(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
