The Bar Council’s recent tepid stand following the Lam Shang Leen Report is an nth confirmation of the mentality and ethos that often prevail among the most elite professionals in whom we entrust the wellbeing of our society and safeguard of our democracy.
Reality and truth matter more to me than any other trappings or intellectual shenanigans!
Among the many factors corrupting our institutions in this country is the rampant ‘corporatist’ mentality prevailing among elite professionals.
When education, health and justice …. even the media become a money-making business foremost, and the professionals thereof can rationalize the perversion of their sacred mission to perpetuate greed and manipulation, then we are really in a free fall to decadence. Is it not time we woke up and took full measure of our complacency vis-à-vis such key professions and remind them to stop rationalizing the unacceptable and unethical for selfish interests? About the urgency to put some basic morality and country’s interests above ‘corporatist’ ones. Trade Unions and NGOs should also be concerned by this higher call of conscience! Not merely standing up to often defending a culture that is undermining the very foundations essential for a healthy and harmonious democratic society.
Dear friends, stop with the rancid and manipulative slogan … ‘mazorite pe fer zot travay byin, fodre pa zeneralize akoz enn minorite’. Rubbish! Look at the bigger picture in depth: at the profound impact on the institution and governance system as a whole. We need to dare call a spade a spade and stop rationalizing. Stop treating some professionals (especially unscrupulous money machines) as sacred cows in our country.
The trivialization and rationalization narrative of ‘zis enn minorite bla bla’ is the biggest alibi for the rotten minority to continue expanding exponentially in our midst. Learned friends of the Bar Council and other noble professionals, what should it take for you to wake up to the reality prevailing among your colleagues and peers? If we are reluctant to openly condemn, don’t use rhetoric and play of words in public opinion to defend, trivialize or rationalize the ‘unethical’, the acceptable. Do it now as patriots. Otherwise, tomorrow will be too late. Hear the voice of your conscience and ponder upon what sort of legacy we are leaving in society and the role models we are creating for our youth.
If we are still faring fairly well as society, it’s because most people outside some corporatist professionals are extraordinarily tolerant and are still behaving decently. Not because of the corporatist rationalization instinct of some self-serving and narcissistic professionals. Wake up and start looking beyond the ken of our fenced ‘pastures’!
Our country deserves more patriots and lesser egocentric ‘corporatistes’!