Several hundred people gathered at Dataran Merdeka on Monday night demanding the release of Maria Chin.
On Tuesday, the number grew to possibly more than a thousand. It is a good turnout I think.
I hope the crowd size will double tomorrow.
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[2841] Mahathir, reformed
The crowd shouted “Reformasi!” last night as they gathered on the edge of Dataran Merdeka to demand the release of Maria Chin.
About 20 years ago, the term was so full of anti-Mahathir context. “Not today however,” History said, smirking as she played a joke on all of us.
Having the crowd crying out reformasi on Monday evening made the atmosphere surreal. Surreal because sitting at the front facing the crowd was the former Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad.
“Reformasi! Reformasi! Reformasi!” the crowd roared.
He managed a smile and raised his hand together with the rest. I had to assess my own sanity and senses whether I actually saw or heard him shout reformasi along the protesters, possibly numbering between 500 and 1,000 people.
Hishamuddin Rais with his hat and ill-fitted clothing — released from police lock-up just a few hours earlier — joked he could hardly believe Mahathir had attended Bersih and on this night, Mahathir was sitting close to him. Hishamuddin made a mocking impression of Mahathir. Yet, he, one of Mahathir’s harshest critics from the streets from the very beginning, is convinced of the need to work with Mahathir and put the past behind. Mahathir understands the compromise Hishammuddin has made, and took the jab with a open, humbled heart.
On Saturday, when Mahathir gave a speech to a much bigger crowd under the Petronas Towers, it was evident many were still distrustful of the old man. I could see it in their faces. They looked on and listened incredulously to Mahathir as he spoke of free speech, free press and freedom of assembly. “Malaysians have short memory,” remarked a friend to me as the clouds threatened to unleash a tropical rainstorm on us.
What was a clear blue sky had turned gloomy by four or five o’clock, when Mahathir arrived to give the speech. The rain god understood the popular sentiment on Jalan Ampang.
It is hard for anybody, me included, to stomach having Mahathir pontificating about free speech, free press and freedom of assembly. This is the man along with Lee Kuan Yew who believed in the so-called Asian values, the belief that the well-being of the whole trumps individual rights. I wonder how Lee would think of his former sparring partner.
To many liberals, I can see, Mahathir simply does not have the moral authority to say things he said on that Saturday afternoon and on that Monday night. Many liberals and others who opposed Mahathir during the 1980s and the 1990s yearn for pure heroes.
I hate to break it to you but those pure heroes do not exist in these desperate hours of ours. Anwar Ibrahim is in jail and Anwar himself is imperfect. Yet, we follow him, believing the injustice brought down upon him reformed him for the better for us all.
What we have now, ironically, is Mahathir.
At this stage, those who believe Najib Razak needs to resign and be brought to justice need to invest in coalition building. That is the only way realistically available to correct the wrong the corrupt have done. It is the only way to get Malaysia to move on. Without a coalition, Najib will continue to be in power plundering public wealth and undermining public institutions that we need to get to the next level of development.
Muhyiddin Yassin on Saturday is right. We need to forget our differences for a moment, just for this moment, and work together towards a common goal for the greater good. The urban and the liberal folks need their heartland cousins to push Malaysia forward and this is where Mahathir comes in.
We have done it before. We saw that in 2008 and 2013. We just need to do it again. Yes, things crumbled afterwards but you know, if at first you do not succeed, try and try again. Nobody said it would be easy.
A defeatist would not even try. He would want to read a 100-year plan before starting anything.
I would say we should cross the bridge when and if we get there. It is premature to think about all permutations and worry about the downside as if the bad outcomes are guaranteed. There is no guarantee. None. And that is why attempts at building a coalition matter. We need to try instead of resigning ourselves to certain damnation.
And to the cynics who still distrust Mahathir, I think we can safely bet that Mahathir cannot be the dictator he used to be. As I stood at the back staring at him judgmentally, somehow I felt pity for him. There was a statesman, the former strongman of Southeast Asia, sitting upfront, shrunken, old, tired, small and humbled.
Yet, he was there on Monday night.
The question should not be why he was there, or whether he should to be there?
The question instead should be, where were you?
Mahathir ate his ego for something greater. Yet, here are the liberals, worried about some kind of ideological purity, trying to parade your moral superiority while more injustice is being committed by others.
Mahathir is not the authoritarian leader we have now. The monster is in Putrajaya.
Get on the program, fucking please.
This edition of Bersih, felt less carnival-like unlike last year. Nevertheless, Bangsar still had the fun crowd, with all the banners and masks and flags and songs. I love the fight songs.
But well, the protest is not about having fun. It is about exercising political rights. And it is never really courageous to take potshots from the sides. From time to time, we hafta go down.
I had expected the worst, after all the heightened provocations and shrilling threats made by Umno men. I was prepared with salt water, some medication and legal aid contact written on a piece of paper in my bag. In the end, it proved to be unnecessary thanks to the protest organizers and the police. I m thankful in the end, the protest was peaceful.
I am glad we have learned something about right to peacefully assemble after all these years. That took a lot of work. And that alone is progress, and that should be restated time and time again to the cynics.
There are various persons currently being held by the police for merely protesting peacefully. Whatever progress we have achieved, there is still much to be done. After all, Najib Razak is still the Prime Minister, after all the wrongs he has done.
How was it in Bangsar?
Well, from left to right, Riza Aziz, Rosmah Mansur (obscured), Jho Taek Low and the man himself, Najib Razak.
Part of Jalan Bukit Bintang has been transformed into a mini-Arab town over the past 5 or 10 years. It has been quite an intriguing trend.
Arab restaurants and tourists are not uncommon along the stretch between the Pavilion and beyond Jalan Raja Chulan. They like Malaysia for various reasons and it is easy to see that they are a wealthy bunch, fitting the general stereotype assigned by the locals to those originating from the Gulf quite nicely.
But in recent weeks, something extraordinary has been happening. I am beginning to spot Arab women and their children begging on the streets on Jalan Bukit Bintang.
The first time I noticed them, I found myself feeling incredulous, feeling that this must have had been some kind of a prank. Many beggars all around the city are linked to some kind of syndicates. Some are manipulating public sentiment for disagreeable personal gains while others are truly desperate in need of help. The prevalence of syndicate-related beggars and the second group of people make me suspicious of these Arab beggars.
But yesterday, I spotted a woman in her black purdah without a face veil sitting on the floor just outside the newly renovated Isetan store in Lot 10. He held a small placard, telling passerby that she was from Syria and she needed money.
I do not how true her claim is but my heart melted nonetheless.
How would you imagine a utopia? What is that utopia?
These are hard questions to answer. It is hard because it requires deep reflection. It cannot be answered on the spot.
In this age when pessimism against liberal values grows day by day, to me, the need to imagine a utopia becomes greater than ever. It is either to criticize these ugly forces fueling Brexit and the Trump presidency (or Malaysian racism and corruption), or to convince the masses it is worth staying the course on the liberal project.
And so when I spotted an event called “Imagining Utopia” at the Kuala Lumpur Literary Festival earlier today, I decided to drop by hoping to find the seeds to my utopias. The liberal order is retreating and so I need my rally.
But as I sat in the front row listening to the panel members, I felt growing dissatisfaction against the majority’s view. Instead of a session imagining utopia, it was a discussion criticizing utopias for being out-of-touch/unconcerned with human nature, and then became a session praising dystopias.
I was mad at the direction of the discussion. In fact, when I took up the microphone to express my dissatisfaction, I sounded unreasonably confrontational, to which I had to apologize after.
Utopias and human nature
As a libertarian, human nature is tried and tested line of argument I used against socialists and communists out there, and to defend the liberal market orthodoxy. Greed, self-interest and other darker sides of us are harnessed by the market to do something good as the argument goes. We have to acknowledge these darker sides of us before we can go on to do good, typically the defense goes. Communism does a bad job at incorporating human nature, as the knife strikes into the heart of the anti-market belief.
Unsophisticated to say the least, but hilariously hard to counter at entry-level discussions.
But yes, utopias have trouble dealing with human nature, as human nature is now, to a realist. Utopias ignore, reject or assume heavily modified human nature to create a paradise on earth in our head.
However, the link between utopias and human nature should not be an excuse to dismiss utopias in the first place. Yet, the majority on the panel refused to imagine any utopia, dismissed the roles of utopia without assessing it and then hastily worshiped dystopias instead.
Roles of utopias and dystopias
The majority view is more interested in dystopias. Dystopias to them are of more value than utopias. Why? Because dystopias readily deal with current human nature. Boo!
Utopias and dystopias have their values in criticizing reality. Brazil, Nineteen Eighty-Four, Fahrenheit 451, The Wanting Seed and other dystopias take a development in the author’s reality and then project it forward to show what is wrong with that reality. Showing what is wrong with our (or somebody else’s) current society is one of the major functions of dystopias.
What the majority view fails to realize is the function — or as Zedeck Siew, the only one defending utopias on the panel, puts it, the utility — of utopias with respect to human nature.
The function of utopias is to imagine a different world where we can do better. Be it communist, liberal, religious, materialistic or whatever adjective there is out there to describe whatever philosophy, it is the imagining of a better world, a better way of organizing society or perhaps more importantly, a better or even different human nature. Indeed, it is a criticism of human nature, as it is, itself.
An example involves Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward. It is a 1897 communist utopia that I disagreed with and an overly optimistic views of human nature. Nevertheless, it is a powerful criticism of capitalism and together with other experiences, transformed capitalism for the better especially after the 1930s Great Depression. It made us look at our reality clearer whereas before, we took it for granted. Really, the latest technology from computing to logistics risks making central planning more efficient than the free market, just as written in Bellamy’s utopia. This is a challenge to all modern libertarian thoughts.
I feel this is why such majoritarian dismissal of utopias based on our current human nature is highly unsatisfactory. Utopias assess our human nature more comprehensively than dystopias because of utopias’ radical imagination. Yet, the majority dismisses utopias because of human nature.
Radical imagination versus mere extrapolation
Imagining utopias, unlike dystopias, are not merely about extrapolating existing trends. Imagining utopias are about jumping to another plane altogether and projecting from that. It is the imagining of our new and better nature.
The newness requirement is why it is harder to imagine a utopia than a dystopia and why it is wrong to cheapen the value of utopias to that of common fluffy trash. This is probably partly also why, there are more dystopia than utopia literature.
More importantly, going back to the point about pessimism against the liberal order, a creative utopia creates a goal. The path towards that utopia will be the integration between that goal and our current human nature.
That shifting of plane requires radical imagination and that plane will provide contrast to the control group that is our reality.
The impermanence of human nature
And finally, human nature can change. We humans and our society evolve. There are still vestiges of cavemen inside of us but those urges have been modified by our understanding of sciences. Hundreds of years of advancement in physics, biology, chemistry, mathematics, economics, psychology, sociology, philosophy”¦ knowledge has changed our human nature and will continue to do so. I am not about ready to say Darwin, Wallace and others involved in a whole line of evolutionary thoughts from biology to economics are wrong just to defend the idea of the permanence of human nature.
And really, the modern us have been around for less than 100 years. For millions of years, we were savages. For thousands, we lived in ancient civilizations. For hundreds, in nation-states. For decades, the confused post-modern now. After the dramatic change in our lives in just decades, can we be confident that human nature is unchanging?
Victims of our reality
One of the panel members, in making a short digression, said many writings today are clichés because many authors produce derivatives. Well, dystopias are clichés. Indeed, it is a failure of imagination to hastily and prematurely dismiss utopias in favor of dystopias.
In fact, I think we are living in a dystopia. The praising of and the addiction to dystopias is us becoming the trapped victims of our reality.