RESET: RACE POLITICS
By Suflan Shamsuddin
A few weeks before the 2008 General Elections, when I went home to Malaysia for some business, I met up with a group of old friends for a late evening coffee. It was great to find out how they were doing, and just to catch up on lost time. This group was mixed, both from a gender and ethnic perspective, and so in a way, it was a microcosm of Malaysian society.
These friends had known each other for quite a while and although I wouldn't say that we would all regularly hang out together, we were sufficiently comfortable with each other's disposition and temperament that it was easy for us to be candid and honest with our views and feelings. More importantly, we each knew how to express ourselves in a way that would not be perceived as a slur or an insult. We could therefore speak frankly without fearing that we might compromise a long-standing relationship.
It did not take long for us to get into a conversation about the impending 2008 General Elections and what it all meant. Into the conversation, Gerard, a clever and witty Chinese lawyer from Penang, turned to me and said, "It's about time that we got rid of race-based politics. As long as politics is based on race, we will never have the hope of truly becoming Bangsa Malaysia. I look forward to the day that UMNO stands for United Malaysian National Organization."
This was not the first time I had heard such a comment. I have had other non-Malays say to me the same thing, although perhaps less bluntly. It is clear that non-Malays feel excluded because national political leadership is determined by a party that really represents the interest of the Malays, before anyone else. The logic is sound. Why can't Malaysians think as Malaysians and have their political choice exercised as Malaysians, as opposed to as, Malays, Chinese or Indians?
A couple of Malay friends who were there - you know the type, savvy, modern, progressive and professional - were immediately sympathetic with Gerard's point of view. Both of them had in fact to some extent benefited from the NEP, having studied in local universities (although both were probably smart enough to have made it on their own merit, I suspect!) and yet they both despised the narrow-mindedness of race-based politics. They both went to schools in big cities where their friends were made up of all races, and were brought up believing that the Rukun Negara was not just lip service propaganda engineered by the government. It was indeed the core values that defined our common Malaysian identity to unite the country, regardless of differences in political views.
Ani, one of my Malay friends who supported Gerard's position stepped in and said: "The thing that frustrates me with race-based politics is the effect of how end results are achieved. Power sharing between communities starts off with bargaining. Which means, putting certain things on the table that can be traded, and holding back those that can't. And the strength of your bargaining position is built by making clear to your counter-parties why it is that they must bargain with you."
We were puzzled with what Ani was saying. What was she really getting at? It all sounded a bit clichéd. But she went on. "In making your case, you'll make clear what there is to be gained by doing the trade. But you'll also make clear what there is to be lost if the deal is not done. And it is the latter that is frightening."
We all smiled politely at each other. And I thought to myself: Okay, maybe Ani is thinking about her children. She has always been a pacifist, never liked violence, whether in real life or in her choice of movies. Maybe the thought of a political bargain being achieved by means of threats between elites who represented separate races was what scared her. What if the bargain could not be struck? Could the elites then influence their communities to manifest that threat by some show of force on the streets of Kuala Lumpur? After all, there have been many UMNO leaders who have been guilty of stoking the fire by raising the ugly spectre of Ketuanan Melayu. Perhaps Ani did not like the thought of her children being exposed to that sort of environment. Perhaps she has a traumatic recollection of the May 1969 race riots. Perhaps she also realized that it was just plain wrong.
I asked her whether this was the case. She nodded to suggest that that was indeed partly the reason, although she politely reminded me that she was much too young to have remembered 1969! But there was more. By making clear what there is to be lost by not striking the bargain, a party at the bargaining table has essentially defined the mentality of those it represents. In exercising its representation, it would be obliged to ensure that its projection of the mentality of its stakeholders is appreciated as being representative of the real situation and not perceived as a hollow threat.
So if UMNO wishes to make clear that the NEP must stay with its negotiating partners within Barisan Nasional, it will use all arguments necessary to explain why it is that its removal might threaten the peace. It will build that argument by boasting the size of the overall Malay constituency in Malaysia, the sense of injustice that such constituency would feel without the NEP, and how the socio-economic disparity if unaddressed could undermine the stability of the nation. Now, what Ani was saying was beginning to make more sense.
Ani said that if that is the premise of the argument in negotiations, UMNO must be able to prove that this premise is not a fiction. Therefore, it will do what it needs to influence the Malays to manifest the truth of these statements. It is this very influence that will end up holding the Malays back, or instigating racial chauvinism. To help the Malays by negotiating for a position that best looks after their interest, you have to prove that they deserve this position. By proving the case, you entrench the very things that serve the community the least. So the Malays will always be what UMNO needs them to be, for the sake of negotiating successfully on their behalf; and that would only lock the Malays into retaining a mentality of narrow-mindedness, parochialism, and blaming others. In a way, UMNO must have Malays remain as it defines them to be to justify its own long-term relevance. So why should UMNO liberate the Malays from their shackles of dependence on subsidies and their fears of marginalization if to do so would mean its own demise?
Now that was quite a sophisticated argument; and it was important she put it on the table. It was also interesting how I changed my own perception about why Ani felt the way she did about race-based politics. I started off thinking that it was because she was a progressive, well-adjusted Malay who felt that the right thing to do was for everyone to be treated equally. I then sensed a sense of maternal fear creep in and that she loathed the idea of a power-sharing system that is built on a bargain struck by threats and fear. Only then did I realize that she was making an argument against a system that was ultimately screwing up her own community, by keeping it in a rut to justify the system's continued relevance. So she thought as a Malaysian, a mother, and as a Malay; though not necessarily in that order of priority!
You could see how this argument could be used for all parties at the negotiating table. Whether the stakeholder was Chinese, Indian or any other race, stereotyping an expectation or mentality, and proving that that stereotype is real will strengthen the negotiating position on behalf of that stakeholder. If the bulk of policy decisions are driven along race-based negotiations, then the embedding of this stereotype becomes even more pronounced and justifiable.
Another friend Thava, agreed that the entrenchment of certain self-perceptions did not serve the Indian community well. It had the Pygmalion Effect: If the powers that be have a strong influence on our beliefs and thoughts, then our behaviour will be affected by their expectations of us. Therefore, the more you say that a race has a particular characteristic, the more what you say becomes the truth. Perhaps that is why vernacular schools have become a pawn in the barter, even though their continuance has very little true value in looking after the interest of communities. But Thava also took a very pragmatic approach of explaining why race-based relations are unfair, and he probably represented the interests of all of my non-Malay friends who were there with me that evening.
"How can you talk about power-sharing when UMNO holds all the cards? In reality, Barisan Nasional politics means that UMNO is the big boss, and all other partners simply ask, "How high" as soon as it shouts, "Jump!" The bargain is clearly uneven. Look at the number of cabinet posts that non-Malays have against the support that is given by the non-UMNO Barisan Nasional component parties, and you'll see what I mean."
Indeed UMNO has maintained a majority of the more powerful cabinet positions. Demographically, the Malays just barely make the majority of the population, but their dominance in government is very evident. Before the 2008 General Elections, approximately 70% or 22 out of 32 cabinet ministers were from UMNO, 23 out of 32 cabinet ministers were Malay, 25 out of 32 ministers were Bumiputra and 23 cabinet ministers were Muslims. Only 2 of the 13 state Chief Minister posts (namely for Penang and Sarawak) eluded UMNO's grasp. UMNO commanded just over 50% of the seats in the current parliament. Its 13 other BN coalition partners controlled about 41% of the seats with the opposition holding the remaining 9%.
But in reality, Thava was less worried about the numbers and positions in government or in leadership, than he was about the fact that wherever you turned, your place in society was determined by your ethnic identity. If you weren't in the right ethnic group, you'd be disadvantaged. This was determined by government policy created by a leadership that prides itself with a "workable power-sharing model". I could sense controlled cynicism in his voice. Thava's family had settled in Malaysia five generations ago from Sri Lanka, and he argued that he probably had deeper roots in the Malay Peninsula than many Malays who had emigrated from either Sumatra or Java at the turn of the century. So why should he be treated any less or indeed, any differently, than they were. It was just not fair.
Obviously, he felt that the power-sharing was not based on fair relative strengths of bargaining position. I think he appreciated that in a commercial joint venture, there will always be some parties that are stronger than others in their bargaining position, perhaps because of the size of the share and the influence that a party might have over the success or failure of the venture. These are just simply commercial realities driven by natural market forces. The fact that these parties have to contend with the relative strengths of their position in the bargain was economic reality. After all, you have a choice to leave the bargain if you think there is no value to remain. But what Thava was trying to say, was that the relative strength and influence of non-Malay stakeholders in the power-sharing equation had been unnaturally suppressed, to make it no longer fair. Non-Malays had no choice, given the lack of a viable alternative, and so the dominant position of the Malays in the power-sharing equation was being constantly abused to their loss.
It was at that time that Ahmad got into the debate. He was going to bring us all down to Earth. He said, "It is not about right or wrong. Nor is it about what is fair and unfair. It's about our social contract. It is about the terms and conditions that we signed up to at the time of independence, entrenched into the Constitution. If we did not agree this contract, the Malays might have fought for their homeland to the exclusion of the non-Malays, and perhaps the non-Malays might have retaliated or just left. But, thank God, it did not come to that, and we reached an accommodation, albeit through communal representatives of the established race-based parties. It is water under the bridge. In any event, we are far better off than we would have been, were we to have continued with infighting amongst the communities for decades on end.
No matter what you might think of the social contract, there are people who have expectations that it be honoured. And this is no small insignificant population. There are non-Malays that vote for the power-sharing model, but there are hardly any Malays who would freely support a political party that ignores their special interest in favour of the interest of Malaysians as a whole. Just look at the support that the Malays exclusively give in favour of either PAS or UMNO. Or more instructively, look at the almost non-existent support of the Malays for the DAP. Of course, there are Malays who support PKR, which on the face of it is a multi-racial party. However, much of its Malay support comes, not from the belief in its overall political manifesto of Malaysian-ness, but because of a desire to support the creation of a stronger opposition, or out of old loyalties to its Malay leaders who had left UMNO and whom they believe will still look after their communal interests. And so the Malays in reality, vote along race lines.
Similarly you cannot ignore the strength of the MCA and MIC in terms of membership and support. Clearly there are a large number of non-Malays who still see the value of a race-based party to look after the interests of the community under a joint venture model. In fact, many Chinese support the DAP because they think that the DAP can best protect their communal interests. Why else would most DAP rallies be conducted in a Chinese dialect?
So isn't the alternative coalition of PKR, PAS and DAP also race-based?"
We all knew that what Ahmad was saying was depressingly true. You cannot exclude race politics if the demand remains as strong as it is in Malaysia. To try to take it away artificially would be so against the grain of the natural political cleavages that exist in our society. But Gerard was not about to let Ahmad have the last word.
He said, "Ahmad, I don't disagree with you. But let's face facts. How much of today's support for these race-based parties is truly demand driven? Ani made the point that the elitists in power have to maintain the stereotype of this relationship to justify their own continued existence. They could never truly sell the notion of non race-based politics, because that would be to sign their own death warrant. So everything that is done by way of government policy is to perpetuate this "myth". So as long as we have Malaysian politics driven by racial interests, the supply will always feed the demand. And the demand will never change. No other political party has any hope in hell to convince the electorate to alter its mindset, because the establishment will use every means at its disposal to prevent this from happening. Look at the machinery at the government's disposal to kill any opportunity of the opposition, to make a case to all Malaysians for non-race based politics. We have to put a stop to this, because it is simply wrong. It is immoral! We are all Malaysians. Can't you see that?"
A Note To Readers: This is Part One of a chapter in the author's latest book – RESET: Rethinking the Malaysian Political Paradigm. RESET is available at all major Malaysian bookstores and is published by ZI Publications.
Suflan Shamsuddin qualified as a barrister from the Middle Temple and was then called to the Malaysian Bar. He is currently based in London, England.
By Dina Zaman
Tunku Ahmad Nerang said the late former prime minister had revealed a secret on an incident that happened in 1954 that brought concerns about his safety.
Upon reaching a rest house in Raub, a police officer approached Tunku Ahmad Nerang and told him that it was dangerous to follow an armoured car very close from behind.
"An incident in front of my very own eyes happened when an Eurasian nurse gave an injection to Tunku but hurriedly left without removing the needle from his buttocks.
"When we were about to leave our house in Alor Star, the rain came down heavily and when the rain subsided, I drove the car a bit too fast as Tunku did not like to keep people waiting.
Zubin Rada Krishnan returned to Malaysia in 2004 after graduating from university. He has spent most of his time since working as a management consultant. Despite what one may infer from his name, he is actually three-quarter squatter and only one quarter of him would be able to 'balik India' should anyone ask him to do so. Zubin came back to his Motherland hoping that one day the first question asked of him will not be, "What are you?"