MARCH 19 — Future democracy, just like pensions, will be paid for by those who play on the streets today.
Prepping those to lead the future is a grave matter.
Except here, in Malaysia, we beat our young blue and black until they lose the fire of defiance.
There’s a one-word mode preferred for our young, don’t. Don’t do, don’t be, don’t see, don’t dare. When in doubt, don’t. When action is necessary, don’t.
To be absolutely objective, it is brilliantly clear. No way to misunderstand the instruction. Inertia is the state’s enemy and our youth must avoid it like leprosy.
They are told, as I was told, as millions are told on a daily basis, growing up.
As are a student group in Universiti Malaya told to cease use of the university’s logo. In the Madani spirit, the Ministry of Higher Education (MOHE) steps in and asks for consultation between the parties. Universiti Malaya and Liga Mahasiswa Universiti Malaya (LMUM).
How would the negotiations be?
UM: We own the logo
LMUM: No university without students
UM: Register as a valid university organisation and then you can use the logo
LMUM: You won’t register us
UM: Yes, but you can apply.
Instead of negotiations, let’s do this. Let’s not negotiate. It is standard operation from those in power, to buy time.
Keep talking about recognition and the dissident students would have graduated by then.
The immensely potent side of the don’t ethos is that time is a friend, not a foe.
The law is on the side of the university, since they derive their authority, appointment and funding from those who make the laws.
The government backs the universities’ administrators in the whole, in exchange the administrators back the government. It is completely circular.
In any given time, the university will be in the right, and the students in the wrong. The power dynamics are so one-sided it barely deserves a discourse.
A super quick history of organisations
Liga Mahasiswa Universiti Malaya (LMUM) is an organisation I do not know much about, other than their limited press releases and their social media posts. Same also for New Gen or Umany. I don’t need to.
As long as they adhere to the general principles of peaceful association, whether inside or outside the university, they have a right to exist.
That’s not me, that’s the federal Constitution Article 10(1)(c). Nor is the government a referee to determine who deserves to avail Constitutional guarantees.
I do know, however, it is mightily difficult to organise in Malaysia. Ask those who run from resident associations to cultural organisations to political parties. It is an exercise of pain, to bring Malaysians together even if it is for their own gain.
It’s a dual challenge, though interrelated. Firstly, legal.
The Postal and Telecommunications Co-operative Thrift and Loan Society Limited Company was the first co-operative society to be registered in the country, officially recorded on 21 July 1922.
It’s been a trudge, to form associations, through the recession in the 30s to the second world war and then the march to independence.
The deregistered Malayan Communist Party (MCP) mounting an armed insurgency in 1948 did not reflect too well about how societies aid public order.
Two, the hiccups of the past and government conditioning, have institutionalised nationwide paralysis. People have completely morphed into inactivity since it’s dangerous to participate, and it’s safe to not participate.
We are generally people who want social evolution — better drains, trains and brains — without us rolling up our sleeves.
Just look at our politics. Beyond identity politics, the adults cannot form arguments. Worse, they struggle to form sentences.
Which is why fidgety university administrators fear active students. They challenge our long established culture of praying for social progress rather than fighting for it.
It’s spectacular that despite every measure to demotivate them, trap their inertia and scare out of them any enthusiasm, these students came out wanting to stand for something.
In among the 20,000 odd students, small collectives of bold actors venture out to speak about their rights, their thoughts, deliver their demands and say they have as much right to own the university as those who run it.
They do so while the threat of disciplinary action hovers over them. It is magnificent to watch.
2050
It’s the future now. Malaysia is still around.
A round of troubles arrives with the adjacent turmoil. Threatening the long-term prosperity and durability of the country.
Those who were 21 in 2026, are 45 presently. They lead the country.
Who’d we from the past want to deal with those challenges? If we can choose today the future doers.
Those — from the legitimate student councils — who diligently accept guidance from the university administrators, relegate student issues as secondary to making the vice-chancellor and his adults happy their overwhelming priority, and take cute pictures with blazers when they collect commendation letters and medals from the university, or the rebels?
Those who drill themselves to stamp out all initiative, because this way the great leaders are not upset, or those who constantly have new ideas and stand by them?
Those who appreciate personal gain through the demonstration of repeated obeisance to university administrators, or those who challenge the university administrators at every turn over principles and general ideas of human rights?
The snivelling, whingeing and docile creatures of the establishment have always been celebrated here. They usually get titles. They don’t get ideas.
I don’t know whether any of the people at these upstarts like Liga Mahasiswa, New Gen or Umany stay the course or give in to the temptations of the easy road, because condominiums with swimming pools and business class holiday travels do not pay for themselves. But they have started on a journey which demands courage, versatility and cleverness.
The prime minister himself was a rebel in that university in the late Sixties and a firebrand activist in the Seventies. The deputy minister at MOHE, Adam Adli Abd Halim, is a former leader of student agitators in his university and afterwards into a series of social issues.
It can all go wrong, and most often life gets in the way. But to refuse the space or the chance to defend a place for the young, vibrant and loud today stillborns a better future for the country.
Universiti Malaya does not need to be proud of them or understand them, but it can sense they have gumption. That’s not the worst thing to be associated with, as a university.
That won’t embarrass the logo of the country’s oldest university, if anything, it gives it character.
* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.
