Malaysia Doesn’t Have a Sense of Direction, and How We Can Find One
I don’t know about you, but for every conversation I’ve struck upon with my peers, if given enough time, resentments and frustrations on…
I don’t know about you, but for every conversation I’ve struck upon with my peers, if given enough time, resentments and frustrations on Malaysia’s political turmoil inexorably surface among the topics of indisputable agreement. We know the major ones: rampant corruption, chaotic politicking, and antiquarian affirmative action policies cross the minds of even the least astute. Of course, don’t forget about the nation’s incompetent management of Covid-19, class-discriminatory punishments for breaching SOPs, and the desperation to silent exposés against the establishment.
Even if you’re not invested into Malaysia’s latest farcical political dynamic, roving around social media, it requires minimal effort to spot #KerajaanGagal on Twitter, Fahmi Reza’s apparently seditious act against the royal queen on Instagram, and the outrage towards police brutality against Mr Ganapathy on basically any social media platform. During Pakatan Harapan’s regime, Dr. Lim Teck Ghee — academic who wrote countless blogs critical of the Barisan National administration which blocked them from public viewing, but were later compiled into the book, Challenging the Status Quo — said in a conference that the incumbent administration’s reform agenda was an “unmitigated disaster”. Applied to the current one, such a phrase instantly becomes a euphemism.
How did we arrive in such a situation? Is it racial bigotry? Or is it due to a malfunctioning economic system? Perhaps it is politicians’ and their ilk’s engrossment in hoarding prestige and wealth — these are the well-perceived suggestions circulated among the aggrieved voices in Malaysia, and they are not wrong; but I believe all of those problems are rooted in an elusive truth; the answer lies in the title.
Malaysia doesn’t have a sense of direction
Malaysia doesn’t have a sense of direction. What I mean is that Malaysia is patently aware of what she doesn’t want to be, but doesn’t know what she wants to become. Even if the drive for change is there, our ambitions toward nation building are so divided that change would stir huge groups into rebellion hence making no meaningful progress, if not dragging the whole country into dangerous territory. Politicians who anticipated such a response shy away from audacious, grandiose rhetoric. For example, look at the political campaigns precursor to the 14th General Election. The Opposition’s laziness and reticence restricted them to the armchair work of criticizing the faults the establishment failed to address, and advertised themselves as the fateful alternative, with no reason other than that they’re the lesser evil. Even though the reelection of a veteran leader would comfort us with his veneer of strong leadership, if your political party’s deciding appeal is as uninspiring as to extinguish corruption, let’s say we successfully achieve this (evidently pollyannaish), what’s next? Orchestrate another political crisis and announce yourself as the solution of the problem you created so that the electorates can feel good about their votes? Seriously, we can do better than this.
If Malaysia’s politics keeps chastened by cowardice, at best, our country would remain static. Like a minor among the adults in the room, our sense of progress will be passively defined by foreign trends. Let them be climate change actions and the adoption of 5G, the manifestos would be veritably winning but not geographically unique; at worst, the poverty of ideas would invite the loudest religious zealots to steamroll the political discourse, rousing untapped emotions of the aimless electorates, regressing our nation into a world with moral standards comparable to the Middle Ages. Dystopia of the like is sprouting under our feet: the “moderately” religious superstars who disseminate such malicious revelations are trumpeting their resounding inroads into our backyard. At the present, our country is teetering in the middle — the absence of a unified compass for the future leaves politicians to pamper their own personal interest. Instead of aiming for a long term ambition, people at the top started to wallow in short-term gratifications. The expediency for power and money devastates the whole country in their wake, further perpetuating cynicism by the rakyat, and the racial bigotry within.
I’ll remind you that this hasn’t been an eternal problem, certainly not during the Independence movement. As attested by Tunku Abdul Rahman’s speech after returning from the MERDEKA mission:
“ I saw wonderful cooperation between the Malays, Chinese, Indians and other races. I was very much impressed because they are not particularly concerned about race so long as they come from Malaya. They only want Independence and nothing else.”
— Malaysia: The Road to Independence
Imagine a time when the people and their grandparents believed that their country would be forever colonized under one or another colonial power. The idea of a Independence was so powerful that separate factions who used to find a greater cause overseas (Malays the Islamic renaissance in the Middle East and the formation of Greater Indonesia; Chinese the civil war in mainland China and later the invasion of the Japanese empire; Indians the independence of India from the British) tore down the walls of division erected by the colonizers, and started to look after their neighbours. You can see it in the unity of the three major racial groups in the Alliance Party. You can see it in the polls of the first General Election, when the pro-independence Alliance party won in a landslide. You can see peasants and businessmen don’t stay here just to eke out a living. Instead, something nobler, something previously unthinkable, compelled their regular presence in rallies and newspaper stands. 3 manifest destinies merged into one, and the Jalur Gemilang triumphantly superseded the Union Jack, later spreading its unwavering cause into further lands in 1963. Without our ancestors marching abreast under the banner of Independence, where are we now?
According to Tunku, Independence is not the denouement for this new tiny country. He relentlessly proclaimed that Independence was the means to a more ambitious end: — what I call the Malaysian dream — to live in a secular, liberal society, where “men of all creeds and races grow up together and live together in happy surroundings”. Even after Independence, therefore, this grander vision impels leaders away from hijacking their own country and citizens away from feeding defeatism. And that did not follow the absence of glimmering results. Years after, militant communism was finally extinguished, the economy booming, and Malaysia’s diplomatic virtuoso in the global stage elevated the nation into international prestige. The world was eyeing on the promising future of this wunderkind.
Of course, I shall spare myself from romanticizing the “great old days”. The honest recount of history doesn’t allow indulgence in rosy-spectacled revisionism. During the same period, groups were discontent with the details of achieving the Malaysian Dream. Non-Malays remonstrated the unequal rights bestowed to them; Malays were paranoid of losing their sovereignty as the “Sons of the soil”. Trappings of such unsettled tensions were instantiated in the resignation of Dato’ Onn Jaafar from UMNO for advocating non-Malay membership in his founding political party. Later, the Malaysian Dream began to fragment between Tunku and Lee Kwan Yew — a harbinger of separation between their respective territory. Then, the irreparable tug-of-war exploded during the May 13 event. Amid the skirmishes, what followed was the fall of Tunku Abdul Rahman, and quite predictably, the Malaysian Dream started to become opaque. The successive leaders of the country failed to inherit Tunku’s vision, and instead attempted to modify it to something divergent, if not jettison it for something vague and abstract. This confusion, manifested in the social and economic failures in our country, have persisted till today.
In short, owing to the careless preservation of the Malaysian Dream, the irony of fate turned a blazing, visionary tiger into a wounded, self-flagellating kitten. Unlike real-life kittens, don’t expect foreign forces for bona fide salvation. Curing the wounds would be a reasonable response, but if we don’t know where to go, what’s the point of healing them in the first place?
How can we find Malaysia’s sense of direction?
I hope that this article has so far convinced you of my thesis. As the torch-bearer of Malaysia’s tomorrow, I believe that we — the youth — are under urgent need to set out soul-searching for a new Malaysian Dream and resetting the tone of effective nation building. This Manhattan project in delicately engineering a new Malaysian Dream wouldn’t come to fruition unless everyone plays a role. For me, it can be broken into two parts, which work in concurrence with each other: Dialogue and Direction.
Dialogue. It is firstly an acknowledgement that our similarities are more significant than our differences. Although we have been liberated from Britain’s colonial grab, the legacy of “divide and conquer” is still fettering the minds of fellow Malaysians. Just admit it: despite our vociferous declaration of ourselves as anti-racists (or the hackneyed phrase of “I don’t see colour”), an honest observation of yourself would tell you that you are kinda… racist — but through no fault of your own. It originates from “nature”: the psychological fear stepping out of the comfort zone, and the evolutionary instinct to compartmentalize and classify objects and people; and it also originates from “nurture”: instead of engaging with real people and establish real understanding, parents, teachers in our early childhood, politicians, and preachers manufacture discord. The continuous reinforcement of stereotypes validates our narrow perception of other groups into neat boxes, as if we had known every inch of their way of living even before encountering them. This arrogance sops our capability to empathize, and in a way pushes each of us nearer to a description of a sociopath.
“Dialogue” is to break the barriers set up by nature and nurture, and I believe Sarawkians, in this respect, stand out among the states. Compared to West Malaysia where religion, language and appearances are conterminous with race, Sarawak is so diverse and intermingled that the idea of stereotype becomes absurd: Sarawakians who look Chinese might be Muslim, pinafore-clad Malay girls might not wear hijabs, and there is a good chance that a random English-speaking Sarawakian might actually be a mixed-raced native! Because most individuals cannot immediately judge another’s race and jump into stereotypical conclusions, tolerance and openness become emblematic of Sarawak’s identity.
To the rest of the states, each of us is entrusted to emulate Sarawak’s virtue, a few practices come to my mind: Don’t police others for not obeying your prejudices (such as shaming a Muslim worker for drinking water during fasting period), and take any opportunity, like a curious child, to meet friends who belong to unfamiliar backgrounds. It would tempt you to improve your non-native tongue too, which always speaks wonders for social cohesion (Sarawakians speak in English interracially. But English doesn’t have to be the medium for social binding). Another thing about Sarawak is that interracial dating and marriage are also commonplace. Hence, although this relates to all religions, abolishing Islam’s decree to convert non-Muslims under conjugal reasons is a potent catalyst for intimate rapport between divided groups. Such endeavour is placed upon no one other than the brave Muslim reformers within and beyond our nation.
Next is “Direction”. It is the cultivation of a dream, for all Malaysians to aspire to. A detour through the Malaysian Dream’s fiasco serves valuable insight to the brittleness of a uniting vision, and which should inspire us to aim higher than our grandparents. To make the new Malaysian Dream work, some requirements must be fulfilled: even though the dream is situated far across the horizon, its atmosphere palpable, its image crystal clear. It must be unsullied by obscure utterances of “diversity” and “tolerance”, or the trite and passé rhetoric of “Malays, Chinese and Indians” (our native friends have feelings after all!). In search of the Malaysian Dream on the other hand, Lee Kwan Yew’s shrewd quote deserves mentioning:
“To understand the present and anticipate the future, one must know enough of the past, enough to have a sense of the history of the people”
Coupled with informed reference to our personal experience, honest understanding of the past could aid us comprehending the zeitgeist of the present. Through the complex chains of cause and effect, we could identify the individual cogs and wheels that dictate the socioeconomic system we find ourselves today, and the probable transitions it could entail. Some historical events could lead to social disequilibrium in near futurity, and the new Malaysian Dream has to harness the force of history to not only nudge away the nation from disaster, but also adjust its bearing to our desire — just like studying the laws of aerodynamics to carry people up the sky. The Malaysian Dream doesn’t have to be perfect in first making; it could be subject to constant investigation and revision along the way, but the main spirit of the vision shouldn’t recede.
Shall we start then?
We are truly living in unprecedented times. Although a glimpse of current affairs would most likely make us feel hopeless, we shouldn’t be discouraged from at least reigniting the sense of purpose. The sense of desire. Hope. Malaysia is falling apart, because there is a vacuum of aspiration in our country. It is our obligation to fill that with something worth fighting for. Don’t vacillate, don’t hesitate. Otherwise, it would be too late.
[Written by Yew Jun Hao; author’s credit to M. San Juan]
References:
Looking back: the Historic Years of Malaya and Malaysia, Tunku Abdul Rahman
A Short History of South East Asia, Peter Church
Malaysia: the Road to Independence, Tunku Abdul Rahman
The Laws of Human Nature, Robert Greene