It is so refreshing to discover that Wan Hamidi Hamid embraces the idea of economic liberalism so passionately. For a person working so deeply in the DAP, I had expected him to stand on the other side of the divide. My expectation missed its target slightly less by a mile.
I learned of his philosophical position during a small discussion at the Middle Eastern Graduate Centre on Jalan Telawi on a Friday’s evening. It was an unscheduled attendance for me because I had not planned to visit Bangsar on that day. The discussion was about attacks on the idea of economic liberty by the left movement in Malaysia. Wan Hamidi wrote an essay a couple of pages long refuting the attack. A good part of the essay could be succinctly summarized by the very idiom he used in the final paragraph of his essay: the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
In my mind, Madonna burst out to sing the song 4 Minutes. That probably helped digressing the discussion from focusing on the attack to describe economic liberty at large.
I wrote slightly less by a mile because he is a convert from socialism to liberalism. Pardon the pigoenhole but those labels are convenient to use. Regardless of convenience, as he admitted during he discussion, he used to sympathize with the left movement. As a young journalist, he did substantial reporting on the local labor movement.
How did he finally, as he said cheekily, “bertaubat” (repent) is unknown to me but he is undoubtedly a liberal in the classical sense now. Actually, he is down the road farther than me. If anybody out there was to describe me as an extremist, he would ran out of superlative to describe Wan Hamidi.
That conversion made me thinking. A person jumping off the left boat to board the liberal one is not an unusual news to hear. How about a person doing the reverse?
The latter is something I have yet to stumble upon.
This also made me thinking about how left the DAP is these days on the political spectrum. Increasingly, DAP may look like PKR in its political diversity, as far as the red-blue spectrum is concerned. Tony Pua seems like more like a liberal than a left sympathizer. Wan Hamidi Hamid is unambiguously a liberal. I also know several more individuals in their 20s within DAP holding liberal ideas.
It would be interesting to know how big the divide is in DAP.
Big or small, all this makes Wan Hamidi Hamid an amusing rare instance of stark contrast. Here is a Malay with economic liberal ideas in a political party dominated by the Chinese which traditionally sides itself with the left. He just stands out from the crowd.
4 replies on “[1859] Of Wan Hamidi Hamid the economic liberal in DAP”
Huh, a Malay libertarian in the DAP? Fascinating. I mainly remember Wan Hamidi’s name for this funny op-ed he wrote in the NST, strongly advocating non-interventionism in Burma.
Obama one of the most leftist?
Odd statement to make because his cabinet are mostly Blue Dog Democrats and contain no leftist at all. Some leftists have even bemoaned that they have been betrayed by Obama. So, I don’t think what you said about Obama is correct.
This cartoon says a lot about Obama being a “leftist” -> http://www.gocomics.com/features/200/feature_items/399336
Like it or not, Obama is starting to look like the Democrats of the 1990s. In fact, his administration is mostly made up of the same Democrats back then. Hardly left.
The claim that the US being one of the most anti-leftist places is a mere caricature.
Even if Obama administration were to be one of the most leftist there were, claiming that American has gone left based on that assumption ignored the fact of many voted strategically (e.g. libertarians voted for Obama) and the myriad of issues like war and religion which has little to do with the social-liberal divide. Many of these people wished to punish Bush Republicans rather than believing in Obama’s slogan and rhetoric. And many are mostly centrists rather than ideological firm on the right or left.
Besides, elections are mostly due to centrists’ vote, not those few not in the center. It is only typical for centrist to sway in their politics. And here, when I refer to conversion, I don’t refer to centrist, as it should be apparent.
About Reagan et la maintaining the social net, that have nothing to do with the conversion referred.
Finally, what you referred as liberalism is in fact lemon socialism, where profits are privatized and losses are nationalized.
Political realities forces most mainstream parties to the centre, and DAP’s no different.
Who’s to say the only conversions are the ones from the left to liberalism?
The Democratic Party under Obama is one of the most leftist ones when being presented to the American voters. His achievement is magnified when we take into consideration that the USA has one of the most anti-leftist societies in the developed world.
Reagen, Thatcher, Howard were all straight-laced conservatives/liberals. Yet all kept social security and medicare. And now these social nets are the things that differentiate developed and developing countries. Liberalism, when left untamed, is a wild beast with the potential to cause much pain.
To evaluate the true colour of DAP is not only listening to their leaders’ rhetoric but the policies that they put into practice, especailly the states of Penang and Perak (though headed by PAS but controlled by DAP).
It was reported that during its Youth Wing Annual Conference, this question of whether DAP is of the left or right was raised. Again, its new Youth Chief, YB Loke was reported to have said DAP in of centre-left.
Whatever, left, right or centre, one thing for sure DAP is all out to make itself a populist government at all costs. Asa repeatedly stressed by its Penang State Chairman, YB CHow KY, they don’t what to be a “One-Term Government”. But at what cost?
Despite financial crisis, they are giving away Penang’s precious land resources to build luxurious golf course, converting leasehold properties to freehold properties in the name of giving in the name of benefiting the poors, giving rebates of water tariff to please people when teh water resource is under stressed and the list goes on…
The question now is at what price?