Category: Society

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Personal Politics & government Society

[2956] Why does sending Najib to prison feel so empty so soon?

As an 18-year-old a lifetime ago, I thought Sijil Pelajaran Malaysia was the end of it. The ending. Not quite death of course, but the emphasis placed on the national examination was so great that it felt like a be-all and end-all. A terminal. Yes, there was life afterward, but that exam determined everything. Do well, and you would get to go to a good school (if you are really lucky, then you would get to go to a really great school across oceans) with some kind of scholarship. Do badly, you would be destined to mediocrity.

I did well, but I quickly learned SPM was not the last station. I went to a good school with scholarship and all, but it was not smooth sailing. University life was hard, even as I was privileged to have experienced it. I learned I was wrong, and I learned something new: life is a series of challenges. A celebration might be appropriate for surmounting each challenge, but there will always be another barrier, sooner or later.

I learned it the physical way when I unwisely went on a major hiking trip to Yosemite during my junior year. Ill-prepared, I came down the Tuolumne Canyon, all the way down to the river at the bottom to soak my feet in cool flowing mountain water. It was a long canyon 20, 30, 40 miles in length, with rugged terrain, high cliff on both sides, and the Milky Way bright up in the sky. No artificial light, no vehicle, no phone reception. The destination was upriver. Each climb to a local peak only revealed a steeper trail beyond. It was a cascade of falls that seemed to never end. If ever I entertained of idea of suicide seriously, it was there. I wanted to give up and jump down. The fatigue was too much. It felt hopeless. But somehow, I made it, with assistance of two strangers near the very top. After a hearty meal, I zoomed to Los Angeles and returned to Ann Arbor to spend my summer more banally by waking up late and play computer games all the time, inter-spaced with anime-watching and soccer games, while waiting download of large files to complete.

The jailing of Najib Razak feels a little bit like SPM, or one of those falls in that Tuolumne cascade. It was a journey of roughly 10 years, which, a huge chunk of it spent in despair and hopelessness. My little part in the whole saga seemed meaningless. The 2018 election came, and there was euphoria, but hopes were dashed soon enough. It was a miracle Najib was found guilty four years later, and his appeal dismissed. And let us not kid ourselves, he could have escaped his deserved fate if he had pushed the political button harder. Government fell twice, partly because of Najib, and Zahid, who were desperate to outsmart the system.

But the day after, life feels empty. There is a slight hopefulness, but that is it. I take it as a reminder that life is a series of cascades. A series of challenges.

The system works this time, but only because we worked to make it work, and then be let to work. There are too many times when the system has been made to succumb to corruption. Never forget that. Institutions are not automatic machines. It has to be manned (and womanned?) by good people. And Najib still has his avenues to escape his punishment.

And it is not just him who is corrupt. His collaborators are still out there, corrupting our society still.

The long struggle is the reason why, the victory yesterday, feels hollow so soon. There is still a long way to go, mountains to scale.

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Politics & government Society

[2953] In Kampung Baru issue, PH supporters need to develop greater capacity for empathy

The expected eviction of some Kampung Baru residents by a private company during the administration of a Umno-led government has more than some Pakatan Harapan supporters feeling a little bit smug. Schadenfreude is aplenty. The residents are targets of that smugness.

This is the wrong.

Nevertheless, it is easy to understand the cause of those feelings RM1,000 per square foot offer was made on a willing buyer-willing selling basis, with a cash portion, as part of a plan to redevelop Kampung Baru comprehensively. It was not a perfect plan, but it was a plan. Many residents rejected the offer and many had legitimate reasons to do so.

But many too rejected it because they bought argument brought by Umno and Barisan Nasional’s politicians. Umno, Najib Razak especially, pushed for a ridiculous rate of RM3,000 per square foot deal. Ismail Sabri Yaakob, then leader of the opposition, also had commented on the issue to encourage residents to say no.

Roughly two years after the fall of PH government, Umno is back in power with Ismail sitting in the Prime Minister’s office. And here is where the incongruity happens.

Based on news reports from The Malaysian Insight and Malaysiakini, the private company is offering those whose properties have been taken over RM400 cash per square foot as compensation. This is approximately 3 times lower than the 2021-2022 market rate of RM1,500 per square foot. In addition, each household would be given the option to purchase a newly developed property there at discounted rates.

The numbers might change, but what will not is the sense of betrayal experienced by residents, and observed by third parties. There is no RM3,000 per square foot to be seen. Worse, eviction notice has been served regardless whether a resident agrees with the takeover term.

While it is tempting for PH supporters to hold that grin, and pontificate the residents on chances lost, and the betrayal the residents suffered, that is a self-defeating position to take.

PH needs those very residents’ support to win an election. But the way things are going, those residents will not be encouraged switch their political leanings. And if they are PH supporters in the first place, then the smugness will drive them away.

One has to remember, this is Titiwangsa, a seat PH won in 2018 but lost to political betrayal. That shared experienced of becoming victims of betrayal should enhance our capacity to be sympathetic to each other. But no. We prefer to say, “we told you so” instead.

PH supporters need to develop a larger capacity for empathy. Not just with respect to the Kampung Baru eviction, but also on other national issues. Build bridges instead of widening the chasms.

Again, this is Titiwangsa, a Malay majority seat in Kuala Lumpur. The way things are set up, if you cannot win urban Malays, you likely will not return to Putrajaya. Without empathy, you can wait for 10 years, and still not win federal power.

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Economics Society

[2952] When did dates become popular among Muslim Malaysians?

Dates now feel ubiquitous on Ramadan dinner tables among the Malay (and the wider Muslim Malaysian) community. Not only that, more often than not, they break fast with the fruits first.

Just the other day, somebody spotted me breaking my fast with something else (a glass of water), and the person commented how unusual my behavior was.

I found that comment very peculiar. Contrary the person’s assertion, I feel date-eating had never been normal in Malaysia. I remember a time when dates were not even at all popular. It was not even available in the Malaysian mass market easily unlike now. The Yusuf Taiyoob trend, in particular, is really a recent phenomenon appearing in the early 2010s.

I myself first tasted dates not in Malaysia, but at a mosque in the United States in the early 2000s. There was a large Arab community—Iraqis, likely due to the Gulf Wars—and they loved their dates.

That comment made me wonder, how and when did dates start to become popular?

I know how it became popular: many would tell you it is religiously preferable to break fast with fresh dates. It is sunnah, which means extra pahala, or merit for those practicing it. And during Ramadan, Mulims believe everything good has a big multiplier assigned to it, unlike normal times when one good deed is considered one. Do not ask me about how the scorecard works.

So when?

I figured, the best way to know when dates became popular in Malaysia, and to prove whether I was right (that is mass date consumption being a relatively recent phenomenon in Malaysia), is to look at trade data over the years.

Here, two public databases are helpful. First, the International Trade Center, a body under both the World Trade Organization and the United Nations. Second, the UN Comtrade Database. Unfortunately, the best I could get was data all the way back from 1989.

So, when did dates first becoming popular in Malaysia (within the confines of Ramadan)?

I will let the graph talk.

The chart suggests date consumption grew in popularity (within its own context) over time. More supply means more could consume it: at the very least, date import volume grew at a faster rate than population growth.

Specifically, 1989 date imports were approximately 440 g/person. It rose to 480 g/person in 2000. An increase, but not too much. But it surge to 640 g/person in 2010 and then 700 g/person in 2020. There was a big jump between 2000 and 2010. I think that says something.

Things changed some time in the 2000s or the 2010s, which coincided with the rise of Tunisia as an exporter to Malaysia. Prior to that event, China, Iran and Egypt were the biggest suppliers. Both China and Egypt have fallen off the rung since the last decade.

With that, I think I can say in the 1990s, it was not that popular. That justifies my experience. It is not me that is unusual. It is the community that has changed.

I also suspect date consumption was popular among rich Malays first, way way before. The culture became popular with masses later partly due to religious exhortation/advisory (sunnah) and a version of conspicuous consumption at work: a Veblenian way of saying rich religious people eat it, and if I eat it, I would be seen as a rich religious person too. This is probably harder to prove.

Finally, it is good to put the rising popularity of dates into context. These date imports are small compared to other (foreign) fruits. For instance, nearly 170,000MT oranges (citruses really), 150,000MT apples and 50,000MT grapes and the likes were imported in 2020. Compare that to the 2020 dates imports of 22,500MT.

Still, 2020 date imports were bigger than bananas. But Malaysians do grow bananas locally. So, it is not a proper comparison.

Categories
Liberty Politics & government Society

[2950] Too tame for our own good

Many things could describe the past two separate years that merged into one. Here, I would describe it as the taming of our society. The fire that powered many before was doused by shocks and disappointments of February 2020 along with all the political development that followed. This broke the heart of many.

And if there were still beating heart fighting on the political front, the pandemic that flared up soon after broke the body of many. The crisis and its mismanagement brought debilitating economic effects that forced many to switch attention away politics (politics here is not the narrowly defined partisan-party politics, but one about governance and the overall organization of society) to that of personal livelihood. Many died along the way.

Malaysian society as it was before the pandemic was mostly too polite for our own good, but the bludgeons needed to fight the pandemic turned that politeness into utter submission. There were noise and protests against the manner government regulation was applied incompetently. Some went to the streets. But those noise and protests were nothing compared to the years before. During the pandemic, far too few could, or willing to go to the ground, divided out of fear of getting infected, or the need to work at a time when unemployment was soaring, furloughing was the talks of the town, and wages were cut down significantly.

The foundation which the Muhyiddin government stood on was shaky soon after its undemocratic formation, but it stood for so long because any anger was contained by fear, or deference of power. But the ember-like anger burnt further and when it appeared a fire was about to lit—even patience among the polite has its limits—the irresponsible government played poker: they raised the stakes by declaring emergency. The stakes were raised to the point the polite did not dare challenge it too fiercely. Or they were too tired, and hapless.

The subsequent government under Ismail Sabri lowered the temperature for a while but the incompetence remained. That same incompetence was for all to see during the recent great floods across the peninsula. The further loss of life and property raised the political temperature yet again. The politics of race and religion showed it was all meaningless in the face of incompetence, so much so that this administration that largely has the same Cabinet members who previously prided itself as a Malay-Muslim government, has stopped marketing itself as one.

Amid the troubles faced by the general public, yet another scandal is erupting in the public first involving the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission, and as national crisis tends to pull other public institutions into the ditch (1MDB was one such case but on a grander scale), later the Securities Commission. A good institutional set-up would have contained it. This government prefers to drag everything down, for their benefits, at the expense of the country. All that highlights how institutional reforms achieved due to the 2018 General Election was fragile and needed nurturing, and how the events of February 2020 undid the good work. The message before had always been reforms took time, but few imagined there would be so big a digression happening so soon.

The digression is happening because we have been too polite, too tame amid assaults over our democratic institutions. It is time to be not so tame and fight.

I would like to end this post by reproducing Usman Awang’s Sepatah Kata:

Sebuah perkataan yang paling ditakuti
Yang tradisional sekali
Untuk bangsa kita yang pemalu.
Sekarang kata ini kuajarkan pada anakku:
Kau harus jadi manusia kurangajar
Untuk tidak mewarisi malu ayahmu.
Lihat petani-petani yang kurangajar
Memiliki tanah dengan caranya
Sebelumnya mereka tak punya apa
Kerana ajaran malu dari bangsanya.
Suatu bangsa tidak menjadi besar
Tanpa memiliki sifat kurangajar.

Categories
Politics & government Society

[2939] A unity government is a chance to rebuild trust among Malaysians

I prefer Pakatan Harapan to be the federal government. The 2018 general election gave the coalition the democratic mandate to be so, and there are plenty of reforms left to the completed. I know many are disappointed with the pace of reforms under the previous Pakatan government, as well as the incessant infighting. But as far as reforms are concerned, it is a long term project. It definitely cannot be done within less than two years. To expect so is naïve and unrealistic.

But my preference is an ideal, which must face the unattractive options in the real world. Realistically, only an election would reshuffle the deck, and allow Malaysia to start afresh. But a general election is out of the question for now. We have to live with our bad hands, instead of insisting of holding the cards that we do not have.

The red line

The likeliest of all options on the table seems to suggest Umno back at the driving seat. Meanwhile, Pakatan lacks the seats to form the government, and an earlier option of that happening one involving working with the criminals of 1MDB. Both options push up the possibilities of 1MDB criminals and their collaborators escaping justice. That is the red line for me.

Yet, Umno’s road to the Prime Minister’s Office is not as smooth as initially expected, with Bersatu imposing conditions, which dissatisfied the Agong. That happened today or yesterday. The condition Bersatu imposes is the same red line I have: no Najib and his merrymen.

Given the political impasse (and before it gets solved with Najib as part of the power broker), the anti-1MDB force from Pakatan and all other sides should come together as a unity government. That unity government would have access to the best talent among the 220 Members of Parliament (there are few despite the big number) while locking out 1MDB men from power.

The additional benefit of unity government is a chance to rebuild trust among Malaysians, which is the reason I am writing this post.

Political elites, groups and values

When we discuss contemporary Malaysian politics, inevitably there will be a charge, with a resignation tone, that the political elites are serving their interest alone.

That is hard to deny, but it is an incomplete assessment of the situation. The truth is, the political elites do represent groups holding on to certain values. We live in a representative democracy, however imperfect it is.

These values differ across groups: upper middle-class urbanites in general hold on to certain values (and interests) they do not share with low-income Malaysians. There are other dimensions to consider: religion, ethnicity, geography, class, etc.

So, political elites are manifestation of the masses.

Distrust among us

We are at the point where trust between these groups is low. It has been low for a long time, and it interacts with other factors like our trsut in our institutions. The trust deficit in our institutions, I would argue, is partly due to lack of trust among us (I would like to add that I am writing a book and a chapter of the book explains this is greater detail).

There is a metric we could use to understand the state of trust in our society. The World Values Survey has a set of questions assessing trust level in a society, and it has been measuring Malaysian level since the 2000s. Well, three times: 2006, 2012 and 2018.

One out of several relevant questions has it, “would you say most people can be trusted?”

The question approximates trust level in Malaysia. In 2006 and 2012, about 9% of Malaysian respondents answered yes in both years. In 2018, it rose to 20% but there is every reason to believe post-election euphoria had a role in pushing the rate up. Regardless, the suddent jump, that is a pretty low percentage. In other countries as recorded in the 2018 edition, the rates typically fell in the 30%-60% range. In Thailand, 29%. In Singapore, 34%. In Japan, 34% too. In the United States, 37%. In Sweden, 63%.

There are of course other countries with even lower trust than Malaysia, but that should not be our goal.

An avenue to rebuild trust

With that in mind, and that the political elites (more specifically, Members of Parliament) representing groups of different values, a unity government here is chance to bridge the gap between different Malaysian groups.

Theoretically, a unity government should bring about a more cooperative environment to groups at loggerheads.

Yet, I am under no illusion such unity government would work in such a way. The gap seems wide that it that building a bridge sounds like a hopeless exercise. Yet, we have to at least try to rebuild that trust. And a unity government provides such opportunity under a democratic system, however low the odds are.