Category: Politics & government

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[2720] Aung San Suu Kyi and cultish reverence

As a libertarian, I have a strong dislike for the cultish reverence towards a person, where one puts a picture of a political leader everywhere almost to the point of worshiping them. It is not the excessive putting of portraits really. It is the attitude of revering too much. It is the worldview that that person is a god’s representative on this earth (even that, on its own, is against everything that I believe in).

That happens in Malaysia in government buildings and sometimes elsewhere too. Recently, the Malaysian education ministry sent out circulars to display portraits of Malaysian government leaders (read Barisan Nasional leaders) in classroom to encourage patriotism. We all know what that means. Starting them young is the best way to manufacture obedient robots. And it is not limited to Barisan Nasional either. And the picture of the Agong is another thing although the practice of rotating the seat every five years among so many of Malaysian sultans, rajas and a Yamtuan Besar does make it less ominous.

Thailand has too many pictures of their king. When I was in Bangkok, I was told I was not supposed to put banknotes in my wallet, because I would sit on my wallet. I do not if that was a make-believe but that is to me, cultish. I have never been to North Korea but through my readings, I would think the North Korean government would like their citizens to worship Kim Jong-un. To some extent, I do have trouble with teenagers worshiping some popstars but let us not get there.

One person that keeps popping in my travels in Burma was Aung San Suu Kyi. I completely understand why she stands out. In a country where the military rules without democratic legitimacy, she is the symbol of opposition to that dictatorship.

When I was buying a book in the streets of Rangoon, the shopkeeper pointed his finger to the wall  and said, “That’s Aung San Suu Kyi, our leader. Do you know her?”

At that point I really had no problem with her popularity. After all, she has done so much and for that, she deserves the respect.

So, things get a little bit disturbing for me when I spotted this calendar somewhere 20-30 minutes south of Mandalay:

Aung San Suu Kyi as a calendar model

The calendar, is somewhere to me, a sign of, in my own neologism, cultish reverence.

I have that skepticism because I always fear power and in a democratic society, popularity and power come in the same sentence. A person with so much power, especially in a illiberal democracy where the liberal safeguards are weak or simply does not exist, that popularity means the popular leader can do no wrong to the eyes of the majority. That means tyranny of the majority.

But this is Burma under military dictatorship and she has only limited power within the limited and guided democracy that the country has. Maybe I should cut her some slack.

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Politics & government

[2711] Thank you, now move on

Some good dozens of issues are holding Malaysia back. Several big ones are legacies originating from days long gone. While we can never truly escape history, I feel it is dragging us down too much. So heavy is the baggage that sometimes, I feel the best way to move forward is to forget.

I write this because Chin Peng died on Malaysia Day. He fought for a very different version of Malaysia, possibly the very opposite of what we have today. That makes the date of his death quite ironic, although it is arguable that his struggle hastened the independence of Malaya and later the formation of Malaysia.

We can never truly know how it would have been if he had his way. But, if offered the choice between a Communist state and today’s Malaysia, I will choose today’s reality—even with its lamentable imperfections—without hesitation.

That does not mean the imperfections afflicting Malaysia today are acceptable. We can live in a society that is better than what we have today. That has to be true because otherwise we must have given up on this country.

One imperfection comes from the very era Chin Peng and his generation represent. The fight against the Communist rebellion took a toll on our way of life. We sacrificed our liberty for security then. Unfortunately years after the conflict ended, we continue to make the same sacrifices when none is needed. Instruments useful for the fight against the Communists have been abused to suppress other Malaysians.

There has been progress, like the abolition of the Internal Security Act, but the opening is happening too slowly for my liking. The promise of more liberalization remains unfulfilled, no thanks to pressure from those still unable or refuse to move on.

I hope the death of Chin Peng — and slowly, his generation regardless the sides they are on — brightens the prospect of us forgetting old fears that are increasingly irrelevant to this age. I use the word irrelevant not to deny old wounds. The wounds are real and I respect that. I write so because when you look all around you, you will not expect a Communist to shoot you. Communism itself does not deserve the attention it receives in Malaysia today.

All the silly political ding-dong on the matter like arguing about the ashes of Chin Peng, gives Communism too much undeserved attention. In fact, the government’s stubborn refusal to let Chin Peng be buried in Malaysia gives Communism too much sympathy.

As that generation slowly fades, my hope is that we can finally take a step forward and leave all the old baggage behind. I hope that the memories of past terrors and the rationale for illiberal laws that we have now will go away with that generation too bitter to move on. I believe only when they are gone will we have a freer hand to write our future.

The era of Communist insurrection is not the only legacy issue bedeviling our modern Malaysia. There is a whole set too long for a comprehensive mention. Some people are blaming the British for Malaysian woes half a century later. What is certain is that these issues are in our collective mind, no thanks to that generation which keeps reminding us of their bitterness and insecurity.

The world changes but they do not. It would be okay if they had kept their old worldviews to themselves as they enjoy their retirement. The problem is that leaders of that generation are still pulling strings.

They are Malaysians too and they deserve a place under the sun but sometimes, they influence too strongly, as Lee Kuan Yew has done in Singapore years after his retirement.

This makes efforts by current leaders, whichever side they are on, to move on more difficult than it should. Former Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi knows what it feels like when Prime Minister Najib Razak comes under unrelenting pressure as the Umno election nears.

But Chin Peng reminds us all that we are mortals. It is just a matter of when.

That generation will be missed. But we need to move on.

Mohd Hafiz Noor Shams. Some rights reserved Mohd Hafiz Noor Shams. Some rights reserved Mohd Hafiz Noor Shams. Some rights reserved
First published in The Malay Mail Online on September 23 2013.

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Politics & government

[2699] If you fail the first time Egyptians, try and try again

As a liberal, Egypt offers horrible options. I am glad I am just a lay observer from across the continent where I am unlikely need to make such choices any time in the foreseeable future.

On one side, there is the democratically elected Islamist organization Muslim Brotherhood with Mohamed Morsi as the former President. While democratically elected, they are no democrats and while in government, they were ready to abuse state institutions to cement their power. Something had to be done to counter the influence of the Muslim Brotherhood and quite clearly, millions of Egyptians, majority or not, agreed that something needed to be done. So they protested more after the original protest turned into a revolution which pulled the dictator Hosni Mubarak down. The new protest brought the whole country to a standstill, which led us to the current situation.

In an attempt to break the deadlock, the military launched a bloodless, pre-announced, quick coup d’état. Some liberals have celebrated the move. Deep inside me, I am truly happy for what has happened in Cairo.

Nevertheless, it is hard to say having the unelected military in power instead of the elected Islamists a better option. Supporting a coup d’état itself is one of the most illiberal things to do. It would be very odd for a liberal to cheer on the military ousting the elected power, a power with repulsive outlook or otherwise.

But things are not that simple especially for Egypt which is emerging from Mubarak autocratic years. If Egypt was a normal democracy, than it would be easy to say a coup d’état by the military was outright wrong, But Egypt is in a revolution that has not concluded. The objective of the revolution is the creation of a sustainable democracy. The logic of revolution has its own rules.

The country is a state in flux and it is struggling to create such democracy. As a liberal, I am hoping that that democracy is a liberal one with individual rights sufficiently protected, and not merely a majoritarian democracy where the majority can do whatever it wants at the expense of others. After all, how many dictators have been elected to power? Winning an election is an insufficient condition for a person to have respect for democracy.

Given that Egypt is fresh at the start, it is important to get things right before everything calcifies.

With that in mind, having the Muslim Brotherhood with its wide tentacles unchecked can corrupt state institutions, leaving the opportunity to create independent institutions crucial to a liberal democracy smaller by the day. Already the new constitution gives too much power to the President, in the crucial early days of the Egyptian republic. Not only that, the constitution is inadequate to separate powers that exist in the state. That gives too much leeway for the Muslim Brotherhood to corrupt the state.

And the Islamists are no liberal and they have an Islamist vision that in the past months have shown intolerance to others, like the Christians. So, I see Egypt under the Muslim Brotherhood as an oppressive regime which believes a victory at the ballot boxes gives it a free ticket to do anything. The only thing that has prevented the Muslim Brotherhood from taking off has been the military.

Democracy, as in modern democracy which really liberal democracy, is not merely about the ballot boxes. It is about rights and institutions and a majority win during one election alone does not give the power to trample those rights and institutions. Those Islamists do not understand that.

So, letting the Muslim Brotherhood through Morsi shaping the early history of the Egyptian republic excessively without strong constitutional safeguard sounds like a bad plan to me.

What the military coup does is to till land again. That gives a chance for a democracy that is more than majoritarianism to flourish. That creation of democracy is the goal of the revolution. If you fail the first time, try and try again. To waste this revolution will be one of the worst of all outcomes. They are already there and so, let them try as hard as they can.

It is only regrettable that the till was done through military might. Ideally, it should have been done through democratic process. Or Morsi should have stepped down. But the land got tilled anyway and that is a great consolation prize. I now hope that the military is merely a caretaker for a very short period before Egypt has another run on its democratic experiment. Whether I am right to hope, whether that hope is realistic, only time will tell.

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Politics & government

[2691] Soon, Reformasi will fade

The wisdom of our age has it that young adults are more likely than not to vote against Barisan Nasional. A survey carried out by the Merdeka Center for Opinion Research backs this up. In a report it published on May 3, the poll agency found out that Malaysians in their twenties and thirties preferred Pakatan Rakyat to BN by a significant margin. In contrast, support for BN was the strongest among those aged 50 or older. In a country where the median age is younger than 30 years old, that offers some hints about the political future of the country.

While that is so, nothing guarantees that wisdom will last for too long.

The generational divergence Malaysia is witnessing now has a lot to do with the political turmoil of the late 1990s. The sacking of Anwar Ibrahim as the deputy prime minister and the subsequent events that followed made a lasting impression on the minds of these young Malaysians who then were still in school, in university or new to the labor market. Whether it was about Anwar or about a larger sense of justice — that something was extremely wrong — they were moved by the event.

These Malaysians are also the largest age cohorts that Malaysia has ever seen yet. It is not merely a coincident that BN comes under intense political pressure exactly when these generations are maturing and exercising their political muscles.

Each generation has an episode which defines their political belief and partly, their worldview. Those above 50 years old now remember the old Umno and hold dearly onto those nostalgias. Future young Malaysians, those in their teenage years and even younger, will no doubt have their very own episode.

Unlike the others however, these new young Malaysians have their book wide opened and its pages unwritten yet. There has not been any big wake-me-up moment for them so far.

One thing is certain though. Time has the power to make society forget the past. The old old generation will disappear into the background, hopefully bringing with them the ghost of May 13, among others. The old new generation — the young adults of today — will have their political views at the new bedrock of Malaysian society. The new new generations will challenge the prevailing views, as youth always do all around the world.

These new young Malaysians will not remember the events of 1998 because they will never experience it. It is much like how young adults today do not remember the events of 1988 when the old Umno was disbanded and the judiciary came under assault by the Mahathir administration. It is the exact reason why many young Malaysians today are not swayed by May 13 and scaremongering opportunists who fuel their sad career on racist politics.

History books alone are insufficient to influence a whole generation so comprehensively. No matter how moving words in the archives can be, reading them in a dark library room up in the stacks or deep in the basement is a passive, cold action. Words of history may work for a minority with true appreciation of history who read heavily but for the majority, they have to be in the dizzying mist of action before the essence of the era seeps into his or her being.

So the new new generation will forget. Society will forget. Slowly but surely, the what-we-call Reformasi era will take a bow, come down off the stage and be relegated to the pages of history.

That may be a comfort to BN. It is a second chance for them in what seems to be a contest between BN the rock and PR the water.

Nevertheless, BN will have to suffer the demographics and the momentum of time for now.

Mohd Hafiz Noor Shams. Some rights reserved Mohd Hafiz Noor Shams. Some rights reserved Mohd Hafiz Noor Shams. Some rights reserved
First published in The Malaysian Insider on May 31 2013.

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Politics & government

[2684] For reconciliation, Najib needs to address UMNO first

It was a Pyrrhic victory for Barisan Nasional and Najib Razak’s post-election speech called for national reconciliation. That is perhaps admittance that his 1Malaysia policy has not been as successful as he had hoped. It is all a nice, humble speech but his call for national reconciliation suffers from credibility crisis.

Soon after, various UMNO leaders made it clear that they did not plan to take up the reconciliation tone. They immediately took up their racialist perspective and blame the Chinese for their loss. The bitter former Chief Minister of Malacca Ali Rustam who lost his election went as far as accusing the Chinese as being ungrateful. Only the heaven knows what Utusan Malaysia will spew out today and the days after.

Najib may be sincere about reconciliation but the party is always bigger than him even as Najib is proving to be more popular than everybody else in his party. The truth is that the majority in his party does not believe in an inclusive Malaysia. If Najib is honest in reconciliation, he has to address his party, not the wider Malaysians, about his reconciliation agenda. He needs to convince his party of reconciliation and not the wider Malaysians. The wider Malaysians hear both Najib and his parties and there are stark diverging themes going on there.

Besides, it was UMNO — the primate party of BN by far — who pushed the Chinese aside. Can you really blame the Chinese for rejecting UMNO and BN?

And the suggestion that BN lost because of a “Chinese tsunami” is not entirely true. BN lost the popular votes for the first time in a long time. That would not have been possible if it were all Chinese votes. There are just not enough Chinese voters to go around making that kind of shift. And the Chinese have been hostile to BN for quite some time now. Does the death of MCA, Gerakan and SUPP not tell you something?

Maybe it was something else. Maybe, it was the urban-rural divide. The urban-rural factor has more explanatory power to describe BN’s loss of popular votes.

Maybe BN believed in its lying media too much that they thought they would have performed better. Maybe, the lesson of 2008 of the importance of credible media has not been learned by BN. They ate their own propaganda and then when it tastes bitter, they begin to blame for someone else.

For reconciliation to happen, BN needs to look at the urban-rural factors. Looking through the racialist view and then talking about reconciliation just will not fly.