Tag: Malaysia

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On Being “Local”

When I was in school in the mid-1980s, we used to say, of something inferior, that it was “local”.

Kasut kau local, lah.

Baju dia local betul.

It was certainly unreflexive – you hear the word bandied about amongst older boys in school, you try it on in your own conversations, you get familiar with how it fits into the way you praise or deride something.

It was only much later in life, when I was older, that I would reflect on these conversations, and especially that term – “local”. I suppose it was a natural reflex for a young nation, still grappling with its sense of identity and self-pride. Industrialisation and manufacturing was still a nascent thing in 1980s Malaysia, and there was a natural expectation that anything manufactured locally would be inferior, sub-standard, poor.

I am old enough to remember when the first Proton Saga appeared on our local roads. Most Malaysians were still happy to use second-hard Corollas and Civics, and there was a real skepticism that Malaysians could make something as complex as a car.

Today, “Made in Malaysia” is no longer a pejorative, and we are known throughout the world as a major hub for manufacturing, especially in electronics and electrical goods. I doubt if children still use the term “local” to describe something sub-par, and I suppose it is a mark of the times that no one says this anymore.

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On MUDA and Political Disruption II

Back in Sep 2020, I wrote some initial thoughts about MUDA, the new kid on the block of Malaysian politics. Having left Bersatu after the spectacular implosion of the Pakatan Harapan government in 2020, former Minister of Youth and Sports Syed Saddiq Syed Abdul Rahman decided to form his own political vehicle, tapping on the idealism and energy of a new generation of young voters. While the Malaysian United Democratic Alliance was never specifically an “age-ist” organisation, the fact that the party’s acronym was a Malay word for “young”, and that the President himself was in his 20s, suggested that MUDA was always going to pitch is political message towards the younger segment of the Malaysian electorate, which was expanded greatly following a bipartisan vote in Parliament to extend the right to vote to Malaysians aged 18 and above.

The party started on a real swing of momentum, and came into its own during the great floods of 2021. It was quick to marshal support to the most affected areas, and made its presence felt in many flood areas across the country, with many young volunteers choosing to participate via MUDA’s coordination.

However, as mentioned in my Sep 2020 essay, the prospects of newly-formed political parties in Malaysia have never been especially stellar. Like many developing countries, political parties tend to be very tribal, and the political base of the largest political parties tend to reflect the major cleavages within society, be it ethnic, religious, class-based, or geographic.

In the case of MUDA, they were very clear on their primary target market: young, liberal urban and suburban voters, typically in their 20s and below, mostly affluent enough to believe that they have “transcended” the primal ethnic lenses of their parents. The problem, of course, is that this voter bank is already hotly contested by both PKR and DAP, both of whom typically would split the urban/suburban vote between themselves amongst ethnic lines: the more Chinese-dominated areas like Kepong and Batu would be natural DAP home ground, while PKR has staked its political fortunes on the Malay suburbs of Gombak, Setiawangsa, and Bandar Tun Razak. Where does MUDA play in all this?

As it happens, we saw the play in the recent general elections. MUDA was mostly squeezed out of the selection process for the main urban and suburban seats that they had pitched their hopes on. Today, they still have only one Member of Parliament, with Syed Saddiq holding on to Muar. To add insult to injury, the Unity Government secretariat has been taking great pains to snub MUDA, having held several meetings without MUDA representatives being invited.

What does the future hold for MUDA? Without any natural voter base to speak of, and the polarisation of Malaysian politics set to continue to play itself out primarily along racial lines, I think MUDA will probably only survive for another one or two election cycles, before it gets swallowed up, most likely into PKR, from my perspective. Unless MUDA begins to take clear measures to carve out a distinctive and meaningful niche for itself in Malaysian politics, I believe it is fair to say that the beginning of the end for this plucky political party is already well under way.

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Tentang Pembalasan

Apa kau sangka semua perlakuanmu itu
Tiada akan membawa kepada pembalasan?
Kini tergelar banduan, kau rayukan kemaafan
Setelah seluruh dunia menyaksikan tindakrakusmu?

Binimu berhujankan emas permata
Anakmu berfoya di pentas karpet merah
Dengan rezeki rakyat yang mudah kau jarah
Sekarang ini kau rayu maaf dengan juraian airmata?

Tak cukupkah dengan harta yang telah tersakau?
Tak cukupkah dengan nyawa yang hilang melayang?
Tak cukupkah dengan tiangarash negara yang bergoyang?
Semuanya harus bersujudturut demi engkau?
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Tentang Melayu, 2023

(dengan pohonan maaf buat arwah Tongkat Warrant)

Melayu itu orang yang bijaksana,
Nakalnya beriring senyum,
Budi bahasa berbunga kuntum,
Kurang ajarnya tetap hormat,
Tutur kata tersusun cermat.

Tapi Melayu kini sudah mula berubah:

Bila menipu tak tau malu,
Bila menyakau berbilion disapu,
Bila mengampu lebat berkipas,
Taat pada bos tiada berbatas.

Tetap berani walau bersalah,
Walau ranap cembul khazanah,
Sudah jadi adat, 
lidah menipu ligat.

Melayu di tanah Semenanjung luas maknanya:
Jawa itu Melayu,
Bugis itu Melayu,
Keturunan Nusantara adalah Melayu. 
Sekarang ini taikun itu Melayu,
Peguam itu Melayu,
Akauntan itu Melayu,
CEO itu Melayu.
Tapi sayangnya,
Yang menunggang agama itu juga Melayu, 
Yang memberi rasuah, Melayu,
Yang makan rasuah, memang ramai Melayu,
Yang sakau duit rakyat itu Melayu, 
Tapi masih tergamak mengaku 
kununnya dialah pembela Melayu.

Dalam sejarahnya,
Melayu itu pengembara berani,
Melawan penjajah demi pertiwi,
Melorongkan jalur bangsa merdeka,
Mentadbir negara adil saksama.
Namun sayangnya,
Begitu luas khazanah negara,
Dijarah disakau pengkhianat bangsa.

Melayu itu kaya falsafahnya,
Kias kata pepatah lama,
Tapi sayangnya, 
Akalbudi pupus dibedal,
Kuasa menang melawan akal.

Melayu sekarang kuat bersorak,
Bangga rezeki Tiktok secupak,
Sedangkan kampung lama tergadai,
Sawah ladang tinggal tersadai,
Tali di tangan mudah dibuang,
Timba yang ada diberi orang,
Dengan harga seguni Birkin,
Amanah rakyat dibuat main. 

Melayu itu masih bermimpi,
Walaupun sudah mengenal Harvard, LSE,
Sanggup merompak bangsa sendiri,
Berkelahi cara UMNO,
"Ready to fight" jadi laungan,
Tapi tak sanggup bertarunglawan,
Marahnya dengan diam,
Musuh dibidik dengan meriam,
Menangnya cara kasar,
Ghanimah cita sebenar.   
 
Melayu asalnya menolak permusuhan,
Tapi Melayu hari ini tiada sempadan,
Kalau menang, menang terpaling,
Kalau kalah, ke lubang cacing. 

Maruah dan agama jadi tunggangan,
Berlumba demi mencari gelaran,
Alphardnya hitam berkilat,
Lencana kereta mempamer pangkat,
Banglo besar di Bukit Jelutong,
Hidupnya berkiblat laba dan untung.

Baiknya hati Melayu itu tak terbandingkan,
Semua ujaran Presiden patuh diturutkan,
Sehingga tercipta sebuah kiasan:

"Nak hidup, bos!"

Bagaimanakah Melayu abad kedua puluh satu,
Masihkah sanggup asyik tertipu?
Jika yakin kuasa Ilahi,
Usah penyamun dijulangtinggi,
Jika percaya kepada keadilan,
Jangan malu perjuang kebenaran.
Jadilah bangsa bijak dan gagah,
Tolak penghasut tolak perasuah,
Peganglah erat talian Allah,
Jadilah tuan negara bermaruah.
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Tentang Jalur Gemilang

Jalur merah putih itu,
Berselang seli menyulam darah dan keringat,
Memaksa sebangsa agar tekun mengingat
Pengorbanan dulu.

Medan biru melaut,
Kanton megah yang terhampar aman,
Lambang hikmah sebuah kebangsaan,
Padamu kami berpaut. 

Sabit dan bintang,
Kuning payungan gemilang daulat,
Setianya kami teguh tiada bersyarat,
Selamanya dijulang.
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On First and Third Worlds

It was a typical balmy KL afternoon as we were driving towards Mid Valley. The sky was clouded over, and there was a faint promise of rain. As I was steering the car gently towards the basement parking entrance of the Gardens mall, the entrance booth slowly came into view. I did the usual instinctive thing, reaching out to the console on the car’s dashboard where I normally keep my Touch ‘n’ Go card. Just as I was about to lift the card out of its faux-leather sleeve, I noticed, at a glimpse from the corner of my eye, that the parking terminal accepted not only the usual cashless payment of Touch ‘n’ Go, but would also accept credit card payments, including MyDebit, with its distinctive Wifi-looking logo.

“Eh. Can pay with credit card now. I wonder if I can use Apple Pay for parking here.”

“Ooh,” Kat replied. “Try lah.” My wife knew me too well enough by now to know two things. One: I hate unfair and inefficient monopolies on public services, with a level of detestation that Kat herself would normally reserve for cat torturers. Two: ever since I was able to use Apple Pay on my iPhone, I have been constantly delighted at the ability to merely double-press a button, look at my phone to unlock the Apple Pay pay option, and then simply swipe my phone over a terminal to effect payment – my favourite First World-level dopamine shot.

I tried it – and voila, it worked! There I was, happily steering my car past the parking entrance booth with a big smile on my face. Never fails.

Anyways, some minutes later, I found a parking spot not too far from the lobby entrance (another pet habit of mine, the pursuit of which can sometimes drive Kat out of her mind), and as we were heading up the escalators and found ourselves walking past the shops on the lower ground level, a sudden thought came to my mind:

“Alamak! Now I remember: the last time I used Apple Pay to enter a parking lot, I couldn’t exit. This silly building in Bangi hadn’t updated its parking system, and so I could enter the parking with Apple Pay, but the parking terminal couldn’t recognise my Apple Pay when exiting. Hmm. I wonder if I might get stuck when we exit later.”

“Oh well,” Kat said, as she normally would when entertaining my sudden bouts of petty anxiety. “If we can’t exit nanti, you just hit the intercom and ask for help, lah. You’ll be that guy, but it won’t be the end of the world.”

“Hmm, okay.” I shelved the thought away from my mind, and for the next two hours, I didn’t think much of it: the movie turned out to be much more entertaining than I had expected, and by the final joke at the end of the movie credits, the entire hall erupted in whoops of delighted laughter.

“Good movie, huh?? Jarnathan hahah!!!” I was beaming.

“Yeah!” Kat grinned. We fell into talking about our favourite parts of the movie, excitedly. It was a good afternoon.

We did some errands at the pharmacy and the supermarket, and then it was time to head back home. As we got into the car, and I was driving towards the exit, I remembered again with distaste that there was a possibility that I might not be able to easily exit. What I was really anxious about, typically, was that getting stuck at the parking exit would delay others behind me whose lives would be unduely disrupted by something I had committed. The dictum of hidup jangan menyusahkan orang was something I held very closely to heart, and I was happy always to lambast those who would break it. Now it could well be my turn to menyusahkan hidup orang.

As the parking exit booth loomed closer, I slowed down the car to a halt, and pressed the button on my right to roll down the window. (Remember those days when you had to actually wind a crank to bring the window down? Amazing.) I lifted my iPhone from its resting place in the centre console of the car, did the usual Open, Sesame gestures on my phone, waved the front of the phone near the parking console, and winced quietly as the seconds ticked, until –

The exit bar lifted up! It worked! In a fit of delight, I did a little whoop, pumped my fist into the air and yelled out with the car window still down: “Oh yeah! First world, baby!”

As the car eased its way past the exit booth and climbed upwards through the exit ramp into the open air, Kat couldn’t resist: “Hmm. If Lee Kwan Yew could crow about bringing Singapore from Third World to First, I guess we can be proud that Malaysia already has First World moments while still in Third!”

Ba-dum-tishhhh.

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Tentang Lebai Alphard

(dengan pohonan ampun maaf buat penulis lagu asal)

Sepohon kayu daun berlendir
Lebat bunganya serta buahnya
Walaupun mulut berbuih "takbir!"
Kalau dah tak ikhlas apa gunanya?

Lihatlah, situ, si Lebai Alphard
Kopiah putih, hidupnya mewah
Rumah banglo tersergam megah
Akhlaknya bau bak ubat gegat!

Tunggang agama sehari-hari
Elaun berkoyan poket sendiri
Supaya nanti peroleh undi
Kuasa duniawi dijunjung tinggi.