Holy coronavirus, Batman!
300 Words about Writing
I have been blogging, on and off, for the past two decades. I have never been able to keep a regular momentum going, though, and I envy those persons who have had the focus and consistency to maintain an active and lively blog.
The age of blogging, of course, has come and gone. Online content creation has migrated from longform musings on Tumblr and Blogspot, to snippets of wit and flaming on Twitter, to the cacophony of shortform videos that make up the vanguard of today’s social media. For a reader like myself, however, there is a satisfaction in engaging with ideas and exposition, that cannot be quenched by the fast-food nature of contemporary content.
My recent reading of Borges’ Fictions has reminded me that short stories, when wielded by a maestro, can become a powerful medium to explore ideas that encompass dizzying multitudes. An imaginary encyclopedia about an imaginary planet that makes up the imaginary literature of an imaginary Central Asian nation? A fable about a man who can never forget anything? A short story about betrayal and identity and regret? All these things can come alive, from the sheer combination of letters to conjure up worlds imagined and unimaginable.
Another recent inspiration has been the 200 Words About Culture blog on Substack. It doesn’t – and shouldn’t – take much to put your thoughts out into the world: to amuse, to entertain, to educate, or perhaps merely to record the passing of our limited days on this earth.
And what is stopping me from writing? Nothing much other than the gnawing – and yet overpowering – sense of “who would care about what I have to say?” I have been sitting with this for some time now, until I realized: I should care. And that should be enough.
Why I Really Dislike Bullying
Anyone who has grown up in schools and playgrounds would know that bullying is a rather common problem. Bullying is a basic form of power games, and indeed constitutes part of our early initiation into the mysteries of human life.
I personally find bullying particularly abhorrent. Bullying is a weapon of the weak-willed; for those who try their hardest to divert attention from their own sense of inadequacy by shining an unflattering light on those of others.
There is also a performative element to bullying: most bullies relish the idea of having fellow gang members around them to observe the humiliation and disempowerment of the victim. The bullying act must be seen and witnessed, for it to be truly savoured.
Perhaps I am being too precious. The law of the jungle seems to be an ineluctable fact of human existence. We must eat, or be eaten: the Darwinian concept of natural selection is what gives our lives its sense of mission and urgency and purpose.
But contest and competition can and must be governed by Honour: this is the principle that underlies the basic architecture of human relations. We need rules and guidelines to tell us how to play the game; referees to enforce those rules and keep people honest; penalties for when rules are broken. The bully scorns such niceties, and considers himself above the rules that must be abided by others.
Like in our childhood playgrounds, bullies ought not to be tolerated. We need to call them out for who they are, and what they are doing. Confronted with real and sustained power, the bully shrinks and walks away. This is the only language that the bully understands, and we should not be afraid to speak that language when we have to.
The Character of Muhammad (Peace be Upon Him)
One of the most powerful aspects of the religion of Islam that has always struck me as patently obvious, and yet so obviously ignored by Muslims in our own daily lives, is the character of Prophet Muhammad. Even before his prophethood, Muhammad was described as a trustworthy person. Dr. Muhammad Abdullah Draz, in his classic exposition of the miracle of the Quran, described Muhammad (peace be upon him) thus:
“His tongue would not utter a word without knowledge, and his eyes would not attempt to conceal anything different from what he declared. Moreover, he would not listen to those who were inclined to exaggeration as they sang his praises. He was great in his humility, with frankness and honesty that are very rare among leaders and with meticulousness that is exceptional even among scholars.”
How many of our Muslims “leaders” would this moral standard that Prophet Muhammad has exemplified for us? How many of our kings and prime ministers have employed deceit and oppression, supposedly in the defense of the religion? How many of our presidents and politicians would swell with pride as their sycophants murmur approval and adulation?
Humility, frankness, and honesty: these can feel like bygone qualities for a bygone age of heroes. And yet, these are the qualities that many Muslims continue to demand in our leaders.
The late Nik Aziz, one could argue, had a rather lacklustre record in his 23 years as Chief Minister of Kelantan. And yet, he continues to hold a strong grip on the imagination of many Malay Muslims. They remember his simple frugality, his humble demeanour, his plain spoken charm.
Humility, frankness, honesty. We can only pray that many more of us may start emulating Muhammad, fully and joyfully, in our everyday lives.
My Outlook for 2021
As I write this, I can hear the roar of the South China Sea as the waves crash onto the beach, tirelessly and unceasingly. 2020 was a year that felt like an unending crash, as a global pandemic threatened the lives of millions around the world, and changed how we live and work.
There is, at least now, a light at the end of the tunnel. An unprecedented race to discover a vaccine for the virus has yielded several winners, and countries are now beginning the work of securing and deploying vaccines to inoculate their populations. The global economy is still holding its breath, but at least we can see a path out of the current maelstrom.
The Financial Times does an annual forecast of global geopolitics, and I thought it might be interesting and useful to have my own take on the questions posed by the FT.
- Will the WHO call an end to the public health emergency over Covid-19? No. It will take some time for countries to deploy the vaccine, and as we have seen with the recent news concerning the B117 variant, the novel coronavirus comes with its own bag of tricks. We will have to live with this for a while, and it will probably be 2022 at the earliest before the WHO calls off its emergency advisory for this pandemic.
- Will the majority of the world’s 5bn adult population be vaccinated? No. While the actual work of developing the vaccine has been a true triumph of scientific prowess and human ingenuity, the logistical challenges involved in deploying the vaccine will mean that many countries will take time to have the vaccine distributed and applied for all that need it. For instance, Malaysia is currently expected to only have its vaccine doses available for deployment in February 2021; I imagine it would be an even more daunting proposition for countries which are less developed and have less funds to undertake a massive nationwide vaccination exercise.
- Will the Conservatives under Boris Johnson re-establish a clear lead over Labour? No. Boris has done well to come this far, after his mendacious role in the Leave campaign and his subsequent ascent into the premiership. As Britons grapple with the reality of trade barriers in a post-Brexit world, they will begin to count the real costs of separation from the EU, and much of the blame will rightfully fall on Boris’ doorstep. On the other hand, Sir Keir Starmer looks like the most competent and convincing leader that Labour has had since Gordon Brown. My money is on Starmer leading Labour back into Government in the next election.
- Will there be an independence referendum in Scotland? No. This, I think, is only a matter of time in coming, but it will probably take some months for everyone in Britain to come to grips with the aftereffects of Brexit. Given the way in which the Tories rammed Brexit through, there will be enough momentum for an eventual second referendum to be called.
- Will the Greens be in Germany’s next governing coalition? Yes. Frankly, I don’t know enough of German politics to make a proper informed call on this particular question, but the FT seems confident that the Greens will be in the picture, and I have no reasonable argument at hand to depart from that judgment (haha, this one is a cop-out, I know!)
- Will Brussels charge a country with rule of law breaches in the use of EU funds? No. While the outrage surrounding Hungary’s Viktor Orban is rising, I doubt that the EU would want to pick a major fight internally while the union is still digesting the departure of the UK from its common market.
- Will Joe Biden be a lame duck president? No. While we will only definitively know this Tue if control of the Senate will fall to the Democrats, I believe that Biden will be able to utilise his deep knowledge of Washington to get deals done, with or without Mitch McConnell standing in the way. Trump gained a lot of political momentum by tapping into the frustrations of rural America, and Joe Biden is probably the Democrat best placed to ride that wave.
- Will the US and China reach a trade deal? No. There is already too much water under the bridge between the two countries, and it is already clear that the there will be a new Red Curtain walling off China and its allies from the rest of the global Internet. Biden won’t have much room to manoeuvre here: he will likely follow Trump’s lead in clearly designating China as America’s primary geopolitical rival.
- Will large-scale demonstrations erupt again in Hong Kong against China’s authority? No. The new internal security law is a game-changer. At this point, China will only further strengthen its hold over Hong Kong politics: dissenters will either face lengthened prison sentences, or leave Hong Kong to build their lives elsewhere. The days of Hong Kong as a global financial and business hub is coming to an end.
- Will India’s economy return to its pre-Covid size? Yes. While concerns remain over Modi’s authoritarian tendencies, the momentum of India’s one billion people will be hard to slow down. And as US-Chinese tensions continue to escalate, American investments into India will rise as the USA continues to enlist and strengthen Asian allies in its encirclement of China.
- Will Nicolas Maduro hold on to power in Venezuela? Yes. Juan Guaido’s moment in the sun has come and gone, and there is little stake for the USA to spend much effort to dislodge Maduro from power.
- Will the US rejoin the 2015 Iran nuclear deal? Yes. Trump’s recent gambits in the Middle East – moving the US embassy to Jerusalem, cozying up to MBS, turning a blind eye to the gruesome murder of Saudi journalist Khashoggi – and Netanyahu’s increasingly brazen appeals to the US Republican Party, will likely engender a rebalancing once the Democrats come to power. The Iran nuclear deal was a crowning achievement for the Obama-Biden administration, and the new president will likely want to rebuild the nuclear accord, partly to defang a long-time rival, but also to rebuild the strategic balance in the Middle East after the upheavals following the American occupation of Iraq.
- Will Ethiopia’s Abiy Ahmed be re-elected? Yes. He was decisive in his intervention in Tigray, and while that has certainly taken a bit of the shine off from his winning the Nobel Prize, it should mean that he would stay in power.
- Will US boardrooms become much less white? No. These things take time, and while the Black Lives Matter has indeed gained serious traction, it will take some time for this to be reflected in the upper echelons on Corporate America.
- Will 2021 be a turning point for electric cars? Yes. Tesla has shown that the time for the electric car is now, and with other automakers following suit, we should see a massive wave of electric car sales as well as electric recharging infrastructure investments across the world.
- Will the combined stock market value of the five biggest US tech companies top USD8tn? No. While the FT seems confident that tech companies are going to only go from strength to strength, I believe that the recent lawsuits against Google and Facebook will launch an avalanche of greater scrutiny against tech companies for their rising monopoly power across multiple industries. Also, the economic recovery following the ongoing vaccinations against Covid-19 will lead to a more broad-based economy resurgence, and channel money away from tech companies that have benefited mightily (and disproportionately) from the abrupt shift towards working from home of the past few months.
- Will more than half of the European office workers be back in the office? Yes. While the adoption of technology solutions will mean that many will continue to opt for remote or hybrid arrangements for working, nothing can beat face-to-face interactions.
- Will the S&P 500 finish above 4,000? Yes. Ultra low interest rates and broad-based global economic recovery will mean that more liquidity will find its way into the equity markets. Time to load up on your stock portfolio!
- Will global carbon emissions return to pre-pandemic levels? No. I think it will take some time for vaccinations to make their way across the global population, which means that the recovery in jet travel, as well as automotive commutes to the office, may take some months before they would come back to pre-pandemic levels.
- Will oil prices stay above USD50 a barrel? Yes. While renewable energy is certainly here to stay, it will take some time for the global economy to fully shift away from fossil fuels. The global economic recovery in 2021 will bring rising demand for oil, as well as other sources of energy.
Tiebreaker: What will Tesla’s market value be at the year end? While Tesla has rightfully done well in making the electric car truly mainstream, even aspirational, I believe that its current market price is already highly speculative. I would bet on the market price to eventually be around 80% – 100% of its current market price of around USD700/share, by the time we get to 1st Jan 2022.
Those are my takes for 2021. A few notable departures from the FT house position… we’ll see how it goes!
Budget 2021: A Walk into the Unknown?
As the debate over the 2021 Budget rages on in Parliament, we are faced with a possible outcome that has not been on the table for at least my own lifetime: the likelihood of a Budget Bill that is voted down by Parliament.
Firstly: how likely is this? The Government was clearly anxious enough about the likelihood of this Budget passing through Parliament, that it actually triggered the option of an Emergency (which was thankfully rejected by the Yang Di-Pertuan Agong). Instead, the Ruler exhorted all parliamentarians to set aside party affiliations, and lend their support to the Budget Bill, keeping in mind the ongoing economic carnage that has been wreaked by a global pandemic that is raging unabated.
And yet, the Agong’s call has been left unheeded.
Parties on both sides of the aisle – in weighing their own political interests – have made their own demands on the Budget, raising the spectre of a rejected Budget.
On the part of the Government, they have not yet fully given up on the hopes of triggering an Emergency; sprinkled throughout the daily newspapers over the past few days are the comments of various rent-a-quote professors, eager – no doubt – to ingratiate themselves with those in office by recalling their so-called merits of an Emergency that would allow a Budget to sail through unmolested.
The more interesting question is: what happens if the Budget is not passed? The responses have been interesting.
Finance Minister Tengku Zafrul have raised the possibility that civil servants might not get paid if the Budget is not passed. (This is technically correct: a failed Budget Bill could lead to a government shutdown, if the appropriate sums to run the day-to-day operations of the Government cannot be appropriated.
What the Finance Minister has left unsaid, and which DAP leaders have been (almost gleefully) pointing out, is that a failure to pass the Budget Bill will likely, based on Westminster convention, lead to the fall of the Perikatan Nasional government. A new Prime Minister needs to be appointed, and the Government formed by that Prime Minister will need to pass a Budget Bill in Parliament.
It is this grim outlook for the Government that has led many within the Perikatan government to still raise the option (almost longingly) for an Emergency, so that a Budget could be passed without the Government of the day incurring the risk of stepping down.
Personally, I don’t think an Emergency would be likely, or desirable. Could the Government fall? I would give it a 30% probability that something like this could happen. More likely is that some sort of last-minute compromise would be cobbled in order to come to a Budget that enough Parliamentarians would deign to vote for.
The alternative may well be uncharted waters for Malaysian democracy!
Muda and Political Disruption
The recent launch of a new political party, Muda, is an interesting new move in Malaysian politics. Of course, the idea of a multi-racial, multi-religious political party in Malaysia is not, in itself, a new thing.
Since the days of Datuk Onn and the Independence of Malaya Party (IMP), the idea of such a party has been floated many times over the years.
The track record of such parties, however, has not been especially stellar. IMP lost out to Umno and the Alliance in the race to win Merdeka; Gerakan made Penang its impregnable base for decades, but today is an abject shell of its former self; PKR won the most number of seats in the 14th General Election, but has been riven by division, and many continue to see the party as primarily a vehicle for the ambitions of Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim.
Muda is interesting. It is a party targeted towards younger voters, although not exclusively so. They promise a new politics of service, and disavow the race-based politics that has long been the animating framework of Malaysian politics since even before its inception as an independent nation. Brave and innovative; or naive and impudent?
There are some who dismiss Muda’s founder, Syed Saddiq Syed Abdul Rahman, as naive and impudent. How would this party appeal to an electorate that has long drawn its tribal lines along ethnic divisions? What does “middle Malaysia” really mean — is it merely code for the urban, Bangsar-bubble liberal youth? How would the party raise money?
Many questions remain. But what is especially interesting about the emergence of MUDA is its timing.
On one hand, the old political formulae are certainly breaking down. Barisan Nasional lost power after six decades in government. Longtime nemeses Umno and PAS are now bedfellows. The prime minister is the president of an Umno splinter party, when so many of such parties have come nowhere near to power at the Federal level.
Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad at the helm of yet another new Malay-based political party. Young Malays are gaining prominence in the leadership ranks of the DAP. Long-running factionalism in PKR has finally come out into the open.
The old political certainties of the past have been smashed up. New partnerships and coalitions are forming and breaking up. A new political consensus has yet to emerge, to take over from the old.
On the other hand, younger voters are becoming an increasingly important factor in Malaysian elections. These are voters who have lived their lives amidst rising economic prosperity, but fearful of what lies on the other side of this pandemic.
These are voters who take for granted the rapid economic growth of the past half century under BN rule, whose parents have benefited from the various institutions set up by the BN government — Mara, Felda, Tabung Haji — but whose most recent memory of Umno/BN rule is the spectre of 1MDB and the pillaging of those same institutions by politicians of the old guard.
These are voters who no longer depend on media that has been traditionally controlled by political parties, and now get their news from Facebook and Twitter and Cilisos and other media websites. They have far less loyalty to the BN political consensus, and their votes are up for grabs.
Can Muda take advantage of this unique season in Malaysian politics? Perhaps. The challenges are legion, and time is running short. But if its founders are willing and ready to play the long game, we might witness a new realignment in Malaysian politics, and Muda might well be on the leading edge of this disruptive revolution.
Originally published in The Malay Mail.
Malaysia, An Immigrant Nation
The recent debate on the merits of accommodating Rohingya refugees continues to perplex. If anything, this debate underlines Mahathir’s adage that people often forget.
After all, Malaysia is, first and foremost, an immigrant nation. Unless you are part of an Orang Asli tribe, chances are that your own family line has been a very recent addition to the melting pot of multiracial Malaysia. In fact, I believe that for most Malaysians of my generation, a quick look up the family tree would reveal at least one grandparent or great-grandparent who made that fateful decision to devote their lives to this land that has now become our “tanah tumpah darah”.
My own maternal grandmother was the daughter of a religious preacher from the uplands of Sumatra who eventually settled in Padang Rengas, Perak. Another grandmother was actually an immigrant herself, coming to these shores in matrimony to a local cleric in Kuang, Selangor.
Malaysia is a land built on the blood, sweat and tears of immigrants. Plantation workers, rubber tappers, tin miners, moneylenders, petty traders: the modern Malaysian economy was built on the contributions of those who chose this land to be their own.
And yet here we are, descendants of immigrants, so eager to jump on the most virulent of racist tropes about the Rohingya. And more so, in these first days of Ramadan, when Muhammad himself was a refugee who escaped persecution in Makkah to build a new life and a new Muslim nation in his newfound home that he renamed Madinah.
In the spirit of this holy month, let us together learn to let go of our prejudices, and learn to accept our fellow Muslims – nay, our fellow human beings – with the conviction of love and dignity that our Messenger made his life’s work.
What I’m Reading Lately – Mon 6 IV 2020
- If you are Malaysian and you have loans to pay, this is a good read.
- When people are angry and frustrated at their political leaders (whether rightly or wrongly), there often comes a time when the finger-pointing leads the public to assign (usually disproportionate) blame to the leaders’ advisors (especially when public criticism of the leader invites punishment): the Tsar’s Rasputin, the recent fascination with Dominic Cummings amongst Guardian columnists, and Pak Lah’s own Fourth Floor are examples of this. It seems Trump now has his “Slim Suit crowd” as another target for the wrath of the many people who cannot wait to vote him out in November.
- Some times I wonder: are Malaysian politicians just really unlucky? Were they tripped up by hapless advisors (see my earlier point above)? Or were they sabotaged by hidden hands? Or maybe Ockham was right, and the simplest explanation is like the most correct: that we just have too many inept folks in our political class.
Dear Coronavirus
Dear Coronavirus,
It hardly seems believable that a microscopic ball of genetic material wrapped in layers of spiky protein like yourself could be the cause of so much grief, bringing the complex global network of human civilisation down into an unprecedented halt.
I know that since you are, by definition, a virus – straddling that grey borderland between chemistry and biology – my attempting some sort of inter-species dialogue may well be an act of foolishness. But I cannot help but wonder, if such dialogue were possible, whether you might be looking at what you have wrought over the past few months with a sense of accomplishment or self-admiration.
You see, human beings have put great store and pride in the edifice of modern human accomplishments. We have tamed the seas, levelled the mountains, explored the darkest depths of the oceans, and have broken free of the persistent bonds of gravity to touch the face of a boundless expanse. Humans have built tall towers of gleaming glass and steel, turned our sandy deserts into oases of verdant green, and built our habitations in almost every known nook and cranny of this blue jewel of a planet. We have tamed bronze and steel and stone and glass, and fashioned them into every sort of ornament and device, including this iPad that I am writing these notes on. It is remarkable, looking at it: the marvels of human advancement and ingenuity.
But there is also increasing awareness amongst many of us, that these achievements, this singular human existence, has a worm living in its very core. We have purchased these wondrous gifts, at a steep price. Every day, humans excavate, devastate, and mutilate Nature for its seemingly-boundless bounty: we strip forests of their trees, we rid jungles of their animal inhabitants, so that we can build more houses and office towers and plantations and amusement parks. We mine the deepest ocean beds for oil to power our factories and our homes and our vehicles, sparing very little thought to the ways in which these activities poison the earth that we live on, in its emissions and spillages across our skies and oceans.
All this to keep human civilisation in motion: our automobiles constantly criss-crossing broad highways over hills and valleys; our investments in companies that fashion a myriad of widgets and baubles, and fulfil the diverse desires of humanity, from the most depraved to the most dignified. A never-ending parade of human comings and goings, in cities and countries that never sleep.
And suddenly, it all stops.
Cities in lockdown. Stock markets in free fall. Empty offices and factories.
We remain chained to our homes – still comfortable, mind you, with our Netflix binges and constant Whatsapp pings – but chained nonetheless. Economies measured in the billions and trillions are on the verge of seizure, gasping for breath, even as our fellow human beings, afflicted by a dreaded affliction – yes, you, my dear viral friend – that leaves the most vulnerable among us humans gasping for life.
I read today that viruses could evolve and survive for a long time – it seems the virus that causes oral herpes have been flitting around humanity for the past six million years!
As I was reading that, I wondered: how long have you been watching us, Coronavirus (the one that our health practitioners call “Covid-19”)? How long have you been silently observing us, just waiting for the time to pounce?
As it is, humanity is rallying back. We are being asked now to separate ourselves, to distance ourselves socially, to break the chain and flatten the curve, so that we may deny you, my dear Coronavirus, of the possibility of untrammelled procreation. For our most vulnerable to survive your sudden onslaught, we need you to die, to disappear, to run out of future hosts.
I am one of those people who believe that Nature is the work of a Magnificent and Almighty Creator. We are of those who believe that God “did not create the Heaven and the Earth and everything between them in vain.” (Quran 38:27)
We believe that everything – every single thing – from the largest of the planets in orbit, to the very smallest of living things (yes, even you, dear Coronavirus!) is a wondrous Sign of His Benevolence and Mercy. We believe that every rock, every plant, every animal, every living thing and inanimate object, sings praises to Him, at every moment in the history of Creation.
I believe – nay, I know – that you have been set upon us a test, just as so many other things in life are a test for us. Today, we struggle, we cry and we bleed, in a desperate effort to save our fellow human beings from an untimely end at your hands. We tremble at what you have wrought. And yet, for many of us, we are also reminded that your rampant virulence, your frightening ability to bring our most treasured livelihoods to a halt, are yet another reminder of His Awesome Majesty.
We know this, and we accede to His Power and Glory, in all humility. But it is not a signal for meek surrender. We will struggle, we will rally back, and we will beat you. It will be at great cost, as we are already discovering, but we will do it, and we will get it done.
Perhaps, when the dust has settled, and we have beaten you back into an existential corner, we may be able to take a longer and harder look at how we have lived our lives, and how we can bend that massive mesh of human existence towards a more humane arc; one that seeks to walk down the face of this earth with humility, which aims to live in true harmony with Nature and with our own selves.
I pray that day will come soon.
ZIAD HAFIZ BIN ABD RAZAK
Originally published in the Malay Mail.