There is a common denominator in all humans - the supreme and avid ability to blame. We blame everything that we can blame. We blame people for not understanding us. We blame our neighbour’s dog for causing our kids to have insomnia. We blame our neighbour’s squeaky children for disrupting our afternoon nap.

I know, many of you may blame me for making such a sweeping statement. Ok, I concede that it’s only the minority who will not blame but rather take responsibility for their own actions and behaviours.

It is very easy to blame, really. It neither requires courage nor any high level of intelligence to point a finger at someone else. And you know as well as I do that it takes exactly the opposite of that to assume responsibility. Whether it is an error of ownself or of another person.

Let’s look at the recent slip-up by our own Defence Ministry on the escape of Mas Selamat, a detainee deemed to be of high danger to the public if not held behind bars. As I was reading the report on the escape, I too fell into the all-too-easy trap of blaming. Shooting off some really not-so-friendly remarks then, I didn’t do anything further to convey my displeasure besides that verbal outbreak and silent fuming over such incredible facts.

The same night, I had a change of mind together with a change of heart. That’s when I planned to talk about this here now.  

There is not even a speck of doubt on what and where went wrong and who should be responsible.  The respective parties involved including the Gurkhan, ISD officers and even the WRDC Superintendant gave honest disclosure. Well, this is what I believe based on the reports that were published. The fact that they were all willing to step up and be fully co-operative, knowing very well that might put them liable to punishment, is something that I applaud.

This is about taking responsibility. Assuming responsibility is always easier said than done, especially when things have gone awfully wrong and the consequence of it could be very huge and drastic. It requires courage to acknowledge the fault and take the blame from angry people, people who have never ever been involved in any of such operations nor may have the necessary vigilance.

In a bid to survive office politics and to prevent becoming anyone’s scapegoat, we are now accustomed to be on the defence all the time. That means when anything goes wrong, we have to find enough evidence to show that we are not at any fault. At the same time, we sniff out possible clues to put the onus on another party, who most probably is the one to carry the major burden too.

The perfect scenario would be this person galantly accepted the charges, and dutifully remedied the situation and turn things around without any grouses or displeasure. The not so perfect scenario would be this person feeling indignant on him accepting most of the blame when it is supposed to be a team effort, and credit goes to everyone when success is achieved, so why should the mistake be undertaken by him solely? You know as well as I do which scenario has a higher probability of occuring in reality.

in my opinion, to help this person pick up the pieces and move on, we need to first move on. That can be done by firstly putting a stop to all the blame game so that frustration can be cleared away, and secondly by focusing on what can be done to prevent such mistakes from happening again and to fill up the hole.

It’s easy to blame, but it is far from easy to shoulder the responsibility, learn the painful lesson and to move on. Let us help these people by making it slightly less painful for them to take up their duty and to continue discharging their best efforts in their specific roles by stopping all the blamng, shall we? 

Rather than using 10 minutes to list down all the grievances, why not use put better use to such time and work on the possible solutions instead?

I hold this view not solely towards the Mas Selamat issue but mainly on life in general. Any thoughts on this that you’d like to share with me and all the readers?