Malay Nationalism and Development
Internal unity is therefore extremely important if not crucial. UMNO admits this fact and sincerely believes that foreign investment will not flow in if Malaysia does not have peace and political stability. Yet it indulges in Malay nationalism.
By batsman
The western countries have already gone through their own phases of nationalism. Some have already adopted great power chauvinism while others have settled for civilized power chauvinism after having tried and failed to be great powers (Belgium, Germany, Spain and Portugal among these). Still it was the nationalistic phase that allowed western countries to grow rich and become civilized and “free”.
Having become rich, they are now touting “globalization” in various degrees to become even richer. Where it benefits them they champion “human-rights, democracy, free speech, globalization and free-enterprise” but where it is disadvantageous, they have no qualms about imposing barriers to protect themselves. (eg. burqa bans, Patriot Acts, bombing and murdering others in the name of human rights and making useless apologies when their bombs kill innocents, stopping ex-Gurkhas from becoming citizens, invading others in the name of freedom, protecting the world from fanatics and tin-pot dictators or using the excuse of searching for WMD, etc.)
Malaysia has set targets for joining this glorious club and becoming a developed nation (by implication – civilized) by 2020. In the meantime, it is still free to be uncivilized and abusive towards its own citizens just like many other 3rd world countries while playing generous hosts to others in international conferences such as the Langkawi initiative and making nauseating speeches about good governance and being people-friendly.
Of all the countries which are struggling to be developed, some have succeed, some are still struggling and many others still seemed to have failed. Their cases need to be studied seriously, but this is beyond the scope of this write-up. For our purpose, it is sufficient to make some crude observations.
Of the countries which have succeeded are Japan and S. Korea. These countries are characterized by their homogeneity (Japan more so than S. Korea). Their citizens are united and have a strong sense of purpose. Domestic capital accumulation accompanied by foreign capital injections (investments) provided the final necessary conditions for their success.
Brazil, India, Russia and China are showing great promise. These countries have more or less settled their domestic conflicts, domestic capital accumulation is proceeding rapidly and foreign investments are flowing in (some countries have advanced more rapidly in these directions than others). Still some doubts remain.
China for example in spite of it being the richest country in the world in terms of spare cash, is still not accepted as a civilized country and excluded from the civilized countries club. This is because many of it domestic conflicts have not been properly resolved. In fact in some famous cases eg. Tibet and Inner Mongolia, there are forces that try to guarantee that it cannot be resolved. Besides, even the Han Chinese, in spite of their great reputation for chauvinism, are hardly united in nationalism (their communist history may have something to do with this, but check out this link, Huge scale of corruption among Chinese government officials, for good measure).
It would seem that the mainland Chinese, like Malaysians are ever ready to take out money (whether theirs or belonging to others) and emigrate at the drop of a penny. Otherwise, if they have no money then they either willingly or allow themselves to be hoodwinked into being trafficked abroad, just to get out of the country.
This disunity and lack of mutual respect and maybe even lack of self-respect causes obstacles on the road to becoming a civilized and developed nation even if one has great wealth.
Internal unity is therefore extremely important if not crucial. UMNO admits this fact and sincerely believes that foreign investment will not flow in if Malaysia does not have peace and political stability. Yet it indulges in Malay nationalism.
As a governing party, which believes that internal unity, peace and political stability is crucial to development, why is it not championing true Malaysian nationalism but instead promotes divisive Malay nationalism? After all it is not an external colonial power ruling the country by divide and rule tactics.
I guess Malaysians of all races have to answer this question correctly if they are to develop as a truly united nation.
In the west, they have united their countries in competition against the rest of the world. Their internal political systems are characterized by sportsmanship and mutual respect even if they are using drones to murder innocents in poor countries (with apologies no doubt). Unfortunately, our political system is characterized by abuse of power and dirty tricks while we are quarrelling amongst each other without any limits in the hostility. There is no mutual respect and sportsmanship, yet we dream of becoming civilized and developed in 9 short years time.
Yet there are promising signs. Since the tsunami of 2008, the government has become more responsive and has come up with initiatives like 1 Malaysia, Government Transformation, Economic Transformation, Key Performance Indices, etc. There
is a small relaxation of opportunities made available to minorities (even if the scholarship recipient lists are still kept government secrets). One could say that all these improvements are the consequence of the opposition achieving healthy gains. If the
opposition were not strong and the rakyat did not show that they wanted a healthy and clean 2 party political system, it would be safe to say that government ministers would still be waving kerises and threatening genocide to protect Malay nationalism.
Still, all is not yet well. The Prime Minister arrogantly and without bothering to offer any explanation takes advantage of government paid trips to advance a personal agenda such as the marriage of his daughter. Some Malaysians may want to close one eye, but this is dangerous and short sighted. Even top government servants now perform expense-paid hajj by offering some miserable receipts to counter accusations without anyone digging deeper than referring to a miserable minion.
If politicians can get away with taking advantage of small things, who is going to stop them from taking advantage of big things? There are no longer any institutional guarantees and not much of any checks and balances. If Malaysian institutions are
shoddy, how can it become a civilized nation? How can a nation be civilized if senior government servants are bonking their juniors and getting away with it without even bothering to answer the accusations?
There are no longer any checks and balances nor any institutions of any strength and integrity and if there are none, the road is surely down the road to ruin, not to developed civilized nationhood.
Bersih 2.0 is just demanding that we have clean elections. This is trying to strengthen our institutions and not destroy them. They are trying to make a complacent and unresponsive government more accountable. They have no choice but to take their demands public since the government ignores all calls for improvement and clean up of the electoral system. Is Bersih 2.0 bad or is the government bad? Or is it just that our own values, thinking and culture are bad and selfish and corrupt politicians are taking advantage of our weaknesses? Do we deserve to be civilized and developed or are we just trying to become rich – like the Chinese?
