Category: Society

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Politics & government Society

[2893] We are too eager fighting our culture war

There are hard positions in our society. It is the product of years of abuse and mistrust, and it will not go away anytime soon. One small issue that rekindles our prejudice in the smallest of ways would ignite a culture war sucking almost everybody in the most unproductive manner.

Some culture wars are worth the fight. Our society does need a can opener to open up its canned mind, especially so when too many of us are so coddled inside our small world to the point that wrongs go unchecked and eventually become a right. It has become so bad that many are beginning to be scared of doing the right thing, just because such action would hurt the feeling of immature persons on the internet armed with incomplete or even downright inaccurate information. Explicitly racist behavior should be called out. Some things just have to be done lest we slide to an equilibrium that is so unbearable that migration would be the only way out.

But a lot of the culture wars we are fighting today are unnecessary.

One example is the teaching of Malay calligraphy-Jawi in school. The Jawi controversy besetting us recently reveals what we have known for the longest time: we live in a sensitive society – sensitive is only a euphemism that would not take much to decipher. We do not need such controversy to tell us that. The whole episode came to surface through an oversight within the government. The course was set several years back. Too few people noticed it that it developed its own procedural momentum that in the end forced all of us into a situation where no one could paddle back, without incurring significant political cost.

This reminds me of a scene from the movie War Game where the artificial intelligence holding the trigger to a nuclear holocaust, after going through all simulations, concluded that the only way to win is not to play the game.

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Too bad that we have no time machine to use, no restore point to return. To abuse slightly the meaning of the Malay idiom, terlajak perahu boleh diundur, terlajak kata buruk padahnya.

Another example is the conversion bill in Selangor. We know religion and child conversion are subjects our overall society unable to deal with coolly. So, we all should approach it with care. Yet, the Selangor state government thought pushing the controversial bill through was the wisest course of action. Not only that, once we were given the chance to pull the brake halting our vehicle resting dangerously close by the cliff, the state government instead insisted on playing the game that nobody would win. Has it got this bad that the game has to be played anyway?

Our society is damaged and this is not the most incisive observation of the day. The last election gives all of us a chance to repair it, and be better. This government is reforming our institutions that for so long abused have been for personal gains. The trust deficit is still there. That is a huge barrier to fight.

I truly believe for Malaysia to get to the next level of development, we need to improve our institutions. We do not need more big malls, more tall buildings.

And those institutions are not merely government institutions like the parliament, the police, the judiciary and anything of the like. It is also about our social capital, that is trust among ourselves.

Culture wars, especially the unnecessary and avoidable ones, do not build trust. Instead, it erodes it and makes bridge-building harder.

Yet, we all are too eager to fight it. And to one-up the others online (adversaries who we likely have never met in real life, or even human bots), we type the harshest words and switch on our scorched earth mode to burn everything that moves.

And god, there are so many other things to do. Yet, here we are with our culture. All heat, no light.

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Politics & government Society

[2879] Illberal troubles besetting the West liberate liberals elsewhere

Development in the United States, the United Kingdom and elsewhere in Europe where racist and fascist sentiments are hogging the headlines is worrying. It has been going on for some years now and it is proving to be a long-term trend rather than just an election-cycle blip.

One of many reasons why it is a concern worldwide is that major countries that used to be associated strongly with liberalism now are more reluctant in defending liberal values globally as they struggle to contain domestic problems at home. Some are even uninterested in doing so because, arguably, they no longer believe in liberal values. For instance, it is quite fanciful to think that Donald Trump believes in liberal values.

But it is not all bad news. Difference circumstances exist throughout the world. Indonesian and Malaysian societies for instance, exist in a context that is different from the one in the US and the UK.

Liberals in places like Malaysia from time to time get accused as being Western puppets or having their minds colonized by the West. When the Western world was the leader of the free world so-to-speak, the accusation had been used by local conservatives to mean that liberalism was alien to the local society and served foreign interest. When Bersih was busy protesting, the BN machinery was quick to link the movement to outside interest like George Soros. To be fair, Malaysian liberals do look abroad for help and inspiration while living in an environment that might be unfriendly to them.

I do not think such accusation is a uniquely Malaysian experience. When a large Iranian protest partly fueled by Iranian liberals erupted in 2009, one of the most popular opinions out there was for the US then led by Barack Obama to not be too vocal in their support of the protest and instead let the locals do their thing, out of fear the Iranian religious establishment would run the propaganda that the protest was fueled by outsiders, and ignore the legitimacy of the protest.

However, today, I think that accusation is starting to lose its traction.

I believe so because liberalism in the Western world – I use the West here in the general popular sense referring to the North America and Europe while keeping in mind the problematic definition as well as the fact there are places where liberal values are still held closely, like in Canada – is in trouble and as a result, the West is losing its role as the prime example of a liberal society.

As the West loses its role, liberals elsewhere get a chance to prove that they are liberals not because they look up to the West, but because they believe in principle that transcends geography and culture. And more importantly, the West does not control the local liberals. With the West in trouble and even local liberals starting to condemn the illiberalness of the West, the accusation that local liberals are Western puppets are becoming less and less relevant.

In other words, illiberal troubles besetting the West liberate liberals elsewhere.

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Liberty Society

[2877] ICERD is not the be all and end all

I did not follow the ICERD debate closely until recently. I felt like the issue rose to national prominence out of nowhere, and then it died a spectacular death before I properly understood what it was all about. If you had asked me what ICERD was, I would be able to mutter some keywords like anti-discrimination before I would exhaust my time trying to be intelligent and having to google Wikipedia to understand it.

Nevertheless, as a layperson with liberal bias, I would gravitate automatically towards supporting ICERD ratification. I consider myself as a liberal, even if these days, some of those who claimed to be liberals in the past feel some kind of political reluctance to wear the label anymore, lest they become superliberals and attract the wrath of their political idols.

And so, I do feel slight disappointment how the ICERD debate has played out. Slight, because I do not think ICERD is one of the most important things in the to do list.

To be honest, while I do not believe in the eye-rolling allegations by its opponents that ICERD would require amending Article 153 of the Constitution, it is unclear to me — and even to other liberals who I have talked to and are more invested in the issues than me — what would entail after its ratification. That makes me feel that a ratification is more of a signalling exercise than anything else. The whole ICERD debate generates more heat than light, partly because the so-what questions have not been addressed, and so giving space to red herring counterargument like “Israel signed ICERD.”

In the end, I think there are many reforms that are more important and urgent that liberals should push first, like electoral reforms including local council elections, instead of ICERD.

But for liberals out that who invested more on the ICERD issue, please do not feel too discouraged. I am reluctant to use this argument but perhaps it is not the right time for it. Perhaps we should continue to do what liberals have been doing: conversations, fora, awareness, understanding, empathy on the ground on values like equality.

That kind of activism would prepare the grounds for a more liberal societal attitude than a sudden ratification of ICERD would do. After all, for changes like these to happen, it usually needs to come from the bottom-up, not from the top-down.

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Economics Politics & government Society

[2872] Lasting change needs more work, more time and wider support

We have the right to celebrate May 9. It is after all the first time in Malaysian history change at the very top happened. For years we were only chipping at the edge. Progress felt irrelevant. But now, here it is. Change.

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Yet, not all or even most of the changes Malaysia needs will be instituted quickly. It will take time and work for these changes to happen. There will be residual resistance to change and perhaps using the adjective residual understates the problem at hand. After more than six decades of Perikatan/Barisan Nasional in power – seven decades if you go all the way to the first Malayan general election in 1955 – there is a kind of deep state the new Pakatan Harapan government will need to win over and even fight.

There will be disappointments, and Pakatan supporters and sympathizers will accuse the new government of betrayal and hypocrisy.

But before any of us levels those accusations, we must understand that the government will have to pick their battles. Some will be won. Some will be lost. Pakatan and their supporters will need to be smart in which battles they want to win.

More importantly, before throwing those accusations in the future, we need to understand the long arc of history all of us have to deal with. Malaysia’s deep multifaceted history – with dimensions of race, religion, Peninsula-Borneo, federal-states, urban-rural, national origins, class, gender, etc – is the proper context to judge the new government in the next few years. No action could be judged in isolation.

And the future is just as important as the past in understanding this new Malaysia and the new government.

Our demography and culture are changing at glacial pace. It is slow but the inertia is massive: our society is set to become less diverse in a meaningful way. By 2050 the Bumiputras will form 70% of total population from about 60% in 2014. So would be the Muslims. The Malay population share will rise to 60% from 50% in the same period.

At the same time, we will be an aged society by 2050, from our low median age of 28-29 years old and low dependency ratio.

I fear the two demographic shifts could make our society less open and less progressive in our values. It is not the Malays and the Muslims per se that I fear. It is the increasingly monolithic nature of our society, and hence, the possible intolerance of differences. I fear that future where the Malaysian mind would narrow to a point that leaving is the only reasonable option for too many people.

This is the reason why the 2018 election was the last chance to change in time. The trends are pushing against us, especially against the liberals. It is not simply an election rhetoric. It is a real long-term concern about the fate of Malaysia. This is why I feel spoiling your votes or not voting is unwise: the advocates of the tactics (who wanted some kind of change) are ignorant of history and blind to demographic changes.

It was also the last chance to change because substantive changes that Malaysia needs could not be made by the same side that benefited from the closing of the Malaysian mind. Najib Razak tried it in 2009-2013 and he failed. All his attempts were in the end reduced to mere silo economic targets that stood alone outside of multifaceted Malaysian contexts, making them utterly dissatisfying as a vision. So dissatisfying that we had to go back to the 1990s to move forward.

And substantive change will need more support from Malaysians. While the Pakatan victory is the first step, we have to remember Pakatan won only plurality in popular votes, not majority. Lasting change would require Pakatan to get more Malaysians on board.

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Economics Photography Society

[2868] The last Banton boatmakers

I consider myself lucky. I have gotten enough education opportunities to ride on the benefits of globalization and technological changes. So big are the benefits I have reaped that I think I could travel around the world tomorrow if I wanted to without worrying too much about my financial obligations back home. If I lost my job somehow, I could afford to enjoy my unemployment as a short holiday and more importantly, I could get another good job in Malaysia or elsewhere with the skills, the connection and qualification I have. My social capital and wealth are great enough to tide me through such difficulties.

But the same modernization can be unkind to others. Not everybody benefits from such changes. Some are unequipped to ride the waves with the same education paths available to me. Worse, the wave could smash and sink whatever raft they are on. That fact sometimes makes me feel guilty of living the life I live now.

The last time that guilt hit me hard was when I found myself on the side of the Irrawaddy in Mandalay several years back. I remember walking by a shanty town where homes were haphazardly built along the river, with no access to clean water. There was no sanitation. The people lived in wooden homes on stilts with pigsty below. Trash of various kinds could be found everywhere and some children no older than ten would play happily among flies, fleas and maggots, contend with their small world simply for not knowing any better. I have seen how poverty looks like before but the kind in that Mandalay village is by far the worst kind I have ever witnessed.

I felt guilty just for being luckier than them, just for doing much, much better than them economically.

That feeling re-emerged recently as I travelled through southern Thailand for work. The Deep South as the Thais call it is a Malay heartland, just as how northern Malaysia is. The people on both sides of the border, more so on the east coast, have cultural ties restricted by the logic of modern states.

Somewhere by the beach in northern Narathiwat, the province that borders Kelantan to the south and Pattani to the north, is a village called Naim. There is a traditional Malay boatmaker aged in his 50s working hard to meet his orders. The only additional hands he gets are his son’s aged 20.

Ten or twenty years ago, he claims there were about 20 boatmakers on the same beach. Today, he and his son are the only ones left. So few are the traditional builders throughout southern Thailand that he is busy for the next four years meeting whatever demand that exists. It takes about four months to finish a boat, and by that account, he should have 12 boats to build.

The traditional boats he produces are magnificent. Made out of wood, they are 20-30 meters long. He uses modern tools to saw off wooden plank, before shaping and carving them. During my visit to his workshop, he and his son were working on the bottom most part of the boat, which had holes drilled into the sides and wooden studs jutting out of it.


The final stage of boatmaking involves painting the boat in bright contrasting colors, making the intricate pattern drawn on its body impossible to miss on land and in the sea. I would later visit Pattani located farther north and I found similar boats floating on the river that cuts through the city. An former MP for Narathiwat told me even the painters are a dying breed.

The modern economy has made traditional boat building an unlucrative business. It takes about BHT300,000 to make a boat, with the labor share of the cost being very small. Obtaining capital to finance the boat is also very difficult and the boatmaker complained nobody has helped him to keep the trade alive.

He also told me nobody wanted to become an apprentice anymore because of great sacrifices required. Apprentices are usually, or more accurately were, taken in young. Doing so today would mean missing out school days and missing out school would mean limiting one’s economic opportunity to escape poverty and rise up the social ladder. And the people in the village are largely poor living in their wooden homes and riding their motorcycles. Many live in wooden shacks in fact that could be mistaken as having been abandoned. One could get modern education and try to integrate with the modern changing economy, or risk one’s life making traditional boat for local fishermen, who themselves likely unable to compete with larger boats with deep sea capability, at a time when fishing stock is depleting regionally.

Boat building is a heritage of this part of the world. And he and his son are among the last of Narathiwat boatmakers. They are the last of traditional boatmakers on Banton beach.

And the same economic setup I am benefiting is killing that beautiful boatmaking culture. The importance of modern education is taking labor away from this trade, a trade that is a public good.