Merdeka – how do I feel?

 – Tan Sri Ramon Navaratnam

The Malaysian Insider

August 30, 2013

I am really happy that we as Malaysians are celebrating our 56th Merdeka, or our National Birthday, with relative peace and progress and a feeling of considerable achievement.

As in the case of our own birthdays, it is therefore a time of reflection, gratitude and for new resolutions that we must make to look forward to a better Malaysian way of life.

For me it is specially important to recall our first Merdeka, because I can say with pride that “I was there”!

Yes, I was at the Selangor Padang or Dataran Merdeka, with my cousin Leslie Abraham, on the eve of Merdeka 1957.

We watched awe struck, as we witnessed the lowering of the British flag, the Union Jack and the hoisting of our new national flag, which was later named the Jalur Gemilang, for the first time, as the clock in the tower of the Secretariat Building struck midnight!

The huge crowd cheered wildly and shouted “Merdeka, Merdeka!”, as the Malaysian flag reached the top of the flag pole. We all experienced the electrifying experience of  pride and the honour of historically entering a new era of Independence.

We got home late on our bicycles. I was then a 22-year-old Economics Undergraduate at the only university for both Malaya and Singapore.

The next morning I got up at the  crack of dawn feeling the exhilaration of welcoming the first dawn of Merdeka. My dear dad was not pleased that I was going to the spanking new  Merdeka Stadium, for fear of civil disturbances and many uncertainties at that time.

It is my dear mother who persuaded him to let me go from our home at Jalan Hose, near the present Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka, to the nearby Merdeka Stadium about 15 minutes walking  distance away.

I could not enter the Merdeka Stadium without an official invitation. So I did the next  best thing, that is to enter the stadium through a hole in the fence of my old school, the Victoria Institution, which as we all know is just beside the Merdeka stadium.

It was thrilling to see right across me, in the distance, Tunku Abdul Rahman, our beloved first prime minister together with the Sultans and the British Queen’s representative in their plumed cock hats and ceremonial splendor.

Immediately after the Proclamation of Independence, the Tunku led the massive crowd with loud cries of Merdeka, seven times!

We shouted ourselves hoarse, with pride and tears of joy as we celebrated our new born independence. What powerful emotional feelings we had with so much patriotism, high ideals and great expectations for a glorious future of freedom and a Better Malaya for all Malayans under our own Malayan Government rule.

Indeed, Malaya, and then Malaysia subsequently, went through many trials and tribulations   and much stress and strain.

First it was the Emergency, then the formation of Malaysia, Confrontation and the 1969 Racial Riots and the Financial Crisis. But our rich resilience and determination got us through all these major challenges.

We succeeded largely because of our Merdeka spirit of National Unity and strong sense of  belonging and love and loyalty to our Malaysia.

However, regretfully, the “uncertainties” that many felt at the dawn of independence  have re-emerged. Today, our sense of unity has been diluted by some ethnic polarisation , more religious bigotry, the brain drain, corruption and crime. There is now general concern about the pace of our future progress!

We are also caught in the Middle Income Trap, with poor prospects for a break out from  the trap – unless of course we adopt new policies and best practices, as a matter of priority.

On this our Merdeka Day therefore, “How do I feel?”

I feel that most Malaysians are still grateful for the relative peace, stability and progress that we have had and still enjoy, thank God. But we need to firmly resolve to raise our national collective determination and our political will, to further build  upon our several strengths and to overcome our many weaknesses.

We need to realise our own Malaysian Dream for an even Better Malaysia for all Malaysians and especially for the less fortunate amongst  us, in this  God given blessed country that is our Home Sweet Home!

May the Almighty bless us Malaysia and all Malaysians on this Merdeka day and in the future! – August 30, 2013.

* Tan Sri Ramon Navaratnam is the chairman Asli center of Public Policy Studies.

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Agenda kemerdekaan yang belum terselesai

by Zairil Khir Johari

The Malaysian Insider

August 31, 2013

Selama 56 tahun, rakyat Malaysia tanpa gagal menyambut satu perayaan yang cukup besar maknanya. Perayaan yang mengingatkan kita betapa berharganya nikmat hidup dalam keadaan bebas daripada cengkaman penjajah.

Dalam pada itu, umum juga menyedari bahawa penghayatan sambutan kemerdekaan bukan sekadar menggantungkan bendera kecil di kenderaan masing-masing, berdiri tegak di dalam pawagam semasa lagu Negaraku dimainkan atau berhimpun menunggu percikan bunga api pada detik 12 tengah malam.

Sebaliknya, kemerdekaan adalah sesuatu usaha pembinaan negara bangsa yang berterusan. Kemerdekaan bererti bahawa setiap anggota masyarakat memiliki hak dan tanggungjawab bersama untuk menentukan corak dan masa depan negara ini.

Kemerdekaan bererti bahawa pilihan rakyat menjadi pilihan keramat. Kemerdekaan bererti bahawa setiap insan yang bergelar rakyat dimartabatkan dengan kehidupan yang bermaruah dan peluang untuk menikmati berkongsi kekayaan negara ini.

Namun, walaupun sudah lebih setengah abad kemerdekaan, rakyat makin hidup dalam ketakutan dengan kadar jenayah yang kian meningkat. Hak demokratik pula tercabul apabila pilihan rakyat yang lantang dalam pilihan raya umum tidak berjaya diterjemahkan kepada realiti.

Kesenjangan pendapatan pula makin melebar sehingga negara kita mencatat Pekali Gini (Gini Coefficient) yang tertinggi di Asia Tenggara dan antara yang tertinggi di Asia. Begitu gentingnya jurang antara yang kaya dan miskin, akibat kerangka ekonomi kapitalis kroni yang menguntungkan segelintir elit serta kerabat mereka, sementara 40% rakyat terbawah terpaksa hidup dengan pendapatan purata RM1,500 sebulan seisi rumah.

Yang paling teruk, keharmonian dan kesepaduan antara kaum dan agama makin terancam. Saban hari media arus perdana menyajikan rakyat dengan sentimen-sentimen ekstremis perkauman dan agama, seolah-olah kebencian itu merupakan sifat fitrah masyarakat kita.

Apakah yang sudah terjadi dengan matlamat Bangsa Malaysia? Harapan mulia yang pernah diimpikan kini lemas diselubungi dendam kesumat gara-gara politik sempit dan pemimpin dangkal.

Justeru, kita memerlukan pembaharuan yang ketara dalam kancah politik negara kita. Politik lama – politik perkauman dan agama, politik kebencian dan ketakutan – sudah jelas gagal dan perlu dibelakangi.

Yang diperlukan adalah keazaman politik baru, iaitu politik bertunjangkan dasar, yang menggalakkan perdebatan serta berjiwa besar. Sekiranya pemimpin politik kita sanggup melakukan perubahan ini, nescaya matlamat Bangsa Malaysia boleh dicapai.

Kita juga memerlukan kerangka ekonomi baru yang mampu mengagihkan kekayaan dengan lebih saksama. Bantuan sosial, pendidikan dan juga ekonomi harus diberikan – tetapi kepada mereka yang perlu dan bukan kepada mereka yang bergelar kroni. Ini tidak akan tercapai selagi sistem ekonomi berdasarkan perkauman tidak dapat diganti dengan sistem yang menyasarkan golongan yang paling memerlukan bantuan tanpa mengira kaum dan agama.

Akhir sekali, kunci kepada pembinaan Bangsa Malaysia terletak dalam sistem pendidikan. Pada masa kini, sistem pendidikan yang seharusnya menyatukan rakyat tampaknya semakin jauh daripada sasarannya. Menurut laporan awal Pelan Pembangunan Pendidikan Malaysia 2013 – 2025, enrolmen murid bukan Melayu di Sekolah Kebangsaan hanya 6% manakala enrolmen murid bukan Cina di Sekolah Jenis Kebangsaan Cina (SJKC) mencapai 12%.

Statistik ini seolah-olah menyatakan SJKC lebih bersifat “kebangsaan” berbanding SK dari segi komposisi kaum. Sudah tentu, ia juga menonjolkan kegagalan kerajaan untuk menjadikan jurusan Sekolah Kebangsaan sebagai pilihan utama masyarakat.

Oleh itu, sudah tiba masanya kita memikirkan kembali bagaimana untuk mengembalikan fungsi pendidikan sebagai pemudahcara perpaduan nasional tanpa mengabaikan kepentingan mana-mana pihak.

Bagi saya, satu-satunya cara adalah melalui proses disentralisasi dalam sistem pendidikan. Saya percaya, kita harus mengagihkan tanggungjawab dan peranan utama dalam pendidikan kepada pihak-pihak berkepentingan (stakeholders), yakni ibu bapa, guru-guru, murid-murid serta masyarakat tempatan.

Sejauh mana yang mungkin, campurtangan politik harus dielakkan. Ini kerana secara lazimnya politik itu menjadi punca segala masalah, sepertimana yang sudah berulang kali kita alami sepanjang sejarah kita (memori yang paling segar kes PPSMI yang dilaksanakan semata-mata untuk memenuhi kehendak seorang pemimpin).

Sesudah 56 tahun bergelar Merdeka, besar harapan saya agar 56 tahun yang akan datang tidak akan menampakkan kegagalan impian dan harapan nenek moyang kita yang telah banyak berkorban demi mewariskan negara yang megah, maju dan saksama.

Maka, janganlah kita sia-siakan usaha mereka. Sebaliknya, marilah kita meneruskan agenda kemerdekaan dengan mengukuhkan lagi batu asas kenegaraan kita dan mendirikan rangka ekonomi, siasah dan pendidikan yang teguh bagi penjalinan Bangsa Malaysia pada suatu hari kelak. – 31 Ogos, 2013.

                This entry was posted on Saturday, 31 August 2013, 7:08 pm and is filed under
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Not Yet the Real Merdeka

By Kee Thuan Chye

Yahoo! News

29.8.13

As we prepare to commemorate Merdeka Day this Saturday – notice that I do not say “celebrate” – it would be timely to acknowledge that the real “Merdeka” has not happened yet.

I say this because we are still not free. We are still under the thrall of the masters who took over from the colonial ones in 1957. They are no different in their intent to oppress us. In fact, over the last few decades especially, they have proven to be even more oppressive. And if the British imperialists divided us in order to better rule over us, the current masters have outdone them in this respect by employing the mechanism of religion on top of that of race.

The current masters also continue to use the instruments of power inherited from the British to control us, such as the Sedition Act, the Printing Presses and Publications Act, the Official Secrets Act, and the Internal Security Act (ISA) which was replaced by the Security Offences (Special Measures) Act and the Public Assembly Act.

In terms of freedom, we have hardly progressed. When I look back on my growing-up years in the 1960s, I find little difference between then and now. People viewed as Communists (even if they were not) or political threats were taken in under the ISA. Youngsters barely out of school were arrested, and some were robbed of their youth for as many as a dozen years.

Even former government ministers were not spared. Aziz Ishak was a minister in Tunku Abdul Rahman’s Cabinet until he resigned in 1963 because of irreconcilable differences with the Tunku. Two years later, he was detained under the ISA for allegedly collaborating with Indonesians to set up a government-in-exile. He denied this and wrote a book about his detention called Special Guest. The book was banned. The media was indeed controlled.

Dissent, especially if it came from a superior intelligence, was also not tolerated. Lee Kuan Yew was found to be too outspoken. So Singapore got expelled from Malaysia in 1965.

As the rock band The Who sang: “Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.”

The new penjajah (coloniser) still holds sway over us. These days, we tend to refer to it as the Umno-BN (Barisan Nasional) government. The emphasis is on “Umno” because it is the biggest party in the ruling coalition and, clearly, the one that calls all the shots.

It now wants us to fly the Malaysian flag to show our patriotism and celebrate the 56th anniversary of our independence. But flying the flag is only for show, and if we are truly patriotic, we don’t even need to do that. As for celebration, what is there to celebrate this year?

What is there to celebrate when we can feel the pain and pinch of our ringgit getting weaker by the day? The currency of Singapore, that small island with no resources that we expelled, is now worth 2.6 times more than our wretched ringgit.

Meanwhile, our budget deficit has increased substantially, and the prime minister has shown no indication of cutting it down. He seems to be spending more money. Our national debt is between 53 per cent and 65 per cent of our GDP, depending on whose calculations you believe. Our national debt apparently amounts to RM656 billion. The international agency Fitch Ratings has downgraded the outlook on our sovereign debt from “stable” to “negative”, which will affect our creditworthiness and potential as an investment destination.

Despite this, is the Umno-BN government still planning to spend millions to stage this year’s Merdeka Day celebrations, for which a good proportion of the money spent would go into kickbacks for cronies commissioned to procure supplies and get preparations done?

As for us ordinary citizens, what can we expect from the upcoming Budget? The likely imposition of a goods and services tax (GST) that will burden us further. Is that cause for celebration?

What about the testimonies of witnesses at the ongoing Sabah Royal Commission of Inquiry on illegal immigrants? What is there to celebrate when we learn from these that citizenships were allegedly given to illegal immigrants so that they would vote for BN and keep it in power?

If citizenships can be given so cheaply, and for such ulterior purposes, what is the value of being Malaysian?

This also reminds us of what happens on the other side of the coin, and makes us wonder what there is to celebrate when people who express dissent against what the Umno-BN government is doing are told to get out of the country. Even AirAsia X Chief Executive Azran Osman Rani was told to do that simply for criticising the Umno-owned newspaper Utusan Malaysia.

And, of course, what is there to celebrate when citizens whose forefathers came from other countries way back in the past are, from time to time, told to go back where their forefathers came from? Or reminded that they must be grateful they were granted citizenships?

What is there to celebrate when someone like High Court judge Mohd Zaki Yassin whom the Court of Appeal recently ruled committed misdirection in his presiding over the Altantuya Shariibuu murder case was last week awarded a datukship?

Does this indicate that the Government celebrates and rewards mediocre work? Or was this, as some people suspect, to reward him for doing the wrong thing right?

More important, what is there to celebrate when the country’s system of justice seems warped, reflected most clearly in the handling of the Altantuya case, including the recent acquittal of the two men who appear to have pulled the trigger and blown up the victim’s body with the C4 explosive?

What is there to celebrate when the crime rate is rising and many people have been shot dead in the past month, and the police are asking to bring back the outdated Emergency Ordinance to detain suspects without trial? To add clout to it, the Home Minister is giving his support. Are we progressing or regressing?

I could go on with more examples, but it suffices to say that many Malaysians are not in the mood to celebrate Merdeka Day because they know the country is broken and needs urgent fixing, and Umno-BN is not up to the task.

They don’t want to fly the Malaysian flag because they are concerned it might be misinterpreted as endorsing and supporting the Umno-BN government.

When I wrote about the Altantuya case last week in this same ‘Bull Bashing’ column, a reader responded with this comment: “If this is the type of government running and managing the country currently, I think I am reluctant to celebrate Merdeka. Right now the Rakyat of Malaysia are more interested in knowing the killer of Altantuya and the mastermind behind the killing than Merdeka Day. The Umno Government can celebrate Merdeka Day.”

Another reader wrote: “Merdeka untuk Umno leaders and cronies jelah. (Merdeka is only for Umno leaders and cronies) … Double standards so obvious … C4 was used to kill a Mongolian woman and yet no one is held responsible. Everyone who was involved got away! But normal citizens who asked for fair and clean elections were thrown in a cell. They do sound like ‘penjajah’ to me. So? Merdeka ke?”

I rest my case. We are still waiting for the real Merdeka. But first, we must get rid of the post-colonial penjajah.

* Kee Thuan Chye is the author of the new book The Elections Bullshit, which will be in bookstores starting this weekend.

                This entry was posted on Saturday, 31 August 2013, 12:11 pm and is filed under
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Tanda Putera imparts no value whatsoever

– Zikri Kamarulzaman

The Malaysian Insider

August 31, 2013

There’s been a lot of talk about Tanda Putera in the mainstream media lately.

I won’t be touching about the controversial bits, or the bad, sometimes emotionless acting (the Mahathir character was spot on, but unnecessary).

I will talk about its value as a movie.

Tanda Putera is a disaster in storytelling, two stories made into one, barely held together by Tun Abdul Razak’s character.

In fact, if you don’t know the subject matter or history, you will be completely utterly lost.

None of the characters were properly introduced in any way whatsoever. You’re just supposed to know who they are.

Same goes for the plot, with barely any background to explain what’s going on.

And there’s so much happening, and at such a fast pace, that you don’t connect with anyone or anything as the movie progresses.

The Universiti Malaya students who were friends caught in the middle of racial riots were weak.

There was no real sense of fear for them, no sense of how they really looked after each other.

You’re better off learning about unity and being friends with all races through a Petronas commercial.

Shuhaimi Baba’s defence about the movie being more about Tun Abdul Razak and Tun Dr Ismail Abdul Rahman, two men who gave up everything, including their lives for the country, also fell short.

Sacrifice in this movie means passing away while in office and hiding your illness.

Neither were shown as having a real impact on the nation, their deeds, a passing mention.

The best way to put it, is that this movie is “syok sendiri”.

It is hard to fathom how anyone will be inspired to be more patriotic by this movie, especially the youths who won’t have much to keep their attention.

This movie is a farce to our nation’s history, and its screening during Merdeka is nothing more but a ploy to make as much money as possible before people realise how bad it is. – August 31, 2013.

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56 years later – a fractured, polarised nation

Tommy Thomas

Malaysiakini

Aug 31, 2013
COMMENT The social contract, social compact or bargain reached by the three communities under the watchful eye of the British imperial power as a condition to Merdeka was that in exchange for full citizenship, a right to use their language and observe their religion, the non-Malays had to concede special privileges to the Malays to assist the latter to ascend the economic ladder.

It was a quid pro quo. It was a consensus arrived after hard bargaining, and has formed the basis of nationhood. In this equilibrium, the non-Malays were not to be relegated to second-class citizens: citizenship was not on a two-tier basis and there was going to be no apartheid, partition or repatriation.

What was required from the non-Malays at the time of Merdeka was undivided loyalty to the new nation. They could no longer owe their allegiance to the mother country, China or India. Racial differences were recognised. Diversity was encouraged. There was no pressure to integrate into one Malayan race.

A new nation was to be integrated over time, but as a plural society. Assimilation was out of the question. Thus, a united Malayan nation did not involve the sacrifice by any community of its religion, culture or customs. Minorities were not to be discriminated in a system of parliamentary democracy based on constitutional supremacy. In many respects, the establishment of Malaysia six years after Merdeka strengthened the social contract.

But as Malaya completes 56 years as an independent sovereign nation today, and more significantly, Malaysia turns half a century on Sept 16, do the 26 million Malaysians have reason to celebrate? Unfortunately, the popular response would be very much in the negative.

Twin forces

The twin forces of race and religion have substantially polarised the nation. Every issue of public life, however minor or insignificant, is given an ethnic undertone by politicians and the civil service, and glaringly publicised in the government-controlled mass media. Totally absent in the national landscape is a statesman like the Father of Merdeka, Tunku Abdul Rahman, the first prime minister, who is prepared to speak for the nation and the public weal, rather than from a parochial or sectarian perspective.

Even after the closest general election in our history, with the coalition governing the nation not enjoying majority popular vote, and with the next general election only due in five years, politicking of the worst kind continues daily.

The prime minister is not giving the leadership that he sought from the electorate, and which he received. With a 44-seat majority in the Dewan Rakyat, the BN government has a majority which is the envy of many governing coalitions across the globe. Yet, a sense of paralysis grips the centre.

Bread-and-butter issues which largely featured in the election campaign of four months ago, have still not been addressed at all. Not a day goes by without murders, rapes and armed robberies occurring in our homes and our streets. Rampant crime has undermined law and order.

The economy has been shaken by mounting debt; not just the national debt, but also consumer and corporate debt. Comparisons have already been made to the run-up to our 1997 financial crisis which was principally caused by a proliferation of debt.

Thousands of Malaysian companies and nationals speak with their wallets; they just take their money overseas in billions. Our currency has received a battering in the last month, resulting in speculation that Bank Negara may have to intervene to prevent further depreciation of the ringgit.

Bread-and-butter issues, as important as they are to the average Malaysian, still pale in comparison with the massive increase in ethnic tensions. What is the point of Talent Corporation spending hundreds of millions of taxpayers monies in an endeavour to attract Malaysians to return home when racial polarisation is on the increase in their nation.

Thousands of non-Malays have done brilliantly in businesses, professions and other private sector areas in Malaysia. They have flourished regionally and internationally in every society that values meritocracy. Hence there is a huge pool of talented non-Malays willing to be engaged in the public service.

Yet in their homeland, the civil service, the GLCs (government-linked companies), the universities, the army, the police – indeed senior positions in the entire public sector – are dominated by one race. How does one justify such massive hiring of personnel from one race to manage national institutions where national policies are made in a nation of multiple communities that claims there are no classes of citizenship or nationality.

Grand coalition

It is accordingly critical in the public interest that politicians of all parties cease polarising the nation any further.

All Malaysians must be treated with sensitivity and delicately. Feelings of communities, however weak and influential, must not be hurt. Hate speech must be avoided at all costs. The government must take the lead, after all the whole purpose of electing leaders is for them to lead the nation.

They must cease immediately playing the racial, religious and ethnic card, and take policy decisions that would promote a plural society. If all these actions can only be taken by a government of national unity, that is, a grand coalition of BN and Pakatan Rakyat parties, the national interest compels such an urgent outcome.

There is a genuine widespread concern that we must all play our part in rolling back the loud public discourse on race and religion. This is an awakening call. Unless remedial measures are taken soon, young Malaysians who have the world at their feet, will desert the nation because they feel they have no place under the Malaysian sun.

They are our future, but they see no future at home. That is the tragedy that must be avoided this 56th Merdeka, and this 50th Malaysia Day.

TOMMY THOMAS is a lawyer specialising in constitutional law.

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A review of ‘Tanda Putera’, a film that takes liberties with the truth

By Erna Mahyuni

The Malay Mail Online

September 1, 2013

KUALA LUMPUR, Sept 1 — For Merdeka, I watched Shuhaimi Baba’s docu-drama “Tanda Putera”. Fourteen other people were in the cinema at GSC Paradigm Mall in Petaling Jaya at 11.30am.

I am unsure if any of them enjoyed the film, though an elderly Chinese gentleman in the audience walked out halfway. My one regret is that I could not do the same. The heart of “Tanda Putera” is the friendship of the late Tun Abdul Razak Hussein and Tun Dr Ismail Abdul Rahman, played by Rusdi Ramli and Zizan Nin respectively.

Sadly, neither of the actors was up to the mark, but more on that later.

To call this revisionist history would be too kind. “Tanda Putera” is a poorly written, abysmally researched train wreck that makes our local soap operas look like arthouse films.

What amazes me is that it cost RM5 million to make this schlock.

Let me first start with the writing. The dialogue is cringe worthy and I am unsure if it is properly representative of the times. At a critical juncture, an aide described civil unrest as a ‘tension’ situation. Oh my bahasa.

There is no proper use of narrative in the script. Flashbacks are dumped into the film willy-nilly (possibly to keep the audience from sleeping), nonsensical subplots and completely superfluous characters abound with the last half hour dedicated to the deterioration of Razak’s health.

What Shuhaimi attempts to do is paint her impressions of the era and for the first time in film, address Umno’s favourite bogeyman: May 1969.

The problem here is that “Tanda Putera” makes no attempt at nuance. There is no balance; it is a limited and unabashedly prejudiced view of history, painting Malays to be put-upon, virtuous and generous people who have to put up with the ungrateful Chinese so easily swayed by the evil Communists.

To top off a horrid script, we have an ensemble cast with the collective expressiveness of IKEA furniture. Rusdi Ramli’s attempt at ‘method’ acting consists of him speaking in an unconvincing ‘old-time’ accent where he pronounces ‘rahsia’ (secret) as ‘reh-sia’ and having just two expressions. Either he is smiling with teeth or looking constipated. Like Keanu Reeves, for Rusdi there is no in-between.

Zizan Nin as Ismail fares no better. His forced camaraderie with Rusdi comes across as a parody of bromance, with a total absence of chemistry. A third of the film is just long, awkward dialogues where both men conspire to keep their wives (and the whole nation) in the dark about their respective health conditions.

The biggest travesty about Shuhaimi’s script is that it paints two of our greatest statesmen as pompous idiots who do not trust their wives.

And the Chinese and the DAP are mostly painted as radical subversives out for Malay blood and total dominion of the country. The ‘communist leader’ is never even given a name, as obviously it is easier to have just one Chinese baddie represent them all.

What about the women in the film? Both Razak and Ismail’s wives are miscast. You have a casting problem when supposed middle-aged women look younger than their teenaged children.

It isn’t all horrible acting, though. Ida Nerina as the stenographer Jah manages to out-act the entire “Tanda Putera” cast in her one minute of screen time.

Also difficult to believe is that Shuhaimi is an experienced director when the overall production value of “Tanda Putera” is the level of a first-year film student. The video-editing is sloppy, old footage is dropped into the film without proper context and looks out of place and there are so many stereotypical devices to the point of unintentional comedy.

For instance, characters show they are dying by either coughing blood or being unable to balance a teacup and saucer. The death scenes are badly done to the point of parody, making you think the director or actors have never seen someone actually die.

All the assassinations of senior police officials seem to happen on the same street, in the same car. Makes you think they should have put up a sign saying, “Do not stop at this junction or a Chinese communist on a motorcycle will shoot you.”

This film makes no mention of the fact that the Malayan Communist party had Malays in their ranks as well, even in their senior leadership.

But apart from all the artistic and technical problems, my biggest gripe is that “Tanda Putera” is a government-funded piece of propaganda masquerading as an artistic work based on ‘history’.

Sure, films like “Braveheart” and “Black Hawk Down” put entertainment value over factual accuracy. But they are well-made films that are at least worth the price of admission. “Tanda Putera” has no redeeming value whatsoever. It does not entertain, neither does it enlighten.

Instead, the film is a sad reminder that there are few cinematic works about our nation’s history. It should not be banned but screened as a challenge to anyone who thinks they can do a better job, because someone needs to offer an answer to this slapdash insult to all the people who lived and died for our country — including the non-Malays and yes, the Communists.

Watch “Tanda Putera” if you must, but I fear that if you’re not Malay, all this movie will leave you with is either anger or sadness that some would consider this film truthful in any way.

                This entry was posted on Sunday, 1 September 2013, 7:40 am and is filed under
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At best Umno should try not to be ‘Chinese hunters’, says Zaid

By Ida Lim

The Malay Mail Online

September 1, 2013

KUALA LUMPUR, Sept 1 — Former Umno leader Zaid Ibrahim today said that the party would be unable to flush out those joining the party to enrich themselves, but said it should at least refrain from hunting down the Chinese.

 Zaid’s comments this afternoon appeared to be aimed at Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad’s call for Umno to shed its corrupt image, where its leaders are viewed as allegedly lining their pockets.

 “Umno surely can’t clean themselves of fortune hunters. At best they should try not to be Chinese hunters,” the former de-facto law minister said on Twitter today, likely in reference to Dr Mahathir’s column in Utusan Malaysia’s weekend edition today.

 Dr Mahathir had today written in Mingguan Malaysia that the injection of new blood into the Umno leadership this October through polls would counter views that it is corrupt.

 Dr Mahathir, who himself led Umno for over two decades during his tenure as prime minister, said the best way to do this is by removing the older, entrenched party leaders in favour of the unpolluted youths.

 “Today, many think that Umno is very corrupt. It is even assumed that Umno leaders at all levels had not joined the party to fight for race, religion and the country, but to enrich themselves,” Dr Mahathir wrote in Mingguan Malaysia.

 “Only by handing over the Umno leadership to the young and unpolluted can this cleansing of Umno become reality, and will be accepted by the community,” Dr Mahathir added.

 In a series of tweets earlier this afternoon, Zaid also took aim at controversial local film “Tanda Putera” which depicts the May 13, 1969 racial riots and the administration of Malaysia’s second prime minister and his deputy.

 Zaid blasted comments that described the film as “well-researched” despite its fictional nature, saying that the truth of the contentious 1969 events should instead be established through an inquiry.

 “Tanda Putera is fiction but well researched and true.

 Another of many stupid statements coming out of my country.”

 “In other countries they have public inquiry to find cause of national tragedy. In my country they do film. Another stupid thing,” the politician-turned-businessman said when expressing his frustrations on Twitter.

 Zaid also appeared to mock MCA, a Chinese-based Barisan Nasional (BN) component party, for not responding to minister Datuk Seri Nazri Azri’s remarks linking “a few Chinese individuals” to the May 13 riots.

 “The Chinese in MCA must have agreed with Nazri on May 13, from their silence. In which case we need more films from SB on other issues,” Zaid said, likely referring to Datin Paduka Shuhaimi Baba, the director of “Tanda Putera”.

 Yesterday, Nazri said the Chinese community should not feel slighted over the controversial film Tanda Putera which allegedly portrays the former as having sparked the May 13 riots in 1969.

 “The Chinese community as a whole is not responsible for what happened in 1969, only the individuals, they are the ones who should feel guilty.

 “I personally feel that there are many Chinese Malaysians who are very Malaysian and they will not (be) involved with this and they should not be blamed because of a few Chinese individuals who were involved,” the minister of tourism and culture told reporters.

 Nazri, who said he has watched the film which premiered on August 29, said it was “well-researched” and reflects the “reality” of the turbulent period in the country’s history.

 But Shuhaimi had last week said the film was a work of fiction despite earlier vouching for its “historical accuracy”.

 Shuhaimi also explained that “Tanda Putera” is essentially about Malaysia’s second Prime Minister Tun Abdul Razak Hussein and his deputy Tun Dr Ismail Abdul Rahman — “two men who gave up everything, including their lives for the country”.

 “Tanda Putera”, which was originally slated for release on September 13 last year, was produced at a cost of RM4.8 million provided by FINAS and the Multimedia Development Corporation (Mdec).

                This entry was posted on Sunday, 1 September 2013, 8:06 pm and is filed under
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Born to an Umno family, but now a DAP rising star

Ahmad Fadli KC & Lee Way Loon
 | 12:16PM Sep 1, 2013

Malaysiakini

INTERVIEW For many years, the Aidilfitri festive period saw Dyana Sofya Mohd Daud visiting open house functions as a custom. But this year, things are a little different.

Now her visits have an official air to it, as she is a representative of Gelang Patah MP Lim Kit Siang.

Dyana, a UiTM law graduate who hails from Ipoh, is serving full time as Lim’s political secretary since the general election in May.

She first came to prominence in early 2012, when Lim held a press conference to announce her entry into DAP.

Interestingly, one of the her reasons for joining DAP was her experience in UiTM, the sole university in the country which is exclusive to bumiputera.

“While I managed to get into UiTM, some of my (non-bumiputera) friends who had similar results were not accepted into public universities. They couldn’t get any scholarship.

“So I think that’s not fair. What would happen to my friends? Do they have to spend a lot of money to get into the private university?” she said during an interview last month.

UiTM for non-Malays

Looking back at her experience in UiTM, Dyana opined that a public higher education similar to UiTM should be established for non-Malays.

She was disappointed that some of her non-Malay friends, regardless of whether they had good results, were denied the opportunity to further their studies at public higher education institutes.

“The non-Malays should have equal opportunity as Malays. A higher education institute that accepts the enrollment of non-Malays but at the same time only charges the same amount as UiTM is necessary.”

She believes that the time is ripe for the education system in Malaysia to go beyond racial lines and instead be based on needs.

Even though she is now active in DAP, Dyana was born into a family that was very active in Umno.

“My mother is still a Umno member until today. She is also the first division secretary for the party women’s wing in Malaysia. In fact, my uncles are also involved in Umno politics.

“They would discuss politics when the family meets. I heard their stories and grew up with them,” she further said.

Dyana said that her mother was understanding and blessed her choice to become a DAP member instead.

“She said that if we believe in something, we should go ahead and do it, that sometimes it is good for us to swim against the tide in order to make a statement,” said the young lawyer who has her own law firm in Cyberjaya.

Conversation with Zairil

But what strengthened her resolve was a conversation with Zairil Khir Johari, the political secretary to Penang Chief Minister Lim Guan Eng and now the Bukit Bendera MP.

“It was a multiracial meet up with about ten people that included Zairil (left) and (The Rocket’s editor-in-chief) Wan Hamidi (Hamid). I asked him why should I join DAP?

“He told me what the party fighting for. And I can see that he is very comfortable with DAP,” she recalled.

After joining DAP for more than a year, Dyana said she was indeed comfortable in the party although most of its members are Chinese.

“I felt I was welcome everywhere. When I want to perform my prayers, I can just go to the surau. It’s like me going back to the primary school days.

“I just believe in what Zairil said. Sometimes they speak a language that I don’t understand, but I just tried to understand it,” she said, with smile.

Like Dyana, Zairil too was born into a family that had active Umno members.

‘Traitor’ label

Despite facing some harsh criticisms from her members of her own race, the young girl’s spirit always remains high.

“I don’t feel hurt by the ‘penghianat’ (traitor) label,” she said, adding that she always sees herself as a Malaysian.

Dyana is also faced by challenge of handling the stigma that some Malays in Johor still have about DAP, which has been portrayed time and again as being an anti-Malay party by the ruling government.

She and two colleagues from the Gelang Patah parliamentary office were once chased away from a village in June even though they were there to gather details about the problems faced by the residents there, on behalf of Lim.

“After winning (the constituency), we received a call from some residents at the village who wanted to complain about the status of the land where they were residing.

“But when we reached there the village chief came to meet us and pulled my hand and asked me to go back. He pointed right at my face and said, ‘we have our menteri besar and we don’t need you’,” she said.

However, Dyana said she will keep going to these Malay villages “because they need me.”

“I will feel guilty of I don’t go and meet them. Their willingness to call us there in the first place is already good progress. Little by little, they will surely come forward to hold discussions with us,” she added.

__

The interview was conducted by Lee Way Loon, Ahmad Fadli KC and Mohd Azudin Shah Mohd Hidzir.

                This entry was posted on Sunday, 1 September 2013, 9:46 pm and is filed under
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I for Idiot is for Bush? Why look that far?

The Malaysian Insider

September 01, 2013

I is for Idiot and unlike established artist J Anu, there is little need to lob that label on former US president George W. Bush when there are enough politicians in Malaysia who have doctorates in idiocy.

The artist was forced to explain the concept behind his artwork after a mosquito Muslim group lodged a complaint, saying that the painting insulted Islam. In fact, the government yesterday demanded the piece be withdrawn from the Selamat Hari Merdeka exhibition at Publika Kuala Lumpur.

Anu said the artwork was in reference to Bush’s adventure in Iraq.

But really, why look thousands of miles away for an idiot? Malaysians are spoilt for choice at home.

Look at Tourism and Culture Minister Datuk Seri Nazri Aziz (pic). He enjoys that work of fiction called Tanda Putera and tries to pass it off as historically accurate and well-researched. Never mind that the director of the film herself conceded that she took artistic licence with the events surrounding the race riots of May 13, 1969.

Nazri yesterday offered the discredited Umno version of the riots, saying that it was sparked by a few Chinese individuals.

“The Chinese community as a whole is not responsible for what happened in 1969, only the individuals, they are the ones who should feel guilty,” he said.

Well, well, what magnanimity by the minister. Today, most Chinese should be at peace and sleep easy. Because Nazri has singled out only a few Chinese for starting the riots.

But idiots never stop when they are on a roll. So this is what Nazri added: “Why should the present generation of Chinese be troubled by it now? It is a historical fact that the riot was sparked by Chinese just like Nazis killed thousands of Jews during the Second World War.”

Yes, Chinese, why be offended? The minister has only blamed you for the blackest episode in Malaysian history.

Nazri’s comments are precisely why many right-thinking Malaysians have been wary of Tanda Putera.

There was more than a suspicion that Umno politicians, Malay nationalists and the intellectually-challenged at Utusan Malaysia would use the movie as fodder to continue demonising the Chinese and the Democratic Action Party (DAP).

Let us not forget a few facts. The movie is funded by the Umno-led government and the plan was to screen it before the general election, with the hope that it would boost patriotism among Malays.

But most of the Cabinet ministers vetoed the plan, fearing that it would hurt Barisan Nasional’s chances with the Chinese voters.

After the results of May 5, with the mantra in Umno and the government being “punish the Chinese for voting for Pakatan Rakyat”, there is now little concern about the film upsetting the Chinese community.

Indeed, the prevalent mood seems to be to hammer the community at every turn, in the style of the schoolyard bully.

Growing up in the 1970s and 80s, Malaysians were not encouraged to speak openly about May 13. Teachers discouraged questions on it; parents were uncomfortable when asked about it and newspapers, well, they didn’t write essays about it.

Perhaps the general reticence could be explained by the fact that many people of that generation saw the bloodshed and loss of life firsthand and witnessed how close the country came to going up in flames.

But on hindsight, keeping mum about May 13, 1969, may not have been the best policy, for it created a cottage industry of speculation and conspiracy theories about the causes of the race riots.

One theory which has been gaining traction in recent years is the role played by Umno politicians. Others blamed a procession by successful opposition politicians after the 1969 elections for sparking anger among Umno politicians.

Malaysian politicians have also blamed the communists for the trouble in 1969 but declassified government documents showed that Malaysians leaders later admitted that the accusations had been wrong.

But it would be asking too much of Nazri Aziz and his ilk to read official documents. They prefer fiction and a storyline which supports their political agenda.

I is also for Imagination. Run wild. – September 1, 2013.

                This entry was posted on Sunday, 1 September 2013, 7:29 am and is filed under
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May 13 was not a racial riot

 – Stephen Ng

The Malaysian Insider

September 01, 2013

Tourism and Culture Minister Datuk Seri Nazri Aziz said that it is “a historical fact that the riot was sparked by Chinese, (like the fact) that Nazis killed thousands of Jews during the Second World War”. I beg to differ.

When May 13 broke out, I was a young five-year-old boy living in a New Village. My father was away working either in Kelantan or Pahang. My sisters and I were the only ones who stayed with my mother in Jinjang Selatan. Although we were supposed to have moved to a new home in Taman Kepong, the family decided to stay put.

As a boy, I was listening in to every conversation that took place between my mother and other relatives and friends. There were horror stories of Malays killing the Chinese, and Chinese killing the Malays. But a phone conversation between my mother and my father that has never escaped my attention was that everything was peaceful in the East Coast.

My Father said that the Chinese and the Malays were having breakfast together. There was no riot in the East Coast. It was business as usual for them. Muthusamy, Ali and Ah Chong were still friends, when things went awry in Selangor. Why is that so, Datuk Seri Nazri?

Racial riots? No way!

My answer is simple: May 13 was NOT a racial riot. It was the work of a few politicians who capitalised on sentiments of the day.

Although there were obvious bad vibes between the races, mainly perpetuated by politicians, citizens of the newly-minted country, who had already learnt to accept each other, were beginning to enjoy being fellow Malaysians.

In Kelantan and other parts of the country, or should I say, where PAS was in control, people were able to live more harmoniously since the day of Prophet Muhammad!

Who then caused the May 13 riots? I only found the answer very much later when I started reading the book by Dr Kua Kia Soong, May 13, and made my own observations in the past six years.

Let me briefly share my thoughts.

May 13 is the work of politicians who lost the 1969 general election. The opposition had tied with the Alliance for control of the Selangor state legislature, a large setback in the polls for the Alliance. The big difference now is that Selangor is totally under Pakatan rule for the good of the people.

Several factors had created the tension. The then Menteri Besar of Selangor, Haron Idris was discontented with the results of the election. At the same time, another camp was discontented with Tunku Abdul Rahman, our beloved Bapa Malaysia.

At that point in time, Dr Mahahtir Mohamed had been sacked after his book, The Malay Dilemma, was banned. Tunku had warned that Mahathir was a big troublemaker, and Umno would be making a big mistake if it was to take him back into its fold.

In his book, Dr Mahathir was able to create a sense of insecurity amongst the Malays and later to control their minds. This was a necessity for a non-Malay, like Mahathir to later become the country’s leader.

Knowing that his own kind is generally not accepted even amongst the Malays, till today, he would not admit that his father was from Kerala in India.

Seizing the opportunity to force the Tunku to step down, Dr Mahathir, Abdul Razak Hussein and Haron Idris were the key players in Umno politics.

To reach that state of Emergency, they had to lash it out on the economically stronger community – the Chinese, and in particular, the DAP, accusing the DAP as a provocateur. Why only the DAP and not the MCA, as both were also Chinese? The present MCA does not even come close to the MCA of those days, when it was still popular with the New Villages.

It clearly shows this was not a racial riot, but the political manipulation by a few. In my opinion, everything was lumped into one big blame on the DAP because they won big. This is the same modus operandi used by Umno Baru till today, except that this time around, it is not only the DAP, but Pakatan taking over the state of Selangor.

As much as there were rascals in Umno during Tunku’s time, there were sure enough the communists and gangsters who were trying to seize the opportunity of turning Malaysia into a communist country. One of my late uncles was taken in by the police not because he was a DAP activist but because he was young and the police took him and others for detention to keep them from causing problems.

Were the Chinese also represented by the Communists? Or, was every Chinese a Communist? The answer is, No!

One of my uncles was, in fact, a Special Branch officer who was tracking down the communists, but he has since migrated to Australia for his own safety. Communism was never a race issue but an ideology that was prevalent in the people of those days.

Tanda Putera or New Village

So, whether it is Tanda Putera or New Village, Malaysians should realise that if we continue to buy into the political manipulation of a few, we would be heading for another disaster.

This is what I want Nazri to learn, that in order to stay in power, politicians need to play on race or religious cards.

They should strengthen their positions as people well-respected by people of all races. I am glad that in our midst there are two good examples that I have seen – Nurul Izzah Anwar and Hannah Yeoh, two young ladies who have gained much credence over the years. May they lead Malaysia into a new era!- September 1, 2013.

                This entry was posted on Sunday, 1 September 2013, 7:52 pm and is filed under
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The Malaysia 3G

BY REHMAN RASHID

SPECIAL TO THE MALAYSIAN INSIDER

September 02, 2013

It is called the “Third-Generation Curse”, and it is known to every emigrant family in a world now built on them as much as by them. The first generation begins with nothing and makes something of it; the second generation builds on that to create an institution; the third blows it all away.

Survive the Third-Generation Curse, the patriarchs tell their scions, and you are set, not just for your life but those of our descendants, and our ancestors shall smile upon you. If not, scavengers will pick through the rubble of our ruined house and having our name expunged from history would be a mercy.

“British Malaya” patently failed to survive its own 3G Curse, and out of the rubble of colonialism Malaysia’s first generation assembled a working model of self-governance for a hopelessly divided polity: to each of us our own house, with each of our heads of household mandated to deal with the others in a Council of Elders.

It was a realistic model for the time, working with rooted socio-economic realities and disdaining the revolutionary, year-zero, blank-slate, non-aligned thinking rampant in the post-colonial world of the 1950s. It was a grand enough achievement for Malaysia’s Gen1 to have attained Independence by common consensus, courtly handshakes and a parade of feathered hats, with the bloodshed confined to beating down Communism. It was left to Gen2 to deal with the ensuing chaos.

For the unifying momentum of Independence itself hardly lasted beyond the reverberations of founding prime minister Tunku Abdul Rahman’s triumphant proclamation in Stadium Merdeka on August 31, 1957.

Within three years he was overseeing the peninsula’s incorporation with Singapore, Sabah and Sarawak in “Malaysia”.

By the 1964 general election, Singapore’s then chief minister Lee Kuan Yew had coined the phrase “Malaysian Malaysia”, and the battle lines were drawn on whether this was to be governed as an “aracial” or a “Malay” nation.

Singapore’s swift and summary expulsion from the federation thereafter did nothing to forestall the racial clashes of the 1969 general election – indeed, it did much to precipitate them.

Although the proportion of Chinese Malaysians dropped from nearly half to less than a third without Singapore and with the indigenes of Sabah and Sarawak designated “Bumiputera”, that schism has not only persisted but deepened into something eerily like a national culture.

Malaysia’s second generation will forever be branded the “NEP generation”, after the New Economic Policy under which they had to grow. Gen2 was incubated by Gen1 as an economic solution to their nation’s political problems.

The NEP specifically targeted them and only them – it was instituted in 1970 and meant to hold the fort for 20 years, or just long enough to boost into play a single generation of educated and worldly new Malay or Bumiputera technocrats, administrators and entrepreneurs.

After having had to hold that fort for twice as long as they had expected, however, many inmates had come to consider it indistinguishable from a prison.

For by the time the NEP was due to expire, it had been taken over and turned into a roaring tiger of national development by the singular administration of former premier Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad.

Even by 1990, that tiger had become all but impossible to dismount. Under Mahathir’s command, it became a beast of national burden.

Today it is old and frail, though even more intransigent and cantankerous in infirmity.

As race-based parties in senescence grow ever more beholden to their lunatic fringes, the hoary old communalism institutionalised by Gen1 looks ludicrously unlike the nation any of its present constituents would wish it to be.

Communalism has become confining, limiting and stultifying, and Malaysia’s third generation is fleeing the fortress, leaving the fulminants within to the comfort zones of their preferred world-views.

Gen3’s world is simultaneously wired up and wireless; real and ethereal. They are mobile and worldwide. Born of Gen2, they do not remember Gen1, knowing only the Malaysia that began with the New Economic Policy and the Mahathir Administration.

A Malaysian citizen born on the day Dr Mahathir assumed top office would have been of voting age when he stepped down. This amounted to a revolution deeper and more transformative than the otherwise pivotal race riots following the 1969 general election, the nation’s third.

Now, after 10 more such exercises – and with the 12th and 13th having again delivered the fateful verdict of the 3rd by removing both the ruling party’s simple majority of the popular vote as well as its two-thirds majority of parliament – Malaysian politics is in the throes of a makeover.

Token efforts are being made at maintaining the facades of yore, but they ring ever more hollow. While the creaky old political buses try to pimp up for new passengers, the skies are thick with multitudes of low-cost carriers flying in all directions on the antigravity devices of modern media.

The dazzle and noise of it all may drown out the very particular message Gen3 is sending out – now in rap, song, text, status update and viral tweet, but it is the self-same message Gen1 knew, heard, and anticipated at the outset: this may be one nation but it comprises many peoples, each with an equal right to be here and a growing determination to exercise it.

But Malaysia’s Children of the Third Generation now reveal what divided polities grow into. They are now separated so widely as to make “equal” a meaningless concept.

Half a century of communal politics, vernacular education and deliberately discrete socio-economic management did not bring home that message as literally and decisively as youths barely out of their teens singing out their truths on YouTube and Facebook.

After 50 years, at this crucial advent of its third generation, Malaysia is three times more populous than when Gen1 worked out their concord, with a gross domestic product 100 times greater.

Certainly, Gen2 did what it was supposed to do, building on their predecessor’s successes and failures alike to make of Malaysia what it is today.

Now it is down to Gen3, either to break the Third-Generation Curse and keep this going in its present form, or call a curse a blessing, “embrace change”, tear it all down and start over as the next Gen1.

Either way, Malaysia has always been and will always have to be a mansion of many rooms. We will be needing many more in the next 50 years. – September 2, 2013.

* Rehman Rashid is a veteran journalist and author of “The Malaysian Journey”.

                This entry was posted on Monday, 2 September 2013, 10:07 am and is filed under
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Travesty of truth and distortion of history for Nazri to claim that Tanda Putera is well-researched movie and May 13, 1969 riots was caused by Chinese

It is a travesty of the truth and distortion of history for the Tourism and Culture Minister Datuk Seri Nazri Aziz to claim that Tanda Putera is a well-researched movie and that the May 13, 1969 racial riots was caused by the Chinese.

No well-researched and historically-faithful movie would have succumbed to flights of wild imagination as to create the fictitious urination scene by Chinese youths at the flag-pole of the well-guarded  Selangor Mentri Besar’s residence as one of causes provoking the May 13 racial riots – reckless of the racial misunderstanding, hatred and conflict that could be generated today after 44 years by this totally fictitious episode and downright lie.

Similarly, no well-researched and historically-faithful movie would have concocted a total lie, noted by Free Malaysia Today journalist K. Pragalath in his film review
“Tanda Putera falls flat”
, where he observed:

“Tanda Putera opens with a dramatic scene of an incident where DAP campaign workers kill an Umno campaign helper two weeks prior to the general election then.”

This is not history but pure fiction – nay, it is unadulterated evil,  wicked falsehood and a treacherous and treasonous tale, for there was simply no such incident in 1969 where “DAP campaign workers kill an Umno campaign helper two weeks prior to the general election then”.

Nazri has done Malaysian nation-building a great disservice in making the baseless claim that the the May 13 riots was sparked by the Chinese, just as it would be most  slanderous and  most irresponsible for anyone to blame the May 13 riots on the Malays.

The May 13 riots was not caused by the Chinese or Malays but by irresponsible  individuals who plunged the country into the most tragic and darkest period in the nation’s history.

Who are the culprits of the May 13, 1969 riots? This is subject of conflicting accounts.

This is why in my first speech in Parliament 42 years ago on February 23, 1971, I called for a Commission of Inquiry into the May 13, 1969 racial riots to find out their causes, assess the racial polarization in the country and to make recommendations to prevent a recurrence of the May 13, 1969 racial riots and arrest the racial polarization in the country.

My proposal for a Royal Commission of Inquiry into the May 13 riots is still relevant and valid today, not so much to apportion blame or to punish the culprits as 44 years had elapsed since the occurrence of the national tragedy in 1969, but to ascertain the true causes and developments to present the historical truth to present and future generations and to heal the country’s worst racial wounds and to remove the spectre of May 13 from Malaysian history.

This would be be more worthwhile and constructive than spending public funds to allow a movie director the “creative licence” to concoct fictitious events about  the May 13, 1969 riots, which could only worsen racial relations and polarisation in the country.

                This entry was posted on Monday, 2 September 2013, 5:46 pm and is filed under
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Registrar of Societies should stop acting on the script of the Umno/BN “DDD” (Demolish/Destroy DAP) campaign but demonstrate that he is independent, impartial and professional including giving reasons why he wants DAP CEC re-elections

Yesterday, the Registrar of Societies (RoS) Director-General Datuk Abdul Rahman Othman asked the DAP to stop its “battle” with the RoS in the media and to comply with procedures.

It is the RoS which is guilty of being part of a “media war” against the DAP in the past eight months, and I would call on Abdul Rahman to stop acting on the script of the Umno/BN “DDD” (Demolish/Destroy DAP) campaign and to demonstrate that he is independent, impartial and professional in carrying out his duties, including giving reasons why he wants DAP Central Executive Committee (CEC) re-elections when the DAP CEC elections last December were proper, valid and conducted fully in accordance with the party Constitution.

In the Umno/BN DDD campaign in the first seven months of the year, three reasons had been floated to question the validity of the DAP CEC re-elections at the DAP Congress in Penang last December:

Firstly, allegations of electoral fraud and irregularities arising from a computer glitch resulting in an error in the announcement of the CEC results, which had nothing to do with any error in vote counting or tabulation but a mistake in the computer posting of the results for purposes of announcement.

Secondly, allegation that 753 delegates “mostly Indians” were not notified of the DAP Congress in Penang last December, resulting in their being unable to attend and therefore deprived of the right to vote in the CEC election.

Thirdly, allegation that 547 “phantom delegates, mostly from Penang” were allowed to vote in the DAP CEC elections in Penang, resulting in fraudulent election results.

All these three reasons have been proven to be baseless. In fact, after the first two months, the first allegation about electoral fraud and irregularities arising from the “computer glitch” was virtually dropped, with the attacks on the DAP elections focussed on the second and third allegations about the “753 delegates” not notified about the Congress and the 547 “phantom delegates”.

In July, a mysterious booklet “The Equity Report (CEC Election Fraud)” in four languages, Bahasa Malaysia, English, Chinese and Tamil, appeared with great fanfare being quoted liberally in the Umno/BN controlled media, as well as distributed nationally throughout the country including Sarawak, although it was written by an entirely fictitious character, a phantom “Father Augustus Chen” and was an illegal publication, as it neither carried the name of the printer or publisher as required by Malaysian law.

I had challenged this “Father Augustus Chen” to surface publicly but of course he did not appear, as he is a pure phantom who had packed some 100 lies and falsehoods against the DAP in its 12-page booklet.

Never before in the nation’s history has a fictitious and unlawful publication been given such “royal treatment”, quoted in the official and Umno/BN media whether print, radio or television as if it is equivalent to official pronoucements emanating from the Prime Minister’s Department or Cabinet sources.

What is noteworthy is that this scurrillous and defamatory booklet by the phantom “Father Augustus Chen” was the final chapter of the Umno/BN “DDD” campaign to justify the UMNO/BN government (as publicly stated by Cabinet Ministers, including the Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Najib Razak) and RoS to demand DAP CEC re-elections, particularly over the baseless allegations about “753 delegates mostly Indians” not being notified of the Party Congress and the “547 phantom delegates, mostly from Penang” participating in the DAP CEC elections.

In the early phase of the UMNO/BN “Demolish/Destroy DAP” campaign, the RoS Director-General was fairly independent, impartial and professional, as evidenced from Abdul Rahman’s statement in January that DAP CEC re-elections “would only occur if there was concrete evidence there were discrepancies in the CEC election process”.

It is obvious that right from the beginning of the DDD campaign, there were intense pressures on the RoS to compromise its independence, impartiality and professionalism and to comply with the script of the DDD campaign to use the DAP CEC elections last December to undermine, destabilise and destroy the DAP as well as Pakatan Rakyat.

This was why the then Home Minister, Datuk Seri Hishammuddin Hussein could announce on February 16, 2013 that an official probe would be launched by the RoS on the CEC elections held in Penang last December as the party had failed to submit its report within the stipulated 60 days, when in fact, DAP submitted its election reports on February 8.

But in the ensuing months, it was clear that the RoS had to act according to the script of the Umno/BN Demolish/Destroy DAP campaign, culminating in the RoS directive on DAP CEC re-elections, although the RoS Director-General was unable to comply with his own standards publicly stated in January that there must be “concrete evidence” about discrepancies in the CEC election process before there could be directive for CEC re-elections.

The Umno/BN Demolish/Destroy DAP campaign has a new agenda after the disastrous BN performance in the 13th General Elections, which is to eliminate the DAP from the political arena by all means, whether fair or foul, and by extension the Pakatan Rakyat.

Nobody is surprised by this Umno/BN agenda, but the RoS should not get involved in this nefarious Umno/BN agenda but must act as an independent, impartial and professional agency overseeing registered societies and political parties.

It is not too late for the RoS Director-General to discharge his duties lawfully and professionally, and the first step he should do is to give the reasons why he is not satisfied with the DAP CEC elections last December and wants DAP CEC re-elections.

I am also prepared to meet with Datuk Abdul Rahman to substantiate my allegation that the RoS had been acting on the script on the Umno/BN DDD campaign after the initial manifestation of independence, impartiality and professionalism of the RoS in the first weeks of the year.

                This entry was posted on Tuesday, 3 September 2013, 3:44 pm and is filed under
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After all these years, Malaysia still held hostage

Ooi Kee Beng

The Malaysian Insider

September 04, 2013

In thinking about 2013, the year the Federation of Malaysia celebrates its 50th anniversary, one cannot but compare the national atmosphere to that in 2007, the year the Federation of Malaya celebrated its 50th anniversary.

I remember that the New Straits Times under Datuk Seri Kalimullah Hassan ran a week-long serialisation in January that year of my book The Reluctant Politician: Tun Dr Ismail and His Time (ISEAS 2006) with the express purpose of putting the country into a contemplative mood and reminding Malaysians of what nation building is all about.

Given the faltering reform programme of then prime minister Tun Abdullah Badawi, 2007 couldn’t help but be a contemplative — and agitative — year for many Malaysians in any case. Be that as it may, to be fair to Abdullah, much change had come to the country after he took over from Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad in October 2003.

Otherwise, the latter would not have been using his considerable political acumen back then to undermine his successor’s position. Only Dr Mahathir’s bad health that year limited his attacks on the prime minister.

Also noteworthy was how tame the Umno general assembly was in 2007. Racial provocation was kept to a minimum amidst rumours that elections would soon be called. However, Malaysia’s first astronaut, Sheikh Mustaphar Sheikh Abdul Shukor, presented the Jalur Gemilang that he had taken into space to Abdullah at the Umno meeting, signifying that whatever success the trip into space had been, it was an Umno achievement, not a national triumph.

Inter-religious tension was also building up with the destruction of Hindu temples and the controversial burials of supposed Muslim converts.

The mood in 2007 was therefore generally more confused than contemplative, and it soon led to open political activism in Kuala Lumpur.

The first Bersih demonstration took place on November 10 to highlight the need for electoral reforms, which was followed two weeks later by the Hindraf rally to demand rights for Hindus.

Already on September 26 that year, about 2,000 lawyers and their supporters calling for proper investigations into allegations of inappropriate appointments of judges had marched to the residence of the prime minister.

Six eventful years, another two Bersih demonstrations and two exciting elections later, much has changed.

The country now has a two-party system where the opposition has actually won the popular vote though without being able to take power; it now controls three states with a huge majority, and has majority support in all urban centres.

The national atmosphere, however, remains as confused as ever. Dr Mahathir’s son is now Mentri Besar of Kedah and is expected to aim for a top position within the party; inter-religious tensions persist between ever more hardened positions; race-baiting continues and the coming Umno party elections are not expected to be anything close to being as tame as the 2007 party assembly; East Malaysian support now keeps the federal government in power; Chinese and urban support is solidly behind the opposition; the country is apparently no longer an oil exporter; violent crime has become shockingly common; and worries about the economy grow by the day, etc.

Datuk Seri Najib Razak has now received his own mandate to rule, no doubt, but it is an unconvincing one since he did lose the popular vote in West Malaysia, and nationwide.

Whether the Prime Minister will survive the term, or even the year, is silently debated.

For now, his worst enemies are not in the opposition, but come from within his party. After all, nice-guy Abdullah was ousted 13 months after he won a weak electoral victory in 2008.

The year 2013 is also the 10th anniversary of Dr Mahathir’s retirement as prime minister. Yet, Najib’s administration, the second post-Mahathir government, continues to struggle with Dr Mahathir’s dubious legacy and personal intrigues.

The political balance is certainly not stable. It may even be desperate, which is why there is so much talk about the need for a unity government that can straddle the incapacitating divides.

The political split down the middle has not been good for business confidence or public confidence in general. Sadly, it has not as yet thrown up effective leadership that can focus on national development instead of individual political careers and does not use disunity as its raison d’etre.

Therefore, for all concerned, there is a lot to contemplate this coming Malaysia Day, and a lot of action required from political and business leaders to limit the opportunistic exaggeration of natural differences among Malaysians.

Without that, the country — and its economy — cannot begin to end its undeserved fate of being held hostage by politics that appeals to the basest instincts of its population. – September 4, 2013

                This entry was posted on Wednesday, 4 September 2013, 4:46 pm and is filed under
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Fit for Golden Raspberry Award

Mariam Mokhtar

Malaysiakini

Sep 2, 2013

What happened on May 13, 1969 was terrible, not just for every Malaysian, but also for the armed forces and the police. If the country is to move on and start the healing process, then the May 13 demons must be exorcised, once and for all; but first, the truth must be freed.

The National Operations Council (NOC) which was created in the aftermath of the disturbances by Najib Abdul Razak’s father, sought to return the country to normality, by restoring law and order, as well as re-establishing trust between the races. Its scope was limited and it did not seek to provide a definitive account of the tragedy.

If Najib is sincere in wanting reconciliation, one of the first things he should do is to hold an inquiry into the May 13 riots. Investigators will be hampered by Umno Baru’s unwritten rule, which is that anyone who disagrees with them is either Chinese or communist.

Sceptical Malaysians will accuse Umno Baru of refusing to learn or discover the root causes of the May 13 riots. Critics will worry about the cost and length of time for this inquiry. Many witnesses, victims, politicians, armed forces personnel, hospital staff or news correspondents, will have died. Memories of those who remain will have dulled with age.

Who will lead this inquiry? What will be the scope of this probe? Should the taxpayer be burdened with the cost? How will the government view the findings? Will families of the victims be given compensation or will an apology suffice? Will those who killed, in the line of duty, be prosecuted? Perhaps, the greatest fear is that this investigation will be another whitewash, just like previous inquiries.

The latest reviews on the mockumentary, ‘Tanda Putera’, which were garnered from the Internet, describe a badly produced film, littered with howlers.

If the film-producer, Shuhaimi Baba had done her homework properly, she would have discovered that there were many anachronisms, like CCTV and Proton cars.

Assuming the role of producer-cum-cinema-enforcer, Shuhaimi declared war on the cinemas which refused to screen her films and threatened them with closure. Was she not embarrassed that despite the hype around her film, each viewing attracted only a handful of patrons?

Most films become box-office hits when the threat of a ban generates massive free publicity.

In Shuhaimi’s case, ‘Tanda Putera’ bombed. It deserves the Golden Raspberry Award in recognition for all that is bad in film making.

Shuhaimi was under pressure to produce a propaganda film and the compulsory viewing suggests that Umno Baru is desperate. The first to view her film, despite a cabinet ban, was a group of university students and Felda settlers – an unwitting captive audience.

Khairy also practising double-standards?

Youth and Sports Minister Khairy Jamaluddin urged that ‘Tanda Putera’ be screened outdoors, for public viewing, when Lim Guan Eng announced that the films need not be shown in Penang.

Khairy complained about double-standards and the chief minister’s lip-service to freedom of speech.

Isn’t Khairy also practising double-standards? Did he support the film, ‘The New Village’, and did he know that Malaysiakini was barred from the premiere of ‘Tanda Putera’?

MCA president Dr Chua Soi Lek supported Khairy’s suggestion. Chua’s agreement smacks of political expediency, but Chua’s assessment of the scenes which depict the Chinese as aggressors would be more interesting.

Guan Eng did not ban cinemas from showing the film in Penang, he merely said that they need not show it. Conversely, Communications Minister Shabery Cheek and the film’s producer said that the licences of cinemas which did not screen the film would be withdrawn.

Shabery also called the DAP stupid and said that if DAP were to rule Malaysia, “art would not be allowed to grow, as the party was full of revenge and irrational sentiments”.

He conveniently forgot the recent furore about a Malaysian artist’s painting called ‘I is for Idiot’.

Mohd Nazri Abdul Aziz, the Culture and Tourism Minister, praised Shuhaimi for a well-researched film, before proceeding to blame the Chinese for starting the May 13 riots.

Is he unaware that Shuhaimi was economical with the truth?

Last year, critics slammed Shuhaimi for “historical inaccuracies” and she was forced to clarify that the scene of Lim Kit Siang urinating on a flagpole, was fictitious.

She may have claimed that the film described the relationship between Abdul Razak Hussein and his deputy Dr Ismail Abdul Rahman, but she is wrong to state that these, “two men who gave up everything, including their lives for the country”.

These two men died in office. They may have dedicated their life’s work to the country, but they did not die for the country.  Her remarks have insulted the memories of the people who died defending their country, against armed insurgents.

Shuhaimi’s reputation is damaged, and her film has bombed. Even if she were to screen the film for free, it is unlikely that people would come, especially after the many negative reviews. Cinemagoers have been warned.

Shuhaimi could learn from her masters, Umno Baru. Their ceramahs have low rates of attendance unless they provide pocket money, food and gifts. Shuhaimi might get higher attendances if she were to give food and money to everyone who sat through all 117 minutes of the film.

Umno Baru is reluctant to let the ghosts of May 13 rest because they are needed to perpetuate the myth that only Umno Baru can “save” the Malays. These ghosts help prolong the fears and insecurities, particularly at election time.

If Umno Baru can’t maintain the spectre of May 13, it will become irrelevant and redundant to the Malays, because there will be no “enemy” to defend against.

Umno Baru knows that Malaysians do not read, much. Many would rather watch a film than read about the May 13 incident.

Shuhaimi has been economical with the truth when making her mockumentary. It is widely believed that May 13 arose from a power struggle within Umno. The failure to quell the riots quickly also contributed to the large loss of life.

The people of Malaysia bear the mental and physical scars of May 13. A responsible government would allow its citizens to bury the ghosts of one of the most bloody episodes in their modern history.

The shadow cast by May 13 blights every Malaysian who wishes to get on with his life. If our leaders refuse this request, then it is our right to demand an exorcism.

MARIAM MOKHTAR is a defender of the truth, the admiral-general of the Green Bean Army and president of the Perak Liberation Organisation (PLO).

                This entry was posted on Wednesday, 4 September 2013, 7:59 am and is filed under
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Is Pak Samad a hardcore criminal or terrorist?

– Tan Zhong Yan

The Malaysian Insider

September 04, 2013

The arrest of Datuk A. Samad Said just after midnight is certainly absurd, crazy and uncalled for. Is there a need for the police to arrest the old man at that hour when they can do so during the day?

Of course, everyone should be equal before the law and that no special position or privileges should be given to anyone including Pak Samad for his status as the national laureate but back to the question, is there such a need for this arrest to take place just after midnight?

The crime or offence that Pak Samad is investigated for is in connection with the flying of the Sang Saka Malaya flag and not for murder, rape or robbery. Pak Samad is not a hardcore criminal nor terrorist requiring the arrest to take place at such a late hour.

The Inspector-General of Police, Tan Sri Khalid Abu Bakar and our Home Minister Datuk Seri Ahmad Zahid Hamidi should give a valid explanation with regard to the arrest or make a public apology to Pak Samad as arresting the man in that ungodly hour certainly seems to be an act of intimidation.

It is even more ridiculous when our IGP had earlier on claimed that Pak Samad was “hiding” from the police. This statement by the police chief seriously creates doubt as to the ability of our police force.

If the police are unable to even locate Pak Samad, an old man who was walking freely on the streets, how are we going to expect our police to deal with those criminals who are really hiding from the police?

Oh well, maybe the police have no other choice but to arrest Pak Samad just after midnight at his home before he goes into “hiding” again in the morning. – September 4, 2013.

                This entry was posted on Wednesday, 4 September 2013, 5:05 pm and is filed under
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Regime crisis, not just a ‘race riot’

— Clive Kessler

The Malay Mail Online

September 3, 2013

SEPT 3 — A regime crisis, a complete implosion of the then existing national ruling formula and framework: that, and not a “race riot”, was what occurred in May 1969.

And that fact, that distinction, needs to be emphasised and repeated.

Even now.

Especially now.

Now that
Tanda Putra
is being widely screened, amidst heated and acrimonious controversy.

A regime crisis, not just a “race riot”: that is a truth that has long been denied and is still routinely resisted.

But is it an essential truth that cannot forever be evaded.

Why?

Because so long as that fact is not understood, so long as it is “glossed” and “fudged” and avoided — at times artfully, as in the Shuhaimi Baba’s controversial film
Tanda Putra
— the Malaysian nation will never know, and never be able to understand, itself.

It will never be able to move forward with clarity and well-formed purpose so long as it fails to grasp, and resists knowing, the ground upon which it now stands, how that terrain was formed, and how the nation got to the difficult ground where it now finds itself.

In hope of encouraging that better understanding, I offer here, now in a “return appearance”, a modest contribution of my own to that task.

Under the shadow of
Tanda Putra
— and in the midst of the swirling and often bad-tempered polemics that this loosely factual, and imaginatively revisionist, work of historical fiction has inspired — it may be appropriate to republish here some excerpts from a brief comment of mine that was published several years ago in the now defunct, and much missed, Malaysian monthly of “political analysis, cultural commentary and awkward ideas” that, while it flourished, was known as
Off the Edge
.

It appeared there, in mid-2009, under the title “May 13 1969: A Regime Crisis”.

What follows is an excerpt of some key parts of that earlier text, offered again here with only a few minor stylistic amendments.

May 13, 1969: A regime crisis

Congratulations to
Off The Edge
! We are all indebted to it [and to the four discussants whom it brought together] for initiating, after some forty years of polite obfuscation and prevarication, the first serious discussion of “the meaning of May 13”.

This thoughtful exchange [among some key participants in the “national rescue effort” of carrying the nation forward after that trauma] is, to my knowledge, the first realistic attempt available on record to Malaysian citizens to probe the nature of that terrible national crisis and of the continuing longer-term implications of the way in which, over the next two years, that crisis was overcome: through the suspension of parliamentary democracy and “ordinary politics” and their replacement by rule through a National Operations Council or, in effect, a supreme state executive directorate.

I was myself both a bystander to those fateful events (as outlined in my comment on the 1969 elections, viewed from the standpoint of those of March 2008, in
Off The Edge
May 2008) and also a “small bit-player” in their aftermath.

I earned my youthful “15 minutes of fame” when the news got around that I had predicted, with some accuracy, both the election outcome and the ensuing eruption of those events to a journalist from The Times of London a week earlier. As a result political analysts and observers, both local and from overseas, made the journey to talk to me in the small Malay rural house in which I was living at the time. It is a confession that I perhaps should not make, but I do think I hear some faint echoes of my youthful self in some of the official British documents from that time that K.K. Soong has seen and cites in his book on May 13.

On that experiential basis
 and from that perspective, a useful point or two may be offered. The main one is this. That so long as the nature of that 1969 crisis remains less than clearly understood — less than accurately identified and precisely defined — for that long too will Malaysians misunderstand their own history and remain caught up in the consequences of their inadequate understanding.

Specifically, it has become a cliché to talk of “the 1969 race riots” in Kuala Lumpur. People use the phrase routinely, automatically, unthinkingly. That is what clichés are, what it means to think in cliché terms. Thinking in such terms has consequences. Clichés are mental shortcuts, analytically lazy or convenient bypasses around difficult issues or awkward terrain, in this case crucial political and historical ground.

Here that standard turn of phrase, that ubiquitous and now seemingly irresistible cliché, desperately needs to be considered, assessed and questioned. This nation’s ability to understand itself — to know where it now stands, and how it got here — depends upon doing so …

An important point needs to be made
repeatedly, cannot be emphasised enough. All the young deconstructionists should seriously work on deconstructing that term, the perennial cliché, “13 May 1969 race riots”.

Yes, what was played out, at large among the people who became involved as innocent bystanders and victims, was a series of violent racial confrontations.

But they were the outward manifestation of, or response to, something else: a regime crisis, a systemic crisis of the Malaysian state, the electoral collapse of its initial post-1957 “governing formula”, of the “Merdeka1 political dispensation”.

People from all backgrounds had been told that — whatever their deep feelings, their immediate ethno-cultural passions and narrower sub-national communal loyalties — they must set them aside since only the Alliance formula could guarantee civil peace and political stability.

Yet, at the polls, Umno failed to convince one-half of the Malay vote, and the MCA did not win support or confidence from its base either.

Suddenly people who had accepted the “only the Alliance can hold us all together” argument felt cruelly deceived.

Confidence on all sides in the Alliance government, and its underlying logic, collapsed. The racial confrontations that erupted were the enraged popular reaction to seeing the failure before their own eyes of the “no-other-way governing formula” for which they had been asked to swallow and suppress their strongest loyalties.

They had been asked to do so by politicians who were now seen as failures, as bewildered victims, not confident masters, of events and national destiny.

It was not only the politicians who were repudiated nor just their promises and assurances. The entire political dispensation through which they operated, and with which they were identified, was popularly discredited.

Neither Malays nor non-Malays in Malaysia, the elections now showed, felt that they could now really trust Umno to hold the centre together. Malaysian Chinese no longer had faith in the MCA to deliver Malay moderation, while most Malays had lost faith in the MCA to manage its side of the coalition “deal”, to ensure Malaysian Chinese support for the Alliance formula and the UMNO-led government. The MCA leadership itself lost faith in its own ability to do so credibly and so withdrew from Cabinet.

Disintegration! The underlying cause and reality was a regime crisis, a systemic collapse. “Racial riots” were not the basic cause but the external response and manifestation of that regime crisis.

Politicians may and will use
 what terms they please. They are determined, canny and resourceful people. Their choices and preferences soon become popular usage. That, too, is in the nature of things.

But it is also in the nature of things for scholars in history and the social sciences, for thoughtful political analysts and commentators, to look at things clearly — at unfolding human and social developments and at the terms in which they are received into public imagination — or at least try to do so.

That is their responsibility.

When they see that the terms being developed and used capture only some part of the total situation, that they obscure or conveniently shield from view other important parts, they need to say so.

That is their job, their work, their duty.

So while the politicians may, and will, still talk of “the 1969 Kuala Lumpur race riots”, the scholars and thoughtful commentators should decline that usage and instead identify things clearly, see them for what they are, call them by their proper name.  They need to speak of what was, and what Off The Edge’s recent four-way conversation now clearly recognises as, Malaysia’s first, basic post-independence regime crisis.

An afterword (2013)

In the post-election regime crisis of 1969, Malaysia’s first post-independence political framework or “dispensation” collapsed.

That first post-Merdeka framework and its governing formula were replaced by a new political logic and dispensation that were crafted by Tun Razak and his associates who ruled Malaysia through the extraordinary interim political directorate known as the NOC: National Operations Council.

When the NOC had finished its work, it unveiled the new set of national governing arrangements that would hold for the next political phase.

These provided for a new strong state that was to be charged with promoting, and which would be strong enough to drive, a comprehensive national programme of pro-Malay affirmative action, to be known as the NEP: New Economic Policy. This policy was to redress and overcome the widespread feelings of Malay marginalisation and “relative deprivation” that had driven Malay anger against the old ruling framework, the “Merdeka1 model” of independent national sovereignty.

Originally planned to last for twenty years — and required to produce clear results and an effective remedy for Malay resentments in that fixed and finite period — the NEP era was to end in 1990.

But somehow it did not.

Instead, it lived on.

The NEP was seamlessly projected further
 as the NDP: New Development Policy. And the specific kinds of pro-Malay affirmative that had their rationale in Article 153 of the Federal Constitution morphed into the doctrine of “Ketuanan Melayu” — an entirely new doctrine of Malay ascendancy in perpetuity, by mutual consent of all, that was “retrofitted” to the original Merdeka Agreements and foundations — that, its proponents now asserted, had supposedly been part of the nation’s formative “social contract”.

As these two linked changes took hold, that second NEP-centred national ruling “dispensation” — the “Merdeka2 political framework or model” — came to enjoy a strangely prolonged after-life, one that far exceeded its initially intended lifespan of twenty years.

As I have written elsewhere, it was only with the twelfth general election (GE12) in March 2008 that, with its underlying social basis by now inexorably eroded over the years by deep socioeconomic changes, Malaysia’s second post-independence national political dispensation finally collapsed.

Now evidently obsolete — and no longer serviceable even to the government as a device for ensuring democratic electoral legitimacy — the essential structural scaffolding and supports of that “Merdeka2 model” of independent national sovereignty were simply blown away in the political tsunami of that year.

Ever since GE12 in 2008, throughout the politically difficult period leading up to GE13 in May 2013, and in the months since then, Malaysia has been struggling to find and fashion a workable new political framework: its third post-Merdeka political “dispensation”.

That is why Malaysian politics have become so embittered and unforgiving, so extraordinarily vituperative and polarized.

For many political actors — both inside government and outside it, including notably in the Malay media headed by Utusan Malaysia and amongst the Malay ethno-nationalist activists of Perkasa — there is strong support for a new national model, or one certain form or version of it.

Their candidate for the next national ruling dispensation —  their “Merdeka3 model” of independent national sovereignty, now offered as their preferred “successor framework” to the now collapsed second ruling agreement — is one that builds upon but goes beyond the logic of the second.

Far more even that the second ruling formula with its official NEP policies and doctrine of Malay “cultural centrality” in national life, this preferred third formula is one that harks back nostalgically, yet also unapologetically and uninhibitedly, to the exclusivist mid-twentieth Malay nationalism that flourished decisively in the mid-20th century: in the period from the anti-Malayan Union struggle of 1946 to the gradual emergence of the Alliance Party as the new inter-communal governing “bloc” in the years from 1951 to 1957.

It is a view of the nation that rests upon, grows from and gives political expression to a “maximalist” Malay political conviction that may be summarized in the mantra ”Malays on top, now and forever. That is Malaysia. Love it or leave it!”

It is in that context
that
“Tanda Putera”
 has emerged.

It emerges, as a politically salient and also politically driven government artistic project, that aims to promote precisely that view.

It is an attempt — a calculated, and far from disingenuous, “revisionist” attempt — to lay claim to the events of 1969 for the Malay ethno-supremacists and to harness them politically in the service of that new and assertively Malay-centric “Merdeka3 ruling doctrine and framework”.

“Tanda Putera”
 seeks to grasp the tragic events of 1969, and the governing response to them that was directed by Tun Razak and Tun Dr Ismail, and to “frame” them in a certain way: to yoke them the purpose of giving legitimacy to that new “Malay-ascendant” view of the nation’s identity and of the national agenda that it now further implies.

That is why the polemics that swirl around
Tanda Putra
are so contentious, extreme and divisive.

That is why
Tanda Putr
a and all that it represents is important.

That is why the often disingenuous arguments that are now offered as an exercise in assertively pro-Malay political apologetics for
Tanda Putra
need to be questioned.

They need to be questioned not only because, in looking to the past,
“Tanda Putera”
 is an exercise in historical revisionism, even distortion — an exercise in rewriting and “refashioning” rather than probing the historical truth of what happened in those fateful May days and their aftermath.

They matter, and need to be questioned, because, in providing their refashioned view of the past,
Tanda Putra
and the symphony of apologetics that is now heard in its praise are seeking to determine the future. To set the nation’s course in the years to come.

By means of a film, some people now intend, the new national script can be written — as if a nation in all its complexity were as simple to produce as a calculating film with a contrived story-line, mawkish sentiments and a narrow political “message”.

“Tanda Putera”
 is a film about, a partisan political representation of, an earlier regime crisis that has been produced in the midst of, and to promote a certain answer to, a later regime crisis, the regime crisis that Malaysia faces today: the crisis born of the slow, much delayed collapse of the “Merdeka2 model” or national political framework, and the less than explicit bid to impose a certain successor “Merdeka3 model” in its place.

Those behind
Tanda Putra
are seeking to suggest that the future scenario that they offer and wish to impose, their candidate model for the “Merdeka3 political framework”, is the only one that is consistent with the experience of May 1969 — as they wish it to be re-imagined and seen.

In a kind of maudlin collective self-pity, they seek to portray May 1969 as simply a “Malay tragedy”, and thereby to suggest that the future national script or scenario that they have to offer is the only one that stands authentically upon the foundations of the post-1969 national past.

But the past which
Tanda Putra
seeks to create is a past, or a version of it, that — later invented and retrofitted, just like its earlier underlying doctrine of “Ketuanan Melayu” — is itself historically not just dubious but inauthentic.

That is why it is necessary for Malaysians to understand what happened in 1969.

To understand that what occurred was not simply a “race riot” that might be managed, then and even now, by more “Malay-friendly” government policies.

It was nothing less than a total regime crisis: one that expressed itself, in part, in the form of “race riots” but which was something far deeper and even more serious than just that.

Malaysians need to know and understand the truth.

Only the truth, and nothing less, can set people free from the grip of the past.

Free from an uncomprehended and otherwise endlessly disabling past.

And, now thanks to
Tanda Putra
, a dubious past fashioned and promoted with a very specific future, or forward, purpose.

One may recall here the old tale:

“Have you read Tolstoy’s War and Peace?”

“No, but I have seen the film.”

Similarly, here:

“Have you yet bought into the Umno/BN promoted ‘soft’ version of the Perkasa view of the national future?”

“No, not yet. But I have seen Shuhaimi Baba’s
Tanda Putra
”.

                This entry was posted on Wednesday, 4 September 2013, 11:27 pm and is filed under
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