Back To The Status Quo – Only More Dangerous
M. Bakri Musa
August 13, 2023
Yesterday’s (August 12, 2023) six state elections confirmed what had been suspected and feared all along. That is, Malays are now deeply and dangerously polarized. This was gleaned earlier from reviewing last November 2022 15th General Election. While the just-completed elections did not change any state government, with last November’s election Pakatan Harapan’s victory in May 2018 was repeated. However, that was prematurely aborted by the conniving Mahathir Mohamad.
Then the young inexperienced Pakatan leaders had a misplaced and unwarranted trust in the old man. They naively believed his claim that he was instrumental in toppling Najib Razak. They forgot that it was Mahathir who was responsible for Najib’s fast rise in politics in the first place. As could be anticipated, the ever-scheming Mahathir, together with his backdoor or backside accomplices Muhyiddin Yassin and Azmin Ali, ended Pakatan’s short-lived government. The pair is rightly cursed as pengkhianat negara (national traitors). I would add that description to Mahathir.
These last six state elections also revealed a hitherto ignored but disturbing development – the rise of the Islamists and Ketuanan Melayu nationalists (Malay supremacists). If Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim, a leader with unchallenged Islamic and nationalist credentials, could not make any inroads against them despite his recent vigorous and untiring campaign, then no one could.
As such it is time for him and others who share his vision of a peaceful, prosperous, and inclusive Malaysia to change tack, and do so dramatically, radically, and in no uncertain terms. The threat posed by these Islamists and nationalists is more ominous than that by the communists after the war.
In my book Towards A Competitive Malaysia (2007) I wrote that Malaysia remained unique for having defeated the communists, more so as she did it without any foreign military aid. Meanwhile in nearby South Vietnam, the Americans with their greatest economy, mightiest military, and their ‘best and brightest’ could not prevail against the pajama-clad Viet Cong.
While McNamara was consumed with his infamous “body counts,” the Malaysian effort, led by the brilliant strategist Major-General Mahmud Sulaiman, opted for the very opposite tactic. He gave these communist guerillas every chance to surrender and escape from being killed. He saw immense propaganda value in having them alive, repentant, and leading productive lives. He analogized the war against the terrorists to exterminating rats. Killing and poisoning them would not work as those rodents could multiply faster. Besides, those poisons could backfire on the innocent. Instead, Mahmud addressed the root causes of communism – eliminating poverty, better education, and most of all assuring and promising them a peaceful productive life out of the fetid Malaysian jungle.
Prime Minister Anwar must adopt a similar counterintuitive strategy. Strip these disruptive and destructive Islamists and nationalists of the self-styled characterizations as defenders of Islam and pejuang bangsa (champions of the race). Expose their vacuity and lack of constructive ideas. Islam needs no defenders, least of all from these scoundrels.
Anwar had correctly begun by arresting corrupt leaders. Go further and much more aggressively. Recruit accomplished foreign prosecutors and investigators. Then, and most of all address the grouses of these latter-day pejuang bangsa dan agama, in particular their plaintive cry on their current pathetic state that mocks their claim of Malaysia being ‘Tanah Air ku.’ I agree with their lament but alas disagree profoundly as to the needed remedies.
With the Islamists, Anwar should distance himself from the likes of the Indonesian Abdul Somad as well as the less virulent but no less destructive local variants found at such places as ISTAC and local public campuses. Instead, invite the likes of the Harvard-trained Ulil Abdulla and the New York-based Syamsul Ali. Singapore wisely banned this Somad charlatan from entering the Republic. Likewise with those Malay intellectuals in Majlis Professor Negara; instead invite successful Malay entrepreneurs, professionals, and scientists to Sri Perdana. That would at least inspire the young. My late father had an apt expression on our current practice of honoring the corrupt and the losers: membajakan lallang (fertilizing the weeds).
The greatest contributor to the lack of Malay competitiveness and thus our current blighted condition is, apart from corruption, the education system. Revamp the national curriculum to make all Malaysians fluently bilingual (Malay and English), literate in the sciences, and competent in mathematics. Get rid of JAKIM and other religious bodies. Use the funds saved to build libraries and laboratories in national schools and recruit well-trained teachers. Stop sending our students to mediocre foreign universities.
Anwar does not need to be reminded that in the 1986 national election, a few years after he joined UMNO, the Islamic Party won only one out of the 177 parliamentary seats. He did it then, and he could it do again, this time out of UMNO. That is, to beat the Islamists and Malay nationalists, Anwar’s top priority must be to make Malays competitive so we could be respected in Tanah Air Ku, and to be worthy of Hang Tuah’s immortal exhortation: Takkan Melayu Hilang Di Dunia! (We will never be lost in this world!)
