OCTOBER 7 ― It was meant to break the impasse, or at least to improve the clarity.
My message to the WhatsApp group.
“Is our nation fair to all its people?”
This was a group of well-educated progressives but with diverse views, especially when it came to politics and nation-building.
Prior, an article was shared intimating the country was heading the wrong way and many Malaysians may opt out. The writer disaggregated the sentiment according to race without any basis which riled some.
To my question, the answers were evenly split in two specific ways.
First, to deflect. That it can be worse, it is worse elsewhere and even perceived paragons of virtue like the US struggle. Fair is illusory.
The other is to assert that there is no place like home. Nasi lemak, warts and all. Whether thousands of miles away prancing under the Eiffel Tower or looking for lost cattle in the Argentinean Pampas, home is a sweet recollection. What beats curry mee?
They could not muster the courage to answer directly. It cuts whichever way it is said, by anyone in the group. Maybe only columnists speak out since they insist on having adversaries on all sides.
The group was made of NEP (New Economic Policy) children, born around its 1970 launch and the first to go headfirst into a social experiment to differentiate opportunities in order to level the playing field.
Now, between their mid-forties and early fifties, their thoughts are circumspect as their race (life race!) is more than half run.
Twenty years ago, from the same cohort — Yahoo Groups! anyone? — some would defend the system they came through, and some were keen to rebut the system which excluded them.
A lot has happened in the country and world since. Certainly, a lot has occurred in the lives of the NEP Children.
My generation was asked to respect the goal of common prosperity regardless of the contentious history dominating it.
However, next generations are palpably different. They must rationalise within a globalised measuring station. To put it plainly, do things without ignoring how the rest of the world sees fairness.
Fairness like the United Nation’s Seventeen Sustainable Development Goals (17SDGs) are aspirations to walk towards even if impossible to achieve in one lifetime. The walk has got brisker — or The Highlander’s quickening — due to global disruptions.
The old way to disguise our ways as Malaysian flavoured does not cut it anymore. The stench grows.
How to justify rights by virtue of race in a country?
Stop and think about that. To discriminate is to discriminate.
Earth’s zeitgeist to fairness — to walk slow is fine, to walk in the opposite direction is inexcusable. Especially when a nation seeks to be a senior and responsible member of the international community.
While man is tribal and conceited, enlightened societies seek to fight those primitive urges with knowledge and reason. Fixing the past begins with the willingness to accept the past was wrong without being vindictive.
The objective of today’s column is to warn. The steadier minds in power do realise the national ethos is skewed and that the burden to correct will become heavier with every generation.
The cost of doing little today by those who can would only punish those yet to be involved.
For it is clear, the current batch of politicians are stepping up their dysfunction like junkies who upped their dosage without consulting their crack dealers because they found pamphlets in the bin.
First, they rush to uphold virtue and wokeness. For instance, the Kisona Selvaduray fallout. One man racially slurs her.
The whole thing is unfortunate, and I wish Kisona and all other Malaysian athletes a life during and after sports free of abuse and full of success.
Borhanuddin Che Rahim, a mid-level politician who I suspect is a NEP Child, behaved in a way completely normal 30 years ago. Normal to a different time in Malaysia.
Within days, he feels the wrath of a nation. He resigns from his party position and apologises not only to Kisona but to all Malaysians. Former national champion Roslin Hashim, born in 1975, asks Borhanuddin to seek forgiveness from the national shuttler and her family in person. Roslin is Kelantanese, just like Borhanuddin.
If my late father was alive to hear about one Kelantanese — the most monoethnic state in the federation — chiding another Kelantanese openly and strongly over his hatred of a young Indian girl, he’d absolutely do backflips.
What would have just passed as a comment and no more, today becomes a national furore.
Today, even if the three main Semenanjung parties in power are avowed racialists — using the Mahathir term to remove stigma — they must condemn racist behaviour. This is a different Malaysia.
But at the same time, because they are committed to the idea that this should be a differentiated country — always appear to care more about Malays — they dance to two tunes at the same time.
“Welcome, we have a great modern idea to improve the Malaysian economy. We will give this much to this many to get that much done. This is Keluarga Malaysia, and no one will be left behind, no one. We are a keluarga. Thank you. But we realise the Bumiputera need help, and we will make sure they will benefit more from this.
“Not more than the rest because this is one country and everyone matters. The same, everyone matters the same, except Malays matter different and the same at the same time. Have you caught a show called Quantum Leap in the 1980s. Sorry, I am a NEP-child. All of this is confusing.”
I almost feel for politicians today. They have to stay in line with equity as the Internet is around, and they have to play the race card since they operate in Malaysia, ending up mixed up as much as their work.
The only sane way out is a reboot. Otherwise, the mental health bill for parliamentarians will skyrocket.
Fairness in Malaysia needs a revisit, because the storm brews, and the NEP Children in charge or on the verge of assuming national power — soon or in the next decade — must lead the issue, not just react to it.
They tacitly comprehend trust is central to nation building. Differentiated models do not work. They forge mistrust. But the times were different before, and the times are quite different now.
As NEP Children they are not responsible for the past, but they are completely raised in the system, and if they love their children they must reboot how we approach fairness without the burden of history.
The family part is right, but the current model does not do the trick. It tells us to be a family without any of us being asked to act like family.
How to start?
Maybe they can forward my question to their WhatsApp groups.
*This is the personal opinion of the columnist.
