UMNO - Unfettered Materialism New Oligarchy ?

UMNO, after all these years of Malay nationalism, still retains the Bahasa Inggeris acronym for United Malays National Organisation in common usage, in speeches, posters and newpaper banner headlines of all languages. Perhaps the Bahasa Malaysia acronym is a too unwieldy: perhaps UMNO is now a word so readily used in national life that it is now part of the Malay lexicon. The revelation that Ummi Hafilda, a small-time Wanita UMNO Klang Gate Baru Chief and key witness at the Anwar Ibrahim trial, managed to get an advertising contract from Pemadam and seeking another from KLIA reinforces the image in the public mind that UMNO is indispensible for its members interested in seeking to improve their business fortunes.

UMNO could very well stand for, depending on how far down you are or up in the pecking order; the United Moneyminded Networkers Organisation, or the Ultimate Money Netting Operation, or any of these, depending where you are from the outside looking in: either the Ultimate Mechanism for National Oppulence, Oppression or Opprobrium.. in that order given the nature of recent events affecting the party. Given all that is being said about it looking after the interests of its cronies, it could very well be nothing more than a collective Union of Magnates, Nepotists and Opportunists.

How did a party established to protect the interests of the Malay race and to win Independence from the British colonialists end up more than half a century later with a reputation for its unusually materialistic and notoriously opportunistic members ? Together with the MCA and the MIC, it has ruled the country for all and more of its independent life as a nation. The party established with the high ideals of service to race and country has by all standards served the country well in the first three decades since 1957. How then did it become so self-serving in the last and most recent decade ? How did a party respected for its principles in its early days degenerate into such disrepute ?

The leaders of UMNO champion the Malay race and the definition of its effective membership converges entirely with the definition of the Malay race spelt out in the Malaysian Consitution and underpins the policies of special privileges formulated for their interests and the nation as a whole. The New Economic Policy implemented after the May 13 1969 riots could not have been effectively implemented without a working definition of the Malay race. The definition used singled out the indigenous people speaking the Malay language, practicing Malay customs, culture and Islam; including recent additions by mix marriages and assimilation of other races and groups. The working definition become the operative mechanism for the party to manage its constituency, propagate its leadership strategies and implement its governing modalities. The political power of the country was now premised on the definition of the "bumiputra".

Once a definition has been adopted it became a powerful and effective instrument for its time for the development and progress of the Malay race through beneficent policies of guaranteeing education, health and honourable livelihood. The progress achieved must be lauded for its humanitarian success in eradicating poverty, illiteracy and want within the Malay race. But the Malaysian realpolitik is pre-occupied with the issues of communal competitiveness and acrimony and the working definition of the Malay race becomes useful again in developing and implementing formulas and recipes required for guranteeing communal accomodation and co-existence. Under the umbrella of such policies, the materialistic naivette and innocence of the Malay race could be protected from the overwhelming acquisitiveness, robustness and tenacity of the other communities.

The present Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad had written once about the gene pool of the Malay race; how inbreeding practices reduced the genetic vigour of the community. It is also equally true that superior assimilated genes from outside the community once accepted as falling within the definition of the community can quickly grow to dominate it. Pseudo-malays, for instance, from outside the community but defined as one of the community, accepted and recognised as one of the community, may possess the very acquisitive, robust and tenacious traits that favour them to dominate it. The insulation of the Malay race through the New Economic Policy sought to protect them from the predation of the other communities. Yet the same insulation of the NEP served to provide the infiltrating elements, all to themselves, a fertile virtually unprotected substrate with which to plant themselves and predate and thrive. For the Malay community, there was no protection from the threat of this strain lurking within.

Over at least four decades of bitter internecine intra-party battles for leadership of the party with varying outcomes, in the end by 1987, virtually all of the best and brightest of the new generation were subjugated by a new dominant group and the losers dispatched by their victorious competition to the ignominy of having to form a new but "inferior" party appealing to the same constituency. The electoral fortunes of the new party in the decade that followed were dismal as would be expected; but the now dominant strain in the "superior" UMNO sought to let loose their "alien" acquisitive tendencies, once contained within the party's aspirations to serve the entire community as a whole.

The dominant strain in the "superior" UMNO receded into a kitchen cabinet as opposed to a showcase cabinet; making all the real decisions of who got what, when and how in government. It became a matter of relative ease for the dominant strain to leverage their positions of unrestrained, unchallenged and unchecked power to manipulate the minor bit parties in the ruling coalition, the civil service, the legislature, the judiciary and the other institutions of Malaysian political, social and economic life. Corruption, nepotism and cronyism gradually manifested themselves as realities through the collective policies of bumiputra equity allocations, bumiputra favoured award of contracts and projects, corporatisation and privatisation of Malaysian Government owned infrastructure, functions and assets.These policies represent the final and most aggressive extensions of the New Economic Policy now garbed as the New Development Policy.

This new "superior" UMNO, the backbone of the ruling coalition, as the election slogans would have it, had transformed the sincere if not flawed programmes of the New Economic Policy to eradicate poverty and reduce communal identification of economic functions into nothing less than an all-out revolution that would put into place an oligarchy: defined as government by a small exclusive class. In an oligarchy the cronies fester around the people in positions of power as flies are drawn to a dungheap.

Privatisation was the instrument of choice to transform national ownership into their own private ownership. In this they were assisted by a booming stock market in the early nineties made possible by the free inflow of foreign institutional funds looking for good investments. Together with an unprecedented number of public listings, the attendant allocation of bumiputra shares readily financed by a crony-linked financial insitutions; a massive proportion of corporate equity passed into bumputra hands. The question being into which bumiputra hands ?

The dominant strain in the "superior" UMNO sought to consolidate their hold on power by emerging as an inner circle of oligarchs; a malevolent mafia of power brokers bent on acquiring a vastly disproportionate share of wealth through their proxies: using various permutations of families, friends and fronts. Their efforts were justified as going towards the development of the Bumiputra Entrepreneurial Community, a key objective of the New Development Policy. Instead the dominant strain sought in reality to transcend their political power by arrogating to themselves sufficient economic power to perpetuate their dominance. In effect, bumiputra sub-groups of wealth differentiated by their closeness to the centre of power were being formed: the UMNOputras, Mentriputras, the Anwarputras, Daimputras and Mahathirputras. A policy of broad communal preference was subverted into a policy of specific individual preference.

This subverted policy is best exemplified by the favouring of the Prime Minister's family. Mirzan's foray into the transportation business, the attempt to make him the "czar" of the industry, Mokhzani's positioning in the healthcare business and Mukhriz's
involvement in the fibre-optics business has less to do with their business acumen than their father's strategic positioning of his children in industries that they could control for generations to come. The policy of privatisation provided the means and the
grand master plans such as the Multimedia Super Corridor provided the opportunities. And this was much the same for the other favoured sons in the super bumiputra entrepreneurial community. It is not a pre-requisite to know the business well; a penchant for acquiring business through financial paper transactions and managing businesses like managing assets will do. Technocrats, it seems can always be hired and made to do the hard and dirty work. Ownership is the paramount objective; specifically in the hands of these few.

The National Economic Action Council, now the operative cabinet recently promoted the success of privatisation and its socio-economic achievements; citing the extremely successful North South Highway. Yet all that privatisation has ensured is that state-owned assets and monopolies have passed into a few private hands, created corporations heavily geared and exposed to debt, both domestic and foreign. An all-encompassing system of patronage provides the "trickle down effect" of this wealth into the Malay community of project contractors and sub-contractors, service providers and employees, ensuring their dependency on the inner circle of super bumiputra entrepreneurs. Yet, the high growth of the last decade was merely an artificial boom created through leveraging the financial system making ; making the policy of privatisation look good and projecting the illusion of prosperity among those excluded from the inner circle. That the NEAC chose to use the bogey of "an alternative scenario of tragic ethnic violence" shows how the inner circle persists in disguising their true acqusitive motivations under the cloak of purportedly addressing issues of inter-communal instabilities.

The crux of the issue has really gone past that of communal issues now. Greed is a most powerful motivator and a most infectious one at that. Having promoted values that "to get rich is glorious", to paraphrase a late Asian leader, money politics and corruption has inevitably set in to rot the party at it very core. With their vast wealth, the indulgences of leaders in money, property and the various vices began to escalate. Both power and wealth become powerful drugs, opiates if you must, creating hallucinations and delusions of invincibility and infallibility. As with all tragedies in history, prolonged exposure to power and wealth diminishes one's ability to distinguish the line between moral right and moral wrong. Because of the vast wealth of its leaders, UMNO has become a most corrupted party: its members are motivated by wealth acquisition; to secure contracts, network to be in favour of the powerful and to get rich in all its glory.

With the onset of the Asian Financial Crisis in 1997, the illusion of wealth and prosperity has disappeared like yesterday's dream. During these difficult times, quarrels easily start and fighting breaks out among the oligarchs over the preservation of their wealth. Because their vast wealth is at stake, leaders are blinded to the normal standards of decency that must be upheld. Such open infighting motivated by greed is alien to the Malay race. The epic battle between Hang Tuah and Hang Jebat was fought over ideals and principles of loyalty, justice and brotherhood. Today the fight is over nothing but wealth. When the essence of the Malay race has been subjugated to the paramount interest of wealth, is it not the saddest thing ?

The Malay race has not been known as an overtly acquisitive people. The antecedants of Malay royalty were the pirate chiefs roaming the Malay archipelago long before the arrival of Islam, trading influences and the colonising powers. The successful pirates established dominance, instituted control over their spheres of influence and manifested Sultanates. The Malay trait of acquisition was until then initially expressed as piracy and subsequently as feudal regimes to gain hegemony and subservience of their subjects. Trade as the alternative mode of acquisition was practised by the visiting Arabic and Indian merchants and later by the Chinese brought into the region by the mercantile Europeans. The acquisitive trading skills of all these other communities threatened the yet undeveloped Malay race used to the feudal practice of acquiring wealth through rent rather than trade.

Hence, the argument goes, for the need for the insulation of the race until the headstart of a few centuries can be overcome by the establishment of a true bumiputra entrepreneurial communnity, one that can take on the other communities without assistance from the Government. Yet the policies of privatisation being implemented today are nothing more than a sophisticated "piratisation" or "rentierism" of the feudal era; the acquisition of wealth for its own sake adds only paper wealth and documents of debt to the Malay community and nothing of intrinsic value. The party politics of UMNO today has more to do with the zero-sum politics of wealth acquisition through privatisation rather than one of the positive politics of wealth creation through entrepreneurship.

The present policies in favour of a few in the inner circle work against the emergence of a true bumiputra entrepreneurial community. Promoting dependence on a system of patronage dominated by the inner circle of the dominant strain, an oligarchy, the Malay community will not be incentivised to compete in an open environment that would encourage "creating" and adding to the pool of wealth rather they are merely "taking" from the pool of wealth. Intoxicated with the heady madness of greed the oligarchy has put their own interests ahead that of the Malay community; in the process practically undoing all the real progress that the Malay community had made in the three decades before this last one.

Ummi Hafilda , one of the genre of the Melayu Baru, unabashedly and shamelessly claims to have acted in the interests of the race, party and country in doing what she did to expose the "animal with the human face". The results of her actions one year ago have exposed instead the beast in a political party in power that has placed material gains far above the principles of justice and unselfish commitment to the community and country.

Paksanno

if you love malaysia

if you love malaysia
love your prime minister dr mahathir
do not hate him as he says they do

if you value your freedom
stay indoors today do not go out
the roads will be clear the country peaceful
and all will be well

if you value your right to free assembly
do not gather in crowds to defend that right
go about singly and mind your own business
let no one distract you

if you value your right to free speech
stay quiet do not make a sound
let those who know better speak for you
there is really no need for you to have a say

if you value the rule of law
then support wholeheartedly the internal security act
those that they detain for your sake
are much better off incarcerated without a trial

if you value our malaysian way of life
then understand and accept
that we can never be a nation of equals
but where the don't haves are tolerated by the haves

if you value your right to choose
then choose only this ruling coalition
that has led the nation to independence
and won for you in the first place this right to choose

if you really love malaysia
then pray for a long long life for dr mahathir
who has pledged to serve you till he dies

if you really really love malaysia
then respect his peace and order
without which there would not be a malaysia
the country in which we live and prosper


paksanno

Of Contents and Containers

A mass movement without the masses is not a movement at all. Reformation without a reformation of the mind is not reformation at all.

Compartmentalised into their respective containers the Malaysian rakyat is put exactly where the present powers that be want them. And what we continue to hear is the unending dialectic of why and how the different containers should remain separate for the good of the contents themselves and the country.

Isolated from each other and limited in number, the contents of each container could not do much to challenge the container-maker.
Eventually the container-maker decided that he could do what he like to the contents and get away with it; and the contents were helpless in their respective containers.

One of the contents then asked: " Do we need to be in these containers ?" That got everybody thinking and they thought and they thought but was afraid to get out of these containers." The same content said: "Collectively we are a country full of very good and diverse content. We can do a lot together. In spite of being brought up in separate containers, we are all of the same shared experience. We have shared a common past and like it or not we will share a common future. And deep down inside we really are all of the same content."

All the contents than began to see through the containers and recognise themselves in each other. A common Fraternity ! The container-maker was very shrewd. He told some of the content that he could give them more content if they remained in their containers. These same contents abused their privileges and caused great suffering to the other contents. All the other contents began to see that it was very unfair that some contents were better treated than them. And they asked for Equality !

The container-maker also told the contents they should be angry at each other, not at him, because some of the contents wanted more of the contents for themselves. Although locked in their separate containers, when they began to compare notes on the internet and elsewhere they realised that they are actually one and the same and were not really angry with each other.

A deep resolute anger began to seethe in the contents at the very thought of these containers that separated them and the container-maker who kept them there. This anger infected each content one by one until all the content was affected by this rage that they should at all be put into these containers.
One day, as more and more of them came to the realisation, no more could they stand it; they said: "Lets rise up together and get rid of the containers that separate and weaken us. Only then can we get rid of the container-maker and his malcontents! " Their rallying call was Liberty !

"It is all the mind !" shouted one content. "The container-maker does not really make any containers. Its all an illusion he made us insecure contents believe in; he had us make all these containers in our minds so that we could feel safe. But there is no need for them now." When all the contents realised this was true, the containers disappeared in a whoosh and in this way began the famous mass movements and successful revolutions in history. Fraternitie ! Equalitie ! Libertie !

Paksanno

The Politics of Race

As a Malaysian, there is nothing more I detest than the politics of race. I am not a member of any political party in Malaysia because each seeks in one way or the other to represent the interests of its communal constituency: for UMNO and PAS, the Malay Muslim community; for the MCA, Gerakan and the DAP the Chinese community; for the MIC, PPP and other smaller parties the Indian community. Over in Sabah and Sarawak, the politics of communal politics is also practiced in full earnest.

Ever since the late 1940s and the 1950s when UMNO, the MCA and the MIC were first formed, they found convincing support from the various races and together they achieved electoral victories that led to independence and government under the Alliance government. It seemed the concept worked, until 1959, when UMNO in rejecting the new leadership of the MCA choose to nominate the old leadership to Parliamentary seats in the general election and began a pattern of dominating the MCA and the MIC. The lie in the A-lie-ance coalition of the 60s was the impression of an equality of partnership in its origins and foundation when in reality, the grouping was completely and totally dominated by UMNO.

This domination of the Alliance by UMNO resulted in the non-Malay communities seeking protection under other parties. Although new non-communal parties were formed, they took up representation of interests of the non-Malay communities who saw the MCA and the MIC as being ineffective. This led to the polarisation of Malaysian politics which resulted in the electoral gains for the non-Malay oriented parties and losses for the UMNO-dominated Alliance in 1969. Malay political supremacy threatened; the racial riots were sparked.

The National Front soon formed thereafter included the victorious opposition parties of the Gerakan, the PPP and the PMIP, now known as PAS. It seemed initially liked an across-the-board type of coalition representing all the races in the country with consensus as its philosophy and approach in response to the racial polarisation of the late 60s. The new component parties soon found out that by joining the National Front they were weakened under the domination of UMNO; PAS was forced to leave in 1977; PPP disappeared overnight as a major political force and the wings of the Gerakan were clipped, domesticating it completely. Each party that joined the National Front saw its constituency eroded as in the 1970s and in the 1980s, the interests of UMNO; the dominant party in the coalition was advanced first by the implementation of the NEP and then the NDP in the 1990s. Any party that tried to challenge it found that its position was untenable and like the PBS, had to leave and remain in the opposition.

The longer the National Front remained in power, the greater UMNO had a hold over its component parties; dispensing its token Ministerial positions, coveted seats on various statutory Boards and other vestiges of its power. In the later part of the 80s and in the 90s, the members and associates of the minor parties in the National Front were accorded preferred treatment in the allocation of contracts and sub-contracts from, projects and partnerships with the members and associates of the dominant party UMNO. All manner of dealing with the Government was facilitated by knowing who-is-who in any of the component parties of the National Front. There was certainly a lot of incentive to stay in the National Front; even though the people in general saw the National Front for what it was: a national facade of multiracial representation masking the total domination of the coalition by UMNO. In is in effect a National Front for UMNO.

In the meantime, picking up the discontented and disaffected in Malaysian politics were the other opposition parties; PAS (and Semangat 46 for a time) for the Malay Muslim; DAP for the non-Malay and PBS for the Kadazan voters. So what we have in our country is the compartmentalisation of race in politics and in political representation. A leader in UMNO earns his stripes by championing Malay dominance; he graduates to national leadership and practices Malay leadership of the political dwarfs within the National Front for UMNO. When the economy is favourable (the cake is growing); he can afford to be a generous Malaysian leader and distributes his favours to all and sundry. The opposition parties loses ground because the component parties representing the non-Malays in the National Front for UMNO are seen to be doing their work.

When the economy is unfavourable (the cake is shrinking) he has to retreat to his position of Malay dominance and take care of the Malays first as is what is happening now.. The opposition parties gain ground because the component parties representing the non-Malays are not performing. During this time UMNO uses whatever resources it has to keep its members and keep PAS at bay.

So the pendulum swings back and forth, back and forth within the confines of the zero-sum game of communally compartmentalised politics. More for you means less for me. Less for you means more for me. But always, because of its incumbency, UMNO wins; its gerry- mandered constituencies ensure that it has the most votes in the most (usually rural) constituencies. In borderline cases, it has the advantages of the Election Commission registration process and postal votes of police and military personnel to make the difference. This is usually enough to win a simple majority; by the way, most of the MCA and MIC seats are heavily populated by Malay voters; so it is really UMNO delivering the victories in those seats and not the MCA or the MIC. To deliver a two-thirds majority so that it can freely amend the constitution and do all other things to further its objectives, National Front for UMNO ensures that the economy is booming when it calls an election. In 1999, it will be creating an artificial boom by blowing a credit bubble insulated from all the pin-pricks that the currency speculators are armed with. It is going to create a sense of euphoria over the economy and how lucky we are to escape the ravages that struck our unfortunate neighbours. The cake has grown a bit and you can have this and that and that.

This is pork-barrelled politics (pardon my expression) at its best. The sense of euphoria will be fueled by the national propaganda machine made up of the all-important Ministry of Information, the "independent" local media and an advertising campaign orchestrated by a particular ad man. It is crystal clear that the general elections in Malaysia are stacked heavily in favour of the incumbent National Front for UMNO. With the majority of seats in UMNO hands and in effect in Malay hands, the non-Malays play musical chairs with their representatives in Parliament; alternating between the non-Malay parties in the National Front for UMNO and the opposition parties. What could be a real battle for political leadership in the country takes place between UMNO and PAS; but it is a no-contest. About the strongest challenge came in the form of Semangat 46 but that fizzled out in a climate of unprecedented economic prosperity for the Malays and non-Malays alike.

As a Malaysian, there is nothing more I detest than the politics of race. As a non-Malay I am forced to vote for the Opposition non-Malay parties which have no chance of coming to power because the arithmetic is not on their side. More important, they are perceived to be communal by the Malays and if I support them, I am considered anti-Malay by the Malays.There is no way I could appeal to the Malays to join my cause.

As a Malay, I am forced to vote for either the incumbent party in power represented by the National Front for UMNO or the Opposition Malay parties which have no chance of coming to power because the arithmetic is also not on their side. More important, PAS and others like it is perceived to be communal by the non-Malays and if I support them, I am considered anti-non-Malay by the non-Malays. There is no way I could appeal to the non-Malays to join my cause.

As a Malaysian, I am concerned about why I am forced into this Hobson's choice of choosing the National Front for UMNO as a Government either way I vote. As a Malaysian, I am concerned about why I am forced to be either a Malay or a non-Malay when I vote; supporting the party of one race, means opposition for the party of the other race. As a Malaysian. I am concerned why our country is still in the tight grip of the racial politics, more than fifty years after it first surfaced.

As a Malaysian, I find the reform movement precipitated by Anwar Ibrahim's challenge to the political leadership of UMNO as trapped within the politics of race. In this context, it is a Malay problem of poltical leadership to be worked out within the community itself. The non-Malay viewpoint prescribes impartiality; given the fact of Malay political leadership and supremacy. In the Malaysian context, however, it is a national problem transcending race, religion and culture centering on the universal values of fairness and justice for the individual.

Countries and their societies evolve from the phase of sustenance to meet their biological needs of food, shelter and security to the phase of social cohesion to meet their psychological needs of social identity and esteem. At each stage of their evolution, certain values and liberties are sub-ordinated for the sake of ensuring growth to ensure that populations are housed, clothed and fed and to ensure that social stability persists. Sacrifices in certain individual freedoms are made to ensure that the society evolves. Biological values first pre-dominate then followed by psychological and social values.

These in fact have been the so called "Asian values". The last fifty years of Malaysian history have been a manifestation of the evolution of these values; in the form of the special rights for the Malays, the communal politics, the New Economic Policy, New Development Policy and the privatisation policies implemented to correct the economic disparities between the races.

As economic and social prosperity sets in, societies can afford to move into the intellectual or self-actualisation phase; the debate by then is not over biological values nor of social values, but of individual values of freedom, justice and equality. These are the universal values; "Western" because they entered their phase of decadence long before the Asians did. The reform movement marks Malaysia's entry into this new phase of societical development; the debate and fight transcending economics and social cohesion into that of universal principles and ideals. The fight is no longer over who gets what economically and who dominates who culturally; but over the value systems for rights of the individual; beyond race and religion.

This phase, as we have seen in the advanced countries; take place when societies are reasonably stable and integrated; integrated enough to contain the wide diversity of individual thought and expression that will come about. It will appear as if the society has become fragmented but in fact it is held together by the common belief that such diversity is good for the society itself. This ought to be the natural progression of Malaysian society as we head for the next century.

The reform movement, however, fighting for the right of individuals is currently still caught within the contradictory values of Malaysian communally compartmentalised politics which has not yet made the transition into the intellectual phase which is pre-dominated by the values of individual rights and freedoms. This is a tragedy, because the reform movement may die stillborn. Unless Malaysians themselves are ready and begin to discard the politics of race and adopt the politics of ideas.

As a Malaysian, I think that the National Front for UMNO has stayed too long and led by leaders that has become too self-serving, too ready to argue that its "ends" justify its unwholesome and unacceptable means. Yet it stays in power because we are all trapped within its politics of race. In the Way Forward, Dr Mahathir holds yet the promise: "The day may come when such disparities [between races] have been well and truly eliminated, so much so that everyone can feel confident of retaining and enhancing his share, whatever his race. When that day dawns, the fact of race will not be politically relevant any more. Then Malaysian politics may be based on class or ideology, regardless of race."

So successful was the NEP implemented during his tenure, carried through in the New Development Policy that Dr Mahathir was compelled to further write in the Way Forward: "With the emergence of successful bumiputra entrepreneurs and executives in big business, practically all sectors of the economy now have bumiputra representation. The second objective of the NEP, the elimination of the identification of race with economic function has been achieved. The first objective of the NEP, the eradication of poverty irrespective of race, has also been achieved, as illustrated by the absence of unemployment in Malaysia. The economic cause of political instability in Malaysia's multiracial society has thus been removed."

Yet as a Malaysian I do not think that Dr Mahathir or UMNO will so readily give up its hold on the Malay constituency and by extension its hold on power on its National Front and on the country. The last time any UMNO leader tried that was Dato Onn Jaafar in 1949, but he was branded as a "traitor to the Malays and the country" for advocating that UMNO admit non-Malays into the party first as associate members and then suggesting in 1950 that UMNO be renamed the United Malayan National Organisation. Given the ignominy that Dato Onn suffered as a consequence in spite of his Ghandian vision, no UMNO President in the forseeable future will dare propose that UMNO be renamed the United Malaysian National Organisation.

It is a pity, because, as a Malaysian, now there, might be a party which would receive more than just my passing attention.

The Malay Dilemma Revisited

Back in 1986 a Filipino friend of mine remarked while at a meeting in Jakarta that the population of the Philippines and Indonesia were bursting at its borders and very soon "their people will just walk over". Returning home to Kuala Lumpur always from these visits to our neighbours I always felt that KL always looked "deserted" compared to the teeming millions that characterise their capital cities and islands. It was soon to change. In the late eighties and in the early nineties, the filipinos and the indonesians "literally walked over" into Malaysia not as an invasion force, but to serve the Malaysians as maids, to work in the construction industries,the factories, the small and medium industries, the service industries ...they were everywhere.

The first million or two indonesians came over illegally, across the Straits of Malacca and by whatever other means available; a half million filipinos also crossed into Sabah as illegal aliens; until the situation got so bad that the Government decided to register all of them and issue them work permits. This turned out to be a major privatised effort as well; the companies licenced to import workers limited to those closely linked with the Deputy Home Minister of that time. From what I hear, millions of ringgit were made at that time; just as millions are now expected by the company that enjoys the monopoly on health examinations for the migrant workers.

What struck me about this massive influx of initially illegal immigrants especially those from Indonesia was the relative ease they
blended into Malaysian society. Some of those who came early literally built whole communities in their own setttlements with their bare hands and nothing else. There are the Achehnese "refugees" who have practically sought asylum in this country. As a Malaysian, I am impressed with their hardworking nature, their sincerity, their single minded goal to earn a living even make a fortune and most important of all, their being free of any hangups or prejudices, racial or religious. What a refreshing change to know these people, here in our own land.

I have seen the extreme poverty and the extreme disparity of wealth in their home countries to know that for these illegal immigrant workers, having made it to Malaysia, even illegally across the hazards of the Straits, it was like a striking a lottery ticket. Malaysia is, was, and will probably always be, the land of plenty; milk and honey. The 100 million living on Java island alone compete with the little they have to get to the top of whatever little dungheap they find themselves on. Indonesia is without doubt a country of immense resources; but they have ten times as many mouths to feed as there are Malaysians. That these resources were not brought to bear for the good of the majority of Indonesians is another story we shall keep for later.

The Indonesian illegal immigrants later recast as immigrant workers, no doubt provided much of the brawn for the rapid infrastrucuture development of the early nineties; doing much of the jobs beneath most Malaysians. For those who could not get jobs, they become cobblers, hawkers, street peddlars, even once at the height of the haze, selling face masks. Even if they had to work for their Chinese shopkeeper or hawker stall bosses; there was nothing they were not prepared to do to legally earn a living and to be on their own two feet.

Nobody talks about their resourcefulness in trying to stay alive in a country which is not their homeland. Nobody talks about how hard they strive to be self-reliant; if at most dependent on the "network" of fellow immigrant workers in times of need. Nobody talks most of all, about their enterprise even in the most basic of businesses. Yet, the Malaysians, including the Malays, the Chinese and the Indians all know that the Indonesians and the Filipinos are "se rumpun" with the bumiputras of Malaysia.
When the Government closed an eye, amidst the pressures of a labour shortage in the late eighties, to the illegal influx of the
Indonesians, it was a very selective eye that kept out the chinese vietnamese refugees, even the mainland chinese, the buddhist thais, and the hindu indians from mainland india. Those compatible with the muslim bumiputra were alright and these included the indonesians and the bangladeshis. When the immigrant workers were registered and legalised, this selection was enforced as policy. The current recession has seen large numbers of these workers despatched to their homelands, albeit reluctantly. Even as Kuala Lumpur looks "deserted" these days, many, at least a million or two of them are still around in Malaysia providing as the social scientists would put it; a control group of specimens of the same genetic stock living in a non-bumiputra
environment. Given ten, twenty, perhaps thirty years, if they could find the means to stay here, they would undoubtedly rise to be an independent self-reliant wealthy entrepreneurial community all by themselves.

As a group and a phenomenon, these are the first "immigrants" in Malaysia since the days before Independence and the drafting of the Malaysian Constitution which granted citizenship to all those living and born in Malaysia at that time irrespective of race and religion. The concession of "jus soli" was granted in return for the "special rights of the Malays" enshrined in the constitution of the country and the constitution of the United Malays National Organisation. This exchange, surrounded in controversy when it was negotiated then and for at least a decade that followed, is at the very root of the non-bumiputra Malaysian citizen versus the communal preference policy of the nep/ndp debate.

The special rights were put in place to protect the bumiputras from essentially the economic superiority of the Chinese who if and when they became citizens threatened to overwhelm and dominate the Malays in their own homeland. One of the points raised by the Malaysian Chinese Association and the Malaysian Indian Congress in the negotiations was whether these rights were temporary or in perpetuity; they were assured that it would only be until the economic parity is achieved. It made a lot of sense then and its still does today.

Hence the nep was scheduled for run for twenty years from 1970 ending in 1990. As Dr Mahathir himself writes in The Way Forward pp 37: "After the NEP ended in December 1990, the Government launched the ten-year National Development Policy (NDP), which stresses quality rather than quantity in the restructuring of the economic wealth of the nation. By 1997, the NDP was showing equally encouraging results. The hope is that, by the end of the NDP period at the turn of the century, the disparities between the races will have been largely eliminated."

We have seen how Dr Mahathir has tried through privatisation to increase the "quality" of the bumiputra economic wealth; conceding in a way that sufficient "quantity" in economic wealth has been attained by 1990. Strangely, the year that the NDP was supposed to show encouraging results, the "conspiratorial currency traders" chose to strike at Malaysia and unleash their deflationary horror. The nep/ndp has been predicated on high growth and in 1986 when the last recession hit Malaysia, Dr Mahathir was forced to suspend the NEP for the sake of inducing growth in a moribund economy.

This time around, specific companies are involved; those related to the "quality" of bumiputra economic wealth; and he feels compelled to rescue them because their collapse would mean financial ruin to friends and family members. Now as they say, when the going gets tough, the tough gets going. Going by the logic of increasing the "quality" of bumiputra economic wealth; the last and final hurdle to parity is the leap of conviction: " Are the quality bumiputra entrepreneurs able to turnaround their own companies given their own resourcefulness, without using the resources of the rakyat ? " That would be the one true test of entrepreneurship; alas, the Prime Minister wants to have his cake and eat it too. He is conscious, I know, and he knows full well what true entrepreneurship is. But he has practically handpicked these "quality" bumiputra entrepreneurs himself and cannot bear to see the "Schumpeterian cycle of creative destruction" lay waste to his legacy for the Malay race.

This dichotomy presents no dilemma for the Prime Minister who has learned to live the lie. Without political power, even his successors would not be able to continue to perpetuate his legacy. The game plan is to weather the storm, protect his brood, ensure they survive to do business another day. Given the setbacks wrought by the turbulent financial markets, Malaysia would have to extend the nep/ndp for another ten years to ensure that the handpicked "quality" bumiputra entrepreneurs have the breathing space to rebuild their capacities and wealth once again. The nep/ndp and its now expected extension serves the Prime Minister's pressing need to leave the Malays the legacy of his bumiputra entrepreneurial community. Victory in the coming election is sought as a mandate for the nep/ndp to be extended into the 21st Century.

The question now being posed is: not Dr Mahathir, but do the bumiputras themselves still need the nep/ndp ? Much has been set in place for the bumiputra over the last thirty years. In education, in employment, in participation in the private sector at all levels, the bumiputras have accummulated more than sufficient numbers in every range and sphere not to feel at a disadvantage to the non-bumiputra community. Access to the non-bumiputra network is now only a frame of mind. The non-bumiputra networks, if they were formed, were done so as a competitive response to the discriminatory policies that left them out of nep/ndp controlled busines loop. Every law, every policy invoked always invites an equivalent response by the affected group to work around it; to be more competitive against the favoured group. The effect of the nep/ndp on the non-bumiputras has been to make them ever more resourceful in their approach to doing business.

We should not be too concerned about the non-bumiputras. They have shown sufficient capacity to take care of themselves irrespective of the adversity of the situation. We are more concerned about what the nep/ndp is doing to the bumiputras. That they continue to be given quotas for education, employment and business, that they continue to be accorded quotas in allocations of equity, houses and preferences in privatisation projects will not enhance their competitiveness. That they are bailed out every time their business fails is not going to increase the "quality" of bumiputra wealth. Man to man, if they were to compete with not the Chinese, Indian or Eurasian, but the immigrant Indonesians who come from the same genetic stock, who now depend on nobody but themselves, the bumiputras would be at the losing end, even.

As the new Millenium draws near, the new malay dilemma is whether for them the nep/ndp or its future extensions have outlived its usefulness or to continue to depend on the nep/ndp and draw their security from a government led by a party bent on ensuring that the Malays depend on them.


Paksanno

Living With Injustice

Values, the implicit sense of what is right and wrong, is the quintessential glue that binds a community together. A community without strong shared values is a fragmented society prone to upheaval and disintegration. In this regard, it is more than out of curiosity to ask what is it in Malaysian values that permit so many contradictions in our sense of right and wrong: Malaysians are asked to live with injustice in our midst and the majority although discordant readily do so without question.

Lim Guan Eng, a Member of our Parliament remains incarcerated for speaking up on behalf of an victim of rape. The family of Anwar Ibrahim, another Member of our Parliament, is dragged through the mud of allegations of his sexual misconduct and impropriety and then told that it is not relevant to the amended charges now faced by him. The Attorney General sworn to uphold the laws of our country, reports that the police, sworn to enforce the laws of our counry are responsible for beating up Anwar Ibrahim but cannot yet punish anyone. The commission of enquiry set out to investigate the matter further does not engender confidence nor faith. The members of the police force, on separate occassions shoot dead a bank teller and a pregnant mother, but cannot link them to any crime. No one is as yet held accountable. A petrol kiosk attendant working for RM 600 a month with a family to feed travelling to work by motorbike past a toll plaza twelve times a day misses paying a few times and is reported to the police. Pleading guilty he is fined RM 3000. And the list goes on and on.

By what yardstick of values is the collective Malaysian consciousness measured that it cannot definitively discern right from wrong to do something about it? In many ways the extent of injustice that is institutionalised within a society indicates the extent of its decadence. But how is it that a society as young as Malaysia - all of forty-two years old - manage to exhibit such symptoms of decline and decay?

Village Values

Attending a Seminar on Japanese Management in 1982 I was told that the Japanese success as an industrial society and modern culture was rooted in the prevalence of "village" values. As an insular nation, isolated from the influences of its neighbours and perpetually threatened by natural disasters and external threats, Japanese society over the millenia developed a core set of village values not unlike those embodied in the practice of gotong royong. These were the characteristics: everybody was accepted in the village as an equal; irrespective of origin or background. The village was of paramount importance in terms of values. Everybody made sacrifices,in the face of threats for the good of the village. Values were survivalist designed to ensure that the village got on to the next day and the next day. After over a thousand years and more of conditioning these values had been reflected in the last forty years of Japanese management excellence and industrial competence.

While the "youth" of Japanese culture and society was preserved over the centuries, it is interesting to contrast this with the decadence of the two oldest civilisations on earth. Indian civilisation matured and aged over several millenia growing past very earlier its biological phases of survival and self-preservation into its intellectual, rationalisation and materialistic stages. Despite the modernity of recent times, its enduring legacy in the indian mind is the hieriarchical caste system of priests, warrior, merchant and labourer classes. The institutionalised injustice of the caste system is justified by the supranatural law of karma. So indian society became intricately struuctred and complicated and around this revolved all its attendant rituals.

Chinese civilisation is no better. After 400 centuries the chinese mind is best described in contrast to Japanese village values. Individualism, intellectualisation and rationalisation have caused value systems to reflect resources are consolidated by bloodline. Whole villages are of the same surname and clan. Outsiders to the village are ostracised and considered outsiders. Every successful individual able and capable will start his own clan. The importance of the clan was considered paramount. Immersed in self-importance, the clan members considered everyone else outside the clan, the dialect group, the region. Ultimately countries outside the Middle Kingdom was considered inferior or barbarian; without culture and the proper "values".The inherent injustice of justifying all in the name of the clan was justified by the inferiority of all the outsiders to the clan.

Religions as reformers

The Roman civilisation similarly rose and fell on the same cycle of satisfying the biological need to survive, establishment self-estemm and then succumbing to individualism and materialism. Whenever civilisations have progressed in their decay, reform movements inevitably arise against the "decadent" values that have been institutionalised. These early reform movements were most successful as religious based initiatives and expansions.

The egalitarian nature of buddhism appealed to those who found the caste hierarchy of indian civilisation rigid and unbending. Christian values appealed to those who were dissatisfied initially with the established priesthood of judaism and the decadence of the roman empire while islam spread far and wide as a spirited rejection of tribal idolatory and paganism. The new religions attempted to establish new value systems and to replace and rejuvenate societies which had fallen prey to old decadent values and where injustice had
grown heavily ingrained in everyday life.

Even within religions and within nations and empires built on religions, when decadence set in, again perpetuating injustice, reform movements were again established to reject the old order. Among the most celebrated was the Protestant movement started by Martin Luther who attempted to refresh the faith of Christainity by breaking away from the tenets of the Catholic Church. This fresh set of values propelled the villagers of Europe to seek freedom in the New World and created the much vaunted protestant work ethic which served as the driving force behind the anglosaxon world's drive for commercial and industrial success; to such an extent that distinctions still remain between the protestant orientation of the anglosaxon world and the catholic orientation of the catholic latin and hispanic world.

The rise of ideology

In recent centuries it has been ideology that attempted to reverse the decadence of old corrupt civilisations. The capitalist ideology of lassiez -faire markets as best espoused by Adam Smith's invisible hand was a reaction to the feudal days of empire, piracy and plunder for soverign, god and gold. The industrial revolution best manifested the competitive values of capitalism. Its decadent and negative aspects were the exploitation of labour and the excessive greed and speculation tendencies of capital. Karl Marx saw the capitalist system as inherently unstable and propounded the virtues of communism. The excesses of the capitalist classes ensured that communism found appeal and for seventy years of the 20th century a good fraction of mankind experienced a new injection of communist "values" designed to erase the decadence of capitalistic society. Yet the forty years of chinese rigid communism until the tienanmein massacre in 1989 have not managed to erase 400 centuries of "decadent" chinese civilisation with its values of clan and self. Furthermore the existence of the Chinese diaspora ensured that the decadent values remained intact; although tempered by the nation building experiences of the new countries the chinese immigrants found themselves in.

The Quest for Malaysian values

In Malaysia we have a relatively young nation composed of three major communities with markedly differing cultural values. Malay society is best described as possessing village values where the community predominates in importance. This is reflected in their activities and their politics. The youthful nature of Islam as a religion reinforces the sense of community and unity against old decadent values. In contrast, the indian community and the chinese communities have brought along with them their old decadent values of hierarchies and structures and heigthened sense of self, clan and race. The unity of the Malay community underpinned by its village values ensure political domination over the fragmented non-Malay communities divided by their old and decadent values.

The experience of immigration and the process of assimilation much like that experienced by the peranakan should have melted old decadent values to mould new young and fresh nation-building values. If not for Islam which deterred any significant inter-communal marriages on the part of the indians and chinese, the Malayan and Malaysian population would have been much more assimilated like in Thailand, Indonesia and the Philippines. Further communal compartmentalisation preserved the differences in cultural values for much of the four decades after independence.

Yet in the new generation of post NEP Malaysians we are beginning to see the faint, very faint stirrings of Malaysian values; loyalty first to the country, the Malaysian community rather than the respective communities. Forced to live together as neighbours Malaysians have begun to experience the Malaysian way of life, unique in its diversity and complexity. From these shared experiences will come forth the true Malaysian values of identity and community. This will happen when the sense of community experienced by the Malays are extended to include the Malaysians of the other communities. This will truly be the starting point, the birth of a new Malaysian society of shared cultural values free of compartmentalisation and fragmentation.

However before then there is much decadence to be considered. In the rush and the zest to rapidly develop the young Malaysian nation still fragile and fragmented, the leaders of the Malay community adopted the policies of pragmatism. Reflecting the village values of community above self, basic freedoms of the individual, of expression and of association were subordinated to the paramount goal of advancing the community as a whole.

There is a certain justification in sacrificing the interests of the individual for the benefit of the society as a whole. Hence on this was the new economic policy and malay special rights premised. And Malaysian society tolerated injustices perpetuated on the individual for as long as the social good was achieved.

The sacrifices made by individual Malaysians in favour of Malaysian society as a whole would have been worthwhile if the leaders of the Malay community had always borne the interests of the Malaysian people in mind. In their continuing justifications put forward for their policies and actions taken in the interest and for the advancement of the Malay community, they saw too many and too easy opportunities for self-enrichment to be easily passed up. In this they were aided by the decadence of the global financial community whom they now want to blame for their excesses.

The Age of the Acquisitor

Ravi Batra explained the Theory of Social Cycles advocated by P R Sarker as the four phases of growth that a society undergoes; The Age of the Labourer; the Age of the Warrior, the Age of the Intellectual and the Age of the Acquisitor. Each Age is marked by different predominating values and actually reflects the phases of a society's growth, rise and fall. The Age of the Labourer comes after the Acquisitor through his subjugation of all classes and sectors of society under his thumb. In the Age of the Labourer, the disparity between Labourer and Acquisitor is so wide, social tensions result. This is the Age where the worst of decadence has run its course and social injustice is at its worst. It is not surprising if social anarchy and upheavals are characteristic of this period.

Eventually, a strong ruler will emerge, militaristic in nature to impose law and order on society as a whole. New egalitarian values of society are put in place replacing the old decadent ones. There is more social justice and fairness as a whole although individual freedoms may be curtailed. A period of growth sets in because the society works together and "village" values predominate. This is the Age of the Warrior.

As the society prospers and reaches the pinnacle of its development, the intellectuals begin to exert their influence over the society until they take over the reins of government. Society rationalises almost everything in favour of the individual. Priests, political advisors and ideologues commanded more power than the warrior in this age.The arts and culture in general flourishes during this era.

When the society arrives at the Age of the Acquisitor, the materialist values of acquisition for its own sake predominate. The Age of the Acquisitor is marked by the sub-ordination of the warrior and the intellectual and of course the labourer to the interest of the acquisitor. The military, the police, the legislature, the executive serve the interests of the acquisitor. The learned in law, the learned in economics, the academia, the journalists are in the pay of the acquisitors and do everything to justifiy the actions of the acquisitors. There is an abundance of corporate mergers and acquisitions and the values of greed and materialism predominate. Unfortunately the disparity of income and of wealth is also at its height. It is not surprising that the during this age, the incidences of injustice is also at its height.

The global capitalist economy is currently in the stage of the Acquisitor and all the tell-tale symptoms of the Age are there at its worst. The global capitalist economy is at a decadent phase where the interests of all is subjugated to the interests of the acquisitor. In a liberalised and globalised financial environment, the competitive speculative mania infects acquisitors from developed and developing countries alike. In countries where the rights of individuals have been sacrificed, it is all too easy for the acquisitor to take over the entire country and manipulate circumstances and events to his advantage.
In the Malaysian scenario, while the present Prime Minister had had the chance and opportunity to ensure balanced policies in favour of the interests of the Malaysian society as a whole, it is pathetic that he allowed the values of the acquisitor following no doubt a worldwide trend to predominate in Malaysia.

In this regard, Malaysia, though a young country with the immense potential to grow based on the youthful values of a more egalitarian society, has now to deal with the consequences of being dragged down by the decadent values of material individualistic and selfish society. It is a shame that Malaysia so young as a nation had allowed the worst of decadence to prevail and with that all the injustices that we see perpetuated almost everyday. And history always repeats itself. A reform movement will always arise to sweep away the old decadent values.


Paksanno