Unity equals one voice equals no choice?
Even while Prime Minister Najib Razak promotes his dubiously ambiguous “1Malaysia,” his party and government are getting excited about the prospect of “Malay-Muslim unity” through a political alliance with PAS.
By John Lee (The Malaysian Insider)
There are two problems here: first, what is Malay-Muslim unity? Second, why should Malays and Muslims want this unity?
“Malay-Muslim unity” is not a straightforward thing. Let’s take a different tack and imagine “Indian-Hindu unity.” What do you get? You get Hindraf.
The government is not a fan of Hindraf. But Hindraf is all about Indian-Hindu unity – so much so that even those sympathetic to their cause are sometimes sceptical about it, because of how extreme they can be. So if the government and UMNO cannot stomach Hindraf’s fanatical unity, why would they be any bigger fans of Malay unity?
This is why clarifying what kind of unity we are talking about is important: cultural and political unity are very different things.
Cultural unity can be a very good thing. People coming together to celebrate their shared lifestyle, whether it is through Hari Raya Aidilfitri or Thaipusam, is something we all support and partake of often.
But political unity? Political unity only benefits a handful of people who monopolise the discussion – the rest are left out in the cold.
When all the political power of one community is concentrated in one party, what happens for those who don’t kowtow to the party leaders? What happens to those who have a different, possibly valid, point of view?
As we know all too well from many bloody leadership struggles in the Barisan Nasional parties, the result is that one leader comes out on top, and persecutes his opponents.
This culture of persecution and monopolising power is what led to Hindraf in the first place: the Indians were tired of uniting behind MIC, which has not done anything about the community’s terrible economic plight. And so Hindraf became the vehicle for voicing their complaints.
You can try to suppress dissent and foist political unity on your people, but it will never work out in the long run, because people have different ideas, and they need their ideas to be heard.
Political unity is a horrible idea for the same reason a one-party state is a horrible idea: the nation needs to hear many different voices.
Even if most of these opinions are wrong, some of them will be good, and we are better off because we can choose between them.
A one-party state not only silences the bad ideas – it silences the good ones too, because it silences whoever disagrees with the head honcho.
If Najib is interested in Malay-Muslim cultural unity, more power to him.
But that’s obviously not what he wants. He wants political unity. He wants his party to be the only outlet for Malay-Muslim views. He wants Malay-Muslims to speak with one voice – his.
A PAS-Umno alliance for the sake of “Malay-Muslim unity” would only undermine the welfare of Malays and Muslims, by reducing the options they have for speaking their minds, and strengthening the stranglehold of a few little Napoleons on the precious little room we have for political discourse.
I don’t know about you but I, as a Chinese Malaysian, do not want the MCA or the DAP to be the only outlet for my views. I want to have a choice of who represents me.
And I am sure there are millions of Malaysians who feel exactly the same way about the menu of political options they currently have – we want more choice, not less.
