Category: Current Events

Cheryl and I were about to have a late lunch last Saturday at Yut Kee when it started to rained. I brought my camera along just in case if we chance upon a UFO because I wanted to capture high resolution images of these mysterious celestial vessels. These would definitely guarantee me a high level of interestingness in Flickr and also make us rich (buwahahahaha), but I digress…

Anyway, after the sumptuous meal of kaya toasts, half boiled eggs and belacan fried tung fun, the rain stopped and the grey skies parted to reveal a beautiful blue hue that is rarely seen in cloudy and hazy KL.

I snapped away and got some pretty interesting shots of the city. The photos I got contained no ET but I wasn’t disappointed.

The news that Mahathir had quit his political party is surprising but not totally unexpected. The old man of Malaysian politics had shown the world again that he is no push over and when cornered, will do anything to put himself on top again. This includes, to no certain extent, destroying the moderate persona that he had adopted during the last few years of his tenure as the longest serving Prime Minister of Malaysia.

His recent speeches and blog articles stating that a particular communal group in Malaysia is losing political power in Malaysia is a most disingenuous argument indeed. By rallying groups of people towards what he perceived to be a newer dilemma facing the nation, he has tapped into an issue that is sure to raise the political, and some say, racially temperature in the country. However, is this argument still valid today as it was twenty years ago?

There are more Malay lawmakers in the parliament today after the 12th General Election than there were after the BN landslide victory during 11th General Election. The addition in the number was made by the ranks of lawmakers from PKR and PAS. Even the DAP stalwarts know of the political realities of the land and has since accommodated this mindset, albeit after initial missteps, into the states that they are managing. Bahasa Malaysia is the national language and no one is challenging that. Islam is the official religion and again, there is no argument on that.

While issues like special rights and privileges will always provoke knee-jerk reactions regardless of whoever raised them, I believe that the Malaysia of today, post 12th General Election, is politically more matured and is able to see through the smoke and mirrors of political maneuverings.

Can Mahathir’s rhetoric gain traction in society? Depending on how the political winds flow, Mahathir’s argument can gain momentum if the Badawi Administration works very hard on it. That’s right. If the Badawi government works very hard on these issues, Mahathir’s movement can gain ground. The Badawi government shouldn’t over-react. By taking a middle ground with a more inclusive and moderate approach, they can win over the majority of supporters. They might take some steam out of Pakatan Rakyat’s increasing move towards the center of Malaysian politics. However, if they over-react and start to take hard line approaches, then the following issues will be sensationalized for all its political mileage:-

• Position of Bahasa Malaysia: The teaching of Science and Mathematics in English was one of the last few initiatives that was pushed through by Mahathir before he stepped down. Practically, this is a good move for society because of obvious pragmatic reasons. Even culturally myopic societies like the French, Chinese and Japanese are equipping themselves with the knowledge of English to be enable their people to tap into the global world of knowledge and commerce which is conducted exclusively in English. There is movement right now, as signaled by the grumblings in parliament, to reverse that decision to safe guard the position of Bahasa Malaysia as the national language. This is counterproductive and we will be building future generations of Malaysians who will be left out of an increasingly integrated global web of knowledge and commerce because they lack proficient English language skills. 
• Position of Islam as the national religion: The recent ruling by the Penang syariah court to allow a convert to “leave” Islam was seen by many moderates as a progressive step to give the religion a moderate face, vis-à-vis the other religions practiced in this land. This double-edged decision by the court, while favoured by the non-Muslim groups, can be used to create a perception of the decline of the religion’s supremacy. This issue can be politicized and the movement of PAS to the center will be hampered by this if it is not seen as championing the Islamic cause by being silent on this ruling. However, this may also hurt UMNO if they do nothing. And if UMNO politicians decide to suddenly rally around this and makes it to be a clarion call to gain supporters, UMNO and its relationships with other BN component parties will be damaged.
• Position of special rights: Najib has made statements recently to the effect that people should question these rights to their own detriment. No one would rightly want the powers of the Malay rulers will be stripped or the special position will be revoked.  Politicians making statements about the erosion of the special rights doesn’t have to prove that it is being eroded. They just have to point to the expected storm of protest from other politicians, actions groups and blogs to prove their point by declaring that they can’t openly talk about their rights without invoking massive protest and condemnation.

All in all, one shouldn’t confuse the lack of support for UMNO as a lack of support for the Malay community. This issue has been raised over and over again by commentators and analysts. During the election night results, TV3 invited a panelist who had the audacity to proclaim that the opposition was anti-Malay. How did he arrive at the logic? He claimed that if one equates Malay to UMNO, then being anti-UMNO means being anti-Malay.

It has been shown that there is another path. Multi-racial politics as spearheaded by Anwar Ibrahim through his Pakatan Rakyat coalition. What is happening right now is a war of ideas on how best to move forward. UMNO and BN, while successful in the past have shown that they lack the capability to govern in light of growing global competitive landscape where information flows freely, where free markets select the winners and where being inclusive makes one stronger.

“The general consensus is that affirmative action should be given to the poor and the marginalised regardless of race or religion. Notions of social dominance and racial superiority find no resonance among the people except for those diehards still bigoted over ancient and archaic forms of political ideolog“- Anwar Ibrahim in his recent speech outlining his New Economic Agenda.

Being a progressive, I personally welcome this new development and I excitedly look forward to a new Malaysia with a new progressive mindset that promises all a better future.
 

In a shocking, but almost true to his element turn of events, Raja Petra the editor of the grand daddy of Malaysian political blog Malaysia-today.net was arrested after he refused to post RM 5,000 bail after being charged in court today under the Sedition Act.

It is indeed a sad day for freedom of speech in Malaysia. Charges were brought against him after one of his recent “No Holds Barred” series that touched on the Altantuya murder trial asked that her murderers be sent to he’ll for their henious crime.

In terms of “seditious” quotent, that article was mild when compared with his other fiery articles. What is true, in my opinion, is that Raja Petra had put down in words what most thinking Malaysians had already suspected but dared not give voice to.

This is really a bad political move for the ruling party.

Just when the Pakatan Rakyat ranks are slightly rattled by their own partisan philosophies and people were wondering if they can get their acts together, UMNO has given a new lease to the anti-government ground swell sentiments. Bloggers and the general populace are now reawakened to the feeling of injustice that they had felt which gave life to the anti-government marches and people uprising of last year.

If the intention of the government is to silence a vocal voice of truth, their latest action will indeed backfire. Raja Petra’s reluctance to post bail has created a situation where he has become more famous than he is already now. The “seditious” post will be replicated and distributed more widely. People will tend to believe the content of that article even more as people would think that there is truth in it else why would he be arrested for writing it?

What happens now is interesting to see. Indeed, Raja Petra’s move has elevated him to a sort of Malaysian Mahatma Gandhi.

And we all know what happen to that story.

For a week, I had resisted from writing my comments because I do not want my unaccustomed feeling of electoral euphoria to taint my views on the biggest event that has ever happened in our politically sterile country.

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1. The non-BN parties didn’t win, BN lost ground.

This is the observation that I grudgingly had to concede. Almost everyone that I spoke to had enough of BN and people just wanted to protest by voting the other person. The joke was that people were so fed up that the Malays voted DAP, the Chinese voted PAS and the Indians voted anyone without a BN logo.

2. Malaysia is still not color blind.

This is so obvious that people, though they’ve always wanted a color blind utopia, had never actually thought of the sacrifices they have to make to break 50 years of racialists politics. Lim Kit Siang of the DAP demonstrated that he is still the firebrand leader by asking for a boycott of a swearing-in ceremony in Perak due to the appointment of a Menteri Besar from PAS. The problem here is that he had forgotten that his party is the one who had won the lion share of state seats and they are a major partner in the state government.

3. The opposition parties, never in their wildest dreams, thought that they would win so big.

MB issues in Perak and Deputy MB issues in Selangor could easily been solved had the 3 parties agreed on a power sharing formula before hand. The 3 parties have really different ideologies and now, after the rakyat bought their promises and chose to give them 4 more states to govern, they have to find a working formula. This means that DAP would have to stop thinking that it is an uber-MCA, PAS would have to de-talibanize itself, PKR would have to find out what it standing for. Practically, PKR has the easiest job because it has the least luggage and also a secret weapon, Anwar Ibrahim, one of the most polished and charismatic politician in the land.

All in all, the 12th General Elections was a great achievement for all Malaysians. We have managed to prove that democracy is alive and well in our country. As to whether the opposition coalition can sweep into federal power 5 years from now, it remains to be seen. But the first step is that they need to come up with a name for their coalition. After all, it is such a mouthful to be calling them the DAP-PKR-PAS (or PAS-PKR-DAP, if you are a PAS supporter- one never seems to get the combination of DAP-PAS-PKR or PAS-DAP-PKR because DAP and PAS are natural polar opposites in the equation) coalition every time we mention the coalition.

I observe, with great interest, the active and often dramatic Presidential Primaries that is unfolding currently in the United States. Leave it to the Americans to make a topic as contentious as politics to become something akin to a spectator sports. But then, it is often the most contentious issues that make for spikes in ratings for the media.

In light of all this active political drama, I can’t help but compare this to our coming Malaysian General Election. While it is no surprise that the General Election will be called sometime this February/March, the mode here is relatively somber and the lively debates about issues are all but present here. We like to hear issues debated openly and not confined to just small housing estates.

I consider myself to be a libertarian and I believe in free market economy. What is interesting to note is that in Malaysia, we only have 2 types of people in politics- those in power and those who are not. Those who are in power decides on sometimes reactive policies without much care to the will of the people. Those who are not ranges from frothing extremist, bent on turning Malaysia to an Islamic state to aging socialists who can’t come up with compelling alternatives to the present political party in power.

The state of politics in Malaysia, sadly, is broken and highly predictive. We can predict for a fact that the ruling Barisan Nasional coalition of race-based parties will sail to victory once again. The question is, by how much. Unfortunately, this is as exciting as it gets: predicting by how much the present government (who will be re-elected when the dust settles) will lose. Even the opposition parties are “realistic” about their chances. I do hope that I’m proven wrong in this regard but sadly, I know that I will be proven correct.

The reason why the political state of affairs in Malaysia is so sad is that we do not have enough savvy voters. In a county that has never seen a change of Federal Government, the voters are so numbed by years of political indoctrination that they believe (and sometimes rightly) that there are no viable alternative party to govern the country well. Take for example the most successful opposition political party in Malaysia, PAS. Its brand of hell fire Islamic politics will never go down well with the mass electorate because they can never dominate urban and sub-urban voters. After years of seeing how Islamic states around the world had operated, the moderates and liberals can’t be bought by promises for eternal salvation when PAS can’t seem to move with the times. It still harps on turning Malaysia into a conservative Islamic state ruled by Shariah law when Malaysians can see and read about how similar conservative Islamic states around the world has failed miserably in providing for an equitable (in terms of commonly accepted social values like sexual equality, freedom of worship, freedom of speech) and economically vibrant society.

On the other hand, the socialist rooted opposition party of DAP has an uphill battle to remove the perception that it is a Chinese chauvinist party. Though having a multi-racial charter, DAP is mostly successful in Chinese majority urban and sub-urban Malaysia  and has never been able to break out from its critics claim that is nothing more than an alternative for frustrated Chinese voters who are fed up with MCA, the Chinese-based party in the ruling coalition. While the DAP has a formidable team of seemingly intellectual members, it has never presented, in my opinion, a viable blue print or plan for Malaysia that is viable nor credible.

Another opposition party, PKR, lost its bubble after Dato’ Seri Anwar Ibrahim was released. Once formidable, it hasn’t proven itself yet on what it will do now that its struggle to release Anwar from dubious incarceration has been achieved. Supporting PKR is like supporting a group of scientists who continues to argue that the Earth is round. Move on, everyone already knows that the Earth is round so find a new issue please.

This really brings us to the crux of the problem. I am not a supporter of the ruling coalition and I implore Malaysians of all walks of life to vote for the opposition in protest. Our opposition may be disorganized but we have to mount a protest to the Badawi Administration that we, the people of this beloved land of Malaysia, cannot and will not, stand for unchecked government that can usurp the will of its people anytime they want.
 

I think the BN coalition have steered the country well when we our country was at its infancy but of late, they have lost their direction. Even during era of the iron grip rule of Mahathir when social liberties were curtailed,  he had the vision and the tenacity to ensure that any Malaysians who are hardworking has a stake in the growth of the country’s economic pie. The Badawi incumbents of today have grown into a comfortable lull, dulled by the surety of always staying in power without the benefit of a sharp poke to always do better for fear of being elected out of office.

They remind me of the emperors and rajahs and sultans who have succumbed to the complacency of thinking that whatever they do, they’ll remain in power. But history teaches us that these rulers are eventually removed, often by force or by coercion from a greater power. It is inevitable because they have lost touch with the common citizen and do not know for certain the pulse of the people and what they really want. Benign dictatorship often lasts no more than a couple of generation before the malignancy of human greed and wanton waste creep into the government. In this era of the connected global village, totalitarian regimes are removed by force or suffer the crippling shame of international isolation. (Unless of course, if that said regime is a financial powerhouse like China- a free-market loving communist country).

Let’s hope that when Badawi sweeps back into office in March that he acknowledges this and really do something that would make his administration remarkable. So far, his first term has been nothing more than slumberous complacency and blinding apathy towards issues like corruption, the economy, equality, crime, climate and education. He has to wake up and as a gesture of goodwill to start working for the people (as opposed to the rhetorical “working with them”) because they have lost so much faith in him.