Class wars: Stuck in the middle
If you have to explain to people what is important to them rather than finding out what their needs are and developing a strategy around it, then the problem might be you rather than us.
Praba Ganesan, The Malay Mail Online
Days begin bright or wet, but always breezy, at the top of Bukit Segar in the hillsides of Cheras-Ampang. In a twist of fate, the low-cost flats and the barb-wire obsessed gated community are separated by the road and walls — but they see each other thanks to constructions built upwards and around the natural gradients.
They only thing they share is the road to work — and back home.
There is hardly a more apt picture to describe the social divides in Malaysian life. Flat residents parked all along the main road, spilling over from the limited parking inside the compounds while guards across the road diligently keeping an eye on the electronic barrier which keeps the riffraff away from their playgrounds.
A friend, a persistent friend, messaged me late two days ago asking me about my usual, in his mind, animosity towards the middle class.
He asked why the poor, the working class, can’t work with the middle class to supplant the elitist class dominating Malaysian political power.
I believe the first weakness is to assume that the working class are aware or responsible to overcome any class collectively. They are firmly aware that life is hard and responsibilities are necessary in order to preserve their families in a sea of struggles, however they are naturally averse to any responsibility of a national nature foisted upon them.
It is not that they cannot work with presumed allies, it is that they are largely unaware they should work towards a political outcome. Politics, largely to them, is about accessing positive outcomes for themselves and those in groups they identify with.
