ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute

Summary

In thinking about 2013, the year the Federation of Malaysia celebrates its fiftieth anniversary, one cannot but compare the national atmosphere to that in 2007, the year the Federation of Malaya celebrated its fiftieth anniversary.

I remember that the New Straits Times under Datuk Seri Kalimullah Hassan ran a week-long serialisation in January that year of my book The Reluctant Politician: Tun Dr Ismail and His Time(ISEAS, 2006) with the express purpose of putting the country into a contemplative mood and reminding Malaysians of what nation building is all about.

Given the faltering reform programme of then-Prime Minister Tun Abdullah Badawi, the year 2007 could not help but be a contemplative, and agitative, year for many Malaysians in any case. Be that as it may, to be fair to Abdullah, much change had come to the country after he took over from Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad in October 2003.

Otherwise, the latter would not have been using his considerable political acumen back then to undermine his successor's position. Only Dr Mahathir's bad health that year limited his attacks on the prime minister.

Also noteworthy was how tame the UMNO general assembly was in 2007. Racial provocation was kept to a minimum amidst rumours that elections would soon be called. However, Malaysia's first astronaut, Sheikh Mustaphar Sheikh Abdul Shukor, presented the Jalur Gemilang that he had taken into space to Abdullah at the UMNO meeting, signifying that whatever success the trip into space had been, it was an UMNO achievement, not a national triumph.

Inter-religious tension was also building up with the destruction of Hindu temples and the controversial burials of supposed Muslim converts.

The mood in 2007 was therefore generally more confused than contemplative and it soon led to open political activism in Kuala Lumpur.

The first Bersih demonstration took place on 10 November to highlight the need for electoral reforms, which was followed two weeks later by the Hindraf rally to demand rights for Hindus.

Already on 26 September that year, about 2,000 lawyers and their supporters calling for proper investigations into allegations of inappropriate appointments of judges had marched to the residence of the prime minister.

Six eventful years, another two Bersih demonstrations and two exciting elections later, much has changed.

Summary

A nation starts building itself long before the nation-state is established. There were Germans before Germany was established and there were Italians before Italy was founded. There were definitely Malayans with a sense of being Malayans before Malaya was founded in 1957.

Where the emergence of a nation is concerned, the state tends to construct clear communal and ethnic categories with which it is able to manage and manipulate the identity building in the country. These become like Lego pieces that stick together in exact fashion but with the borders hardened. At the social everyday level, however, society builds cohesion the way one bakes a cake – the ingredients have to mix and they have to be loose, both in essence and in definition.

There is tension between these two sets of dynamics and the two have to battle for dominance. In the case of Malaysia where race and religion decide much of how its citizens describe themselves and institutionally relate to each other, there is what may be seen as a state capture of society.

Allow me to air some thoughts about some keywords first before I get down to talking about how we can limit the knee-jerk racial discrimination that infects the country.

Some Keywords

Let's start with ‘discrimination’. To ‘discriminate’ is a strange word. It means having the ability to notice subtle differences (which seems a positive thing), but it also means to think disapprovingly of and to act unfavourably towards things and people considered different (which is not a positive thing).

Discrimination therefore is not only about noticing a difference but also about noticing a difference deemed negative. It is hard work and it is continuous work. It is also collective work and being collective work, it easily becomes political work.

But what difference? It can't be any difference. In almost all cases, it is about difference from whatever it is one considers to be defining of oneself. We harbour no discrimination against a bird because it has wings; we harbour no prejudice against a shark because it can swim in deep waters and grow new teeth endlessly; we do not dislike a frog because it can croak. These are about elements and characteristics that we do not take on as characteristics of my selfhood.

Summary

Sixty years may have passed since Merdeka Day, but its historical significance remains something we continue to debate.

Did Malaya fight to free itself from an implacable Britain? Did the British offer independence to its colonies in South-East Asia to suit its own ends? Was there a Malaya that now threw off the shackles of Pax Britannia's global hegemony? Or was Malaya something novel, grown out of generations of colonial conveniences?

In short, the key question is: ‘Was there a Malaya that on 31 August 1957, was liberated and granted independence? If there already was a Malaya, in what sense was there one? Or was it created that day? If it was created that day, what were the ingredients – physical and cultural – that went into the concoction?’

The Legal Malaya

The trouble taken to so carefully craft a national constitution under the oversight of an international commission would suggest that a new polity was in fact being judiciously brought into being and that nothing like it had existed before. Seen that way, the constitution was the outlining of a new entity we would now call the Federation of Malaya, an act of definition in fact that was geared towards immediate membership in the UN.

Already on 17 September 1957, the country became the eightyfirst member of the United Nations. Needless to say, most of those members who came later and many of those who went before were in fact new countries, generated and necessitated by the fall of empires and of colonies throughout the twentieth century.

Gaining political existence in a form that would gain the country immediate membership to the UN was a basic deliberation in the crafting of the Malayan Constitution. What qualities a country should essentially possess for it to be a potential member were what the lawyers and politicians involved in crafting the document were trained to consider.

The UN has 193 members today, up from 80 before 31 August 1957, 60 years ago. How so many diverse societies in the world could over just a few decades after the demise of the imperial principle of human organisation take on the strict stock character of the nationstate, explains much of the global troubles that we live with today – not only in Malaysia but throughout the world.

Summary

The word ‘karma’ is on the lips of Malaysians, at least of those who have some idea what the Sanskrit term means and who need to explain to themselves what has just taken place in their country.

The use of that resonant word is best understood through observation of the recent fates of Mahathir Mohamad and Anwar Ibrahim – the once almighty prime minister and icon of the Third World and his deputy whom he cruelly dismissed and jailed. Two men whose fates are connected the way that few are.

When the 92-year-old Mahathir, the past and present prime minister of Malaysia, decided to return to politics ostensibly to correct the mistakes he had made during his 22 years as leader of the country (1981–2003), onlookers nodded knowingly. The man had had the fortune to live long enough to baulk at the enduring effects of his wrongs. Whether that was good or bad fortune depended on what he intended to do about it.

‘Karma's a bitch’ was a casual but cutting phrase going around, one that summed up nicely Mahathir's ethical dilemma. On 5 September 2016 he had unexpectedly appeared as a member of the viewing public at a court hearing to greet Anwar. It was the first such encounter since the latter's sacking and subsequent jailing in 1998. That was Mahathir's first move at reconciliation with his protégé-turned-foe.

Mahathir was putting into play his plan to return to politics, 13 years after his retirement, in order to topple the prime minister, Najib Razak. And the opposition fronted by Anwar, once formed to oppose Mahathir himself, was the only force nearly capable enough of pulling off that stunt. What that opposition effectively lacked was strong enough support from the Malay community outside of the urban areas.

This Mahathir could provide. Since his retirement in October 2003, Mahathir had been watching and meddling in the politics of his successors. He appeared to evince greater and greater despair at what he had done during his tenure when his authoritarian methods undid many of the checks and balances that had been Malaysia's proud though slowly eroding legacy.

Summary

It takes two hands to clap; there is no shore unless there is sea; and one man's ceiling is another man's floor, as the poet rightly claims.

You get the point. There is always a bigger picture, and that bigger picture always changes the picture, as it were. More key players are always involved, more historical trends are always being played out; and more overlapping and contesting agendas are at play than meets the eye.

It is like piecing together a puzzle. To gain a fuller insight into Malaysia's attainment of independence, we need to view the adjacent pieces as well. And the piece that cannot be ignored is the one involving the retreating colonial masters, the British.

On one side, we have the chain of interwoven events known to all Malaysian schoolchildren, which led to Merdeka. Tunku Abdul Rahman shouting ‘Merdeka’ seven times at the stadium in Kuala Lumpur on 31 August 1957 was in orchestration reminiscent of Mao Zedong screaming ‘The Chinese people are finally back on their feet!’ eight years earlier at Tiananmen Square in Beijing; and to be sure, of many other such ceremonies where national independence and liberation were declared.

But such were the times. The 1940s, 1950s and 1960s were an era when nation states sprouted into being like mushrooms all over Africa and Asia. What this excess of cases in so short a time has meant is that the uniqueness of each case, and the legacy and lasting significance of the conditions configuring the post-colonial system of government particular to each country, tended to be disregarded. Yet, it is these conditions that have to be considered if we are to understand the now half-century or so in the history of each of these countries and if we are to identify the elements particular to each case, which have been leaving the most lasting impact.

On the other side, we have the British withdrawal to wonder about. This closing down of empire was a pan-global one and the sun would soon never rise again on the British Empire, let alone set on it. The First World War and Second World War had been fought within a span of three short decades and although the British emerged victorious, the costs were such that the Empire could not hope to win the ensuing peace.

Summary

When studying humanity and its history, what one does is construct a narrative. And in that narrative, one distinguishes heroes from villains, outlines territories and peoples and differentiates steady trends from turning points.

Since different choices result in different stories, it is understandable that power-holders use whatever means they can to popularise storylines that they think serve them best. That is the nature of states. But what happens when the narrative leads consistently to negative outcomes?

In the case of Malaysia where quarrelling and squabbling now pass for discussion and debate, what we are often left with are disjointed ideas about what Malaysia is, what Malaysia was, what Malaysians are and what Malaysians are supposed to become. This would seem to have resulted from the over-politicisation of the national consciousness and over a long time.

Another way to describe this is to equate the Malaysian way of doing politics with the spraying of ink by the shrewd sotong. It sprays ink to confuse more than to contest. It does not wish you to know where it is going.

The problem is, if it does this too often and for too long, the sotong becomes as lost and confused as its enemy. It too does not know where it is going. The contest becomes everything; it becomes its own goal, it becomes a way of life. All are locked in a futile fight where even the winner recognises that his triumph is really a loss. There are no real winners.

But how is the country to break out into a new consciousness and attain a new way for Malaysians to relate to each other? Short of having an authoritarian figure forcing his will onto the whole of society, it would seem that sustainable change has to come from young adults who wish to break the tortuous trap in which the country is caught.

There is a tragic pathology involved. The diagnostician has to wonder over questions such as: How did UMNO, once a secular or at least non-religious party become a champion of religious politics?; How did the relative inter-ethnic harmony of the early decades end in the tensions in daily life that Malaysians now live with?; How has the acceptance of multiracialism as the basis of Malaysian life been overturned?; How did the cultured traditionalism of the Malays lose out to the harsh legalism of the Islamists?

Summary

Who am I?

A simple question to ask oneself and yet, no simple answer suggests itself. As long as the issue is about the singular person, it appears to be but a psychological and philosophical quandary.

Ask it in the plural and we approach what may be the key question of our times. It becomes a scrutiny of the human situation today. It becomes sociological, and it becomes highly political.

Who are we?

Now, the ‘we’ is the issue. In both cases, the answer can never be adequate. Much must be left out. A life is always unimaginably more than a biography can be.

In inquiring about myself, I would try to include as much as possible in my answer and in effect, I end by leaving the answer purposefully unfinished and properly tentative.

When the query is about the collective, ‘Who are X?’; ‘Who are Chinese?’, ‘Who are men?’, ‘Who are Malaysians?’, ‘Who are human beings?’, one is immediately drawn to seek a neat answer that captures the essence of the collective.

This latter cognitive habit is a serious problem and whatever its roots, the fateful fault lies in mistaking denotations for connotations.

When answering the self-query, I imagine different streams of experience from my past, always too many and disparate to mention. But in answering what collectives I presumably belong to, I seek to simplify instead and try to give as basic and as diminished a definition as possible.

Giving tentative, and even poetic, answers to questions about identity seems to me to be the only rational way to go. After all, is a Chinese today what a Chinese was a century ago? Is being a man today the same in Malaysia as in Thailand? Is being a man the same as being one in 1943 or even tomorrow?

Should one expect an answer about identity to be anything other than an exploratory one, then one is seeking power, and is propounding and prescribing definitions that are self-serving.

Let me illustrate this cognitive flaw, or cunning, another way.

Whenever we marry, we join fortunes with more than just a person. Whenever we make a friend, we connect with more than just an individual. This is true whether the other person belongs to our collective or not.

Summary

Malaysia has drawn the attention of the global community in recent times and this has largely been much more as negative publicity than positive. Just last Thursday, the European Parliament passed a resolution deploring ‘the deteriorating human rights situation in Malaysia and in particular the crackdown on civil society activists, academics, media and political activists.’

This follows a series of reports throughout the year in the Wall Street Journal on scandals in high places in Malaysia. These are just two of many other cases.

While this sustained attention from abroad is new, the analysis tends to be too much focused on the contemporariness conditions than it should be. Malaysians in general understand the country's difficult situation to be a profound one, rooted in a unique history as much as in notional narrowness.

The country may have gained independence in a relatively easy manner, but over time, no one should have thought that the nationbuilding to come would be an easy one. Many things have changed but the question remains: Is Malaysia a country at a crossroads or in a quagmire?

That is as relevant a question today to ask about Malaysia as it ever has been. I am more prone than ever to ask it though after reading some books very recently about the social history and politics of the late colonial period in British Malaya.

Throughout the 1930s, Malay newspapers were being established to satisfy the growing need among Malay intellectuals to discuss the situation of their community. The world was in a deep economic crisis then and the growing notions of nationhood and ethnic essentialism led to a hostile debate between those professing the term ‘Malayans’ and those Malays who would not recognise that notion. The Malay newspapers were those driving the debate most consistently.

More than 80 years later, from the vantage point of 2015 going into 2016, it is stimulating to compare the two periods and to see what has changed and what has stubbornly remained the same.

This article cannot profess to give a list of these things; it can only prod readers to proceed on their own and study and contemplate the exciting history of late colonialism in order to better understand the Malaysian nation, as it stands today.

Summary

According to its Constitution, Malaysia has to hold its next general election by 24 August 2018. At the time of writing, that is still almost two years away. And yet, rumours of early elections persist, both at the state and federal levels.

This needs some explaining, given how Prime Minister Najib Razak waited until almost the last minute to go to the polls back in 2013.

The exercise to delineate constituency boundaries now being concluded heightens speculation that early polls are coming. Having lost its two-thirds majority since 2008, the ruling Barisan Nasional (BN) has not been able to increase the number of parliamentary constituencies; it is now able only to realign the existing ones or rename them. And that, it is doing.

That in itself is a substantive exercise of power especially with the independence of the Election Commission that is in charge of the delineation being in serious doubt.

The major argument for those predicting that elections will be held by mid-2017 is that the opposition is in a confused state, if not in disarray. And so, before they can get their act together, the chances of Datuk Seri Najib holding his ground and maintaining at least the same voter support that he had in 2013 are good.

By hook or by crook, his administration has survived the many aspects of the 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB) scandal, at least for now. By sacking key dissidents from UMNO, especially his former deputy Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin, he has consolidated his hold on the leadership of the party.

Victory in the Sarawak state election held in May and in two recent by-elections in June, one in Perak state which it marginally controls and the other in opposition-controlled Selangor state, also brought some comfort for the BN coalition and showed that the Malay ground remains encouragingly loyal. Also, the anti-BN votes in the byelections were split down the middle between Parti Islam SeMalaysia (PAS) and its recent splinter party, Parti Amanah Negara.

Having this indication that the Malay opposition to UMNO is badly split and convinced that the PAS leadership is now more willing than ever to negotiate with it, BN has all the more reason to dissolve Parliament earlier rather than later.

Summary

The return of former prime minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad to the forefront of Malaysian politics at the age of 92 – 19 years after he sacked his deputy Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim and 14 years after he retired as prime minister – is astounding not only in a Guinness Book of World Records kind of way but also because of some interesting things it articulates about Malaysian politics in the twenty-first century.

Foremost is the apparent stagnated political transition that the country is caught in. The reformasi or reform movement that Anwar got off the ground in September 1998 captured the imagination of Malaysians and brought forth a generation that did not share the fears instilled in their forebears by the consensual nature of inter-ethnic Malaysian politics. This generation of Malaysians did not buy the conservative ‘this is as good as it gets’ idea nor did they think that the only way to discuss politics was to tiptoe around the most difficult subjects. That much Anwar managed to inspire.

Although the movement was partially headed by older leaders, the impetus came from the young and youthful – and these included those who went into politics then, those who now write for the new media and on social media and those who voted for the newly energised opposition coalition.

And so, even if the leader of the opposition today is in his nineties, he should not be seen as a symbol of or a throwback to the politics of the pre-reformasi era. Societies are never stagnant and politics can, therefore, not be unchanging. And even if a transitional period appears stagnant, it nevertheless is spiralling off in a certain direction.

And it is that direction that needs to be identified and named. Malaysia in 2018 is not the same as Malaysia in 1998. And even if many of the leading names are from an earlier period, the battle is not the same one.

After the ‘tsunami’ in 2008 gave five states to the opposition, the Barisan Nasional failed to recover and instead weakened further in 2013, when it lost the popular vote. The coming fourteenth general election is, therefore, understandably seen by many as a new arrangement of reformasi forces bent on toppling the UMNO-led BN.

Summary

I co-authored a decade ago a book called March 8: Eclipsing May 13. What I was trying to do when I chose that title back in 2008 was to draw public attention to the centrality of history in understanding the confounding and exciting events that make up Malaysian politics. The twelfth general election that took place on 8 March 2008 was indeed a milestone that Malaysians will find hard to forget. However, that day simply signalled a shifting to a higher gear in a process that began many years ago, stretching back to 13 May 1969 and beyond. Its significance goes beyond its proximate spatial and tidal context.

That process continued after 2008 in fits and starts and finally came to fulfilment in the fourteenth general election that was held on 9 May 2018. That day, the Barisan Nasional government was toppled as the electorate chose with a resounding majority to end its six-decadelong period in power. As in all cases when a change in government had been waiting for too long, the change left many speechless and astounded. Much of how they had strategised their lives and how they thought in order to survive under that government became irrelevant overnight. Such is what a revolution feels like, even peaceful ones like the one that happened in Malaysia that day.

A spontaneous process of public re-education can now be expected to begin, and it will include much soul-searching and much throwing away of old ideas, old hates, old loves and old orientations.

To realise the full significance of what has come to pass, Malaysians will need to hit their history books. Sadly, not many history books about Malaysia exist which manage to capture at sufficient depth the many underlying dynamics contesting to direct the strange events that the country's political history is infamous for. Some active and analytical reading and researching is required now by each Malaysian interested in his or her own role in the present process of rebuilding the country.

Success for democracy in Malaysia is practically a prerequisite if countries in the region are to have any faith at all in a system where the people are free to choose and change their government. Introduction Malaysia's Future is Redeemed

Summary

We should not forget that in the days before social media and news websites, the flow of information – basically through schools and through daily newspapers, television and radio stations, was highly centralised and easily controlled.

Then came the 1990s and the Internet took over our lives in a big way, and with it a blogging culture began to flourish. For Malaysia, it coincided with the disastrous 1997–98 Asian Financial Crisis.

This democratisation of communication – and knowledge – accelerated with the coming of social media. SMSes, Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp and Instagram, among other developing technologies provided everyone with the means to express themselves from below and to access news sites not controlled by the government.

The search engine revolution has given us immediate access to most facts, sweeping aside the rows of encyclopaedias and dictionaries in our homes.

Hypertext allows us to connect ideas in ways we could not before.

The development of the smartphone only a decade ago has taken the liberating of the individual from his or her immediate surroundings to a whole new level. The preferred apps and the preferred settings on his or her smartphone now decide and define the flow of information and the lines of communication.

We can now choose our own news, our own threads of thought and our own special collection of ‘friends’ and contacts. And we can now rant and gripe and believe anything that our individual sociocultural situation, our personal history and our own level of knowledge prone us to do.

This opening of the mind is something strongly positive, no doubt. It empowers people. But as with all mass empowerment, it has led to a fragmentation of collective values and a decentralisation of public discourses – and also to governments losing whatever ability and coercive power over knowledge that it had had to imbue the majority of its citizens with a sense of common causes.

Keeping the World Twittered

How governments and how governing in general adapt to this, is a subject for immediate research. American President Donald Trump's twisted tweet communication with the world can be understood merely as an old man's way of awed handling – and retreating from – a world technologically changed beyond his recognition and holding that changing world hostage in the process.

Summary

The word ‘Governance’ has the same roots as ‘Government’. However, the recent popularity of the use of ‘governance’ comes from the growing notion of looking at political control as a technical matter and of an increasing tendency to think of the government – and the governing – of a country as the management – and the managing – of a country.

We should also be aware that governance seems more at home in the context of corporations, and in line with that, the word assumes the existence of the entity to be unproblematic – be it a state or a corporation.

For countries and states that are relatively new and that are still being ‘built’, the increasing usage of ‘governance’ may be in response to the initial and over time, excessive focus on the notion of nationbuilding rather than on state building.

Governance as a notion necessarily highlights rules and regulations, technocratic mechanisms and corrective procedures. Except where security is a concern, it is of great advantage that information is free and reliable since policies have to be based on them – as are punishments.

So what constitutes Good Governance on the part of a national government?

I would deconstruct the term into the following related processes:

Summary

Following the Red-Shirt rally in Kuala Lumpur on 16 September, discussions have been rife that the government of Prime Minister Najib Razak was ‘playing the racial card’ to bolster support and to distract the public, especially its Malay supporters, from distressing issues at hand.

It is true that the demonstration was a purely Malay rally, but what is essential to note is that while the initial impulse to organise it came from people who were undoubtedly trying to highlight and deepen the racial divide, by the time the event did take place, much of that had been deftly turned into a show of support for the beleaguered prime minister by his staunchest followers.

In the end, few incidents took place and the riot police did not have much trouble keeping rowdy demonstrators at bay, who were symbolically trying to get into the city's Chinatown.

This is an important point to highlight. The racialising did not spread.

The demonstration was an angry reaction by Mr Najib supporters to the anti-Najib Bersih 4.0 rally that took place on 29–30 August. Notwithstanding the huge turnout at that two-day event, some mass media outlets had focused on the proportionately low number of Malay participants at the Bersih rally.

This in sadly typical of Malaysian journalism, in fact—whatever happens, look for the racial aspect first. What should be read out of this is that the Bersih Movement has been very successful in achieving its main long-term goal. This is not so much electoral reforms as the gradual shifting of the national discourse away from persistent racial issues over to a passion for democratic governance instead.

Ever since it was formed by a large group of civil society organisations and opposition parties, Bersih (short for Gabungan Pilihanraya Bersih dan Adil—the Coalition for Clean and Fair Elections) has relied for support on its non-racial agenda of electoral reforms.

The latest version of its reforms are (1) free and fair elections; (2) a clean government; (3) the right to dissent; (4) strengthening parliamentary democracy; and (5) saving the Malaysian economy. These are generally so technical and generic in nature that one would be hard put to turn them into racial issues.

Summary

As with all agreements, consensus and contracts, a Constitution is a hunt for a balance – and a dynamic one at that, between the expressing on one hand of lofty national aspirations and ambitions, and on the other of compromises meant to be more binding than they usually turn out to be.

It is an act of self-definition and self-control, where rights and duties are laid out in broad generic terms. Thus, one can see it either as a search for common ideals, or as an arena of contestation where the fortunes of different interest groups shift over time. Which parts are carved in stone and which parts are of wet clay? That seems to be the unanswerable question.

Edmund Burke, the famous conservative and vivid scholar of the French Revolution wrote in 1790 in Reflections on the Revolution in France that ‘A state without the means of some change is without the means of its conservation. Without such means it might even risque the loss of that part of the constitution which it wished the most religiously to preserve.’

The obsession that Malaysian political parties have about the twothirds majority in parliament is a clear reflection that the country's Constitution is an arena of contestation rather than an expression of common ideals. Having the means to amend the Constitution is what power seems to be about.

One can certainly argue that the contingencies of the 1950s – the fear of communism, the rush to gain independence on the part of the Malayan leaders and the need of the British to let its empire fall into a pattern that still left it with serious advantages, made the basic law of the country-to-be a balancing act – a superb act in legal formulation – that allowed most citizens to feel that they had not been excessively ignored.

As we know, the choice for Malaya of a federation model instead of a union model – a decision reached in the immediate post-war period rather than after the communists had been largely defeated in the mid-50s, was not so much a matter of political principle and academic wisdom than it was the expression of the British need to retain the status quo of having sultanates.

Summary

Malaysia's former prime minister, Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad, surprised his countrymen by turning up at the Kuala Lumpur High Court on Monday to shake the hand of his former deputy and protégé and (perhaps former) political foe, Anwar Ibrahim.

This is a highly significant event and their short meeting sent a strong impulse through the Malaysian political landscape. Since Dr Mahathir launched a campaign to unseat Prime Minister Najib Razak many months ago, including a national tour that succeeded in collecting beyond its target of a million signatures calling for the removal of the Prime Minister, it had been unclear how far his movement would take him. Or how far he would actually go in getting what he wants.

Strange twists in Malaysian politics now see the two figures who were once the two most powerful men in the country becoming fellow travellers with the common ambition of toppling the Prime Minister. The deep animosity between the two camps had loomed as the biggest hurdle to their forces mounting a concerted campaign against the federal government, and threatened to divide the opposition into those who would embrace Dr Mahathir into their camp, and those who refused.

It was an understandable divide, given that while Anwar's supporters wished to topple UMNO and not only Mr Najib, Dr Mahathir's supporters were only out to get rid of the Prime Minister.

The opposition parties, though having trouble working with each other, are largely faithful to Anwar and his agenda of national political reformation. No doubt, the grief that the former deputy prime minister and his family had had to suffer since his sacking on 2 September 1998 and eventual imprisonment accounts a lot for the sense of loyalty his supporters continue to feel for him.

His Reformasi Movement has after all been the inspiration for the generation of Malaysians from all ethnic backgrounds that now forms the backbone of the opposition.

In his dramatic move, Dr Mahathir appeared on neutral ground and over an issue that he and Anwar could agree upon, namely opposition to the National Security Committee (NSC) Act that they both claim gives unlimited powers to the Prime Minister.

Summary

It is fascinating how seemingly innocuous words actually are not. Especially those that sound neutral, even ethically positive. That is why the sage never thinks in haste, because he knows the words that bear his thoughts cannot be trusted and his listener's ability to understand him the way he wishes to be understood must always be doubted.

Take ‘multi-ethnic’ for example. We often consider that term to be a practical synonym for ‘pluralism’ or ‘multicultural’. And so, we move on from that concept to begin dreaming about celebrating diversity based on multi-ethnicity. And we are then exasperated by how impossible that seems to be.

I suspect the basic problem is that ‘multi-ethnic’ is actually a highly conservative term. Its major connotations are static and ignore the evolving nature of individual identities in favour of collectivising humans under simple groupings.

Revealingly, after the term ‘race’ became taboo in social scientific circles following the end of the Second World War, ‘ethnicity’ was recruited instead to replace it. In Malaysia, we now use those two as synonyms, as we do with ‘multi-racial’ and ‘multi-ethnic’.

Putting together disparate units that are in the process starkly distinguished from each other does not bode well for the harmony of the whole. There is a contradiction herein that should warn us to have low expectations. The association between the groups is encouraged to be cultural or religious and is about treating each other as members and representatives of distinct groups. This collective identity approach to social life is a defensive and conflict-oriented one that cannot but breed caution and fear rather than celebration and enjoyment. If you ask me, that is where racism has its roots.

The future is urban

There is also the aspect of existential space. If we assume rurality as the backdrop for modern social interactions, then we are assuming that there is sufficient space for problematic differences to exist at a safe distance from each other. On the other hand, if we assume urbanity instead as the present and definitely the future nature of Malaysian society, then we must deal with the fact that there is simply not enough existential space for static divisions to be able to co-exist harmoniously.

Summary

Extreme Weather hits most places on Earth every now and then and recently more than ever. But when freak storms appear with an intensity stronger and more devastating than living memory can recall, it is wise to conclude that we should not take blue skies and cooling rainfalls for granted.

More obviously, governments should begin thinking very seriously about how the effects of dramatic climatic change can be mitigated at the most local level. If there is any lesson to be learned from the tropical storm that hit northern Malaysia, most notably the state of Penang on the weekend of 4–5 November, this is it.

Weather systems seem to have shifted, and the people of Penang, where the weather has almost always been mild and where disasters are queer events that take place elsewhere, were totally surprised by an extremely heavy overnight downpour accompanied by high-velocity winds that brought down dozens of trees and countless branches, onto fences, roads, houses and cars.

Seven people died.

Penang being Penang – a state defiantly run by the federal opposition since 2008, and which has for two mandate periods now been a poke in the eye of the powerful and long-standing central government, it has been difficult for many to consider the floods simply as a natural disaster. Instead, some schadenfreude was initially evident and fingers were pointed at the state government. But to be fair, much of this was done before most people realised how bad the situation actually was.

It did not help that there had been some flash flooding and landslides a couple of months earlier on an unprecedented scale, though a scale now dwarfed by the November storm.

A construction site landslide that took 11 lives on 21 October had further shocked the people of Penang into demanding answers and action from the Pakatan Harapan government led by Chief Minister Lim Guan Eng. His government has set up a commission of inquiry into the latter incident.

Civil society groups had been demanding for years that the state and local governments exercise more control over hillside developments.

The political pressure had therefore been mounting on Lim before the storm hit on the night of 4 November. Perhaps because of that, the chief minister was fast in responding to the latest crisis.

ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute

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