Research on the Malaysian leadership under way

Under the grants from the Perdana Leadership Foundation, 5 malaysian scholar are to conduct research into the nation’s leadership history. Read about this at the Star online.
Research on the Malaysian leadership under way

The research topics are as follows:
1. Malay intellectualism through the thoughts of three prominent thinkers
2. the politics of national identity through the country’s four prime ministers
3. Malaysia's past foreign relations
4. Dr Mahathir’s approach towards regional development and Asean
5. the pattern of opposition towards Dr Mahathir’s declaration of Malaysia as an Islamic state

well, it is always good to learn from the history. But granting a research grant of RM10,000 to RM50,000 for these kind of research, is it really worthwhile?

As how my colleague put it, we human likes to worship the past, especially those good old days..

But, is it really that, nowadays we don't see any more of the moment that we should be proud off? Ok perhaps, our first austronaut eating roti canai and drinking tea tarik in batik shirt, is not something we should be proud off, but I am sure there are things that we can be really proud of as a Malaysian. One thing for sure, the stable government and the harmony multiracial/multicultural country.

People always take it for granted, we look back into the past, on how glamourous we used to be and so on and so for, and we forget that we should work even harder for now and the future. So that one day, our son'son can look back and say, "Yes, our past generation did something good"

My only hope is that, the valuable grant could be use in a more practical way. Instead of researching how good our past prime minister was, or how we treat our neighbour, we could use the money to train our younger generation to be a even better prime minister one day.

"History is more or less bunk. It's tradition. We don't want tradition. We want to live in the present and the only history that is worth a tinker's damn is the history we made today."
-- Henry Ford (1863 - 1947), Interview in Chicago Tribune, May 25th, 1916