Malaysia: Why do I care?

— Clive Kessler

The Malaysian Insider

Feb 01, 2012

FEB 1 —
Part 1: The personal quest

Now back in Sydney yet again, after two more months in Malaysia, I sigh from both exhaustion and relief.

Exhaustion, since as I age I find it ever more punishing physically just to get around Kuala Lumpur and keep up with things there.

… And relief. Relief since I am here at home spared the daily onslaught of anguish and stress that is my lot there, as I contemplate Malaysia’s future and prospects “from within”: from the midst, or at the least from my vantage point close on the sidelines, of the nation’s current travails.

I enjoy here, in short, some of the pleasure of a little distance from it all, some blissful detachment.

But it is a guilty pleasure, an enjoyment that makes me feel uneasy. Why?

As I now think, from afar, about how exercised and agitated and concerned I become about Malaysia’s current situation and trajectory — especially as I contemplate Malaysia’s current situation and prospects from “inside” or “close up” there — I pose a challenge to myself. A basic question.

The question

Why, I now ask myself in my easeful Australian summer holiday relaxation, why do I care? Why do I care so much about Malaysia?

The same question, I suppose, occurs, if perhaps in a slightly different form, to a number of my Malaysian friends, as they see me thrash around in their company and become increasingly agitated the longer that I am there among them.

Why, I imagine they ask themselves, often in amused exasperation, does he bother? What is Malaysia to him?

A fair question.

And it is one that I have been thinking about posing, to myself and to my friends, in a brief commentary that has occupied me ever since I left Kuala Lumpur three weeks or so ago.

I have been toying with the idea, but not getting very far. Being here and enjoying the Australian summer’s pleasures makes Malaysia’s travails seem ever less immediate and urgent. With every day they become just that little bit more distant.

Even when the news seems less than encouraging, it becomes daily more endurable, more readily sustainable. As one post-Christian wit once put the matter, God in his great mercy has given us an almost infinite strength to bear the misfortunes of others.

Yet, every now and again, something stops me in my uncaring tracks. Something causes me to stop and consider whether I should resist the comfortable slide into a measured, and congenial, forgetfulness about Malaysia.

The challenge

Something of that kind dramatically confronted me the other day.

Two short sentences from The Malaysian Insider commentary by Azrul Mohd Khalib on “Rejecting religious fascism” (23 January) did not simply catch my attention but slammed me in between, and a little behind, my eyes — which is where, rather than in my “gut”, as is regrettably the case with so many of the ideologues who are making the “political running” these days, I do my thinking.

“Religious fascism,” those two short sentences declared, “is a tapeworm in the gut of modern Malaysia. It is time we recognised it for what it is.”

These resonant words posed a challenge that I simply could not ignore.

They demanded that I “come clean”, that I give myself, and also friends, some account of myself in this connection.

Some account, that is, of why it is that, given who I am and how I became who I now am, I do care so much about “other people’s business”: about the Malaysian people’s national business and future.

Addressing that question, it now seems to me, has two parts: the biographical and the thematic or “philosophical.”

The beginning

In part providing the answer is a matter of personal biography.

I remember writing my first brief essay about Malayan historical development and prospects as a high school student, in mid-1957, in the heady weeks immediately prior to Merdeka.

The country entered my mind, if not yet my soul, at that time, as I tried, as one schooled in the standard history of European nationalisms, to think about what the forging of a common national consciousness and destiny upon a diverse and in many ways disconnected human foundation in Malaya might entail.

All I could conclude was that this new country could be a success only if the official approach to be adopted to that required process of “forging” a national identity understood that ambiguous term “forge” in the metallurgical sense, of intently hammering into shape and refining the cohesive character o the nation, not in that of the counterfeiter.

It would work only if it were genuine, not fraudulent or deceptive, not a fake.

And for it to be genuine and effective, it would have to be based upon the cultivation and enlargement of trust. Of a sense that — however diverse the origins of their convergent paths towards Malayan nationhood citizenship might be — a sense of “we, all of us, together” among the citizens of the new Malaya was indispensable.

Only in that way could the new nation “forge” ahead, in hope and confidence.

The appeals and benefits of a prospective and common future had to become more powerful, and be made more real and palpable, than any differences that they might have had and still, as was natural, might wish to maintain and preserve.

First sight

I passed briefly through Malaya, from Sydney via Perth and Jakarta, one day in early 1960. It was a brief refuelling stop, on an international flight westward toward Europe, at the old Sungai Besi airport, then both a military and civilian facility.

For an hour or two there, and as I looked at the “tanah ayer” from above — that complex intermingling of water and land, of rivers and jungle, of rubber estates and rice fields and fishing villages, I again thought of my high-school essay.

So this, I said to myself, was the very ground, the geographical and historical terrain, up which that Malaya I had written about would have to resolve that central “existential” national question of the indispensable overarching “we.”

At university

As a university student in the early 1960s I became interested in Southeast Asia. Clifford Geertz’s classic on “The Religion of Java” (1960) had just appeared and we read, even devoured, it with fascination.

It was unwieldy. It was “unencompassable.” In its bloated proportions and grandiose aspirations, in its floridly displayed sentiments and grand human scale, it was like an ethnographic “Gone With the Wind”, we joked. But it was gripping.

It certainly made many of us think about Islam not solely as a “dry” phenomenon of the Arabian deserts, the spirit of an “arid” world, but also as a fresh component, in complex and perhaps mutually enriching, interaction with the verdant green world of jungle and irrigated rice fields — and of Hinduism and Buddhism, of peasant spirit-world animism and palace-centred aesthetics and mysticism — to Australia’s north.

Many of my fellow students focused their rapt attention to where Geertz’s own endeavours were then directed, to various parts of Indonesia. For some reason, I was impelled to take the insights that I drew from Geertz’s work, as well as the criticisms that I felt myself increasingly driven to develop of it, to Malaysia.

I became interested especially, as Geertz and many of his followers who followed him to study Indonesia were, in the political salience and impetus of Islam, beyond the Islamic heartlands in Southeast Asia.

Malaysia, Kelantan, & the politics of resurgent Islam

I had heard that a political party that called itself Islamic had surprisingly captured control of the “remote” Malayan state of Kelantan from the power of the Tunku’s federally-dominant Umno-led Alliance Party, and I became increasingly fascinated with exploring the meaning and implications of that dramatic fact.

Other fellow students (and it was then a remarkable time for student curiosity and adventurousness!) had noted that the Communist Party had come to power electorally and established its political grip over the Indian state of Kerala. In that they saw some straws in the wind, perhaps some pointers to the emerging future.

In a similar way — and we talked together about such issues — my interests was seized by the rise of what was then always referred to as the PMIP. It was not a matter of political ideology or historical analysis, but simply of a “feeling in my bones”. But my sense was that in future, in the non-European world especially, the political career of Islam was growing and might well prove fateful.

I was not sure what this new political affirmation of Islam might portend.

But of one thing I was sure. That the continuing political salience and even growing human power of Islam in social mobilization were not, as all the conventional “political development” theories of the time maintained, simply a surviving, yet rapidly dying, residue — the proverbial last gasp — of “traditionalism” in the modern world.

Rather, I sensed, there was something dynamic, enlivening and powerful at work here — something, I felt sure, that was already animating new political challenges and responses, and was not just the tired, spasmic reflex of a dying political consciousness born of traditional or pre-modern allegiances — and I wanted to know what it was and how it worked.

A detour, not a change of direction

By the time I wrote, in 1964, a very long honours thesis I had decided not to write about Malaya itself.

The recent formation of the expanded Federation of Malaysia and the beginnings of Konfrontasi or the Indonesian “Confrontation” made the matter all too fraught at the time.

But something related to my Malayan interests came to mind and I pursued that question with great seriousness and dedication.

That was the idea, first developed in the Southeast Asian world and at the time routinely employed, often in a lazy and cliché fashion, to describe and “explain” Malaya: the concept, developed by the noted colonial administrator J.S. Furnivall, of “the plural society.”

I read all that I could on that subject, including but not only what had been written about Malaya. But at that time I strategically put both “Malays” and “Chinese” aside.

Under the influence of a wonderful teacher who had written about Indians in the West Indies, I read all that I could find about overseas Indian migration, both “free” and “indentured”, worldwide, especially within the lands of the former British Empire.

My focus the was on Indians in South and East Africa (Natal, Kenya, Uganda, Tanganyika, Zanzibar): upon the difference between overseas Indian communities and societies of “free” and “indentured” origins, upon the contrasting dynamics of their engagement with their host societies, and upon the differing effects on that process of different kinds of political regime or colonial structure.

That, I concluded, was the key to the notion of “the plural society” and also the basis, historical and theoretical, of its limits.

To Kelantan, an indirect route

My brief turn to the Indian diaspora, in the end, proved not a turning away from Malaya and the analytical relevance of the idea of a “plural society” but, rather, a productive strategic detour.

In the end, unable to get research funding for any such work on “the new post-1959 Kelantan question” in Australia (“What possible relevance did that have to Australia’s needs and future?”, important people kept asking!), I had to go to London and enrol for a London doctorate to qualify for access to British and USA funding (from the then London and Cornell Universities Project of Research into East and Southeast Asian Societies — to which I remain eternally grateful and hugely indebted for life) to enable me to get to Kelantan.

I spent almost two years in rural Kelantan from 1967 to 1969 and wrote my doctoral thesis, which in a different form later became a book, on “Islam and Politics in a Malay State: Kelantan 1838-1969” (Cornell University Press, 1978).

On my flight back to London in July 1969, I recall, I read a copy, just bought in Singapore, of Clifford Geertz’s celebrated “Islam Observed” (1968) contrasting the distinctive historical patterns of religious development, namely of Islam’s political engagement and expression, in Morocco and Indonesia.

No sooner had I arrived in London than my London School of Economics colleague, the great social theorist and anthropological analyst of Islam, Ernest Gellner, seeing me still clutching that book, asked me: What do you think of this latest work by Geertz? What do you see as its main weaknesses? How do the Malaysian developments that you have been tracing “sit” with Geertz’s latest comparative analysis?

I have been worrying ever since how to answer him — and still do, years after his death.

‘The rest is history’?

I cannot quite say that “the rest is history.” But I can certainly affirm that by then, so far as the prospects and fate of Malaysia were concerned, I was “well and truly hooked.”

I have now been “working on Malaysia”, as academic types like to say, for half a century. I have been writing and publishing seriously about the country — as well as a number of other scholarly matters, since I am not just a “Malaysia specialist” and nothing more — for almost as long, certainly for well over 40 years.

The things that, from the outset, I have written about have not lost their relevance.

The political salience and power of Islam, the effectiveness of Islam in providing both the social basis networks and the intellectual or moral idiom and “popular logic” of political resistance, the role of Islam as a kind of “para-political” domain where more direct or explicit or conventionally modern forms of politics may not be available: none of this has declined in importance since the early 1960s.

On the contrary.

When, at the 1999 elections, the Islamic Party PAS registered a dramatic revival of its political fortunes, I read commentary after “shocked” commentary suggesting that the new Islamist challenge had, so to speak, “come unannounced from nowhere” — and that it was time people began taking the Islamic appeal seriously, analysing its dynamics thoughtfully, and exploring how it operated.

All I could say was that I had been doing just that for years — and that very few people had ever paid much attention.

‘Curious outsiders’ & national identity

That is one of the strange things about writing, as an international scholar, about Malaysia.

My colleagues who write seriously about France and Germany, about Italy and the India, about the United States and Japan, have the satisfaction, as well I suppose as the problems, of seeing people in those societies respond to their work.

Other scholars and serious commentators and journalists at times take up their ideas and “run with them”. So their contributions, for better or worse, become part of the “national conversation” in those countries, part of the great public debate about national identity and character and destiny.

For whatever reason, in Malaysia it is not like that.

I suspect that curious outsiders do not become absorbed within, and part of, the public debate about national identity because in Malaysia there isn’t one.

There is much partisan rhetoric, all couched within a dichotomised discourse: latter day absolutist Malay nationalism, now the ideology of “Ketuanan Melayu”, versus its critics, the loyalists to the 1957 “Merdeka moment” national aspiration towards ethnic convergence and the transcendence of the communal divisions of the “plural society.”

Dichotomized dissatisfaction, but no inclusive “national conversation.”

So there is nothing for those outside friends or informed scholars to engage with, other than partisan polemics. For them it is like urging mellow detachment and constructive family therapy to a divided, adamantly unreconciled household.

In the end, writing as an outsider about Malaysia is very much like spitting into the wind. The most that happens is that it blows back into your own face, without ever reaching anybody else standing there in front of you, whom you have been facing and your words addressing.

So, strangely, one remains largely unknown. Anonymity and obscurity, I suppose, do have their distinctive pleasures.

Who am I to speak?

But when people occasionally challenge me, demanding to know “by what right do you as an outsider presume to speak about our society and pronounce upon our political dilemmas”, I can only respond, as I have occasionally done, with the riposte (which puzzles some younger politicians, but “tickles” others) that I have, as an adult with a serious interest in these matters, been writing about “the fate of the Malayan and the Malaysian national idea” since before they were even born.

A leading (and even now still active) Malaysian journalist at the time of the 1999 elections inveighed against the role, and the credence widely given to the pronouncements, of “clueless outsiders.”

For myself, and despite all the acknowledged limitations of my work and understanding, I can only say “Clueless, I think not.”

And an “outsider”? After all these years, I am no longer sure about that either.

Certainly, I am no Malaysian “insider.”

I merely write for one — for a fine journal by that name — and for its readership of people of that kind, to whom the term may genuinely apply.

Yet an insider myself? I never was, anywhere. But a total outsider, a naïve stranger?

Again, I think not.

* To be continued tomorrow.

* Clive S. Kessler is Emeritus Professor of Sociology & Anthropology at The University of New South Wales, Sydney.

                This entry was posted on Wednesday, 1 February 2012, 10:34 am and is filed under
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PM – when will Beng Hock’s case be given due attention?

by Teoh Lee Lan

(Sister of The Late Teoh Beng Hock)

18th January 2012

It’s already 2012, could the PM please tell us when the Beng Hock case will be given due attention?

We, the family of Teoh Beng Hock, will be in Putrajaya at 9 a.m., 2 February 2012 for a Court of Appeal decision on the Teoh Beng Hock case judicial review.

In 2012 we are about to usher in the third Chinese New Year without Beng Hock and with the truth nowhere in sight.

We should like to ask: What actually happened on 16 July 2009 at the scene of Beng Hock’s death? Why have the various doubts we raised gone unanswered?

For the past few years, we have asked such questions not once, not twice, but more than a thousand times at the courts, in the media, and at various forums, but every time silence was the answer.

At this festival, when families are supposed to have reunions and everyone get together for celebration, we still have to be faced with these questions that frustrated us for thousands of times.

The heavy clouds of doubt and specious “presuppositional” answers did not in any way help to give a true picture of what happened on the day of the incident except for throwing the truth into an even more dubious haze.

Some would say, hasn’t a coroner’s court examined the case? Wasn’t a Royal Commission of Inquiry already set up? Hasn’t a report come out?

It is true that all this the government has done. But do we have any idea who the people most responsible are?

Have we heard any agency publicly give any hint of regret? Have we seen the suspects investigated?

Have our doubts and suspicions been cleared up? Has the truth come to our knowledge?

Others would say, we should leave our grief behind and move on.

In the face of an unconvincing criminal judicial system that has disappointed over and over again, however, we cannot but remind and question over and over again: “Where is the truth that we want?”

We still remember the waves of questioning voices that surged among the common people when the Royal Commission of Inquiry report came out.

From that we have no problem discerning that Beng Hock actually carries the expectations of so many members of the public for the truth.

Such expectations illustrate the concern of all for a society free from torture and violence in law enforcement as much as it does the importance of the truth.

If the truth is regarded as unimportant, violence that escaped condemnation and punishment under the law may come back at any time to haunt all of us and the defence of other social values will all the more be out of the question.

The only thing we are asking for is to at least know the truth and have those responsible held responsible. Without this, can an ambiguous answer really comfort our hearts as the victim’s family? Can it really lay to rest the soul of a victim whose life was prematurely ended at the tender age of 30?

On 9 January the Anwar case brought into sight how much the people were concerned over a court case, with thousands and thousands of common people swarming to the court to show their concern and the power of their support.

Therefore, we, the family of Teoh Beng Hock, sincerely look forward to similar support being shown over the Beng Hock case.

Here we would like to call upon the masses to attend the judicial review session on the Teoh Beng Hock at the Court of Appeal in Putrajaya on 2 February at 9 a.m. to lend us the most needed support and encouragement.

Perhaps this is the last chance for our judicial review.

Venue : Mahkamah Rayuan, Istana Kehakiman, Presint 3, Putrajaya.

                This entry was posted on Wednesday, 1 February 2012, 11:58 am and is filed under
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PR MPs will remind Najib in March Parliament to honour his solemn undertaking to leave “no stone unturned” to find out the truth about Beng Hock’s death or face the censure of voters

For more than 30 months since his murder at the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) headquarters at Shah Alam on July 16, 2009, justice have been denied to Teoh Beng Hock.

Despite an inquest, an exhumation, a Royal Commission of Inquiry (RCI) and solemn undertaking by the Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak to Teoh Beng Hock’s family that “no stone would be left unturned”, the full frightening story of the causes and circumstances for Beng Hock’s murder at MACC Headquarters have still to be told and full justice given to Beng Hock and family.

The Coroner Muntapha Abas in Beng Hock’s inquest had ruled out suicide but had returned an open verdict as there was insufficient evidence to prove that his death was a homicide.

The James Foong RCI came out with a finding overturning the verdict of the Inquest ruling out suicide – concluding that Beng Hock was “driven to commit suicide by the aggressive, relentless, oppressive and unscrupulous interrogation”.

This is most unacceptable finding as it was not based on any evidence but completely a leap in speculation by the RCI.

Although no sufficient evidence was adduced at the RCI to establish Beng Hock’s killers, it was clearly established at the RCI that there was a conspiracy of “blue wall of silence” among the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) officers to “cover up” what actually transpired at the MACC resulting in Beng Hock’s death, with the RCI publicly condemning the MACC Selangor officers except for two “brave” witnesses as a pack of liars who blatantly told lies and perjured at the RCI.

Since the  publication of the RCI report in July last year, Najib had washed his hands and cleanly forgotten his solemn undertaking to Beng Hock’s family to “leave no stone unturned” to find out the real causes of Beng Hock’s death – in other words, to hunt down Beng Hock’s killers!

After the publication of the  RCI report, Najib said he left the decision of penalising the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) trio named by the RCI  to the MACC, the police and the Attorney-General.

There have been no action whatsoever  on the part of the police and the Attorney-General while what happened in the MACC has been  an even greater charade – with no news in the past six months about the outcome of MACC internal probe against the three MACC officers implicated with Beng Hock’s death.

Former Court of Appeal judge N.H. Chan in his article “Who killed Teoh Beng Hock” after the RCI report said  the implicated MACC officers should not only be charged under Sections 304 (culpable homicide) and 304A (causing death by negligence)  of the Penal Code, but even murder under Section 302.

Why has there been inaction whether by the police, the Attorney-General or MACC.

Najib cannot pass the buck of responsibility of fulfilling his “leave no stone unturned” pledge to Beng Hock’s family to a third party.

Pakatan Rakyat MPs will remind Najib in the March Parliament that he has failed to honour his solemn undertaking to leave “no stone unturned” to find out the truth about Beng Hock’s death and demand that he keep to his pledge to Beng Hock’s family or face censure by the electorate in the forthcoming general elections.

Tomorrow the Court of Appeal will sit in Putrajaya at 9 am to decide on the application for leave for appeal against the High Court decision in December rejecting a judicial review of the open verdict of the inquest into Beng Hock’s death.

Will there be justice for Beng Hock tomorrow?

                This entry was posted on Wednesday, 1 February 2012, 3:45 pm and is filed under
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Rebranding Rela into BN’s vanguard

— Bob Teoh

The Malaysian Insider

Jan 31, 2012

JAN 31 — Under the Government Transformation Programme (GTP), Rela is to be rebranded as part of a police “omnipresence.” But its massive build-up has raised suspicions that it may instead become Barisan Nasional’s (BN) vanguard or even an additional vote bank.

“When the chips are down, Rela will be with this government to defend the country. Do not cause havoc in this country because the 2.8 million Rela members will not stand idly by and watch the country descend into chaos,” he thundered to the noisy approval from a crowd of 30,000 Rela members gathered in Kuala Lumpur last Saturday.

Najib Razak seems at variance with his minister in charge of the GTP, Idris Jala. The GTP roadmap for combating crime requires Rela to help police keep “omnipresence” in 50 identified crime hot spots in the Kuala Lumur, Selangor, Johor and Penang.

 But Najib talks about using Rela as a vanguard or vigilante when Umno or BN’s chips are down, and he wants Rela to contain demonstrators out to create public disorder.

How do we expect a rag-tag army of volunteers to rein in demonstrators when even the specially-trained, red-helmeted FRU could not handle the peaceful Bersih 2.0 Rally last year without resorting to brutality? And Bersih 2.0 was not even out to create public disorder, at that.

There is hardly any time or resource to train a volunteer army. According to the GTP roadmap, fewer than 400 Rela/JPAM personnel were trained and deployed in Kuala Lumpur and Selangor in August and September 2009; about 280 personnel were trained and were deployed in Penang and Johor in October and November 2009. That’s a tiny drop in the ocean of 2.8 million Rela volunteers. If it takes just ten hours to train one Rela member, it would take 3,240 man-years to train all of them round the clock! What we likely to get is a largely untrained vigilante force sanctioned by BN.

The recruitment of volunteers for this auxiliary security force shot up almost five-fold, from 600,000 to the current 2.8 million, within two years. It is the biggest peace time civilian mobilisation and is 25 times bigger than the country’s standing army as well as that of the police force.

The bulk of the new Rela recruits are from frontline states. Selangor has half a million, Penang (220,328), Kelantan (222,910), Perak (271,396), Sabah (258,162) and Sarawak (199,991) as at July 31, 2011. This works out to be two-thirds of Rela’s total membership. Given that in the 2008  general election, some marginal seats were won or lost by less than 50 votes, the extraordinary Rela presence in these states is more than a concern.

This massive build-up seems extraordinarily strange especially when Malaysia already has a better police personnel-to-population ratio than even industrial countries. For every 100,000 citizens, Malaysia has 301 policemen. According to UN criminal justice statistics, this is higher than Denmark (196), Canada (200), South Korea (202), Japan (203), Sweden (206), US (229) and Australia (247).

On top this, the country also has its civil defence force of 67,000 as well as the Police Volunteer Corp, both of which are much more disciplined and experienced than Rela.

Rela has a bad reputation, having drawn flak from foreign observers for its alleged human rights abuses when nabbing aliens without valid entry permits for a bounty of RM80 per head.

In 2007, Human Rights Watch called for Rela to be disbanded.

“The government has set up what’s little more than a vigilante force to target foreigners. Given Rela’s repeated abuses, it should be disbanded right away “said Brad Adams, its director for Asia.

In that same year, the Malaysian Bar Council passed a resolution at its annual general meeting, calling for the repeal of the legislation that established Rela and extended the powers of the corps’ officers to, amongst other things, enforce immigration law.

Ikatan Relawan Rakyat Malaysia (Rela) or the Peoples’ Volunteer Alliance was established on January 11, 1972 under the (Essential Powers) Emergency Act 1964 – Essential Rules (Ikatan Relawan Rakyat) (Amendment) 2005.

This law presumably will be defunct within six months after the repeal of the emergency declarations by Parliament last September and is to be replaced by what Najib calls a new Rela Act, presumably in March. But he gave no details.

Another worrisome sign is that the Home Ministry has recently installed a RM6.65 million high-tech virtual shooting range for Rela youth cadets or teenagers to handle simulation firearms. The centre at the Rakan Muda Complex in Kuala Lumpur can cater to up to 14,400 trainees a year. The virtual firing range will run on South Korea’s Intelligent Marksmanship Training Simulation System (IMTS) for its police force.

Adding to this is the claim by Perkasa, the extreme Malay right wing group, that a Rela subgroup called Briged Setia Negara had been established by Selangor Perkasa chief, Abdullah Mansor, in December last year. This was later denied by Rela.

Rela is also a strain on the Home Ministry budget as it would cost millions to maintain such a big and superfluous outfit. Najib has also proposed to increase Rela allowance by RM2 per hour. This will effectively double the full time volunteer allowance for non-officers to between RM800 and RM900 a month, which is more than what a ketua kampung or longhouse tuai rumah gets.

                This entry was posted on Wednesday, 1 February 2012, 1:09 pm and is filed under
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A Critique of the ETP: Part 3 (i) – Execution (i) – PEMANDU  strengthens the ‘know-who’ cancer

By
Dr. Ong Kian Ming BSc (LSE), MPhil (Cantab), PhD (Duke)

Teh Chi-Chang, CFA, BSc (Warwick), MBA (Cantab)

Refsa

Very swift progress, but is it due to PEMANDU?
 In its 8 ETP updates so far, PEMANDU has announced multiple new EPPs (Entry Point Projects) worth billions of ringgit of investment and creating thousands of jobs. One EPP – Johor Premium Outlets (JP Outlets) – is already open. But how much of this rapid execution is due to PEMANDU instead of normal private sector efficiency?

Opportunistic naming of existing projects as EPPs.
 For example, the JP Outlets and St Regis Hotel projects pre-dated the ETP. Their completion dates were unchanged by their subsequent EPP status – suggesting minimal input by PEMANDU. Naming them as EPPs gives the illusion of quick wins and overstates PEMANDU’s success.

PEMANDU might have indeed helped.
 PEMANDU might respond that these projects would have been delayed without its help in cutting red tape. Note that the developers Genting-Simon Property and Chua Ma Yu-MRCB are global multinationals, a prominent local businessman and a GLC.

Such help strengthens the ‘know-who’ cancer.
 If such big guns are unable to navigate the bureaucratic maze on their own, what about ordinary Malaysians? In its role as red tape-cutter, PEMANDU stifles entrepreneurship by setting itself up in the position of choosing winners. It does not matter how good your idea is, it depends on who you know to get it through the system.

The ‘hothouse’ labs probably killed innovation.
 Naming already existing projects as EPPs suggests the ETP is more ‘business-as usual’ rather than the ambitious departure from the norm it claims to be. We do indeed see serious flaws in the lab process.

The ETP is apparently well on track …
1

Chart 1: PEMANDU has announced a total 113 Entry Point Projects (EPPs) in 8 updates so far …

Note: PEMANDU’s total includes 6 Recap EPPs and 3 SRIs (Strategic Reform Initiatives). Recap EPPs are EPPs which have been made public in between the updates
2
.

Chart 2 : … worth a total RM177 billion investment value …

Note: The RM36.6 billion MRT and RM60 billion Petronas RAPID EPPs boosted the numbers in Updates 3 and 6 respectively.

Chart 3: … with the potential to create nearly 390,000 jobs by 2020 ….

Note: A few EPPs account for a high proportion of new jobs created. For example, the TUKAR (Update 4) and Pasar Komuniti (Update 5) EPPS are expected to create 51,000 and 56,000 jobs respectively
3
.

Chart 4 : … and generate RM237 billion of gross national income (GNI).

Note: The Tanjong Agas and Petroleum Incentives EPPs boosted the numbers in Update 2; RAPID contributed most of the GNI contribution expected in Update 6.

It’s too good to be true …

By November 2011, less than 14 months after the launch of the ETP (Economic Transformation Programme)
4
, PEMANDU
5
 had announced a total 113 projects worth RM177 billion and with the potential to create nearly 390,000 jobs:

The RM177 billion of investments is well above the RM140 billion per year average required to hit RM1.4 trillion by 2020;

97 of the 113 EPPs (Entry Point Projects) are in progress. One EPP is already open for business – a Premium Outlet Centre in Kulaijaya, Johor under the Tourism NKEA.

PEMANDU appears well on track. Each of the eight ETP updates so far heralded multiple new EPPs (Entry Point Projects) generating thousands of jobs and billions of ringgit of investment. The tone is exhilarating, extolling the considerable progress and huge investments. There is nary a murmur of hitches.

That already raises questions. All of us have experienced having to refine, amend, and sometimes, abort plans. Rain ruins satay dinner at our favourite stall; floods in Thailand wreak havoc on the operations of the famously meticulous Japanese car-makers.

The highly-paid team at PEMANDU and its expensive consultants
6
 might be better able to avoid the hitches that mere mortals like us run into, but still, a plan that is as ambitious and transformative as the ETP is bound to run into hurdles and roadblocks. It stretches credulity – that all has been hunky-dory with the ETP ever since its launch in Oct 2010.

REFSA finds that, indeed, not all is well behind the glitzy façade. We now focus on Execution – the ‘E’ in DEEDS, the framework with which we are evaluating PEMANDU and the ETP. This will cover 3 Parts:

Part 3 (i) here focuses on the value-added contribution of PEMANDU especially on its role in cutting red tape;

Part 3 (ii) will examine the selection of EPPs – particularly how the NKEA lab process can be ‘hijacked’ by vested interests;

Part 3 (iii) will use the two massive but economically tenuous EPPs as examples to illustrate the shortcomings in the execution process.

Taking credit when none is due?

Our first execution issue is with the actual contribution of PEMANDU towards some of the EPPs announced.

Some early wins are due to projects that got off the ground before PEMANDU and the ETP were created. For example, take the Johor Premium Outlets that are now open. This is a 50:50 joint venture between Genting Plantations Berhad and the Simon Property Group, a company listed in the New York Stock Exchange:

Genting Plantations formally announced this project to Bursa Malaysia in Sept 2009
7
;

The much vaunted PEMANDU labs that selected the EPPs that would constitute the ETP were convened only in May 2010;

The ground breaking ceremony for the project took place on 5 Aug 2010. This was more than 2 months before the release of the ETP Report at the end of Oct 2010
8
;

The project was open in 2011, as per the target in Genting Plantations’ very first announcement to Bursa Malaysia. This was before the term EPP was even heard of. What then was PEMANDU’s contribution?

It smacks of opportunism – that PEMANDU should name this project as an EPP under the Tourism NKEA
9
 when it was already well under way before the ETP. It is hard to see what PEMANDU contributed to ‘facilitate the implementation and delivery’ of this EPP
10
.

PEMANDU might claim that its role in the Johor Premium Outlets went way beyond monitoring. It might claim it played an instrumental behind-the-scenes role, as it did with the St Regis Hotel EPP, another project that existed long before PEMANDU and the ETP.

Project completion dates are unchanged despite PEMANDU’s ‘help’

The St Regis project was announced in 2008, but according to Minister Datuk Seri Idris Jala, CEO of PEMANDU, EPP status resulted in the building approval process being expedited:

There’s an entrepreneur who wanted to build a six-star hotel in Kuala Lumpur, a St. Regis hotel. He went around the mulberry bush trying to secure approvals for two years. He got frustrated and could not get approval. On October 25th last year, it was announced as one of the new projects. Two weeks later, piling began for this project
11
.

REFSA, however, is puzzled. The St Regis Kuala Lumpur is still scheduled to be open in 2014
12
, which is unchanged from when the project was announced
13
. Just as in the Johor Premium Outlets, PEMANDU’s involvement does not seem to have sped up this project.

As these two examples show, PEMANDU’s involvement has not speeded up completion dates. The fast pace of execution of the ETP that PEMANDU showcases may be due more to the normal efforts of the private sector participants than to PEMANDU’s help.

PEMANDU already uses the term ‘Recap EPPs’ for EPPs which had been separately announced prior to specific ETP Updates.   It is even more important that pre-existing projects such as the Johor Premium Outlets and St Regis be separately listed and catalogued, and not called EPPs, so as to differentiate between projects where PEMANDU had substantial input, and pre-existing projects for which it might help somewhat in execution but cannot take full credit.

By doing this, PEMANDU can avoid the criticism that it is misleading the public by attempting to take credit for pre-existing projects. It would also then be in a position to take full and rightful credit for the truly fresh EPPs that were nurtured in its labs and blossomed to completion under its leadership.

Is PEMANDU reinforcing the ‘know-who’ cancer?

PEMANDU might respond that the projects are on track only because of its help. Without PEMANDU and the ETP, their completion dates would have been delayed. This may be true, but begs the question as to why the listed companies involved did not publicly announce the likely delays.  The problems would have been apparent long before these projects were selected as EPPs.

Taking PEMANDU at face value presents an even more frightening picture. Consider this:

Genting Plantations is part of the huge Genting group, which generates billons of ringgit of profit from extensive operations all over the world. It has businesses from Singapore to New York and includes 5 listed companies in 3 jurisdictions;

Its partner in Johor Premium Outlets, Simon Property Group, Inc., is the largest real estate company in the U.S. with assets in North America, Europe and Asia;

St Regis Kuala Lumpur is promoted by prominent local businessman Chua Ma Yu and Malaysian-listed conglomerate Malaysian Resources Corporation Berhad, which also happens to be a major government-linked corporation (GLC) with a track record of building many high rises in the KL Sentral development area where the St Regis Kuala Lumpur hotel is located.

Have our government and bureaucracy become so business unfriendly that huge multi-nationals like Genting Group and Simon Property need to engage a ‘fixer’ like PEMANDU to shepherd their projects through?

Has our government become so cut off from its grassroots that even a GLC and a prominent local businessman are unable to navigate the maze of approvals required to get a project off the ground?

If so, where does that leave the ordinary small Malaysian entrepreneur trying to get his fledging business under way?

PEMANDU, acting as ‘enabler’ and cutting red tape is unwittingly reinforcing the cancer of ‘know-who’ rather than ‘know-how’ that is killing Malaysian innovation, creativity and productivity. It does not matter how good your product or idea is, or how efficiently you can make it, it depends on who you know to get it through the system.

Genting-Simon Property Group and Chua Ma Yu-MRCB got through, but how many others are stalled because they do not have the benefit of PEMANDU’s red tape-cutting shears?

To be truly transformative, PEMANDU must make it a primary goal to

cut the red tape and make sure it does not come back to stifle other genuine entrepreneurs.

Better yet, PEMANDU should indicate how it was able to ‘facilitate’ in the implementation of such pre-existing projects and how these facilitation measures are being translated into long-term policy changes, one of which is to reduce red tape as stated in the Strategic Reform Initiatives (SRIs).

Otherwise, PEMANDU is setting itself up to be a permanent entity, with the job of selecting ‘winners’ from a beauty parade of projects striving for EPP status. This merely institutionalises the government-knows-best mentality, rather than promotes the private sector initiative which is a key pillar of the ETP.

The ‘hothouse’ labs probably killed innovation

Going back to the very foundations of the ETP, PEMANDU makes much of the 12 NKEA ‘labs’ that brought together 500 experts from the private and pubic sectors to define and detail the ETP.

These labs, in 8 short weeks, detailed and defined the 131 EPPs (Entry Point Projects) across the 12 NKEAs (National Key Economic Areas) that make up the ETP.

However, by naming already existing projects as EPPs, the ETP might be depicted as yet another project ‘grabfest’ and not the ambitious departure from the norm and programme it claims to be.

REFSA sees fundamental defects in the process of selecting the EPPs. The ‘hothouse’ labs would have favoured incumbents with existing business plans rather than entrepreneurs with transformative ideas. More next week!

*******

Note on Part 2:

We thank Nurhisham who blogs at http://econsmalaysia.blogspot.com/ for pointing out that our GDP Deflator calculations in Part 2 of our critique were not accurate
14
. After recalculating, we find that the GDP Deflator from 2001 to 2009 increased at an annual rate of 3.7% rather than the 5% listed in Exhibit 1 on page 6.

About this series

Critics of PEMANDU and the ETP thus far have tended to focus on the expensive costs incurred by PEMANDU and its consultants, accusations of style prevailing over substance, the execution of specific projects (such as the MRT and 1 Malaysia email) and its apparently lofty, unrealistic targets.

We think these issues can be further debated, but these questions ultimately boil down to PEMANDU’s raison d’être.  PEMANDU is already a fait accompli. Debating its existence serves no useful purpose at this point.

Instead, we evaluate PEMANDU and the ETP on its own terms by looking at the goals, plans and targets outlined in the ETP Roadmap document. Doing so facilitates constructive debate as it uses the same framework which PEMANDU has chosen to work within.

In that vein, and in keeping with the spirit of the alphabet soup of NKEAs, NKRAs, SRIs, EPPs, GNI surrounding the entire GTP, we evaluate PEMANDU and the ETP on its DEEDS:

Data transparency – the ease with which an independent analyst can evaluate the figures relevant to the ETP and its targets;

Execution – the progress, or lack thereof, of announced EPPs (Entry Point Projects);

Enterprise – whether the target of stimulating private investment is being achieved. The ETP aims for a 92:8 split between private and public investments;

Distribution – the distribution of EPPs across the NKEAs (National Key Economic Areas), which shows whether a healthy balance of projects is being maintained; and

Socio-economic impact – an evaluation of the main beneficiaries of the economic activities generated by the EPPs.

The story so far

In
Part 1,
Let’s evaluate PEMANDU on its DEEDS
, we introduced our evaluation framework.

In
Part 2,
We won’t really be twice as rich in 2020
 we declared “It does not compute!” PEMANDU’s  target is to double nominal income per capita to RM48,000 by 2020. But using its forecasts for income and population growth, and inflation, the income target should be RM54,145, not RM48,000. How can we trust this ‘roadmap to economic transformation’ when the highly-paid team at PEMANDU and its costly consultants cannot even get the basic mathematics right?

Note on PEMANDU’s response

Upon hearing that we were writing an evaluation of the ETP, the communications team at PEMANDU kindly arranged interviews with a Director from the Minister’s Office who is also the Director of the Oil, Gas and Energy & Financial Services NKEAs, the Director of the Wholesale and Retail (W&R) NKEA and the Assistant Director of the Tourism NKEA. We are grateful for these interviews and will include clarification points from these interviews in our evaluation. These interviews were recorded by the ETP communications team and we hope that they would be made available online for public access.

About the authors

Visiting contributor Dr Ong Kian Ming holds a PhD in Political Science from Duke University and Economics degrees from the University of Cambridge and the London School of Economics. He is attached to UCSI University, which has been named as the project owner of two Entry Point Projects (EPPs). To avoid any potential conflict of interest, he will not make references to or analyse these two EPPs. He can be reached at
[email protected]
.

REFSA (Research for Social Advancement) Executive Director Teh Chi-Chang holds a first class degree in Accounting & Financial Analysis from the University of Warwick, an MBA from the University of Cambridge and the CFA (Chartered Financial Analyst) charter. Prior to joining REFSA, he headed highly-regarded investment research teams covering Malaysia, and was himself highly-ranked as an analyst. He can be reached at
[email protected]
.

Help REFSA do more!

REFSA is a not-for-profit research institute that provides relevant and reliable information on social, economic and political issues affecting Malaysians. We aim to promote open and constructive discussions that result in effective policies to address these issues.

REFSA depends primarily on donations to fund its operations. Research such as this consumes much time, expertise and effort. Please contribute if you share our vision for a better Malaysia and support our commitment to impartial, constructive analysis. Donations can be:

Made on-line via our website at www.refsa.org.

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Credit

REFSA allows authorship of derivative works and other transformations of this publication for personal, non-profit/non-commercial use, subject to the inclusion of proper and appropriate credit to “REFSA – Research for Social Advancement”. REFSA expressly prohibits the use of the whole or any part of this publication for defamatory or criminal purposes.

Other Information

The information in this report has been obtained from and is based upon sources that are believed to be reliable but no guarantee is made as to accuracy and completeness.

________

1
 All the data for Charts 1 to 4 were obtained from the ETP website: http://etp.pemandu.gov.my/Progress_Update-@-Progress_Update.aspx. Retrieved 29 Jan 2012.

2
 However, some projects which had been announced prior to that particular update were classified as EPPs rather than Recap EPPs, including projects that existed before the ETP. Examples are the Karambunai, Tanjong Agas, St. Regis and Iskandar Educity projects.

3
 We shall analyse the creation and distribution of new jobs in detail in a subsequent Focus Paper in this series.

4
 The ETP calls for 131 entry point projects (EPPs) within 12 National Key Economic Areas (NKEAs), which will pour RM1.4 trillion worth of investment into the economy and create 3.3 million new jobs by 2020.

5
 The acronym that the Performance Management and Delivery Unit within the prime minister’s department is better known by. PEMANDU is the government agency that created and is now steering the ETP.

6
 Its eight directors reportedly pocket RM39,000 each per month; while consultants McKinsey were paid RM36 million to set up PEMANDU. Covered in Part 1: Introducing DEEDS.

7
 Announcement by Genting Plantations Berhad to Bursa Malaysia, 30 Sept 2009. Ref No GP-090930-3DAD8. Available at www.gentingplantations.com/news/2009/pdf/GPB_30Sep2009b.pdf. Retrieved 29 Jan 2012.

8
 Chief minister of Johor officiates ground breaking for Johor Premium Outlets. Genting Plantations press release dated 5 Aug 2010. Available at www.gentingplantations.com/news/2010/pdf/GPB_05Aug2010b.PDF. Retrieved 29 Jan 2012.

9
 The ETP report actually identified the establishment of three premium outlets, including the Johor Premium Outlet. Interestingly, the ETP report anticipated the first outlet to be operational only by 2013 (pg 326), despite the public announcement by Genting Plantations that the Johor Premium Outlets would be completed by 2011.

10
 The purpose of the ETP unit, as outlined in Pg. 26 of the Executive Summary of the ETP Roadmap Report.

11
 Interview published in McKinsey Quarterly, Oct 2011. Available at http://etpblog.pemandu.gov.my/posts/2011/11/02/jump-starting-malaysia%E2%80%99s-growth-an-interview-with-idris-jala/. Retrieved 29 Jan 2012.

12
 The St Regis Kuala Lumpur – Opening December 1, 2014. Available at hwww.starwoodhotels.com/stregis/property/meetings/index.html?propertyID=3392. Retrieved 29 Jan 2012.

13
 St Regis coming to KL. Available at www.klsentral.com.my/NewsDetail.aspx?NEWSID=395ff40c-5230-45c3-973d-58c49526dcc7. Retrieved 29 Jan 2012.

14
 Hisham’s critique of our critique can be found at http://econsmalaysia.blogspot.com/2012/01/critiquing-critique-or-this-is-not-how.html, Retrieved 31st Jan 2012.

                This entry was posted on Thursday, 2 February 2012, 5:34 pm and is filed under
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In just two years, Najib has “given up the ghost” on his signature 1Malaysia policy

“Why must I be Malaysian first and Malay second?”

This seemingly innocuous question by the  Minister without Portfolio in the Prime Minister’s Department, Datuk Seri Idris Jala yesterday marked another watershed in the 34-month premiership of Datuk Seri Najib Razak.

In just two years, the Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Najib Razak  has “given up the ghost” on his signature 1Malaysia policy to create a Malaysia where Malaysians regard themselves as Malaysians first and their race, religion, region or socio-economic status second.

It marked another abandonment of Najib’s grandiloquent “transformation” policies, like the even more short-lived New Economic Model (NEM)  which was given an unceremonial burial in three short months.

This was why the theme of  my speech in Parliament on the Tenth Malaysia Plan on 21st June 2010 was “Tenth Malaysia Plan: Long live NEP – RIP NEM” although the NEM was unveiled only on 30th March 2010.

In the March 2010 Parliament, I had observed that the Najib Cabinet was full of Ministers who were quite sceptical about the 1Malaysia concept treating it as nothing more than political theatre.

I specifically asked who were the Ministers in the Cabinet who had the 1Malaysia DNA as I could not see anyone, posing two 1Malaysia DNA tests for the Cabinet Ministers:

Is the Minister  prepared to declare that the basis of 1Malaysia is “ketuanan rakyat Malaysia” and not “ketuanan Melayu”?; and

Is he or she prepared to endorse the objective of 1Malaysia as defined by the 1Malaysia Government Transformation Programme (GTP) Roadmap launched in January 2010 to create a nation where every Malaysian perceives himself or herself as Malaysian first, and by race, religion, region or socio-economic status second by declaring that he or she is Malaysian first and ethnicity second?

To demonstrate that I not trapping the Ministers with a trick question, I made the following declaration in Parliament:

“I declare that I am Malaysian first and Chinese second. Is every Cabinet Minister prepared to make a similar declaration?”

No Cabinet Minister dared to respond to me inside Parliament. After much prompting and challenge, the Deputy Prime Minister, Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin declared outside Parliament that he was  “Malay first” and then only a Malaysian.

In the past two years, apart from the Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department, Datuk Seri Nazri Aziz who courageously declared: “Yes, I am a Malaysian first and Malay next. Does any bigot have a problem with that?” in an open letter to Utusan Malaysia, all the other Cabinet Ministers have been on the run on the issue.

Even the Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Najib Razak dodged this question when he was asked  by Malaysian students at the Malaysian Student Leaders Summit (MSLS) in Kuala Lumpur in July last year on what he thought of Muhyiddin’s infamous remark of being “Malay first and Malaysian next.”

Najib came out with the poor and weak excuse that he did not want to “respond in a way that will divide me from my deputy”, adding: “1 Malaysia is our guiding philosophy. It does not matter what you say, just as long as you follow (the 1 Malaysia concept)”. (
The Malaysian Insider
)

I have no doubt that if Idris had been pressed two years ago to declare his personal stand on 1Malaysia policy, he would have declared that he was a Malaysian first and Kelabit second.

But now he gives a long, rambling and ludicrous reply: “My name is Idris, that is my name, my identity. Kelabit is the tribe I was born in. I belong to a group called the Orang Ulu. I am Sarawakian, I am Malaysian, I am Asian.”

Clearly a long drawn-out tussle for the soul of the 1Malaysia policy had been waged in UMNO  in the past two years, and  the hardliners have won the battle.

This is why under Najib’s premiership, extremists are increasingly having a field day as shown by Utusan Malaysia, UMNO’s official newspaper, allowed to shout from the rooftops their incendiary lies and falsehoods to create stoke racial hatreds and incite religious tensions.

This is why racial and religious polarisation are at their worst in the nation’s history under Najib’s 1Malaysia when they should at their best if 1Malaysia policy is a serious and meaningful Prime Ministerial policy instead of being an empty and hollow one!

This is not a good sign for Najib’s 1Malaysia policy, his various transformation programmes or his recent call on the moderates to unite and to speak out against the extremists.

Now the Minister responsible for articulating and implementing Najib’s signature 1Malaysia policy has been assigned the task of dismantling and burying it!

With the 1Malaysia stripped of its soul and purpose, only 1Malaysia gimmicry and bric-a-bracs are left.

Very sad indeed and a most pathetic end to Najib’s 1Malaysia policy.

Also no point to ask what the other Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department who is assigned the task of answering questions in Parliament on 1Malaysia, Senator Dr. Koh Tsu Koon what he has to say.

                This entry was posted on Thursday, 2 February 2012, 5:17 am and is filed under
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Jika Mempunyai Peluang, Saya Akan Menyertai DAP

Oleh
Ahmad Tajuddin Abdullah

Kenyataan ini seolah-olah saya mahu menyertai politik selepas tamat pengajian. Tidak, bukan itu maksud saya. Tetapi sedikit komentar dari saya setelah memerhatikan beberapa siri kejadian yang tidak disangka-sangka oleh ramai rakyat Malaysia yang aktif memerhatikan gelombang politik tanah air muttakhir ini.

Siri kemasukan ramai nama-nama besar melayu (terpulang kepada persepsi pembaca) ke dalam Parti Tindakan Demokratik (DAP) akhir-akhir ini menimbulkan persoalan, apakah tuduhan dan serangan UMNO selama ini terhadap parti tersebut tidak berjaya mempengaruhi orang melayu?

Saya membaca beberapa keluhan dan rasa resah dalam kalangan rakan-rakan saya dan komen-komen pembaca mengenai berita ini, dengan menganggap mereka yang menyertai DAP sudah lupa asal usul, terpengaruh dengan ideologi komunis, dasar tidak mengenang budi dan sebagainya.

Bagi saya, ini lumrah dunia politik. Orang akan mengecam segala 1001 perkara yang mereka tidak suka. Tambahan pula, apabila perkara itu berlawanan dengan kebiasaan mereka.

Dato’ Saifuddin Abdullah ada menulis sebuah artikel yang disiarkan oleh Sinar Harian berkenaan politik fitnah dan hikmah di Malaysia. Artikel yang bagus, seolah-olah Dato’ Saifuddin ingin menegur barisan partinya sendiri mungkin. Ini telahan saya.

Jika dalam artikel tersebut, Dato’ Saifuddin mengutarakan idea berkenaan politik hikmah yang wajib didasari oleh setiap warga Malaysia bagi menentang politik fitnah yang cukup keji, maka kali ini saya mengutarakan pula idea politik matang bagi mengatasi sindrom politik takut dalam diri rakyat Malaysia terhadap beberapa perkara yang dipalsukan kebenarannya oleh pihak-pihak tertentu.

Orang Melayu Sudah Lama Ditipu

Saya merujuk kepada beberapa penulisan oleh Aspan Alias dan Sakmongkol 47 selepas mereka berdua secara rasmi mengisytiharkan kemasukan mereka ke dalam DAP yang membongkar beberapa titik penting untuk dibincangkan dalam artikel ini.

Antaranya, orang melayu sudah sekian lama ditipu bulat-bulat oleh UMNO/BN melalui media mereka bahawa DAP itu parti Cina. Bukan sekadar cina, malah mereka menambah lagi garam dengan mengatakan bahawa DAP itu anti-Melayu, anti-Raja,chauvinist, mahu menjadikan Perdana Menteri dari orang cina dan pelbagai lagi.

Melayu ditakut-takutkan sejak sekian lama dengan kenyataan yang tidak berasas. Seolah-olah negara ini tiada perlembagaan, dan orang-orang DAP tidak tahu menghormati perlembagaan!

Orang-orang kampung apabila mendengar perkataan DAP, seolah-olah kita menyebut segerombolan komunis memasuki kampung. Sampai begitu sekali ketakutan yang UMNO/BN berjaya tanamkan dalam diri hampir keseluruhan masyarakat melayu terutamanya mereka yang lahir pada era 80-an dan ke bawah.

Malah, tidak terkecuali sebahagian besar mereka dalam kalangan generasi saya pun!

Menakutkan Melayu Demi Survival Politik

Rasanya mungkin ini hujah paling tepat kenapa sindrom takut ini ditanam dalam diri setiap warga Malaysia. Mudahnya, mereka yang sedang berkuasa ingin terus mengekalkan survival kuasa itu dalam genggaman tangan mereka.

Cara paling mudah ialah dengan memberi gambaran seburuk mungkin kepada rakyat terhadap pihak lawan mereka. Sentimen perkauman adalah bahan bakar yang paling mudah disambar api.

Pantang disentuh, pasti marak apinya tanpa mampu disekat.

Perkara biasa yang kini hampir basi ialah kedudukan Raja, Islam dan ketuanan melayu. Inilah melodi yang dimainkan oleh parti pemerintah sekarang untuk menakut-nakutkan orang melayu.

Mereka berbuat demikian dalam keadaan mereka menyekat pelbagai sumber lain untuk rakyat menilai dan berfikir. Minda rakyat terutamanya melayu dikongkong dengan sentimen basi ini. Pantang dikritik, pasti melenting dengan isu basi ketiga-tiga di atas.

Setiap kali pilihan raya, inilah antara melodi yang paling hangat. Rakyat bukan bodoh, tetapi mereka tidak mendapat maklumat yang meluas. Mereka dipaksa untuk menerima penipuan tersebut hidup-hidup.

Mereka yang tidak pernah di ajar untuk berfikir, akan cuma pandai bertempik dengan semangat kemelayuannya yang akhirnya pak menteri bina rumah banglo bertingkat-tingkat, rakyat yang diperbodohkan miskin merempat.

Setiap tahun mereka perbaharui penipuan  ini di PWTC dengan laungan penuh semangat, Hidup Melayu!

Seperti saya tulis di atas, hal ini semua dilakukan demi survival kuasa memerintah mereka.

Dato’ Onn Pencetus Idea Politik Matang

Saya masih ingat tentang sebuah artikel yang pernah disiarkan dalam akhbar Harakah, mengulas panjang tentang fenomena di Malaysia semasa dan selepas PRU-12. Kebanyakan orang tidak pernah terfikir bahawa suatu hari nanti orang melayu Islam mengundi calon Cina sebagai wakil rakyat mereka, dan juga masyarakat Cina yang sanggup menerima calon PAS sebagai wakil mereka.

Ini luar dari jangkaan ramai. Ketika Dato’ Onn menyuarakan cadangan agar keahlian UMNO dibuka kepada bukan Melayu, beliau telah ditentang oleh ahli-ahli UMNO sendiri sehingga Dato’ Onn membuat keputusan keluar dari parti tersebut dan menubuhkan Parti Malaya Merdeka (Independence of Malaya Party).

Menjadi persoalan di sini, kenapa Dato’ Onn mampu melontarkan cadangan yang begitu luar dari kerangka masyarakat ketika itu berfikir sehinggakan ramai menganggap beliau sudah tidak relevan?

Hakikatnya, beliau sendiri telah nampak perubahan politik yang bakal berlaku pada tahun 2008 ketika itu.

Namun, pemimpin UMNO ketika itu membutakan mata mereka daripada memandang hal yang sama. Mereka lebih senang menggunakan helah dan penipuan seperti yang saya nyatakan di atas demi mengekalkan kuasa yang ada di tangan mereka.

Saya merasa amat yakin, jikalau cadangan Dato’ Onn diterima ketika itu sudah tentu permasalahan sindrom politik takut yang melanda masyarakat Malaysia dapat ditamatkan.

Saya menghormati Dato’ Onn kerana keberaniannya melawan arus masyarakat ketika itu, demi tujuan melahirkan sebuah masyarakat Malaysia yang matang dan benar-benar harmoni.

Beliau cuba mendidik masyarakat melayu ketika itu, menyedarkan mereka dari tidur bahawa Malaysia ini bukan milik orang melayu sahaja tetapi mereka berkongsi tanah yang sama dengan rakan cina dan india. Beliau telah mencetuskan satu arus pencerahan yang amat sukar diterima pada waktu tersebut.

Kini, idea cetusan beliau itu makin marak malah telah menyebabkan pihak pemerintah menggigil ketakutan. Bayangkan seorang apek cina tidak malu mengangkat sepanduk “Kami Sayang Tok Guru” dan PAS sudah siap dengan penubuhan Dewan Himpunan Penyokong PAS yang dianggotai oleh mereka yang bukan Islam.

Kini, orang melayu mula menyertai DAP secara berjemaah!

Kenapa Sertai DAP?

Ya, saya mahu menyertai DAP. Saya mahu mendidik masyarakat di sekitar saya bahawa DAP bukan komunis. DAP bukan cina. DAP bukan anti-Melayu. DAP bukan chauvinist. DAP bukan anti-Islam. DAP bukan semua tanggapan kolot di atas.

DAP adalah parti politik yang sah di sisi Perlembagaan Malaysia. Tiada beza taraf DAP dan UMNO dari sudut perundangan. Cuma bezanya antara dua parti itu ialah DAP cuba mencerdikkan rakyat dan UMNO sudah sekian lama menipu rakyat.

Walaupun sudah ramai masyarakat Malaysia sedar tentang hakikat ini, namun hal ini hanya berlegar di kawasan yang mempunyai capaian maklumat yang tepat sahaja.

Bagaimana dengan nasib warga FELDA?

Bagaimana dengan nasib penduduk Sabah dan Sarawak?

Bagaimana dengan nasib masyarakat di kawasan pedalaman?

Hanya dengan kesediaan masyarakat yang sedar dan matang politik, untuk berani terjun melakukan sesuatu yang lain dari kelaziman maka cetusan pencerahan ke arah politik matang ini dapat dipercikkan.

Semakin ramai yang berani membuat keputusan begini, sudah tentu sindrom politik takut itu dapat dikurangkan hari demi hari. Pergiatkan program-program pencerahan kepada masyarakat.

Saya tidak tulis di sini bahawa hanya dengan menyertai DAP sahaja satu-satunya cara untuk membina sebuah masyarakat yang matang politiknya, tetapi ini salah satu usaha ke arah itu.

Masyarakat yang matang politiknya akan mampu berfikir secara rasional, tidak terpengaruh dengan sentimen perkauman, sedar akan hak mereka untuk berfikir dan memilih secara bebas tanpa dikongkong, tidak terperangkap dengan sindrom kerajaan pemerintah adalah kuasa segala-galanya tetapi insaf bahawa merekalah sebenarnya penentu siapakah yang akan menjadi pemimpin kepada mereka sendiri.

Saya terpegun dengan berita 2 graduan perundangan UiTM menyertai DAP. Timbul di benak saya, apakah ada “perancangan” yang gagal sehingga terjadinya kes sebegini terhadap graduan UiTM?

Mari kita baca ini, sambil berfikir secara orang dewasa yang matang.

Wallahualam.

                This entry was posted on Thursday, 2 February 2012, 6:40 pm and is filed under
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Malaysia: Why do I care? (Part 2)

By
Clive Kessler
 | February 02, 2012

The Malaysian Insider

FEB 2 —
Part 2: The “philosophical” aspect.

Why do I care about Malaysia?

Why do I have ideas and opinions? Why do I voice them? And why do I believe that people might occasionally listen and give some heed when I do?

Half the answer, which I have already provided in sketchy outline, is biographical. It is a matter of, literally, one’s “curriculum vitae”, the “small pathway” of one’s personal, individual life-course.

The other part, which I will now try to suggest in this complementary discussion, is a matter of the attitudes and sensibilities acquired during the course of that life.

It is a matter of how the formative experiences not merely of one’s professional career and trajectory but of life in general have entered into and so shaped one’s thinking and writing, and life’s work, as a scholar.

“In a nutshell”?

How can I suggest these complexities, in part very abstract yet also intensely personal, in a simple direct way to a readership of “Malaysian insiders”?

Not easy, but perhaps it can all be found somewhere in a nutshell, “the world” (or at least my world) “in a grain of sand.”

So, with that intent and strategy, I will draw upon a recent exchange that I had with a most thoughtful “younger” (here meaning younger than me and colleagues of my own generation) Malaysian scholar.

The exchange occurred in the days immediately preceding the January 9 “Judgment Day”, as I was preparing to return to Sydney.

The Malaysian press was then full of reports of attempts to stage a mass opposition mobilisation outside the Jalan Duta courts that morning.

Things, I remarked, seemed to be simply falling apart.

The government seemed committed to a “no-win, lose-lose” position, whether Anwar was convicted or acquitted. The opposition was overplaying its hand, overreaching itself, inviting embarrassment if they could not — improbably so it seemed to me — call out 100,000 people.

“Entropy on all fronts,” I said. Or, “Things fall apart, the centre cannot hold.”

Why, I was asked, did I believe the opposition was overreaching, that it could not produce such a huge turnout?

Well, it would be hard at any time, in any circumstances.

Especially these.

This, I said, was not July 9.

People, I thought, felt tired and exhausted, not energised and challenged.

Unlike the July 9 moment — which despite official efforts to characterise it as a merely partisan or sectional exercise, had been anything but that — this occasion, like it or not, was, because it was yet another step in the “exemplary suffering” or “passion” along the Via Dolorosa of Anwar, inherently political.

So, I said, unlike July 9 this is not apolitical, non-partisan, “murni”.

Malaysia, I added, seemed near-broken. Its problem was far bigger than Anwar. It was experiencing, and had been since at least March 2008, a slow, protracted regime crisis.

The governing party machinery, I said, seems broken, cannot be repaired, and cannot be replaced.

Political exhaustion and the defence of democracy

Meanwhile, I fretted about the political tiredness and exhaustion that, as my friend agreed, seemed endemic all around me.

I could not simply accept that passivity as a neutral fact, a reality without its own implications.

“This political exhaustion is not neutral,” I insisted. “It favours some, disables others. Meanwhile, yet again, residual democracy is dying from a lack of defenders. That is why I am continually reminded here these days of the Weimar Republic, and of its collapse between 1928 and 1933”.

A democracy without democrats, a democratic constitutional order without committed and effective democratic constitutionalists, is a worrying thing.

The big problem here, as in Weimar, I added, is that in a maimed, crippled democracy most people no longer care to defend democratic principles. So ground is ceded daily to the “blood and soil” nationalists. That is fatal.

Blood and soil nationalism

“Blood and soil nationalists”? What does that mean?

Just that. It refers to the kind of nationalism that is based upon ideas, or doctrines, of blood and soil. Upon the key belief that the nation is a community created, bound together, and thereafter bounded in its limits by connections of blood and soil, or “Blut und Boden” as the right-wing German nationalists had said.

The basic idea is that the land, any land, is won and held and owned, exclusively, by those who have a certain kind of historical connection to it.

On that basis a nation is a community born of a connection of blood, through descent, from the founding national ancestors, and born too of the blood that those ancestors spilled in making that land theirs, making it the possession and exclusive inheritance of their direct, or “blood”, descendants.

The noted Canadian writer and politician Michael Ignatieff captures this idea, the essential notion of what is known these days as “ethnic” or “descent” nationalism, in his superb book “Blood and Belonging: Journeys into the New Nationalism” (1993).

Drawing especially upon his own long experience of pre- and post-breakdown Yugoslavia, he identifies this kind of nationalism as a type.

It is based upon the idea or dream or fantasy that, in today’s world and under modern conditions, one may yet live entirely among “people of one’s own kind”, unaffected and “undiluted” and “uncontaminated” and hence, above all, “unmastered” by others, by people of different historic, descent-based identities.

And since, this mindset continues, one may reasonably aspire to live a life entirely on one’s own “historic” terms among people of one’s own kind, the determination to do so is legitimate.

This kind of nationalism is simply the determination to actualise that mindset: to enact that script, to make real that determination, to achieve its main end, an exclusive and exclusionary political self-sufficiency.

Under extreme conditions its logical “end-point” is ethnic cleansing. In ethnic cleansing, the immanent core idea becomes explicit, is made quite brutally clear.

Short of that end-point, this attitude and mindset find expression in ideas of a bifurcated citizenry: one dichotomised into two distinct and unequal classes, the one enjoying full rights “as of natural right” and as a “birthright”, the other enjoying less than full rights or formally full-rights, but only conditionally — on condition of not challenging the domination of the majority or questioning the basis of their imposed domination.

For their part, the French “purists” gave expression to these idea in their notion of the pays légal, the legal nation, the fully rights-bearing part of the nation, in contradistinction to those “lesser” citizens who, essentially as some sort of concession, enjoyed less than those full rights.

If not you, me and us then who?

My “young” colleague is, of course, fully aware of all this.

He even writes about these things.

But writing is one thing, acting, and feeling confident of the possibility of acting effectively, is another.

So, yes, a frail and fraught democracy, as in Weimar Germany, may die from a lack of defenders, of those who will publicly uphold democratic principles.

But on what grounds — and an intellectual will always require, even demand, intellectually persuasive and adequate grounds — may one feel confident of one’s entitlement to act in that way, in defence of democratic principles?

For older types, like myself, he said, that was still possible. How lucky we were, he implied. But for him and his peers, there was no longer any such possibility, no such basis of belief, of confident entitlement to action.

Or, as he put it, for himself and his generation of “younger” scholars, “Yes, but with no transcendental language left, what is there to fight over, die for? One can die for God or paradise. But for liberalism?”

Some, I had challenged him, are ready to live, fight and die for the “bangsa”. Others for Islam — or rather for their view of it, and of its preferred future. So, who but us, or rather you all, will uphold democracy?

“You want transcendental?” I continued. “Grow up!” We are, as Weber long ago insisted (I reminded him), in a “no-magic world”, a world without enchantment or mystification, a world where everything supposedly has its mundane explanation: a world, therefore, in which it is always a tough struggle, especially when upholding what we see as decent human values is concerned.

“Legions for Caesar and legions for Pompey, but who shall be for Rome?” So, I reminded my colleague, some public-spirited Romans had asked when Caesar and his legions, violating what we would now term “norms of constitutional propriety”, crossed the Rubicon and began his advance to Rome.

These days there are aplenty in Malaysia those who are for the government and those for the opposition. Is there not, I suggested, also a necessary role for, and an obligation upon, those who would stand, at the level of principle, for the overarching national terms and implied framework (even if at this time it is as much hypothetical or imputed as real) within which the two oppose sides contend?

Somebody, that is, must be prepared to stand for a decent Malaysia, as a nation grounded upon its citizens, all its citizens, impartially and equally.

If not you, me and us then who? Is there someone else who cares about, and for, us and for “our Malaysia”? I see none other.

The game, its future, the nation’s, I warned him, is now going, being left to go, by default.

Yet, to defend it, to see that task as worthwhile and feasible, you want, even after Weber, the “transcendental”? What a luxury.

No more “transcendental” ratification, only the mundane

A transcendental dimension? You want others, like me, to provide it for you, to tell you where to find it?

Who, after all, I have to ask, killed off the “transcendental”? Who did away with your “master narratives”? With their motivating and mobilising power?

It was not me, and those of my inclinations, I must insist, who killed off the “transcendental”, your so-called “master narratives”.

It is you and your intellectual generation, your scholarly associates and their like-minded post-modernist cohort, who did that, and who are now wailing, bemoaning the consequences.

And you now want us “pre-postmodernists” to sympathise with you in your postmodernism-induced predicament, you ask us to comfort you in your “normative bereavement”? To give you some acceptable reason not to give up, some plausible grounds upon which to stand and resist?

True, there was nothing inevitable, or “given” or “privileged” about the Enlightenment and its values. The post-modernists made that point — often, laboriously, ad nauseam.

But they — those values and beliefs and ideals — are, or were, what we had. We had them because those who came before us, and who had fought these same battles in their earlier — perhaps more rudimentary — forms, won some ground.

Valuable ground, with much struggle, and at a price that should not be forgotten or dismissed.

And, in doing so, established those values as the grounds (yes, they were very contingent values!) of our continuing demands: grounds that we might ourselves continue to stand upon and claim; human and humane values that we might still affirm, uphold and also use.

So why trash them?

So my question to that younger post-modernist generation is, and has always been:

Why not make them, despite their acknowledged frailty, your own, why not then demand on that basis that their reach and benefits be extended, that their promise be enlarged, made good and delivered — to you, to your generation, to everybody, including to the billions of humankind who have never heard of the Enlightenment and its values, even to generations still unborn?

And, anyway, what do you have with which to replace the basis of that moral claim, that political demand, that basis of action?

You have nothing else? So why trash what you have and abandon the real leverage that these ideas may still provide?

Why abandon them? Just for personal career advantage, just to “cut a good line” as one “swans one’s way” through our now normatively and ethically eviscerated universities?

Better to hold onto them — to make those grounds and those values and, however limited, that earlier achievement one’s own inheritance and possession — and then to demand that their promise now be made good to those still left out, to those yet to come, and to us.

Said or Arendt?

That, anyway, is the view of those of us who would rather read, and find ever so much more benefit from reading, Hannah Arendt than Edward Said.

The loss of the “transcendental” was a problem that was already faced by her and her friends, her generation, long ago.

When she wrote about the new “Existenz Philosophie” that emerged at mid-century in the wake of historic devastation and desolation, she did not demand — after all that had happened, and following that grim gift of systematic extermination, genocidal annihilation and total warfare! — that history should now benignly give her, or us all, some metaphysically vouchsafed new “transcendental” as the basis for engaging with, and in order to struggle against and within, an unpalatable reality.

Existentialism: one has to have and find within oneself, within one’s own humanity, the courage to face that world and to face, alone and unaided, a bare, bleak universe, if that is what it might prove to be.

Nothing else, nothing more, was guaranteed. So one should not seek such assurances, nor be unduly trusting towards those who would offer them.

For some, like her and us, it is enough to say, as with Martin Luther, here I now find myself, and, even if it is not by my own choice, here, not elsewhere, I must take my stand; I must act, and cannot conscionably act in any other way.

As Hannah Arendt used to say, it was now a time for political thinking in a twisting, broken world: for political thinking on, so to speak, a tortuously winding and perilous staircase in a dilapidated old mansion, rising under precarious conditions, without banisters, without any handrails, without any steadying ethical props or assured structures of normative security. “Thinking without banisters, without handrails,” she called it.

So I ask you. You want, you expect, you need such transcendental guarantees in order to be able to act, even to contemplate acting?

Such transcendental guarantees are a luxury.

Sorry, but you must face and accept the fact that they are unavailable, and also that they are unnecessary.

There is no need for any such transcendentalism. Existentialism will suffice. It will have to. There is, for a certainty, nothing more.

It is enough to say, here I am. Here, and here it is my choice and my responsibility. To act or not to act. And if to act, then how? That is my choice.

That is my burden, since I did not create the terrain of my choosing or the options that it may offer. But it is my choice and therein lies my freedom.

And now Adorno and Benjamin

My colleague replied as best he could:

“Yes, but you have a faith I have lost.”

To which I could only reply:

I am tempted to feel as you do. I know the reasons, the arguments. But I refuse.

It is a matter of attitude and character, even will, not of intellectual argument, proof and conviction. Perhaps that was what Gramsci had in mind when he spoke of the attitude, and necessity, of “pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will”.

So I simply refuse. As T.W. Adorno, echoing the doomed writer Walter Benjamin, once urged, we must learn to face despair, desolation, from the standpoint of redemption.

A redemption that we can discern, define, defend — that we ourselves can offer and now make available?

No. It is enough to try to see things from the standpoint of a hypothetical, a purely abstractly posited, redemption that one cannot yet grasp or sense.

It is just some “notional” or formal standpoint, as yet outside of history and hence not accessible to us, that may yet enter into and reshape history.

We need to be conscious of, or to leave room in our thinking for, this source of salvation that yet lies beyond human consciousness.

What this means for me. And why

Why do I say, and hold to, this?

Because of a formative Jewish stubbornness and counterfactual optimism, I suppose. That, linked to the radical idea we humans too have a contract with God, and when we think that the contract is being neglected, we have a right to remind God of it, of what is due to us, what we are owed in this world.

It is the legacy or residue of a Jewish childhood that began, temporally, in the midst — yet, spatially, by good fortune on the margins — of the “great devastation” of 1939-1945, and of a moral identity and historical consciousness that took shape on the terrain that was subsequently created by those “world-tearing” events.

But I understand your predicament, I continued.

For myself, sometimes, indeed often, I don’t know what to do about all this, since after all Malaysia is not my country, my problem.

But, putting that complication aside, I come back to the basic existentialist “refusal” that is “the other side” of the demand that history provide us with some “immanent” reason and assured grounds for acting in history. (When it is put in that way, you can see how basically unreasonable, how absurd, that expectation really is …).

That is to say, I can’t and won’t give up, yet.

And, for that reason, I get angry with those — those otherwise very decent well-intentioned Malaysians — who do.

With those who don’t think that Malaysia is yet “over” but who won’t stand up for it, for its basic “conditions of possibility”, for the basic requirements of its national coherence, cohesion and survival.

NGOs, civil society and the defence of democratic principles

And what does “standing up” mean here, standing up for democratic principles?

While I have the greatest respect and admiration for many who labour away, day by day and week by week, in ground-level “NGO activity”, I do not think that that kind activity is enough.

It is not wrong, but by itself it is insufficient.

It is, and has in recent times become, especially “problematic”, as NGO-people and “NGO-speak” like to say, in this age of the crude, rapacious “hijacking” of democratic forms.

Its adequacy, alone, has become questionable now that the whole idea of NGOs and “civil society” has been seized and captured simply as a means to pursue a very different, and far less benign and attractive, kind of action.

When all sorts of pressure groups and so-called “ginger groups” and deceptively presented yet often dubious, “front organisations” — by appropriating the mantle of the socially-oriented and generously inclusive NGOs — now project themselves, and masquerade, as primarily social, and only secondarily, or derivatively, or intermittently political bodies.

Yet these “cuckoos in the nest” of the capacious and unduly “hospitable” idea of civil society and its diverse array of NGOs are essentially and primarily political organisations with political agendas and objectives.

In short they are, to use the technical terminology of political science, “front organisations”.

In sum, the idea of civil society has been appropriated by all sorts of uncivil actors and activities. The opening up of democratic space by the real pioneers of democratic civil action has been captured, for intimidatory purposes, by the most undemocratic of actors and organisations, and for quite anti-democratic purposes.

That is why the public affirmation of democratic principles as an essential political activity, at the explicitly political level, is indispensable.

The lesson of Weimar

People should be very clear. The society of Weimar Germany (and similarly of interwar Austria, notably in Vienna) displayed an unparalleled richness of lively, autonomous and vital “civil society networks”.

Interwar democratic society in those countries had their own cascade of newspapers and magazines, their own vast array of coffee shops and theatres and cabarets, their own art galleries. Everything. The lot.

Nothing like it ever existed before nor has it since then.

Yet the brilliant society of which those organisations were an integral if oppositional part proved unable to resist the advance of a grim, determined and brutal “blood and soil” authoritarianism.

Civil society and its ramifying organisations provided no protection, and in the end could not even defend themselves against the onslaught nor protect themselves from brutalisation, then eradication.

The Junker aristocrats, the great industrialists, the state-identified military, the entrenched middle classes all thought that they could make use of the “blood and soil” rowdies for their own ends yet keep them, and the energy that they generated and unleashed, under control.

They were wrong.

In the end it was the stage-managers of the rowdies who showed who was in charge.

They used the rowdies, and the combination of enthusiasm and intimidation that they could command, to show everybody who, “when the chips were down” — when it came to the ultimate mobilisation, contestation and demonstration of sheer, naked force — was really in control.

That was not what we intended, said the out-manoeuvred aristocrats and grandees, the industrialists and bankers, the polite, well-meaning but complacent middle classes.

Too late. Intended or not, that is what, together, they had all brought on, or by ill-advised hesitation and “democratic insufficiency” allowed to take place.

That is why the public defence, at the political level, of democratic principles is essential.

The cost of the failure to defend them is exorbitant. The choice is fatal.

These days nobody needs, yet again, to find that out for themselves. The lesson is there, readily available from history, “off the shelf”.

Experience, it has been said, is the best of schoolmasters; unfortunately the fees are often punitive. Here one need not pay them oneself. The price has already been paid, and the lesson heavily paid for, by others.

That is what, from the lessons of his own “life-course”, one far from clueless friend of Malaysia now wants to say.

Putting the two together

And what, finally, is the connection between the two parts of this answer to the question why I care about Malaysia.

The answer that I have provided is so much about the past — mine, Malaysia’s, the Enlightenment and its values, Germany’s.

Yet my concern, like that implicit in the challenge that Azrul Mohd Khalib posed to the readers of The Malaysian Insider in his recent column, is focused forward, to the future, not the past.

To think about the future, it is not the gift of prophecy that is necessary, but an active, reflective memory.

“There’s one great advantage in it, that one’s memory works both ways,” the White Queen remarks in Alice in Wonderland (from “Wool and Water” in Through the Looking Glass).

“It’s a poor sort of memory,” she adds, “that works only backwards”.

________

*
Clive S. Kessler is Emeritus Professor of Sociology & Anthropology at The University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia.

                This entry was posted on Thursday, 2 February 2012, 3:05 pm and is filed under
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‘Umno warlords will not let Najib succeed’

By
Mohd Ariff Sabri Aziz
 | February 2, 2012

Free Malaysia Today

Sometime ago I met The Economist correspondent Dr Richard Cockett who asked me whether Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak will succeed in his transformation ideas.

I said, Najib will not suceed. And why not? Because Umno won’t let him succeed.

Take the case of his New Economic Model (NEM). Nowadays we hardly hear about it. In the 2011 Umno general assembly, Najib did not even mention it.

Instead he devoted much of his speech sounding very combative and full of vehemence. What he did at the time was to actually retrograde to Umno cavemen politics – stick and stones.

So how is he going to push his tranformation agenda? Knowing Najib, he will revert to the ‘old’ tested ways of ‘patronage’.

He will select cronises and push through his economic agenda by giving directly negotiated projects masked by seemingly transparent methods.

The ‘chosen few’ will be recommended by the “man who can walk on water” (former premier Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad).

Najib’s ideas rejected

If you recall, in the 2010 Umno general assembly, all Najib’s big ideas were rejected and thwarted by Umno delegates.

They were obviously mirroring the general objection to Najib’s adventurist ideas which were his alone and most probably, scripted by expensively paid consultants.

His idea of 1Malaysia with the hazy notions of inclusiveness and outward readiness was immediately rejected by the delegates who insisted on a “Malay first” policy on everything.

So what 1Malaysia is Najib talking about?

Najib’s plans to transform the economy and especially that of the Malays through his NEM founded on hazy notions of affirmative policies based on free market economics and affirmative policies based on merits were met with howls from delegates who insisted on the continuation of NEP-like policies.

In the end, Najib was left standing alone and could only muster his last trump card to claim high pedestal, and that is that he is the son of Tun Razak (second prime minister).

No one can dispute that. Genetically he is, but culturally, he isn’t. Najib doesn’t have the leadership qualities of Tun Razak.

Najib up against Umno wall

How can he push his liberalist economic agenda through a mindset accustomed to patronage?

Will the Umno warlords, who have only known survival through the party’s patronage system allow an anointed successor, even if he is the son of Tun Razak, to dismantle a system that has provided them with succor?

Now, that would be suicidal.

Better to sacrifice Najib than allow a system that has spawned hordes of tenderpreneurs from being replaced his blasphemous idea.

In short, Najib faces a brick wall in Umno and has nowhere to go. Either he faces the Umno firing squad or capitulate.

How then is he going to push his transformation agenda?

—-

The writer is a former Umno state assemblyman and now a DAP member. He is a FMT columnist.

                This entry was posted on Thursday, 2 February 2012, 11:08 am and is filed under
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Unity

– by Clement Ting

– The Malaysian Insider

Feb 02, 2012

FEB 2 — Ever since DS Najib took office on April 3, 2009, “unity” is yet another word used on slogans without much effort to embrace the word for what it truly means. Let’s look at the latest and hottest slogan promoted by our dear PM himself, 1Malaysia.

The 1Malaysia slogan is now everywhere — from Kedai Rakyat 1Malaysia (KR1M), 1Malaysia clinics, 1Malaysia pillars, banners, posters etc. I am not trying to run down the idea as I think this idea has successfully reached everyone from the urban cities to rural areas. However, I feel that it is just an empty slogan with no one taking heed of what it actually means. Furthermore, this 1Malaysia slogan is contradictory in so many ways to the extent that instead of promoting unity, it is possible that it is doing the exact opposite.

Why is it contradictory? To start off, people of different races interpret the meaning differently. Tun Mahathir mentioned in his blog (http://chedet.cc/blog/?p=468) that:

“The Malays generally interpret 1Malaysia to mean real adoption of the national language as the home language by every citizen as happens in other multiracial countries. They also expect the abolition of Chinese and Tamil schools and ensuring the private sector has a fair participation of Malays and other Bumiputeras.”

According to the Constitution, the rights of the Chinese and Indians to continue studying in their vernacular schools are protected. So maybe there is a problem with the understanding of some of these Malays whom Tun M spoke about.

Similarly for the non-Malays, they interpret 1Malaysia as having abolished the rights of Bumiputeras and a fair and equal treatment towards all Malaysians according to article 8 of the Constitution, which talks about equality. This is also an issue because certain quarters assume these rights to be inalienable, and those not accorded similar treatment would feel aggrieved.

Without a proper definition of what is 1Malaysia, it will just be another empty slogan, at best, no matter how effectively the government promotes it. What is more, it may even create complications and arguments on what is truly 1Malaysia.

Let me give you another example on how contradiction to the ideals of 1Malaysia can bring more harm than good. The PM and his Ministers must sing the same song. When the PM personally advocates the ideals of 1Malaysia, his Ministers should not confuse race with nationality. Both serve a priority to us all; one as an individual, the other as a member of a collective group. They cannot confuse these themselves and must set the right example to all of us as Malaysians. As a result of this oversight, PR’s CM Lim Guan Eng declared in retort “I am Malaysian first, and Malaysian last”.

Although our nation is 54 years old, our unity in its purest form is still questionable. Our fathers and theirs before them, would always speak about the good ole’ days where race didn’t matter. They would get involved and immerse themselves in each other’s culture and celebrate their uniqueness. Today, we have to pay thousands of ringgit to produce TV commercials to show how Malaysians are expected to interact and to personify a “false” object of unity. We don’t need to. We just have to understand, embrace and celebrate each other’s differences, uniqueness and strengths.

Malaysians and the culture we have are colourful. How can we expect unity if such wonderful cultures are not embraced?

To make matters worse, recently some extremists demanded that Muslims not celebrate Christmas simply because it is an annual celebration to commemorate the birth of Christ, and that Muslims should not wish others Merry Christmas. What is wrong with Muslims celebrating Christmas? Do they not realise that Nabi Isa, who is also Jesus Christ, is also a prophet in the Quran as well?

Michelle Yeoh once said in an advertisement about a decade ago, “This is Malaysia, truly Asia”. I personally envision and believe that Malaysia, with its many races, dialects, culture, beliefs can one day blend together peacefully to create the truly Asian flavour.

Lots more work must be done than just advertising the current 1Malaysia slogan. We need the Government to be a catalyst to realise this ambition. Our leaders need to truly stand for 1Malaysia, for if they ever wish for a united Malaysia, our leaders themselves must be effective in showing us the path towards unity.

Otherwise, all these hopes of 1Malaysia will just be another dream waiting to be realised.

                This entry was posted on Friday, 3 February 2012, 9:01 am and is filed under
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