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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.

Categories
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.

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.