidency are a pair of granddads.
By this time next year, we may have a president who, in human terms, should be well past his ‘sell by’ date. Whoever wins, US voters would have chosen either – a Democrat who is a doddering old codger prone to verbal gaffes and is rather unsteady on his feet, or that ‘Orange Toupeed One’; he for whom the word ‘narcissist’ was coined!
The ‘two-party’ hegemony of US politics is such that Americans are rather evenly divided on whether they will live with a second-term Joe Biden, or that second-bite-at-the-cherry, Donald Trump!
‘Sleepy Joe’ – despite his rather ‘okay’ first term as president, will be 80. His younger rival would have just passed the biblical barrier of three score and ten, to somehow look, and appear jauntily sprightly, aged 74.
Isn’t it alarming that, much as we admire (some elements) of the American political system; it is one that can put in office a ‘criminal’ who goes so far as to contemplate pardoning himself using the power of Presidential privilege!
Ehem, closer to home, may we yet get a PM Centurion (need I say who – he who turned 98 on July 10?), should our Prime Minister Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim (who celebrated his 76th birthday on Aug 10) fail to stay on and stay on as PMXl after the next General Election?
Just like the US, isn’t it the height of incredulity that somehow, we will find ourselves being ruled by gerontocracy?
Do we want that? Can we live with it? Should we stand by and let that be fait accompli?
At the rate things are going, two coalitions will go into battle, and it is not an unlikely prospect that a Bersatu-Pas coalition might feature Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad as PMXl-designate. Should Pakatan Harapan win, a far from youthful Anwar may, this time, become PM again, and maybe this time round, accept the salary that goes with the position.
Dr Mahathir, in his dotage, has chosen a confrontational path now, rather than taking a backseat and playing the role of elder statesman. The pronouncements he mouths from the pulpit are long held. It is not surprising that the political climate now has provided the spur for him to vent his spleen.
These are sentiments on race, ethnicity and maintaining the special rights and privileges of the – for now – dominant race. The oft-repeated mantra relies solely on the notion that one race was here FIRST and that others are mere ‘pendatang!’
Some I share, some I don’t. Here, I’d like to touch on the role of vernacular schools and offer a solution, not merely prodding a bee hive and suffer the sting for such an irresponsibly callous act.
Here, I would even countenance the use of executive powers to force the issue. Barisan Nasional (BN) had that muscle for all of six decades, didn’t they – sorry, the Hitlerian, Putinesque, Kim Jong-un, and maybe Modhi tendency in me is somewhat latent, though now aroused!
Why not take elements of what works in such schools and make SKs and SMKs adopt it?
Next, equitable distribution of wealth. Create a Norway-type Oil Wealth kitty with bounty from oil palm, timber, bauxite, rare earth, musang king. We have so many able/capable fund managers, especially amongst the Bumiputera boys who benefitted from the NEP, who should not mind now to work pro bono.
I can go on and on but really, I think this is putting the cart before the horse. We should leave all the ‘hands-on tinkering’ to the next cohort of politicians – the post millennials in their mature 40s, or younger!
After all, it was through the agitation of one politician from their ranks – Syed Saddiq Syed Abdul Rahman – who enfranchised 18-year-olds with the vote.
It was also his party, Muda, that dared to include in their manifesto, doing away with multiple pensions of office bearers – especially since the financial burden of making those payments comes from public coffers.
I was attracted to this issue when I came across an article in the BBC that sought to knock a hole in the skull of our elder politicians and study if they are fit to impose their ‘dated’ wills on the rest of the younger populace.
The Bidens, the Trumps, and the ‘ehem ehem’ – in deference to all would-be-centurions – should slow down a little from the hectic, self-imposed busy schedule, to see the parlous shrinking state of their grey matter!
Or maybe look to Shakespeare in his ‘Seven Stages of Man’ on dotage, which can be instructive:
‘Dotage and death: He loses his mind in senility. His hair and teeth fall out and his sight goes. Then he loses everything as he sinks into the oblivion of death.
Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion,
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.
The views expressed here are the personal opinion of the writer and do not necessarily represent that of Twentytwo13.
