There is no democracy with monopoly of power
It is not surprising that the new fangled concept of “One Malaysia”, just like its now neglected predecessor “Hadhari” and the even more famous one before that – “Vision 2020”, cannot but be machinations of a political party intent on holding on to monopoly of power. Where does democracy stand in all of this? UMNO democracy in my view is just the threadbare clothes that hide the nakedness of absolute power of the emperor using cheap slogans to fool the rakyat.
By Batsman
In terms of nation building Malaysia faces more problems than most. Most people grew to nationhood by the efforts of a population that shared a common culture and language. Unfortunately colonialism left us (as it did other poor countries as well) with a diverse mix of people with vastly different cultures and languages. Our history was interfered with and manipulated at the pleasure of our masters. This monopoly of power has not disappeared with independence but has instead been passed on to UMNO (this fact alone explains why UMNO is on such warm and friendly terms with our “wicked” colonial masters). This is our lot and we have to grapple with it, problems and all.
UMNO has monopoly of power, but like its masters it likes to deal with illusions. It therefore pretends that its power legitimately derives from the people in democratic fashion and it conducts elections more or less regularly.
The fact of the matter is somewhat different. UMNO has placed its cronies and henchmen in all the positions of power and influence in our civil service, judiciary, law enforcement and military. Not contented with this, UMNO plays the colonialist tricks of “divide and rule” which it learnt to perfection from our former colonial masters as well as passed on the nation’s wealth to privatised crony businesses and GLCs where CEO’s earn obscene salaries and bonuses to manage what are basically commodities and monopolies. These are the characteristics of not just a monopoly of power, but one which is intent on keeping it.
It is not surprising that the new fangled concept of “One Malaysia”, just like its now neglected predecessor “Hadhari” and the even more famous one before that – “Vision 2020”, cannot but be machinations of a political party intent on holding on to monopoly of power. Where does democracy stand in all of this? UMNO democracy in my view is just the threadbare clothes that hide the nakedness of absolute power of the emperor using cheap slogans to fool the rakyat.
In nation building, it is necessary for every citizen to be given a fair opportunity to be at his best – most creative and productive. A nation, single and united, cannot exist happily and with great hopes for the future by the oppression and exploitation of large minorities. A superpower like the US may be able to pull it off, but Malaysia is no superpower. “One Malaysia” is a sham if the minorities continue to be forced in their place and “special rights” of the majority are not retracted.
This is especially urgent since these “special rights” are just tools in the armoury of “divide and rule”. They have become not just a hindrance to real unity, but an excuse of unscrupulous individuals to rob and steal from other individuals as well as from the nation’s treasury. The majority get only a pittance at the price of being expendable tools and soldiers (sometimes sacrificed to the death sentence) for the rich and powerful who get not only cheap land to build their palaces on, but sell of large chunks of the country to foreigners in the name of development, the money from the project (almost RM13 billion worth) seemingly vapourised into thin air, just like the RM67 billion stimulus packages.
What then should be the real role of democracy? Democracy is the real social contract in a multi-racial country. It means that power is distributed and shared and everybody plays according to the rules of democracy. Every citizen accepts and owes loyalty to the principles of democracy – power can be won by the political party with the best and most competent set of leaders in a fair and honest manner.
By assumption, it also means that power can be lost by incompetent political parties gracefully without resorting to foul means such as pushing racist platforms, using religion cynically, twisting the law and the constitution, using the power of a biased civil service, monopolizing the media, paying either gangsters or the police to intimidate or blackmail the opposition, bringing false charges against activists and opposition leaders, using the power of detention without trial or using corrupt elections officials to hang on to monopoly of power. (Personally this list is beginning to seem endless and quite boring to repeat).
Perhaps I am being too idealistic – while it is possible for incompetent parties to lose power gracefully, it may not be possible for corrupt and abusive parties to lose even a tiny fraction of their power gracefully. There is no democracy in monopoly of power.
Even with such a monopoly of power, these guilt ridden individuals have to transfer the guilt to the insecurities and subconscious fear of the majority as if they are still being threatened, oppressed and placed in an inferior position. This reminds one of the US – which with such a preponderance of power and wealth feels threatened by a bunch of unkempt bearded fanatics living in the wilds of Iraq (did they just recently move secretly to Afghanistan? Or maybe even Iran next?)
There cannot be democracy in a monopoly of power. One is reminded of the antics of President Nixon of the US who broke the rules of engagement and employed foul means. If he had monopoly of power, he would have gotten away with it. Similarly, Prime Minister Brown of Britain is struggling to keep the hounds at bay when his aide was found to be using foul means to sabotage the opposition.
However, no system devised by man is perfect. Democracy has its weaknesses. Bush used the Zionist lobby, the Gun lobby, the Fundamentalist lobby, the Neo-Conservative lobby, the Anti-Abortion lobby as well as the Military lobby and the Secret Service lobby to do most of his dirty work and barely scrapped through with his reputation intact although he lost power in a most humiliating way – barely escaping the shoes.
Democracy is threatened by extreme lobbies. This may include racial and religious lobbies as well as openly antagonistic lobbies such as communists. Being citizens, the democratic tradition demands that their rights and views be respected, but in the extreme cases, these lobbies may not owe any loyalty to democratic traditions in return. Once in power, their ideals need time and the complete effort of the nation to be fully implemented. They therefore cannot allow the democratic tradition to be enforced and for the people to change their minds midway though the experiment.
Most of these extreme lobbies therefore go underground and seek to change the system only though violent revolutions. Those who are more moderate and non-violent will have to come up with platforms that offer their ideals to the people in slices that can be implemented in single electoral terms – revolution by slices in the hope that eventually the people see the advantages of the system they recommend and discard what is essentially time consuming and wasteful democratic traditions by habit and practice.
On the other hand, any government that uses force, abuse of power and censorship to maintain its monopoly of power demeans and destroys democratic traditions and plays into the hands of the extremists. It already uses force even before the extremists do thus sending the message that use of violence is OK. This is the famous pre-emptive strike of the Americans, whereby those in authority and those that seek to overthrow this authority both blame and counter-blame each other and violence spirals ever more fiercely upward. These neo-Americans ignore the traditions of past President Roosevelt who insisted that their enemies make the first violent act of aggression before they beat the hell out of them and drop 2 atomic bombs on them. (It seems later Presidents did not have this patience and manufactured such first acts of aggression while even later Presidents still dispensed with such niceties altogether)
But do we have to worry about these things that are far into the future when we struggle to the utmost just to try and keep (not very successfully) corruption and abuse of power at bay? Even when those in power choose to use methods that demean and destroy democracy, do we have to do the same in return? Do we have to descend to their level?
In my view, it must be the people that make this choice and not for individuals in various lobbies. It is not for individual action but for social action. The crimes of those who abuse power must be exposed for all to see and if the people do not bother, then the consequences of such crimes must be exposed for all to see and if the people still don’t bother, they need to experience these consequences before they finally decide what to do. I do not believe violent revolutions work whether in the short run or the long run. Worse, it destroys all checks and balances and creates opportunities for unscrupulous or emotionally sick individuals to exploit in violent and murderous ways.
Neither do I think that democracy is perfect nor even the best and most effective social and political system (especially when linked to cut throat capitalism) for decent humans (after all, humans are supposed to progress and improve on what they have at present), but for the moment, democracy is all we have as an intermediate stage to better things which people are free to choose when they have attained sufficient culture, maturity and commitment to decency in the far future when our nation building is more or less fairly advanced.
