Tag Archives: Bersih

May 11, 2018 · 20:23

What Malaysia Means

I woke up on Tuesday morning in London on edge, thinking about Malaysia. A general election was due to be held the next day, Wednesday May 9, and I had not slept well. The campaigning had been outright dirty, even by Malaysia’s already chequered standards. We all knew this would be a crucial election – our country could not go on as it had. With Malaysia’s soul being fought for, it felt wrong to be so far away.

The crazy idea entered my head that I ought to go back. I began searching the Internet for flights and tickets and found that if I took a flight on Tuesday evening, I would arrive in time for the election results. It would be a thirteen-hour flight on a trip I had not even planned, but so what? I had done mad things before.

At the last general election five years prior, I had sat glued to screens in London, flipping between sites on the blogosphere. I was cautiously optimistic at the outset (see blog-post Malaysia’s Election Eve) and bitter by the end. I felt profound disappointment, not because what I had hoped for did not materialise, but because I believed that a small win had been stolen from the opposition.

There were reports of a dodgy electoral roll, washable indelible ink, mysterious ballot boxes and non-Malaysian voters. As I sat and watched the numbers trickling in it was clear, even from London, that the results were being massaged. Incumbent wins were reported quickly while opposition wins were delayed. At some point I remember a convenient power breakdown at Radio Television Malaysia. Perhaps my memory is playing tricks, but that is what I recall. Would it be different this time?

I did not know; I knew only what I felt – that I could not stay away. No matter what the outcome, I had to be there for these critical hours.

I packed hurriedly. I was surprised by how full the flight was, crowded with returning Malaysians like me. We landed just after polls closed. Kuala Lumpur, though calm, had an element of tense excitement.

It felt right to be back. Up in the air at thirty seven thousand feet, I finally understood how much Malaysia means to me. The bond I have with this land is unbreakeable. I carry Malaysia inside – it doesn’t matter that I’ve lived longer elsewhere.

If I had stayed away at this seminal moment in Malaysia’s history, I would have regretted it for the rest of my life.

The past forty eight hours have been exhilarating and sleepless, if a little worrying, but I would not have exchanged them for anything else. Yet, when I made the decision to come, we did not know how things would turn out. Some friends thought I was flying into trouble.

We know now that the opposition coalition of hope, Pakatan Harapan, led by Malaysia’s former Prime Minister Tun Mahathir Mohamad, secured an unequivocal win . The transition to a new government is not over and there is plenty of speculation about attempted chicanery by members of the previous government. But they are now dust; I don’t want to talk about them. What I’d rather focus on is that even if you aren’t Malaysian and haven’t visited Malaysia, my country can still be a beacon for you.

Because we Malaysians have achieved what once seemed utterly impossible.

We have managed to vote out a government that was tyrannical, rotten and so corrupt by the end that I’m told its cronies were seen openly bribing voters on the streets. Despite this and despite using every trick in the book – the gerrymandering of boundaries, an Election Commission unfit for office, an electoral roll on which as many as 15% of voters did not have addresses – they lost. Malaysians voted them out. The odds were stacked against us, but we did it.

We did this together, we Malaysians of all races and faiths. We came together as Malay, Chinese, Indian and everything in between; we came together as Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, Christian, Sikh, atheist and whatever else; we came together for the common cause of saving our beloved country. We did this without bloodshed, riots or unrest.

This is something we can truly be proud of.

As I write this, the euphoria has not settled. We are still celebrating. The road forward will be hard – we know that. But it does not detract from what a great thing we Malaysians have done. And if we can do it, others can too. God bless Malaysia.

10 Comments

Filed under Identity, Malaysia

Tagged as , , , , , , ,

May 31, 2017 · 17:23

I Have a Dream

Martin Luther King once began: ‘I have a dream…’

I, too, have a dream. In my dream racial discrimination in Malaysia is a thing of the past. In this dream my homeland, Malaysia, has transformed into a country known for good governance. In my dream Malaysia is a beacon: a multi-racial, multi-religious and multi-cultural country in which I, though largely of Chinese descent, am treated as an equal citizen.

With each passing day this dream recedes further into the abyss. Racial discrimination in Malaysia is now entrenched. The country’s governance gets from bad to worse. And its list of scandals grows longer.

When it comes to corruption, Malaysia competes well with the likes of China and Mexico – a staggering feat for a country of only 30 million. According to Global Financial Integrity, the developing countries with the largest illicit outflows between 2001 and 2010 were China, Mexico and Malaysia. No surprise, then, that US$1.2 billion found their way into the Prime Minister’s personal bank account in the scandal known as 1MDB. How such an astounding amount arrived there is something which Najib Razak, Malaysia’s Prime Minister, has still not explained properly, yet the man remains Prime Minister and looks unlikely to be deposed!

Hand-in-hand with corruption have come increasing Muslim fundamentalism and concomitant attacks on religious freedom, the latter always carried out under the guise of ‘protecting Muslims’. Several years ago the word ‘Allah’ was proscribed for use by non-Muslims when referring to God. Emboldened by this poisonous atmosphere, extremists have attacked churches, cast aspersions on the adherents of other religions, and routinely made racist comments that would not be tolerated in a civilised country. These disturbing trends date back years. The culprits behave with impunity and with the connivance of the ruling political party – the United Malays National Organisation – or UMNO. This party, which has ruled Malaysia since independence in 1957, uses Islam as an electoral tool with which to acquire the Muslim vote.

A new low was reached recently. Now activists have begun to disappear. The United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) finally took note and placed Malaysia on its Tier 2 list, alongside such luminaries of religious freedom as Afghanistan, Cuba and Turkey.

How did Malaysia, a once tolerant and moderate country, get to this point?

First, if we strip everything away, I believe the crux of Malaysia’s problems lies in something we are not supposed to discuss: its racist policies. The country’s descent has been gradual. But the slide actually began a long time ago – with the principle that not all Malaysians are created equal.

The idea that some Malaysians, namely, those of us who are ethnically Chinese or Indian, are somehow ‘squatting’ on land that rightfully belongs to Malays is pernicious but long-standing. I first heard the idea expressed in Mahathir Mohamad’s infamous book ‘The Malay Dilemma’. In the blog-post Where is Home? I describe how being called a squatter made me feel. By 1973 when I learnt about Mahathir’s book, the concept had already been codified into so-called affirmative action policies with no time limitation. The beneficiaries are a special breed of Malaysian, one who deserves extra rights, not through merit or because of need, but because the ancestors of this type of Malaysian arrived in the country earlier. The logic is so spurious that a special term had to be invented: bumiputera, or the prince/princes of the earth. (See The Malaysia We’ve Lost.)

Imagine the first pilgrims to the United States calling themselves the ‘princes of the earth’ and giving themselves and their descendants ‘special rights’, over and above those enjoyed by all the other waves of immigrants who helped build America. Bumiputera ‘rights’ in Malaysia are eye-watering; they include: entitlement to a disproportionate share of university places, discounted property, quotas in government departments, 30% equity stakes in companies and government scholarships. At one point, there were even universities reserved for bumiputera! This has been the situation in Malaysia since the 1970s, when the concept of the bumiputera was written into government policy.

The question of who is a bumiputera is a minefield, because there are people who are truly indigenous to Malaysia. Even in the Malay language they are called Orang Asli, or the original people. Naturally Orang Asli have bumiputera status, though this is more lip service. The crucial point is that Malaysians of Malay ethnicity, who are believed to have come to Malaysia from Yunnan in southern China and more recently from India and Indonesia, are all deemed to be bumiputera.

Why is this important? To start with, there is the issue of moral dubiety. In Malaysia it’s well-known that part of Mahathir Mohamad’s own family came from India. Ergo, the man who calls me a squatter in The Malay Dilemma is himself squatting on land which belongs to Malaysia’s original people, the Orang Asli. Then, there is the groundswell of resentment which the creation of the bumiputera has caused. How can you have a unified nation with such blatantly racist policies? The answer is that you can’t. A million Malaysians have left. I am part of that exodus. I left with a heavy heart – and anyone who has read The Woman Who Breathed Two Worlds will know that my love for Malaysia remains strong.

What do you think happens when a government tells one section of its populace – the bumiputera – that its members have rights over and above others? It’s almost inevitable that those who are mollycoddled become spoilt. They start to feel as if they’re above the law and can do whatever they want.

Worse than that, dishing out special rights anaesthesises those who are privileged – in this case, the bumiputera population, the Malay recipients who form the country’s majority. UMNO, the ruling party, has been purchasing their acquiescence for decades and in so doing, has fundamentally distorted the democratic process. For as long as a majority in the electorate is numbed by handouts, UMNO can do whatever it wants.

Except… it’s now harder, even for UMNO. After nearly sixty years in power there is discontent, especially among urban Malays. UMNO’s excesses have become so electrifying, they’ve hit world attention. Part of its electorate is restless. Some bumiputeras recognise the harm which Malaysia’s racist policies have done. A columnist, Wan Saiful Wan Jan (a bumiputera), with two friends (also bumiputera), began the Institute for Democracy and Economic Affairs (IDEAS) several years ago. In a recent article, Wan Saiful pointed out the immorality of Malaysia’s bumiputera policy. ‘Why not then steal from the rich and give to the poor?’ he wrote rhetorically.

Wan Saiful should be applauded. No one else has had the guts to be as blunt. He and groups like IDEAS and Bersih (the group that is fighting for clean, fair elections) – and all the people campaigning for an open, progressive Malaysia – must be supported.

And here’s the second part of my answer: Malaysia did not arrive at this point by accident. We Malaysians have allowed it to happen. We have allowed it through our collusion and our silence, and by our refusal to venture outside of our comfort zone. When I was growing up, how many times did I hear a fellow Malaysian-Chinese say, ‘Ai-yahh, why bother with politics? Let’s just make money-lah…’

Fast forward to 2017, when we can see where such attitudes have led us. Malaysia is poised at a crossroads, and what I hear now is a lot of grumbling. Mutterings too, along the lines of, ‘What’s the point? I can’t do anything. I’m not bumiputera.’

In this way, all blame is passed on to the bumiputera, as if we do not bear collective responsibility for the state of our country. As if our national obsession with food, gossip and shopping, to the exclusion of much else, is not a contributory factor. I know I’m guilty, too. I took the easy option and left, instead of staying on to fight. I now do what I can, by supporting Bersih and IDEAS and all the people who are willing to stand up for a better Malaysia. I also write. Both in this blog and in the novels forming The Malayan Series, which will carry on after the second book, When the Future Comes Too Soon, is published this summer. Fiction is a powerful tool, one which I intend to use. (Foreign readers don’t need to know anything about Malaysia. The Malayan Series is first and foremost an epic family saga, a story about people. What happens will be experienced through the characters themselves.)

There are plenty of Malaysians who tell me, ‘Malaysia is still a good place to live.’ And then they ask what I can find elsewhere that I can’t have in Malaysia.

Here are a few of the things I enjoy in the West. Equality in the law. The chance to compete on merit. A vote which counts. And when things aren’t right, I have the ability to protest, to get things changed. Anyone who has read The Woman Who Breathed Two Worlds will understand that I have not been brainwashed by the West. No human system is perfect; both Britain and America have flaws.

Within the cracks of their flaws, however, lies a gem: the cliché known as freedom. In the West, I have the freedom to be whoever I want and to live my life exactly as I choose. This is so precious and priceless that once experienced, is almost impossible to give up.

To those who say that Malaysia is still a great place to live in, I have the following questions.

  • Do you think this is the country our predecessors fought for in 1957?
  • Is today’s Malaysia really the country you want to see?
  • Does this Malaysia make you proud?
  • And what are you going to do about it?

Leave a comment

Filed under Cultural Identity, Malaysia

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

November 28, 2016 · 17:10

Malaysia’s Rubicon Moment

On Saturday a leading political cartoonist, Zulkiflee Anwar Ulhaque, better known as Zunar, was detained under Malaysia’s draconian Sedition Act. He had been participating at the George Town Literary Festival, arguably the country’s best-known lit-fest. Zunar was arrested for criticising Malaysia’s Prime Minister, Najib Razak. This is presumably to set an example: look what happens when you dare call a spade a spade! Zunar’s arrest has made international news, but what is less well-known is that he was also punched up beforehand by stooges of Malaysia’s dominant political party, UMNO, the United Malay National Organisation.

Zunar’s arrest is part of a string of troubling developments in Malaysia. The previous week, the chairwoman of a civil rights group, Bersih, was also arrested. Bersih (which means ‘Clean’ in Malay) has been campaigning for basic democratic rights for several years. Rights such as:

Free and fair elections. Clean government. The right to dissent.

Daring to demand an end to corruption is too much for the Malaysian government. After all, its raison d’être now is to cling on to power (and the nation’s coffers) by whatever means it can. Bersih’s chairwoman, Maria Chin Abdullah, was thus held in solitary detention – without charge, I might add – and not allowed to see her lawyer or family for a week. She has now been released, but not before the Malaysian police promised to crack down on people participating in vigils to have her freed.

Before Maria Chin Abdullah was detained, she had actually been threatened with ISIS-style decapitation. The rise of Islamic fundamentalism is a troubling trend in Malaysia – a trend on which the supposedly moderate government has remarkably little to say. Indeed, there was yet another attempt last week to table a bill in Parliament that could pave the way to hand-chopping in Malaysia. In principle, the bill was not the government’s and is supposed to apply only to one particular state in the country, but these are beside the point. The rubicon of hand-chopping, if crossed, will have consequences for the entire country and each and every Malaysian.

I left Malaysia many years ago. In the Malaysia I knew, a law proposing the chopping off of limbs as punishment would have been unthinkable. This is the country I want to remind Malaysians of in the books which will form The Malayan Series. I’m no fan of British colonialism – anyone who has read The Woman who Breathed Two Worlds will realise that – but there was undoubtedly a degree of tolerance in previous days which has been deliberately leached away.

Malaysia has turned into a country I barely recognise. It is now a place in which, as soon as you criticise the government, you’re either beaten up or threatened with death. It is a country where protest demanding good governance is viewed as a threat to government and if you have the courage to voice any discontent, you’re told, “If you don’t like it, leave.”

Is this the Malaysia we want?

It’s not the country I want, which is why I will do what I can to remind people about the Malaysia we’ve lost. It’s also why I will support those who are fighting for a secular, pluralistic, more inclusive Malaysia.

There are people who say that it’s already too late. I don’t believe this: it is never too late to change. There are other Malaysians like me, as this sane letter shows. The longer we leave it, though, the more entrenched attitudes will become and the harder change will be. It is up to us Malaysians: no one else can do the hard work for us. The Malaysia of tomorrow will reflect what we today are doing, or not, as the case may be.

6 Comments

Filed under Identity, Malaysia, Novel, Writing

Tagged as , , , , , , , , ,

August 30, 2015 · 23:54

This Merdeka is Yellow…

Tomorrow, August 31, is Malaysia’s Independence (Merdeka) Day. Shortly after Merdeka Day thirty six years ago, I left Malaysia. I’ve lived away for so long now that I have spent more time in England than in my country of origin.

Yet, nothing grips me as much as major pieces of Malaysian news. Last July for example, when MH-17 was shot down over Ukraine,  I was riveted: engaged in both heart and mind, emotions veering between horror and utter disbelief, and finally anger. Hours later, when it was already clear that the plane had not crashed accidentally but had been shot down by a missile, major media networks (in three languages) changed their headlines to reflect this appalling new element.  All except for the BBC, which retained its misleading “Malaysian Plane Crashes in Ukraine” as if it had been Malaysian Airlines’ fault, as if the plane’s flight path had not been pre-cleared. I was so incensed that I wiped the BBC app off my iPhone.

This weekend, I have once again been glued to Malaysian news. A 34-hour protest has been taking place in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia’s capital. People were out in force – two hundred thousand according to the organisers, a mere twenty thousand by the government’s count. Most of the protesters wore yellow T shirts (hastily banned beforehand by authorities), blew into their vuvuzelas and air-horns, prayed when it was time to pray, listened to speeches and made music – all quite peacefully. Many even stayed overnight as had been planned, literally sleeping on the streets and squares of the capital. To see what it was like during the final hour of this marathon rally, see the attached link.

The protest was organised by Bersih (Clean), an organisation which is campaigning for clean, fair elections in Malaysia. This was the fourth rally organised by Bersih. At the previous demonstration before this one, an estimated quarter of a million turned up and police used teargas on the crowds.

Not surprisingly, the Malaysian government – which has a rather low tolerance of dissent – was up to its usual tricks last week. They first declared the rally to be “illegal”. When that didn’t work, the Home Minister banned yellow clothing and T shirts with the words “Bersih 4”. The authorities, knowing that a sleep-in was planned, promptly prohibited the erection of tents.

Despite these absurd obstacles, yellow T shirts abounded on KL’s streets. Demonstrators proceeded with their “sleep-over” – truly a sight to behold. Of course there have been plenty of naysayers, as there always are. People who belittle Bersih for “not going far enough”, and the protest as little more than the huff of a few well-heeled urbanites.

As the former chairperson of Bersih – the redoubtable Ambiga Sreenevasan – has pointed out, Bersih’s rallies take place despite the organisation having little money and no power and in spite of the entire machinery of government being arrayed against them. These rallies rely entirely on “the goodwill of the people”. Which is why they are remarkable: Bersih‘s rallies are tangible signs of a nascent civil society.

Street protest flies in the face of Malaysian tradition. As a nation, we prefer to avoid even the smell of conflict. We stick to safe topics, such as shopping, and of course, food! We can say a lot about food without touching on anything remotely controversial, anything that (we fear) may offend someone. If you spend your life in this “head-down, risk-free” zone, the thought of going on a march where you may be asked to hold a banner or shout and generally take a stand, is rather alien. Mahathir Mohamed, the former Prime Minister who turned up at the rally on both days, gave an interview in which he admitted that it was the first time he had joined a street protest – and he is ninety.

I only learnt about protest as a student at Southampton University in Britain. The experience was incredibly liberating. I discovered what democracy should actually be about. I found that in a truly democratic country, people were free to express legitimate political views, so long as they did not advocate violence on anyone else or infringe on the rights of others. In contrast to Malaysia, I could say what I felt without being shut down, called names or told to leave the country. I went on marches, I held placards, I became an activist. I disagreed vehemently with some people, and still managed to remain friends with them.

The whole process was thoroughly validating. Among my causes: gay rights. There were absolutely no positive gay role models then, and your boss could have fired you if s/he discovered your sexual orientation, no matter how well you did your job. It was such a far cry from today that it is hard to even remember what Britain was like in the mid-eighties. If anyone had told me then that in less than thirty we would be able to marry one another, I would have laughed out loud.

This example goes to show that protest can bring about change. You only have to think of the suffragettes to be reminded that without them, women would never have obtained the vote. Without protest, we would also not be attending universities today.

Could the same natural evolution happen in Malaysia?

On this, the signs are not good. The Malaysian government is one which loves the legitimacy that its veneer of democracy confers, at the same time as it hates the reality. Citizens wanting to hold Ministers accountable: what a nuisance. As for the possibility that the government might actually be voted out of office, perish the thought!

After fifty eight years in power, any government would be tired; this one is especially tired – of criticism from those pesky citizens. In recent days and weeks, Malaysian Ministers have acted with their usual brilliance. In late July, a leading business publication exposed the fact that US$700 million had entered the Prime Minister’s personal bank account. The official response? Suspend said publication for three months. How dare journalists do their jobs! This week, when it became clear that threats and intimidation were not going to prevent the weekend’s rally, the government blocked access to Bersih’s website (within Malaysia).

No wonder America’s former ambassador to Malaysia has voiced his worries. In a recent opinion piece, Mr. John Malott described how there are two faces to Malaysia’s current Prime Minister Najib Razak: the international man who knows what Westerners want to hear, and the domestic man who happily lines his and his wife’s pockets while curbing individual liberties and meddling with institutions.

As if to confirm his increasingly authoritarian streak, the Prime Minister told the nation yesterday: “All forms of street demonstration have to be rejected as they adversely affect peace and order and cause problems to the public.” Apparently, only “immature” people express their views by protesting on the streets. Such words (and his actions) do not bode well.

Where will Malaysia go from here?

Will the Prime Minister step down tomorrow? Unfortunately, this is unlikely.

Will we see greater restrictions on freedom in Malaysia? Possibly.

Could the country veer towards dictatorship?

As an optimist, I believe that positive change will come, but this will take longer than we either think or would like. What is important is for concerned Malaysians not to give up. We need to remain engaged, to stay strong and show that we will demand good governance, no matter how much our own government threatens us. For the sake of Malaysia’s future, we will not go away. Not until we have clean, fair elections and an end to rampant corruption and cronyism.

2 Comments

Filed under Identity, Malaysia

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , ,