The gloves have come off. Former prime minister Mahathir Mohamad is the man Umno is now pinning its hopes on to win the next general election, while current premier Najib Razak is lurking close behind with his 1Malaysia slogan to moderate the temperature in case Mahathir's rhetoric gets overheated and racial tensions get out of hand before their party is ready to benefit from an all-out ethnic dogfight.
Buoyed by the Malay support shown to Umno at the Tenang by-election, Mahathir is striking while the iron is hot.
“This country belongs to the Malay race. Peninsular Malaysia was known as Tanah Melayu but this cannot be said because it will be considered racist. We must be sincere and accept that the country is Tanah Melayu,” Malaysian Insider reported the 85-year old as telling a seminar entitled “Malay race and the future” on Tuesday.
Good cop, bad cop
On the surface, it appeared that his words completely contradicted Najib's 1Malaysia slogan, which attempts to portray a sense of multi-racial unity. But pundits warned that was just a ploy by the Umno elite.
"It is not so simple. Najib and Mahathir are more friends than enemies. It is the classic bad cop, good cop role-play. Mahathir does not mind playing race-champion for the Malays. It was what brought him up in politics. Najib has much less guts, so he settles for the wishy-washy 1Malaysia, and this is why until today no one know what 1Malaysia means. Ultimately, as long as Umno stays in power both men and their families gain and that's why they don't mind blurring lines when it suits their purpose," PKR vice president Tian Chua told Malaysia Chronicle.
Indeed, 1Malaysia has been falling apart precisely because the non-Malays it attempted to attract have wised up to Najib's double-game.
His speeches at last year's Umno general assembly were every bit as fiery and racist as Mahathir's was today. Nonetheless, his minders and the BN media have been promoting the slogan as a panacea for all non-Malay grievances.
But at the recent by-election in Tenang, Chinese voters turned their backs on it and voted for the Islamist PAS instead.
Pundits say this may be the reason why Mahathir and Umno have thrown caution to the winds. At Tenang, there was a two percentage point swing in the number of Malay votes for Umno.
"They know they can't get back the Chinese vote at all. The erosion began with Perak crisis and it has become worse. Maybe Najib also didn't realize this, but bigger the size of his Economic Transformation Program the more the Chinese lost faith in him. The small and medium businessmen know how to count very well. They know RM1.4 trillion is really pie in the sky and they been privately ridiculing Najib for daring to announce such grandiose but hollow plans," said Tian.
Malay supremacy
Meanwhile, Mahathir told the non-Malays to admit that the country belonged to the Malays, implying that they had to accept a lower status.
According to him, Malaysia's forefathers gave the Chinese and Indians citizenship because they expected the communities to respect Malay sovereignty
“(Former Philippine President Corazon) Cory Aquino is Chinese but she identified herself as a Filipino. (Former Thai Prime Minister) Thaksin Shinawatra is Chinese but he speaks the Thai language and lives the Thai culture. It is different in Malaysia, we still introduce ourselves according to our race. This is why the question of race will continue to haunt us,” Mahathir said.
He continued to make himself popular with the Malay audience by insisting that race affirmative programmes such as the New Economic Policy were still necessary as the community was still weak financially.
“We must not reject every government effort to help us. We must push away the crutches and realise that we are still limping. Which is better? To be dependent on policies which will save us or depend on others hoping that they will save us? Sooner or later, we will be under their rule,” said Mahathir.
He did not mention who "their rule" referred to but it was obviously the non-Malays in the country. In the past, he has even warned Malaysia could become like a colony of Singapore's if the Malays here were not careful
Where are we politically? What is our current station socially? And what is our economic distribution factor and environmental score?
Politically we have been made to betray each other. Today, after 54 years of Merdeka we are constantly reminded that we are Malays, Chinese, Indians and others. Today the battle cry from various quarters – which even includes a former Statesman, is one of ‘this is our land, not yours’.
And religion is increasingly being misused as the wedge of political power brokering.
On the social frontier no one wants to talk about the drug abuse and trafficking wagon that has derailed. Rape, exploitation of cheap labour, babies flushed down the sewers or left at car parks, street crimes, -- you name it, we have it.
Arguments like ‘other countries too have such problems’ do not hold water because statistically we are a tiny nation.
We have not integrated as one nation of people at all. The fact that we have race based political parties forming coalitions to form a government for so long since independence is sufficient to confirm this truth.
Economically, despite all the oil money, every working rakyat has a loan or several loans to repay for almost his or her entire working life. This alone is good enough a barometer to establish how well off are Malaysians.
Without the government’s study loans, almost three quarter of the young would not have the means for tertiary education. And upon graduating you start repaying a debt. Simply put the government owes you nothing but you owe it all to the government. No?
Environmentally are we a flop? No? Maybe we are good at covering up our rape of the rain forest? No? Don’t be silly – we cannot have development without cutting down those hundreds of years old timber; we cannot have development without relocating the elephants and birds for we need dams. And the list is endless. After all have you ever seen a penniless timber merchant?
All of the above is common sense. But that common sense has left us a long time ago. Today we can be accused of taking a simplistic view of politics, social, economy and environment.
But what use is all the complex rationale when the very basic – COMMON SENSE, is no more our daily currency of nationhood?
Is the government in office the same as the state? Not at all. Finance minister Pranab Mukherjee's raised more than hackles last week when he suggested opposition parties who were stalling parliamentary proceedings 'should join the Maoists'.
The FM's remark also implicitly raised a point of constitutional nicety that is often overlooked in the hurly-burly of politics: namely, that the government in office is not the same as the much larger entity of the state. Mukherjee's comment was set against the backdrop of the demand by the opposition to form a JPC (Joint Parliamentary Committee) to go into the scandal of the 2G spectrum scam.
The Congress-led UPA government's refusal to set up a JPC, and its argument that the already-formed PAC (Public Accounts Committee) was competent to deal with the issue, led to a logjam in Parliament bringing legislation to a grinding halt.
The finance minister accused the opposition of 'destroying Parliament' and likened them to Maoists who try to undermine the Indian state. While Mukherjee's remark might make for good political rhetoric it makes for bad constitutional law, confusing as it does a particular government currently in office, which is a coalition government at that, with the state, which includes not just the ruling coalition but also the opposition parties, as well as the bureaucracy, the judiciary and the defence services.
The Maoists are indeed against the Indian state, in all its ramifications. Can the opposition parties be described as being anti-state or anti-Parliament? Most emphatically not. In fact, in any worthwhile democracy the opposition plays as important a role in the functioning of the state as a whole as does the party, or coalition, in office.
True, in the present case the opposition's persistence in its demand for a JPC, and the UPA's stubbornness in refusing to allow it, led to a gridlocked Parliament at a particularly bad time for the country when seemingly uncheckable inflation is threatening to put a brake on economic growth. Both the opposition and the UPA are to blame for this paralysis of governance.
That said, the finance minister's accusation evokes the political conjuring trick of which Indira Gandhi was a consummate exponent. Her slogan 'Indira isIndia , and India is Indira' sought to create an optical illusion, a smoke-and-mirrors stage effect, in which the party of which she was the undisputed leader and the country were seen to be one. Her call for a 'committed' bureaucracy and judiciary (committed to the interests of her party) and her authoritarian intolerance of any form of dissent inevitably led to the declaration of Emergency, the closest that India has come to dictatorial enslavement since throwing of the yoke of British rule.
Dissent and disagreement with the governing party or parties - provided this dissent is conducted by constitutional means - is not merely permissible in a democracy but is a prerequisite. Any attempt to stifle or jeopardise legitimate, non-violent dissent - by the opposition, the media, minority groups, trade unions or any other constituent of our polity - in the name of stability of governance, or for any other reason, undermines the foundation of democracy. Dissent is not the price we pay for democracy; it is the guarantor of democracy.
And the first rule of democracy is not just the right but the duty of all citizens, and not just opposition politicians, to question and disagree with the government in office. By doing so we're not subverting the state - as the Maoists self-avowedly are seeking to do - but strengthening its democratic foundations. In other words, UPA-II is not synonymous with the Indian state, any more than the NDA was before it. Let's not mistake one political tree for the entire Indian forest.
The FM's remark also implicitly raised a point of constitutional nicety that is often overlooked in the hurly-burly of politics: namely, that the government in office is not the same as the much larger entity of the state. Mukherjee's comment was set against the backdrop of the demand by the opposition to form a JPC (Joint Parliamentary Committee) to go into the scandal of the 2G spectrum scam.
The Congress-led UPA government's refusal to set up a JPC, and its argument that the already-formed PAC (Public Accounts Committee) was competent to deal with the issue, led to a logjam in Parliament bringing legislation to a grinding halt.
The finance minister accused the opposition of 'destroying Parliament' and likened them to Maoists who try to undermine the Indian state. While Mukherjee's remark might make for good political rhetoric it makes for bad constitutional law, confusing as it does a particular government currently in office, which is a coalition government at that, with the state, which includes not just the ruling coalition but also the opposition parties, as well as the bureaucracy, the judiciary and the defence services.
The Maoists are indeed against the Indian state, in all its ramifications. Can the opposition parties be described as being anti-state or anti-Parliament? Most emphatically not. In fact, in any worthwhile democracy the opposition plays as important a role in the functioning of the state as a whole as does the party, or coalition, in office.
True, in the present case the opposition's persistence in its demand for a JPC, and the UPA's stubbornness in refusing to allow it, led to a gridlocked Parliament at a particularly bad time for the country when seemingly uncheckable inflation is threatening to put a brake on economic growth. Both the opposition and the UPA are to blame for this paralysis of governance.
That said, the finance minister's accusation evokes the political conjuring trick of which Indira Gandhi was a consummate exponent. Her slogan 'Indira is
Dissent and disagreement with the governing party or parties - provided this dissent is conducted by constitutional means - is not merely permissible in a democracy but is a prerequisite. Any attempt to stifle or jeopardise legitimate, non-violent dissent - by the opposition, the media, minority groups, trade unions or any other constituent of our polity - in the name of stability of governance, or for any other reason, undermines the foundation of democracy. Dissent is not the price we pay for democracy; it is the guarantor of democracy.
And the first rule of democracy is not just the right but the duty of all citizens, and not just opposition politicians, to question and disagree with the government in office. By doing so we're not subverting the state - as the Maoists self-avowedly are seeking to do - but strengthening its democratic foundations. In other words, UPA-II is not synonymous with the Indian state, any more than the NDA was before it. Let's not mistake one political tree for the entire Indian forest.
While some are talking loudly and long about cutting government spending, it is doubtful they will discuss cuts in a $40-billion-plusannual "intelligence" budget. This, despite the fact that our intelligence services and our far-flung diplomatic network failed to foresee the historic upheaval now underway throughout the Western end of the Muslim world.
There is at least an even chance that we are now entering a rare cycle of history that may take 20 to 30 years to resolve itself, with autocracies giving way to fragile democracies that in turn will evolve into radical fundamentalist regimes (think Iran), and possible civil wars. For the world's greatest superpower, this is a quandary. It is an even greater quandary when that superpower depends for a quarter of its oil imports on supplies from that region.
From the beginning of the Cold War, we adopted a policy (some called it political realism; I call it unprincipled expediency) described as "the enemy of my enemy is my friend." Thus, regardless of how repressive and anti-democratic a potentate might be, if he were anti-communist, he was our friend. We gave dozens of these types a lot of money and political support even though it was used to build up security services that locked up and tortured anyone who quoted our Declaration of Independence in the national square.
Curiously, we failed to notice that everyday people in these countries remember these things. Then when they summon the courage to take to the streets and demand freedom, we express surprise that they do not like us and reject our embrace. This has happened in country after country and now in a vital region that encompasses a billion and a half people.
If we believe what we claim to believe, and if we truly mean to stand on the principles embodied in our Constitution, we are going to have to do better than this. That is if we truly want to stay in the vanguard of history and not try to merely catch up to it as it disappears over the horizon and leaves us behind.
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