3 posts tagged “malaysian politics”

It's hard not to notice them; the many billboards along the roads with the faces of all the Prime Ministers of Malaysia, saying that we should be grateful for their sacrifices made for the country. What about the contribution of the many ordinary Malaysia people - read tax payers? How come nobody is celebrating the collective contributions of the citizens of this country who have brought it to where it is today? Not a peep, which means to say that we're not important enough to be recognised. It riles me to no end to see inanely meaningless billboards which tout "Malaysia Gemilang". Gemilang for what?  For falling standards in education? For increasing crime and corruption? For getting our priorities all screwed up - we have money to splash on a needless exercise to send someone to space to make teh tarik but the funds are somehow not available to make schools safe so that teachers don't crash through the ceilings of upper floors.... 

Merdeka-cartoon

Despite the countdown to August 31 by the media to celebrate our 50 years as a sovereign country, I can't help but feel that there's not very much to celebrate or to be proud of as a nation. Fifty years of anything is always a milestone to commemorate, but I don't think there're many positive things to celebrate in Malaysia as things stand today. The main reason for my lack, or actually, absence of enthusiasm to celebrate this Merdeka, is that looking back from where we came from, this country has regressed in critical areas like race relations, religious freedom and the judicial independence. People are less tolerant and accepting these days compared to the days of my grandfather. The races seem to mix less and are more suspicious of each other. It doesn't help to have a heap of half baked, lobotomised and hypocritical politicians who pay lip service to the importance of racial harmony but have no qualms to score cheap political points in playing the race or religious card whenever they think it's expedient to do so.

I remember an old Malay gentlemen who was my late grandfather's friend and lived a couple of houses from my home. His name was Yusuf and he came from a world which has been swallowed by the tide of religious intolerance. Like my grandfather, Yusuf served in the army in World War 2 and was quite an anglophile. Many years ago, I remember my family invited Yusuf  to our reunion dinner during Chinese New Year, simply because he had nowhere to go and nothing to do. By this time, Yusuf was already in his late 70's, but still lucid and sprightly. Before the dinner, my grandpa informed my grandma who was in charge of cooking the reunion dinner, that Yusuf was coming to dinner and to have some non-pork dishes prepared. It was so nice to have Yusuf join in our reunion dinner - our family is very small and untraditional, so we usually have friends over during such dinners. He didn't make an issue that we had pork and chicken dishes on the dinner table, although we ensured that we put the chicken dishes right in front of him. He didn't insist that he bring his own set of cutlery because our kitchen was not halal-ised. Much to our surprised he asked whether he could have a drop of whiskey as well to join in the celebration. Reading recently about some religious leader's instruction to Muslims not to attend non-Muslims' open house celebrations is a painfully jarring contrast to people of Yusuf's generation who came from a more easy going time and were able celebrate the diversity of our differences.

I remember than not so long ago, I came across an exhibition of old photographs from the 1940's - 1960's from the archives of the New Straits Times at a mall. Looking at those photos, many of which captured the innocence and hope of a young nation amongst the earnest faces of the different races photographed together moved me to feel more affinity for this country. Where did we go wrong between those early days and now? Where did we fuck up so badly that we find ourselves in this rut? Why do Malaysians vote the same unworthy politicians into office every general election?

Woke up this morning to this new article Cyber law mulled to block lies in blogs and I thought, here we go again.

As you will see from that news article, another bright spark in government has suggested that, "We need to have stricter cyber laws to prevent these bloggers from disseminating disharmony, chaos, seditious material and lies. 

We are talking about creating cyber laws to control those who misuse the Internet."

Where was this bright spark just 2 weeks ago during the UMNO General Assembly where there was a free flow of sedititous and racially inflammatory speeches and a keris bandied about? How about taking immediate action against these guys, because there is already a mosaic of relevant laws already in place, no need to spend time and wasting tax payers' money to draft yet another self-serving and redundant piece of legislation. This is yet another classic example of the odious hypocrisy which ails Malaysian politics today.

A lot of people either don't know, ignore or forget about section 3(3) of the Communications and Multimedia Act 1998 which says, quite simply, "Nothing in this Act shall be construed as permitting the censorship of the Internet." Of course, there is the Sedition Act and the all time favourite of the government, the Internal Security Act which can be used to silence bloggers, but really, it's high time that politicians grow up and realise that what they should do is to allow an open and honest discussion about taboo subjects like race and religion. Sounds naive but unless people are allowed to discuss these things openly, it will always remain a sensitive issue and we will always be beholden to all kinds of prejudices and lies. 

Heaven alone knows when those in power will realise that these knee jerk reactions to want to control the internet are quite futile. Yes, it is possible to prosecute a couple of bloggers and make an example of them, but such actions are like building a sandcastle to protect the beach against a tsunami.

I might be an idealist, but I believe in John Stuart Mill's On Liberty treatise where he argues that free discourse is a necessary condition for intellectual and social progress. We can never be sure, he contends, if a silenced opinion does not contain some element of the truth. He also argues that allowing people to air false opinions is productive for two reasons. First, individuals are more likely to abandon erroneous beliefs if they are engaged in an open exchange of ideas. Second, by forcing other individuals to re-examine and re-affirm their beliefs in the process of debate, these beliefs are kept from declining into mere dogma.

Wanted to write about this a couple of days ago but didn't get round to it, but I feel a strong need to comment about the Information Minister recently saying No to Live Parliament broadcasts.

According to the minister, the reason why Parliamentary proceedings shouldn't be broadcast live is because Malaysians "have not attained a mental maturity where it is insensitive to racial issues," Bernama quoted him as saying.

What an absolute insult to all Malaysians.

Right here, we have a supposed representative of the people, saying that we're too stupid to understand when these alleged Yang Berhormats who, just very incidentally, are funded by the very same people they call mentally immature, who gave them their jobs, are trading racial slurs for their own political mileage in a place where they are supposed to be looking after the interests of the nation. I'm an ordinary person and there're lots of people way smarter than me, but I certainly know when someone is making a racial insult either at me or someone else.

I say Parliamentary proceedings MUST be broadcasted, to show everyone just what kind of shenanigans go on in Parliament. If MPs fall asleep during Parliament, they should be shown to be doing so on TV. If we have MPs who pay lip service to racial harmony during Merdeka Day are freely spouting racially insensitive opinions during Parliamentary debates, let the TVs show their hypocrisy for all to see. Malaysians have every right to know what the people they have chosen to run their country are doing in Parliament. If MPs are doing a great job, the people should also know this. If there is nothing to hide, then why not broadcast Parliamentary proceedings?  We have the right to see our democracy, or the lack of it, in action in Parliament.

I also wonder where are all of our politicians who were falling all over themselves to jump to the defence of the Malaysian education system when the Times Higher Education Survey gave a dismal rating to several local universities. Where are all those politicians who said, with a straight face, that our education system was "world class?" If we produced world class students, then the next question should logically be, how come they are mentally immature to understand Parliamentary proceedings? We are all very proud of Malaysian record breaking feats and our national pastime of collective Malaysia-boleh back-slapping for really meaningful things like largest group of people washing their hair simultaneously. So where is this Malaysia Boleh spirit when it comes to having Parliamentary proceedings broadcasted?

It is difficult not to become increasingly alarmed at how much of our energies and attention are focussed on issues which are simply not important - after 50 years of independence, we are still silo-ed along racial lines and not only that, we're becoming our worst enemies with our growing intolerance, ignorance, paranoia and fear of each other and one group's perceived threat to their power. We must immediately stop this internal bickering, and instead the peoppe must empower themselves to have meaningful and civilised debates about serious matters which our country face - such as the fast declining standard of our education system and competitiveness of Malaysia, the drop in foreign direct investment, why is religious fundamentalism growing in the country and how people who live below the poverty line regardless of race should be helped. How should Malaysians become empowered? One way would be to have the courage to use our right to vote without the fear of the unknown, unless of course the unknown presents itself in the form of PAS.  The other way is not to succumb to national amnesia, which seems to be prevalent in Malaysian society. Nobody bothers to follow up on what's happened to the MP who told the customs people to "close one eye" or how the Selangor Klang councillor who somehow amassed enough money to build a palace. These are things we shouldn't forget in the next election. Bersih, cekap, amanah - yeah, right. Don't know how politicians can live it down with that slogan.

Coming back to issue that Malaysians are not intelligent enough to handle racially sensitive issues. In my opinion, preventing Parliamentary proceedings is not the answer to stopping people from making racially offensive remarks. Pull the plug on TV and these racial slurs may even increase because those who make it think that nobody is watching and will be emboldened to even be more offensive. Why doesn't any politician ask, how can we stop people from making these racially offensive statements? Why do we allow our government to spend millions of tax payers' money on meaningless programs like the National Service where one of the main purposes of the program is to promote racial understanding? The same politicians who expound the virtues of national services are the same ones who have no compunction in making fiery racially offensive statements and worse of all, get away scott free with it.

I remember my time as a student in the UK, it was a real eye opener to watch the British Parliamentary debates. It was such an eye opener because before then, I had never seen such intellectually engaging debates between politicians before. The thought that came to my mind was "Wow, you really need to have quite a bit of grey matter between your ears if you want to become a British MP, or least, you have to sound reasonably intelligent." These MPs were far more eloquent, informed and smooth compared to ALL of the MPs which we have. I seldom watch TV but on the rare occasion on which I watch our politicians being interviewed on local TV, I cringe at the way they speak and carry themselves and change the channel as fast as possible. I have lost a lot of respect for Tony Blair because of his stance on his position on Iraq, but will always have a lot of respect for the way he handles questions during the Prime Minister's question time in Parliament. This guy may be full of spin, but he does it with style and doesn't say things that insult the British people. The British politicians know that their electorate can be unforgiving if they screw up and they will suffer the consequences at either their local or national elections

And therein lies the fundamental difference between the British political scene and ours - their MPs are ultimately accountable to the people. Malaysians have sadly yet to attain that quality of democracy.