SEPTEMBER 30 — The Malacca Bar was kind enough to invite me to speak on a panel last Saturday, in conjunction with the United Nations Day of Peace. I say this because the event was unexpectedly a riot, despite the serious subject matter and it was not just enlightening but seriously entertaining.
I would be stupid to turn down an event that would have not just “little lamb” activist Syed Azmi as my fellow speaker but Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad himself would be giving the keynote. Dr Mahathir even did us a favour by turning up late (Malacca weekend traffic is terrible) and ensuring the captive audience would have to sit through the panelists’ sessions before Dr Mahathir’s arrival.
Of course he made quite the entrance — right in the middle of Bar Representative Karen Cheah’s presentation on the rule of law’s role in maintaining peace. Bravo to her for maintaining her composure even with a loudly “Yam Seng-ing” wedding party next door and then Dr Mahathir arriving just when she was getting to some rather salient points.
Dr Mahathir, having caught the tail end of Cheah’s talk later, cheekily stated, “In this world, there is no such thing as the rule of law. There is only ‘might is right’.”
Unfortunately for our former prime minister, he was seated right next to someone with just as much cheek: me.
During a public Q&A, after he had answered a question pertaining to race relations, I then added that when it came to having more than one race get along, Sabah and Sarawak had already figured that all out.
It was tiresome, I said, as an East Malaysian, to feel invisible and left out of the dialogue when it came to talking about Malaysia.
Poor Dr Mahathir thought I’d felt offended by his leaving Sabah and Sarawak out when he talked about how Malaysia was formed via consensus, in the pre-Independence days. To give him credit, he did apologise and sadly I didn’t manage to clarify that he had no need to (though if we were talking about Project IC things might have veered into testy territory).
I found out something unexpected that day; that despite Dr Mahathir being known for being a stalwart champion for the rights and dignity of the Malays, he had interesting views about what unity meant.
A member of the audience had asked him how we as Malaysians could finally be united and he said that there really wasn’t some magical, elusive one thing.
He’d thought we could, like the Americans, all adopt and embrace a common language, a national identity. But, he’d realised that while he could push Bahasa Malaysia to be used in official functions, he could not make everyone use it. Even at the forum, Dr Mahathir declared, if he tried to speak in Bahasa, perhaps half the room wouldn’t understand him.
What he realised then, was that we didn’t need to be “one.” It was good enough, it was a darn-near miracle that a population as diverse as ours got on. It was enough, he conceded for Malaysians to just be able to put aside the petty things and just get on with their lives.
Yes, Dr Mahathir took plenty of opportunities to make both veiled and blatant swipes at our current prime minister. I understood right then, though, that he knew with certainty that the things he learned — that the flawed concept of unity was overrated and that peace and just “getting on” seemed simple and yet was so fundamental to Malaysia’s success — were things the current administration did not value.
I think we forget, in our obsession with current events, that the narrative of our country is so much more diverse and encompassing than what news headlines can capture.
So maybe we don’t all want to speak the national language but I’m beginning to think what we really love, besides food, is this strange peace we have.
Maybe, just maybe, that’s all we need.
* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.
