What are the chances that Malaysia will go the same way as Bangladesh and Kenya?

The government and leaders of a nation tend to presume that just because people have taken a lot of abuse while only reacting a little in the past, they can continue to heap upon the same amount of abuse on the people, and expect people to react only by the same small measure in the future as well.

Nehru Sathiamoorthy

Bangladesh is in the doldrums today. Kenya too.

The reason they are both in the doldrums is basically the same. It is because of their economy.

In Bangladesh, the final manifestation of their economic problem came about when their government decided to reserve 30 percent of the country’s government jobs to a politically connected group of people, while in Kenya, it has to do with tax hikes.

In both cases, the final manifestation likely came about after a long period of economic mismanagement. In other words, the final manifestation itself is not a problem, in the way that the final straw that broke the camel’s back is itself not the problem. It is the accumulation of problems that is the problem. The final manifestation, just like the final straw that broke the camel’s back, was merely the point where the accumulation of the problem became manifest or visible.

It is the nature of regular people to bear with whatever it is that they face in their lives, for the sake of their self-interest.

A regular person’s self interest generally consists of the wellbeing of their family, their own wellbeing, their future wellbeing, their social status and the state of their possession and property.

For the sake of securing their self-interest, a regular person will generally bear with whatever corruption, injustice, unfairness or humiliation that they encounter, and just focus on trudging ahead with their lives.

We know that Malaysia is not doing well. From minister’s husband getting government contract to the HRDC fiasco to professor’s council being mired in financial scandal to something brewing in Socso to our large and growing national debts to boycotts to rising cost of living to racial and religious tension, the list of symptoms that indicate that Malaysia is not doing well is long and ever growing.

What we have to combat them all however, is the propensity of regular people to bear with whatever misfortune it is that assails them, like the proverbial camel, for as long as they are able to secure their self-interest, and keep trudging forward.

Because it is the nature of a regular citizen to bear with anything and do whatever it takes to secure their self-interest, our government and leaders can screw up 101 times, without their screw ups leaving any significant or visible effect on the people or the nation.

As matter of fact, it is precisely because the people have a propensity to bear with humiliations, injustice and corruption that government and political leaders tend to feel emboldened to screw up regularly, with the belief that even if their screw ups are discovered, they can manage the problem, because all that the people will do is just grumble a little, before resigning themselves to the screw up and continue on with their life for the sake of their self-interest.

The government and leaders of a nation tend to presume that just because people have taken a lot of abuse while only reacting a little in the past, they can continue to heap upon the same amount of abuse on the people, and expect people to react only by the same small measure in the future as well.

Their beliefs and expectations will indeed hold true, but as the Bangladeshi and Kenyan example is proving today, it will hold true only up to a certain point.

At a certain point, people will reach a stage where they will no longer feel that they will be able to maintain their social status, provide for their families, pay for their house and car loans or hope that tomorrow will be better than today, and at this point, they will start to behave in a manner that the government and the leaders cannot anticipate or predict.

That is basically what is happening in Bangladesh and Kenya today. Their government and leaders thought that their people would continue to act predictably, as they continued to add straw after straw on the people’s back, without realising that a large number of their population had already reached the last straw.

The government and leaders in Bangladesh and Kenya probably did not expect their people to react so drastically when all they did was something that they had done 101 times before, but little did they realise that all of their previous actions have pushed too many people to a point that they lost hope in their ability to secure their self-interest.

When a person no longer feels that he can take care of their family or themselves, when they don’t think they can maintain their social status or retain their property or possession, when they lose hope that the future will be better, they will no longer see why they should preserve themselves or the world around them.

The thought “What is the point of existing in a world where your existence is only a burden to yourself?” will become pervasive in the collective consciousness of the people, and that is the point you cannot predict what the people will be doing any longer.

Will the chaos in Bangladesh and Kenya ever stop?

Yes, of course it will. No matter what our problem is with the world, we don’t have an unlimited amount of energy to expand.

At some point, the unrest in Bangladesh and Kenya is bound to end, as the people run out of energy and hit a point where they will have to rest.

Until then, subconsciously, the disaffected and frustrated Kenyans and the Bangladeshis will be doing whatever they can to bring the entire country down, so that their inability to secure their self-interest will stop making them feel like they are failures.

You will only feel like a failure if you alone are unable to secure your self-interest. If you can bring your entire nation down and make everybody in your country fail to secure their self-interest, then you will no longer be the only one who failed to secure your self interest. When not only you, but everybody around you is also failing to secure their self interest, you will stop feeling like a failure.

If the disaffected Kenyans and the Bangladeshi manage to bring their entire nation down during this period of unrest, so that their own failures will not stand out prominently against the backdrop of their nation’s failure, when the unrest ends, the Kenyans and Bangladeshis will likely go back to their old way of life, and rebuild their lives from the ashes that is left.

If they run out of energy before they are able to bring their entire nation down however, then even after the unrest is over, they will still be trying to bring their nation down by some other means, until they feel that their own failures don’t stand out, when seen against the backdrop of their failed nation.

When too many people in a nation are preoccupied in the business of seeing their nation fall instead of seeing themselves succeed, so that they can hide their own failures in the grand failure of their nation, that nation will continue to fall for a long time.

Of course, Malaysians today are not in that stage yet. Most of us still believe that we can take care of ourselves, our loved ones and retain our properties, even if it is getting harder to do so.

But then again, you can never really tell when a nation will reach the last straw, where everything that our government and leaders predicted and foresaw, will go out of the window, as the various problems that the nation has, each manageable by itself, will begin to reinforce each other and create a self sustaining chaos that is able to grow by feeding on itself.

Let’s see what impact that the lifting of the subsidies on RON 95, which is predicted to happen soon, will have on the nation.