Dear Mr Prime Minister,

To be honest, I am one of the many who had wished hard that you would not be my prime minister. Now that you are; besides my reluctant congratulatory wishes, I feel obliged to voice up some of my opinions about the kind of prime minister I would like to have.

I may be just a small commoner but I strongly believe that you would agree that every opinion matters.

There are certain values lacking in our present government that I would like to share with you here. Not all values can be legislated, but that doesn't mean it is not a proper topic for discussion. For example, I know I value good manners. Whenever I hear someone who says ‘Excuse me', ‘Thank you' and ‘Please', I feel that the world has hope. I believe I am not alone in this.

Yet we know the government can't legislate good manners though he government can encourage good manners in the civil service who serve the people. The same goes with competence. Nothing raises the people's hope more than dealing with a service which takes pride in their work or goes the extra mile - who actually seem to want solve our problem.

Unfortunately, this value is severely lacking across all government agencies. And Mr Prime Minister, you can't just talk about ‘Performance Now' without realising this. Now that you had talked about ‘Performance Now', please do make an effort to reinstall this simple value back into our government agencies.

Next is the sense of empathy of all cabinet ministers and especially you, Mr Prime Minister. This is most important value that you must take note of; it is not as simple as a call for sympathy or charity but is something more demanding. It is a call to stand in somebody else's shoes and see through their eyes.

1. Try to be in the shoes of a housewife whose her husband has just got retrenched and is struggling to send their children to school. Understand why she thinks the second stimulus plan is not helpful at all for the poor and retrenched families.

2. Try to be in the shoes of an ISA detainee's family member to understand his/her disappointment when their loved ones were not one of 13 which you had ordered releases. See through their eyes to understand why they think you are unfair and this act was considered a political ploy to negate the negative public perception the rakyat has of you.

3. Try to be in the shoes of a concerned parent who watches his children being taught mathematics and science in English by a teacher who can't speak fluent English. You will be able to share their concern as to why they oppose the PPSMI for the sake of their children's future.

4. Try to be in the shoes of an ordinary worker who faces heavy traffic while rushing to work yet they still need to give way to political leaders and royalty with outriders without hassle. How would they feel?

5. Try to be in the shoes of the rakyat to understand their unhappiness over the ‘double standard' attitude of all independent agencies act and how they act towards the opposition. Then you will understand why the rakyat thinks that the separation of powers no longer exists under the BN government; thus a majority of them are voting for change.

6. Try to be in the shoes of a victim of a snatch thief, a parent of a kidnapped child or a family member of a murder victim to understand why they are lacking trust in the government and police to provide a secure environment for them.

7. Try to be in the shoes of the people who are queuing up long hours at government agencies to get their little things done to see why they think that the government is wasting a lot of taxpayers' money hiring these incompetent people.

8. Try to be in the shoes of the voters to understand why they feel their vote has little meaning in Malaysia's style of democracy when the people they rejected in an election were appointed to be cabinet ministers. The rakyat is supposed to act as a first-phase filter to reject all leaders they rate as incapable and incompetent.

But sadly, Mr Prime Minister, you personally decided to bring back these filtered out persons and yet you are still wondering why the rakyat does not feel good about your cabinet.

9. Try to be in the shoes of a foreign investor to understand their concern over red tape when doing business here. Listen to them and learn from their complaints about a certain policies that they deem unnecessary and their perception about the transparency level of the business conduct here.

10. Try to be in the shoes of all taxpayers and EPF contributors to understand their frustration on seeing how the public money is wasted without accountability (for example: the RM5 billion loan to ValueCap and the incomprehensible 4.5% dividend pay out by EPF despite getting higher revenues last year).

Your first 10 days has yet to bring any positive hope to the rakyat. Perhaps the people surrounding you are not being empathic enough to understand the rakyat's concerns and feelings. The rakyat has yet to be able to distinguish what your main principles in governing are. Your recent selection of a cabinet just showed that you were making ‘pleasing everyone' your main principle.

This won't do the job for you, Mr Prime Minister. You need to set a set of principles for yourself and a consistent guideline to evaluate your cabinet if you are going to make your KPI evaluation a fair one.

All ministers must be subject to the same judgment according to the same criteria as required by you. Judging from the way you set up your cabinet, I doubt you have these criteria at hand.

Mr Prime Minister, here I would like to suggest a way for you to be an empathic prime minister (one that we urgently needed during these tiring times).

Try to spend 10 minutes a day, to make one random call to any ordinary folk around Malaysia (anyone - the poor, the blue collar workers, CEOs, teachers, labourers, a policeman, an army man, people from a church, mosque or temples, a businessman, an Orang Asli, etc).

Talk to them, and listen to their concerns. I am sure they will be happy to talk to you when they know that the prime minister is on the other side of the phone. Listen to their opinions, their daily struggles and what is their hopes for the new government. Post your conversations with them on your blog.

By doing this long enough, I strongly believe you will be able to find the denominator for your new policy that will carry a common hope and a common dream for all Malaysians.