New Malay dilemma: enchained by our own heroes

FMT:

New Malay dilemma: enchained by our own heroes

Malay leaders proclaim we’re people of a great race, yet they also tell us we are weaklings easily subjugated by others.




Elections must be near. The usual noises are coming through loud and clear, some hugely amplified (or distorted) by loudspeakers old and new. Expect more noises, otherwise migrate to Timbuktu.

The usual suspects, now with increased vigour, are shouting about – you guess it – race and religion. Such shouts used to be in muted, coded language except for the fringe ultras, but this time the fringe ultras have become mainstream.

Our dear ex-, or rather ex-ex-prime minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad is there in the fray, too, grabbing every opportunity to spew bile, while buddying up to any unsavoury character who’ll give him a platform. It’s getting a bit boring, though still riveting in a macabre sort of way.

I don’t know whether these noises arise because the noisemakers sense blood and are going for their enemies’ jugular, or if it’s because they’re desperate and feel they’re on the chopping block themselves. It is likely to be a bit of both.

The recent general election was surprisingly good for the noisemakers, who won an unexpectedly generous number of parliamentary and state seats. Obviously, shouting scary things to the electorates does work, especially to the Malays.

To the non-Malays, though, it must be bewildering to be accused of wanting to take over the country and kicking the Malays aside. All the facts, numbers and actual reality point to exactly the opposite, and their main concerns are more likely on whether they stay or leave.

To the Malays, it’s all pure emotion. It’s a primal, and perennial, screams of insecurity about being besieged and encircled and soon to be overwhelmed. They have had decades of conditioning to quake and quiver at the merest mention of such things.

Its textbook Pavlovian.

This conditioning has been immensely successful and effective, and as conditioning often goes, it has become self-perpetuating – the more insecure you are, the easier for you to be further conditioned to be even more insecure.

But, emotions aside, let’s forget about the usual hand-wringing about the future of the nation etc and focus on something more specific: what is it doing to the Malays.

I certainly won’t say we Malays are in a good place. In spite of outnumbering all other tribes and ethnicities combined (by a factor of almost two), and in spite of controlling almost every single lever of national power, we’re still quaking with fright about our future.

Damn right we should be too. Take aside the crooked and corrupt politicians, businessmen, the privileged and entitled elites and various other parasites, the vast majority of Malays aren’t doing well. As a people, we’re now almost totally dependent on the government for survival, whether directly or indirectly.

All these noises about being overcome come at a price. It’s embarrassing. for a start.

A foreigner friend told me long ago that the Malays are the only majority people who yet give themselves the protection and privileges of an endangered minority.

That stung then, and stings still.

Worse still, the noises put us in a state of khayal, a constant hallucination that makes us ignore reality and wallow in self-delusion and self-pity instead. It’s akin to the highs the drug addicts go for – and we Malays have a lot of those too.

Our problems have got worse. We’ve made progress since the country gained independence, but it’s not the absolute progress that matters, but rather the relative progress.

If the world is progressing at 10% and we’re progressing at 7%, that means we’re being left further and further behind every day.

In spite of shouts to the contrary, we know this as truth deep inside our soul. This makes us fearful about losing the ability to commandeer easy resources and create jobs and livelihood and wealth for an ever-growing population in a more challenging world.

An immediate result is we’re pushing away our Malaysian cousins from across the South China Sea. The Sarawakians especially are pushing back against what they see as encroachment of the rot happening in West Malaysia.

About time somebody does too.

As it is now, Sarawakians dressed in their traditional clothing probably won’t be served or even allowed entry into a government office, or even hospital and police station. Or, horrors of horrors, even be allowed to walk around in public in Kelantan!

We are also pushing away many non-Malays, and an increasing number of Malays too. They’d either physically leave the country, or stay but tune off the nonsense and rubbish and focus on their own well-being, depriving the country of tremendous resources for collective nation-building.

The irony is that our Malay leaders happily shout that we’re a people of a great race who’ve done this and that (including such earth-shattering feats such as speaking Bahasa Malaysia at the United Nations), yet also tell us, in an increasingly less oblique way, that we’re weaklings who are easily subjugated or conquered or frightened or converted by other people.

Unless of course, we breed like rabbits to produce even more voters and keep voting them into power, of which the failure to do so seems to guarantee a place in hell. And indeed, we’ve done just that for decades, except that our problems have become even bigger.

To my fellow non-Malay Malaysians, I have this to say: No, not all of us are like this. Many of us are working hard to make ends meet against an increasingly tough world.

Many of us aren’t getting any special deals because we’re not politicians or connected elites – or because of pride or belief in fairness and our own abilities.

And many of us look with horror at the direction we are heading.

This is not a good direction for a people who want to be respected and admired, rather than just feared. This is not what a strong, confident people should be, and many of us are not oblivious to that.

To those who do feel that way, we must speak up louder against increasingly desperate leaders who play on our fears. Fears which they themselves had sowed and that has given them immense power and wealth, often unearned and in many instances, not even halal.

What I hate the most are bullies, of whatever sort. I hate people who use their strengths, in this case numbers that give them political power not earned through excellence or hard work, to lord it over others.

I hate it the most when they lord it over their own people. It’s like being colonised and exploited all over again, except by our own people, and with no chance of ever being independent.