Malaysiakini : When ‘scaffolds’ become ‘concrete pillars’

Like in construction, scaffolds are removed with each stage of completing a multi-storey building. In our context, the New Economic Policy (NEP) and racial quotas are the “scaffolds”, which were necessary 50 years ago to address wealth disparity and ease racial tensions.

But over decades of rephrasing the race-based policies, the scaffolds have turned into permanent concrete pillars with cumulative effects.

Low-income Malays, the Orang Asli in particular, are trapped in mediocrity while the well-connected Malay elites get richer and richer.

To grow a national family, no member should be left on the wayside. All have shared aspirations for a better life. The state in this context is the familial provider. But the family remains divided.

We were raised and educated in national and vernacular schools from ages seven to 12. Our racial and cultural identities were formed early. We are differentiated by class, race, and religion.

Yet we have a remarkable capacity to get along without being overtly belligerent. That’s our Malaysian paradox. So, what follows?

Algorithm vs reality

I revisited this question when I caught up recently with former colleagues from Institut Teknologi Mara, Shah Alam. (I left ITM in the late 1980s for Australia to work as a journalist and later as a media academic).

Drawing from our inter-racial experiences, we thought Malaysians may not be as divided as the politics and algorithmically polarised social media suggest.

Our reminiscence brought me back to the early 1960s when I ran around barefoot with my Malay and Indian friends in the village.

The early morning muezzin’s call to prayer from the community mosque was my alarm bell.

Growing up, we respected our elders. Friends and strangers were “makcik” (aunt) and “pakcik” (uncle), “tuk” (grandfather) and “nenek” (grandmother).

We celebrated Kongsi Raya, Christmas, and Deepavali as one chaotic family. The grounds for growing an extended national family that existed in the pre-1969 era cracked after the race riots in 1969.

Innocence lost

We lost our tween innocence. Anxieties and fears were projected onto us from those who had witnessed the wanton killings in Penang and Kuala Lumpur.

The racial weeds started to creep in. Weeds are naturally opportunistic. They spread their seeds, settle, and grow in any cracks and exposed soil. And, in our government machinery, there are many cracks.

An effective weed killer lies in our political will to restore what was good about pre-1969 Malaysian society.

With today’s TikTok generations, imagine if we could mobilise a national family unit starting from the ground up to those who govern us. Social media can be a reckoning force in generating collaborative inter-ethnic content.

Political apathy from the TikTok generations will see the national family unit breaking up, further undermining Pakatan Harapan’s original reformasi agenda - particularly the prime minister’s declaration of zero tolerance for corruption.

In an extended family, trust is the currency of survival. Corruption and ongoing racial differentiation devalue that trust.

If the head of the household is seen to hoard resources and pardon corrupt elders, the younger members will lose their faith. (Malaysia is currently ranked 52nd on the Corruption Perceptions Index on a scale of 0 to 100, with 100 being “very clean”).

As the Center to Combat Corruption and Cronyism (C4) said following Harapan’s state election losses in August in Negeri Sembilan, Johor, and Sabah: “… numerous individuals appointed by Anwar to positions of power have found themselves tainted by scandals”. The irony is, well, scandalous.

C4’s conclusion rings ominously true: “With the 16th general election fast approaching, every further delay, compromise, or abandoned promise only serves to assure the public’s loss of confidence in Harapan and their subsequent loss of the mandate to govern.

“These electoral losses must serve as a warning... that Malaysians will not tolerate broken promises of a government that is complicit in corruption and has eroded our institutions of good governance.”

The prime minister may well have declared his "zero tolerance" for corruption.

But if the bureaucrats of state-owned enterprises and the Malay-dominant civil service resist any reforms, the head of the household is effectively hamstrung.

What undermines the national family unit is not just who is corrupt (or racist). It is the type of leadership that protects the corrupt (and the racist) that will break up the national family, the feel-good sloganeering notwithstanding.