Anifah gives diplomacy a Sabah flavour
Published on: Thursday, January 08, 2015
Kota Kinabalu: It is commendable that much travelled Foreign Minister Datuk Anifah Aman sees the need for more talents from East Malaysia and particularly his own state Sabah to serve the country in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, especially after Malaysia assumes a seat in the United Nations Security Council and the 2015 Asean Chair. Some interns are from Sabah besides others with excellent command of English who graduated from the Institute of Diplomacy and Foreign Relations (IDFR).Notable from January was the appointment of Tan Sri Rastam Mohd Isa, a former experienced diplomat and former Secretary-General of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to head the Institute of Strategic and International Studies (ISIS) Malaysia as its new Chief Executive augurs well for the country's image.
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Although another ISIS acronym has gained international notoriety for the terrorist group Islamic State of Iraq and Syria when Malaysia's Institute of Strategic and International Studies, the country's oldest think tank first laid claim to it.Rastam minced no words when he opined that, "For a diplomat, skills in and command of languages are essential. Unfortunately, many of our diplomats do not feel the need to improve themselves in this very important aspect of a diplomat's career."Rastam aptly put it: "The Institute of Diplomacy and Foreign Relations (IDFR) has developed a very good reputation primarily as a diplomatic training institution. It has trained scores of diplomats and officials not only from Malaysia but also other countries and has established linkages with other diplomatic academies and training institutions all over the world.
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"While maintaining its training role, IDFR should expand its capacity for research especially in areas such as the political, social and cultural traits and peculiarities of countries and regions."Based on the research findings, it can produce studies, papers and reports that could help in furthering our understanding of those countries.
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"These would be useful to diplomats, business people, voluntary workers, expatriates and even the ordinary tourist and could help avoid situations such as the case of child abuse by Malaysian parents in Sweden or when Malaysian companies lose money in foreign countries for lack of understanding of the business culture there."In this regard, our diplomats abroad can be encouraged to participate in the research work and their effort and product could be counted in the assessment of their performance or they can even be rewarded with some form of academic recognition."The key tools in creating good and professional diplomats essentially are good training and mentoring with a positive attitude among people.""Success can only come with a positive attitude, willingness to learn and improve and the drive to excel; qualities which require self-motivation and introspection and cannot be easily acquired simple through training," he stressed, and certainly not through political favouritism.On Asean, Rastam said, "Malaysia has been gearing itself to become more integrated with the rest of Asean and the world and to attain the status of a high-income economy and developed nation by the year 2020.Stay up-to-date by following Daily Express’s Telegram channel.
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