NOVEMBER 20 — Malaysians have decided! And yet we haven’t!
We are as divided as before, with arguable realignments that seem to shift towards a more extremist race-based swing.
It is not a great moment for Malaysians. Certainly not for me, who has always hankered for a more inclusive multicultural progressive state and a brighter future for myself, our children and our families.
Yet, it is another sobering moment for every Malaysian to ponder over again. Are we still a nation worth saving from itself? And our political masters?
I am saying this from the blinkered eye of a 4th generation Chinese Malaysian, my great-grandfather migrated to Johor in the mid-late 1800s. Is our Malaysia for a collective ‘us’, and our children, or will it be just for ‘them’? I’m reminded that following my SPM (which was just 2 years after the fateful May 13, 1969) nearly 60 per cent of my non-Malay classmates emigrated, most never returned.
I chose to stay for some obscure unfathomable patriotic sense of belonging, that my grandpa and father had instilled in us as kids. They were enthralled with our Merdeka freedom from the British colonialism and the WW2 Japanese invasion, just some 2+ decades ago, and were buoyantly positive about this adopted land of us. We became citizens by choice with the new independent Malaya, then in 1957, and then later Malaysia in 1963.
I’ve always maintained that we do recognise the primacy of the ethnic Malays and their rights as enshrined in our Constitution, but should our minority rights & concerns be whittled away, by decades of political ethnic pruning, until there’s no hope for a colourblind nation of the future? Will there be a day when no one Malaysian needs to talk about which race one is, or isn’t?
I mean that we seem to be veering towards a growing threat of religious and racial divide of no return... one driven by an extremist-supremacist policy of single entrenched ethnic dominance, at whatever cost! Let our multiracial peoples be damned, leave if you we do not like this, they are saying... “This is my land!” Is Malaysia not ours too?
It’s been loud, it’s been clear for many decades now, driven by the Mathahir doctrine via its crudely skewed BTN propaganda of our humongous streams of civil servants over the past many decades... Surely some of these entrenched posturing and indoctrination have stuck.
Whenever some political crisis arise, the spectre of Jews, Christians and yes the pendatang Chinese and Indians are stridently proclaimed — we are to blame.
There is nothing like casting supposedly existential threats like the demons of Jewish global dominance conspiracy using Christian political foes as cheap fodder, onto a less discerning horde of politically-charged Muslims! Create false innuendos and fear of the unknown, mixed with the heady punches against a ‘known enemy’ — these coming from political desperates with entrenched racist mindsets!
The supremacist reconstruction of the Constitution has been used to deny proper and rational discourse of our collective future forwards. Nowhere else in the free world is there such sweeping interpretation in laws that promote and protect the majority rights over its minority.
The accrued but fossilised religious-ethnic narrative creates an almost impossible civil debate or rational relook at where Malaysia is heading as a nation.
Some of my friends have called this cynically, as a ‘talibanisation’ of our largest major ethnic group. Or, should Malaysia of the near future be secular and remain multiculturally diverse and progressive?
The GE15 is another watershed moment that is now resulting in a ‘hung’ government... It is almost the same scenario as per the last GE14. Much horsetrading needs to be done to cobble up a workable government, or we will continue to mire in instability, and therefore lose focus. We need to have a collective political leadership and a greater vision of a better nationhood possible. Is there now no hope?
The Machiavellian divide and conquer games of one-upmanship to gain cheap political points will ultimately destroy us, if not already.
Look at neighbouring Indonesia with its renewed constitutional antiracism laws, and its recently much better leadership & less corrupt governance, and see how this has propelled the nation forwards!
Malaysia may see its failed state denouement being realised sooner, unless the powers that be shift their warped self-interested stance towards one that is truly ‘FOR’ the rakyat as a collective whole, than relentlessly playing the ‘game of thrones’ for keeping themselves in power and out of jail!
I hope and pray that our Majesty Agong will choose the path of moderation and vision over the more divisive & race-focused detractors. Is there hope yet for a renewed mandate for a more modern progressive Malaysia? Bangkit Malaysia!
Dr David Quek
* This is the personal opinion of the writer or organisation and does not necessarily represent the views of Malay Mail.
