Friday 29 Mar 2024
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This article first appeared in Forum, The Edge Malaysia Weekly, on August 29 - September 4, 2016.

 

The controversy surrounding this year’s Festival Filem Malaysia is telling of the existential problem we have as Malaysians — who are we? After almost 60 years, we are still not sure of who we really are and because of that, I suspect we do not really know or even agree on what being Malaysian is all about.

There are those who believe this is a Malay country in the sense that everyone else is not their equal. Of course, the symbols of state reflect the Malay heritage of Malaya in particular but the special provision in the Constitution with regard to Malays and bumiputeras was a recognition of their relative economic underdevelopment at that point in time. Therefore, public aid, employment quotas in public service and instruments of public policy can be directed at them. This recognition of need and remedy is somehow construed as special status in terms of rights and privileges.

Such a belief undermines the whole notion of citizenry and citizenship, which is predicated on the uniformity of rights and responsibilities of all citizens. There will never be any sense of national unity without the acceptance of the idea of equality of citizens, which is what has happened.

There is also the emerging theocratic nature of public institutions — what started out as embracing Islamic values became the Islamisation of public institutions. The state — at the federal level — assumed a specific Islamic posture and advocates it: an institutionalisation of religion that intrudes into the personal spaces of individuals as citizens, Muslims or otherwise.

The Malaysian federation grew with the entry of Sabah and Sarawak whose only common ground with the states in the peninsula is that they all share the legacy of British colonialism of some form. Sabah is far more different from Perlis than Perlis is from Johor. There were, of course, apprehensions on their part in 1963, hence the caveats and agreements — unresolved issues to this day — but they presumably joined to share a common platform called Malaysia to achieve the dream of collective self-determination. However, it would have been clear to them that they were joining states with Malay rulers who were Muslim leaders but that the federation was a secular one where every Malaysian was equal.

What should have united us — a national language — became a divisive issue. Instead of calling it the national language or Malaysian language, which we did for some time, someone thought it better to call it the Malay language and there was acquiescence to that. This might still have been forgiven if we had done an excellent job of developing and advocating the language, teaching it well and using it as a tool of knowledge and communication, but alas we did not. We neither ended up being united by the language nor made it a better one in the process.

Indonesia, on the other hand, used the same language (Malay) — a minority language for them (as many speak Javanese) — to unite a whole archipelago with a population more diverse and much more numerous than ours. They call it Bahasa Indonesia and use it much more eloquently than us to communicate and produce works of literature. And they are catching up on their command of English as the global lingua franca.

The Malays have benefited from the sustained growth of the economy but as a group, they remain laggards in the developmental story in spite of this “superiority” posture. That has clearly been sub-optimal. The phase after the New Economic Policy should be one that liberates and unites, not a detour towards the direction the NEP aimed to correct — a racial identification of economic and social functions.

Sport, like the recent Olympics, brings out a sense of nationhood as a natural outcome of a common recognition of national symbols — the colours, the flag and the national anthem. Emotional constructs add to the abstract concept of Malaysia. We were then able to separate our individual inclinations from our collective belonging — and we cheered for the collective for a pride felt at the individual level.

It is perhaps easier to achieve this in sport even when the “other” is an external party. We then must have stronger foundations in our national ideals to deal with the differences when the perceived “other” is one of us. How to tolerate and not label one of us as an “other” because we have differences as individuals? That the “us” in us — that we belong to the same country — is bigger than the differences between us.

The Festival Filem Malaysia controversy saw some Malay professionals objecting to separating movies and the technical aspects of movie-making into languages, effectively dividing them into Malay and non-Malay categories. I can empathise with them — they want to compete and be recognised as the best in the country, period. Not because they are Malays but because they are Malaysians who excel but who happen to be Malay. More fundamentally, great movie-making has little to do with language.

People like me, of my vintage, are beneficiaries of policies that were targeted to improve the lot of the Malays and bumiputeras. It was primarily about getting access to education but making the most of it was an individual enterprise and so was getting over the hurdle. That may be the case but the stigma of “being helped” persists regardless of what one does. That, I suppose, is the price I have to pay but I do not want that for my children.

I strived to obtain the means to provide education for my children on my own and they succeeded on their own merit. They should not carry the stigma that I did; they should be liberated from it and celebrate their independence rather than perpetuating this stigma of dependence couched in some myth of dominance.

We cannot go on living like this — living a lie, pretending and putting on a false façade but seeing the passage of time changing and deteriorating the nature of our relationships in some very fundamental ways. We should go back to the Constitution — distorted though it has become from the numerous amendments — as the original compact that binds us as Malaysians and find our way back.

We need to have honest conversations about our federalism; not just on matters of national identity and inter-governmental relations and matters of public finance, but extending that conversation to civil rights and liberties, to legislation, adjudication and the separation of powers. Mindful of the spiritual nature of Malaysians generally, we must have open conversations about protection for personal religious beliefs, religious institutions and the role of the state.

The economist in me has always advocated that independence means that the national economy must break away from our colonial past — that is the real transformation that is needed: to change the way factors of production are used and rewarded. We need to move away from the colonial legacy of plantation economics to something better, not just from the returns to factors of production but more fundamentally, from the perspective of the relationship between the factors of production, their share of returns and the ownership of these factors. This can only be achieved if we free ourselves from the constraints that preserve the existing economic relationships.

It is worrying that we keep increasing the hectarage of oil palm plantations instead of finding alternative and more productive means of using our land. By any measure, oil palm productivity has stagnated but we keep on clearing forests for more plantations, perpetuating the colonial economic logic that depended on the availability of land and cheap labour. Nothing entrepreneurial, innovative or technological here.

Parliamentary and legislative reforms are necessary to effect the desired transformation. All legislation inherited from our colonial past must be repealed and new legislation be enacted in a more participative manner. Independent Malaysia has nothing to be proud about colonial laws, such as the Sedition Act or the Printing Presses and Publications Act. The singular achievement of the present administration is the repeal of the equally repulsive Internal Security Act. More can be done in this regard.

I foresee accusations that these are liberal points of view that propagate tolerance and diversity as if they were seditious and a threat to national security. If so, what is the converse? Intolerance and bigotry that undermine our federation?

In Aristotle’s Politics, the state is a political community or partnership whose aim is not just to avoid injustice or for economic stability but rather to allow its citizens to live a good life and to perform beautiful acts: “This political partnership must be regarded, therefore, as being for the sake of noble actions, not for the sake of living together.”

This is an ideal worth remembering; a country — everything that comes with it — is not just a place to live or earn a living. It is a place for noble actions, a place that allows such actions, a place that makes us better human beings.

Merdeka!


Dr Nungsari Radhi is an economist and managing director of Prokhas Sdn Bhd, a Ministry of Finance advisory company. The views expressed here are his own.

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