- It is a strange thing to grieve for. A herd of like-minded people. A vehicle for pursuing, seeking, maintaining political power and domination. A collective of similarly-faced, similarly-named, similarly-garbed humanity, named and marked and made intelligible with insignia and flag and song and creed.
- But also a community of people who understand one another. Who band together to yoke the human powers of a young nation, its sinews and hopes and grit, into sprawling roads and gleaming spires.
- “Keramat”. Hallowed. Noble. Dignified. A rather pompous word to describe a seething mass of ambition and belief and camaraderie and struggle. But deeply felt. More than just a name on a card or an official form. Not merely an annual general meeting of the believers and the strivers and the schemers. A movement. A people within a people.
- To remember a glorious past. Demonstration. Mobilisation. Negotiation. Declamation. A young people claiming their right to exist. To govern themselves. To give deed to promises made. To forge a nation out of the disparate and messy strands of migration and immigration – the grime of lives made and remade. Deeds now hallowed in history books.
- Deeds now made into shallow and mocking echos, mouthed by a mongrel mob. Thin and hollow and blasted – these are the calling cards of an army of pygmies, claiming the mantle of past glories with which to cloak their cowardice.
- The emperor is clothed in lies and deceit and self-deception, but the imperium marches on, wilfully blind and mute and dumb. Ever onwards, ever loyal, ever grieving.
Three Things I am Thinking about Today #2
- Another anti-Trump politician is self-purging himself from the Republican Party, asking himself, ““You could fight your butt off and win this thing, but are you really going to be happy?” I wonder if a similar trend might soon take place in Umno. The Bossku phenomenon suggests that Umno is at a crossroads: will the party turn back towards the middle ground, and reclaim the popular vote that it has progressively lost since 2008? Or will Umno stay in its current hard-right corner, justifying corruption and grand larceny in the name of Malay supremacy?
- The fact that an 84-year old Ku Li is still a “player” in Umno – the party of Tunku and Tun Razak and Tun Dr. Ismail – shows the depths of the party’s current lack of leadership talent.
- China trolls its Pacific neighbours, even as the US tightens its focus on Asia with its recent Aukus deal.
300 Words About Learning to Let Go
It doesn’t appear much on the front pages of Sinar Harian or Utusan Malaysia, but I cannot stop thinking about the recent announcement of the AUKUS alliance, which certainly helped to advance America’s intentions to escalate its stance against China, but has also brought the relationship between the USA and France to a level of tension that has not been seen since the late 18th century.
What was particularly interesting to me is the venom with which France has responded to the recent developments. French diplomats called it “a stab in the back.” “You can’t understand the depth of our anger and sense of having been disrespected.” These words from the French ambassador to Australia were very telling.
Just like Brexit, I believe that the fury of the French reaction can only be truly understood when seen in the long arc of imperial history.
The French, under Napoleon, were on the brink of European – and by extension, given the colonial drive of the 1800s, one could even say World – domination, until Waterloo. French history, since then, has been one long slide downwards, culminating in the submission to Germany in World War II, the humiliation of Dien Bien Phu, and the loss of Algeria.
Like Britain, France has struggled to adapt to the realities of postwar Europe, and the primacy of America. How will France move forward from here? If Britain’s example is anything to go by, there will be further flailings of existential angst to come.
Will France go as far as switching its allegiance away from its Atlantic allies, and cozy up to Russia and China? At the moment, this seems rather unlikely, but stranger – and more suicidal – things have happened when nations cannot let go of a glorious but all-too-distant past.
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.