The Travails of a Chief Minister

The Travails of a Chief Minister

They told me to be in politics

Is to serve the poor and marginalized.

As a fresh graduate my chances are automatic,

To be elected and state assemblyman realized.

But these allowances are not enough

For those in long houses.

Not even to buy a parang or plough

What more shorts and blouses.

Prayers to God Almighty daily

Get no response immediately.

What to do, resign and sit under the forest tree,

Meditate and hope from heaven drop the money?

Patience in politics paid off in time.

Soon I became the Chief Minister with lots of power.

Now I could do more for those without a dime.

I recall the time I spent in the forest bower.

Contemplating how to uplift the masses

In the long houses in jungle serene,

Where toilets are not needed for faeces

Where abound rivers and stream.

Soon the trees in the forest gave me a solution.

Gazette forest to agricultural land.

Tender it out for oil palm plantation,

Cut the trees for timber and sell them.

Ten percent will go to the forest dwellers

Who now have no land or long houses.

Seventy percent will go to the buyers,

And twenty percent to me who sold the state’s resources.

Everyone is happy, the long house owners

Are now living in concrete dwellings

With electricity and piped water, not like villagers.

Their fish are never caught in riverines.

But I forgot that they have to have money

To survive life among us,

So that they can buy food daily

And travel from home by bus.

Wonder where have I failed them?

My dream to help the poor and under-privileged

Have gone awry, and am I to be condemned

For my greed for power and riches?

(The Travails of a Chief Minister)

2

Just because I am Chief Minister.

Have ruled for a quarter of a century.

A widower, married a young girl who could be my daughter.

And she is my companion and lady,

One, who apart from my children

Expect to inherit my ill-gotten gains,

Invested in foreign bonds and fixed deposits hidden

In banks from Singapore to Bahrain.

Well, my dream for the original dwellers

Have back-fired to sustain me and my family

For a hundred years to come, and damn the anti-corrupters

Who sit in air-conditioned rooms and seeth with envy.

-  Khoo Soo Hay, 31.03.2013