Is Malaysia a pressure cooker or a chrysalis?
At the best of times, M’sia had definitely been a place where cultural differences enriched each other without melding inseparably into each other.
by Ooi Kee Beng
IF THERE is one thing everyone can agree upon about Malaysia, it is that the status quo – however one wants to describe that – is not satisfactory.
From the prime minister down to the Malaysian on the street, from Barisan Nasional to Pakatan Rakyat, from PAS to Perkasa, from Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad to Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim, and from Penang to Sabah, the debate is about how – not if – Malaysia should be transformed.
For a country that is so obviously loved by its citizens, it is popularly dismissed for what it is at the moment. What does that tell us? What ails this land that once held such promise?
It would be claiming too much to say that Malaysia was once a melting pot, or that it had had such pretensions. It had not. But at the best of times, it had definitely been a place where cultural differences enriched each other without melding inseparably into each other.
For a melting pot to do its work, time is of the essence. Since the rise of the independent nation state of Malaysia, however, the country has been in a hurry.
It tried to side-line the English language as quickly as possible in the 1960s; it put into place a quick-fix programme to facilitate the entry of the Malay community into the modernising national economy in the 1970s, curbing civil liberties and restricting democratic rights to do so; it initiated a bold process of Islamising the governance of what is essentially a pluralistic country in the 1980s; and it dared to aim for advanced nation status by 2020 in the 1990s.
Until the Asian financial crisis, therefore, nation building in Malaysian was a rather resolute process, proceeding confidently and innocently with eyes fixed a couple of feet ahead. But some profound change took place in 1997-98. More correctly, a limit to the political infrastructure was reached that even Dr Mahathir could not breach. What used to work no longer did, and more of the same would not give expected results.
From that point onwards, the political consciousness of Malaysia’s population was irreversibly altered. New dimensions for political discord came to the fore, with new actors fronting them. Calls for reforms-and for transformation-began resonating in 1998. The new era saw the country’s second most powerful man – Anwar – being arrested and jailed for 15 years in 1999, and the most powerful man – Dr Mahathir – retiring in 2003. After that, the agenda for broad national reforms had to be adopted by the ruling coalition.
Fast forward to November 2013, and we see how the leadership of the two major Malay parties, Umno and PAS, has survived practically intact in their first party elections after the ground-breaking general election of May 2013. This certainly shows a steadfastness in the support for the positions they have come to adopt, vis-à-vis each other, and within their respective coalitions.
So what can be cooking under the lid? Is Malaysia a pressure cooker with tensions along class, religious and ethnic lines building up towards an explosion? Or is it really a chrysalis we are witnessing?
For pessimists, the country is undergoing a cultural disintegration that incomprehensibly is being driven by but a few individuals who make up for their lack of popular support by playing on the fears among national leaders of their diminishing legitimacy, both as race representatives and elected government. This desperate position is witnessed in how the absence of legal accountability has freed leaders and top civil servants from the need to be rational in explaining failures and incompetence in state matters. Once one does not have to make sense, regulations and legislation lose relevance.
Indeed, it is hard not to be a pessimist in such times. Without form, governance becomes arbitrary, and rules become lax. Criminal elements are heartened, and chaos threatens.
On the other hand, those disposed to see the cup as half full – and they are, luckily, still numerous in number – are encouraged by the surge in popular demand for good governance and by the freedom of speech afforded so dramatically by new communication technologies.
