(Delivered at the closing ceremony of the AARRO Conference in Kuala Lumpur,
Malaysia, March, 1993)
Kuala
Lumpur, Malaysia
March,
1993
New Opportunities
As President of AARRO (Afro-Asia Rural
Reconstruction Organisation) for the next three years, I would like to tell you
some of my opinions on few subjects that might be useful for us in our efforts
to develop individuals and organisations in our countries towards the discovery
of new opportunities for our people in the pursuit of a better quality of life
for the underprivileged in the rural areas.
As far as the development of individuals is
concerned, despite being of different religions, cultural backgrounds and
political system; and despite being from different continents, we recommend
certain values that have been propagated by our Honourable Prime Minister, Dato’ Seri Dr. Mahathir bin Mohamad at a
leadership lecture on January 1, 1992, as values relevant to all.
These values have been tested over time in
countries such as Japan, South Korea and Taiwan. It is hoped that with these
correct values, individuals in all the member countries of AARRO can improve
their performances and the quality of their lives.
The five values that our Honourable Prime
Minister introduced in his leadership lectures are:
·
Trust
·
Discipline
·
Courage
·
Diligence and
·
Loyalty
Trust
It is unfortunate that in developing
countries, particularly, among the poor, the degree of trustworthiness in
diminishing.
Without being trustworthy, it is difficult for
any programme to succeed.
We have to, all the time, ask our people
whether we will be more trustworthy tomorrow than we are today; or will it be
that with more power, with more wealth and better position, we become less
trustworthy than we were when we did not have all those excesses.
Discipline
We also have to inculcate discipline in
ourselves. We have to do things the right way according to certain acceptable
rules and principles, within a certain period, just as in prayers, by the Muslims, we have to
perform, at a certain time, and in a certain way.
It is obvious that wherever we have extreme
poverty, we also have extreme indiscipline.
Discipline, however, is also lacking among
people living in prosperity. It is only
in those countries with leaders at all levels who are able to carry on in a
disciplined way can we succeed in doing anything great at all.
It is, therefore, necessary for our people to
keep on asking whether we are more disciplined today than we were yesterday, or
whether we will be more disciplined tomorrow than we are today.
Courage
The next value is courage. Whether in a democracy or in other systems, it is always
the lack of courage among leaders, or among individuals, that eventually rocks
the society. There is a saying that goes, ‘The
world will go the dogs when good people do nothing.’
All the time in our society, we will see
programs failing not so much because they are ill-planned, but because we do not
have people with enough courage to tell those who are implementing them that
they have gone wrong.
It is not only in implementation of the
programmes that we need the people with courage, but also we also need people
with courage in all walks of life at different levels in society. It is,
therefore, necessary for us to keep on asking whether we are braver today than
we were yesterday or we will be braver and have more courage tomorrow than
today.
Diligence
Diligence
– hard work, is one of the tenets required for the
success of any program. It is, therefore, very important to work hard.
The harder one works in the right field, the
better will life be. It is wrong for us to
try to train our people to be prosperous without work, to be enjoying
themselves without effort.
In Islam, we celebrate ‘Idul Fitr’ after fasting during the month of Ramadhan. We do not
celebrate ‘Idul Fitr’ before we go on
the month-long fast. It is, therefore,
necessary that we suffer first, sacrifice first, so that we succeed in the
future.
Loyalty
Loyalty
is the fifth value. Loyalty seems to fade with extreme
wealth as well as with extreme poverty. It is, therefore, necessary for us to
continue to teach our people to be loyal to what is good and not to deviate
from what is good because of changing circumstances.
That is all I wish to say on the development
of individuals. I would like to turn to the conditions for the successful
development of institutions. I am borrowing these principles from a book
written by a Professor for his wife who was elected to be the Head of the
Wives’ Organisation of the University.
Since the Professors’ wife is unfamiliar with
running an organisation and had no leadership experience and knowledge, the
husband had to go on leave to write a book entitled, ‘How To Run Any Organisation.’
I am sure books written by husbands for their
wives are the best books to read.
How to Run Any
Organisation
We have organisations in our country such as
the Farmers’ Organisations and the Fishermen’s Organisation. We have
co-operatives and political parties. You, too, have all types of organisations
in your countries. Organisations, however, will not work unless they fulfil the
five principles for the success of any organisation.
I have tried implementing those principles and
it has worked in my present Ministry and in the previous Ministries where I
have served.
Authority
The first condition for the success of any
institution is to understand authority. It
is important for leaders of all organisations to know and remember where their
power base lies. If leaders in organisations do not know or forget where their
powers come from, then they will forget the groups they have to serve which
have given them those powers.
We are all here today in AARRO because our
Governments have agreed to be members of AARRO and because our Governments
think well of AARRO.
In other words, it is the performance of AARRO
that will decide whether our Governments continue to stay in AARRO. When we are
here, we know that we have been sent by our Governments to ensure we take the
best from AARRO for implementation in our countries. Members of AARRO and AARRO
itself must remember this.
Communications
The next principle for the development of any
institution is communications. If
AARRO has done many good things over the years, then AARRO must be able to
communicate.
Since we are far apart, we cannot meet like
this often, and with AARRO lacking its own radio and TV stations or newspapers,
we have no alternative but to ensure that our members know what is happening
through other means.
I do hope members of AARRO, when receiving
minutes and reports, will read them, will study them very closely and will try
to understand them so that we are conversant with what AARRO is doing. AARRO
should also communicate what it is doing to non-member countries to inculcate
interest in becoming members of the organisation.
It
is no good for us to expect a country to be a member of AARRO first and only
then tries to know what good AARRO is doing. It is necessary for us to
select some good literature on the activities of AARRO and disseminate them to
people with power to decide in each of the non-member countries.
I believe that if all the good work that ARROO
members have done for their respective organizations are made known to non-member countries,
more countries might want to join and benefit from the body.
We have also to identify whether the people
who receive our circulars and our brochures are empowered to make decisions in
their countries, and we must also be aware whether our contact in each country
is dropping out of favour with the Government in power in that country. This
political sensitivity on our part will ensure that AARRO will grow from strength
to strength.
Productivity
The third condition for growth and success of
any organisation is productivity.
Looking at the way the Secretary-General
participates in the Conference, I have no doubt that he has the stamina… and I
believe with this stamina and with the co-operation of all in the Secretariat
and among member countries, we will see more quality programs in the future;
and the future of AARRO will be brighter as we go forth.
Morale
The fourth condition for organisational
success is morale.
Being productive, AARRO will continue to have
many programs. The programs must have higher percentage of successes than
failures. There is no point in having too many programs if most of them fail.
For morale, it is better to have a few good
programs, that succeed and succeed well. I believe that AARRO, having done
very well in the past, will continue to do very well in the future.
For high morale, there should be high
motivation among members of AARRO. Each
Conference of AARRO must be able to motivate the participants by upgrading
their level of acquaintances to that of friendship and not just as fellow
delegates.
I do hope, even when we are no more
representing our countries in AARRO, we will still remain friends. I will be
waiting for your New Year Greetings or whatever greetings you might send while
you and I are in or out of office. I will also remember you as much as I hope
that you remember me and the other Vice Presidents and the Secretary-General
here.
Let us hope that this gathering will not only
end up with the reports, but will end up with closer friendships among all of
us present here.
Change
The fifth condition for institutional development
is change. We must be prepared to
change. If there are programs that we are running which are not bearing
fruit, we might as well stop.
If we feel that there are other new and better
programs implemented by others that we need to adopt, we might as well adopt.
We should look at other countries, countries that have better programs, even
countries that are not so progressive but have some projects that are extremely
good. We should copy, we should learn to copy from others. We should not be too
proud of ourselves as not wanting to learn from others.
The Future
Futurists agree that the definition of a
developed country in the future will be a nation that has less than 20 per cent
of the working population in agriculture. A developed country in the future
will have less than 20 per cent of its
population in the manufacturing sector; about 30 per cent of the working
population will be in the knowledge sector and the other 30 per cent in the
service sector.
With the reduction of work force in the
agricultural sector, increasing production, is made possible by biotechnology and bioengineering.
Robots
The manufacturing sector will have less
percentage of workers although production in the manufacturing sector will
increase to cope with demands. This is made possible by robots.
There are factories in Japan where the rate of
production of robots is one robot per robot per day. Each robot produces itself
faster than it takes for a human couple to have a baby. Robots will, therefore
take over from humans some of the routine manufacturing work.
Computers
Computers will enable the growth of knowledge industry.
In future, it is possible to have a university on two-acre piece of land with
50,000 students.
The students need not stay on campus, they
need only to have videos, telephone, fax machines and computer terminals linked
to the university’s data base.
In the past, for 50,000 students to have
50,000 telephone links, we would have needed five log-size copper cables.
With the discovery of optic fibre, it is now
possible to have one thin optic fibre to channel 50,000 messages simultaneously
to various terminals.
Knowledge
Knowledge is the future’s big industry. Of course,
with less farm work, more robots and computers, people will move less. When there
is less physical activity, the population will become more sickly. There would
be a need for more parks. More health farms will sprout everywhere and vitamins
and medicines will be in greater demand.
Fast Food
The women of the future will no longer be
confined to the kitchen – even in developing countries. There will be more fast
food outlets and restaurant chains to cater for people who will opt to eat out.
There will, of course, be other expensive
restaurants for people to go once, twice, of four times a month or once a week,
and not only on weekends, to enjoy themselves with families after living on
fast food for daily meals. We must be ready for these changes.
Opportunities
The third subject that I want to touch briefly
is the discovery of opportunities. During
my 19 years as a Member of Parliament of which 15 years as Deputy Minister, and
later, as Minister in charge of the rural population in agriculture, there is no other way to increase our people’s
income except by developing marketable skills for the production of marketable
goods and marketable services. Besides being lucky, there is no possibility for
us to increase income otherwise.
Quality of Life
The fourth subject is the promotion of the quality of life. It is important for
leaders in developing countries to concentrate on fulfilling the need of each
part of our body to have a balanced life, a life we can describe as being
healthy and of quality.
Polygamy
The poor in countries where polygamy is
possible, tend to have more than one wife. Does that really bring better quality
of life? It does satisfy their bodily needs.
There are also other needs that we have to
satisfy. We have to satisfy our eyes with beautiful things, with landscaped surroundings,
with beautiful flowers – colourful and scented.
Health… Love
We have to satisfy our ears with good music
and humour… not useless talk. We have to satisfy our noses with good scented
plants and good scented flowers. Our palates must be satisfied with halal tasty food and drinks. Our body
requires health, our minds need peace, faith for our heart, love for the
family, knowledge and motivation for all.
This much I have to say, in summary, of the
need of our people, based on my experience as a man who had been poor, born of
a poor family and as a person who, twelve
years ago, was entrusted with the responsibility of looking after the rural
population as Minister of National and Rural Development and as Minister of
Agriculture for the last six years.
Thank you.
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