Thoughts and comments on things Malaysian mostly, and on the English Premier League and the World occasionally.
Alex Cheong,
Kuala lumpur.
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Hari Raya Aidilfitri.
Everybody celebrates whether a Muslim or otherwise. Sending greetings to one another, being invited to join in the festivities and reciprocating by partaking of open houses.
Where else in the world will you find a religious-based occasion celebrated together by people of different faiths on such a scale?
At times like this, Malaysia makes me proud.
SELAMAT HARI RAYA TO MALAYSIANS
“…Financial experts predicted an economic downturn as defeat plunged New Zealanders into a bout of national soul-searching.” (Quoted in an AP report carried by the Malay Mail of 17/11 at page 59).
No, the Kiwis did not lose a war, just a rugby match. But the morning after the game (against Australia in the World Cup semis last Saturday) the whole nation was “feeling depress about the result and down in the dumps”. That’s how passionate they are about their favorite sport.
And it is not a bad thing really, this passion in sports. A whole nation collectively feeling the “hurt” in defeat or the reverse when triumphant translates into unity in purpose and spirit. This is good for nation building.
Are we Malaysians passionate about sports?
It used to be the case when life was simpler, people more tolerant of one and the other and politics less complicated. I am talking of the sixties and the seventies.
Who can forget the incident in the seventies when RTM was unable to telecast certain soccer world cup matches and Malaysians from all walks of life took it into their hands to pay for the live telecasts (RM40,000 per game). I can still remember rushing to Balai Riong (NST’s office) to hand in my contribution, which was fixed at a minimum of one Ringgit. And how proud we all were when just before the telecast proper this line was flashed across the TV screen – DI TAJA OLEH RAYAAT MALAYSIA.
And the Merdeka Stadium, during the Merdeka Soccer Tournament (a brain child of our first Prime Minister, Tunku Abdul Rahman), was one place where Ahmad, Ah Kow and Muthu truly act as Malaysians, if only for ninety minutes each night (yes, we did have floodlights then).
Any goal would be greeted with a tremendous roar (to rival Singapore’s famed “Kallang Roar”) irrespective of who was the scorer as long as he was Malaysian. And woe betides the opposition teams if they fouled any of our players. Besides verbal abuses of the four-lettered type in three languages, they could expect a barrage of “missiles” thrown at them. Sometimes, during such occasions, I suspect our men in blue (FRU) also turned a blind eye to things, being caught up themselves in this feeling of oneness with the Malaysian spectators.
Memory failed me of other examples of how passionate we were of sports, especially soccer.
Suffice it to say that all this demonstrates that we Malaysians can come together if we can find a common purpose. For a start, lets revive our passion in sports.
Irresponsible Writing
I must admit that I did not read the full story but only what was mentioned in NST Viewpoints. So I may be out of context in what I am writing. Therefore I stand corrected if it so proved and apologise for it.
That said I am referring to the statements on the under subscription of units by Bumiputra in Amanah Saham Wawasan in the story carried in Viewpoints -
“Alluding to the fact that the non-Bumiputera portion worth RM1.5 billion had been fully subscribed, Utusan Malaysia and Berita Harian said it was further proof that non-Bumiputeras were economically better than Bumiputeras.”
[…]
"What does it show? It means they really have the money, more than the Bumiputeras."[…]
(highlights are by me)
This type of writing is mischievous to say the least. It is perpetuating, what local political scientist and human rights activist, Farish Noor, wrote,
“………this negative dialectical mindset which poses the Malay-Muslim as the norm and
the rest as the constitutive Other, forever labouring under the negative
epithet of 'non'.)
In the first place they (the statements) were generalizations, without any concrete evidence of its correctness. Also, why was it necessary to apportion the reason for under-subscription of the units by Bumiputra to the seemingly “wealtier” Non-Bumiputras when the “fund manager Permodalan Nasional Berhad attributed the poor response to, among others, the conditions attached to the scheme like investors must be below the age of 30 and the presence of many other investment schemes for the community.
Time and again this sort of things are played up in the mainstream and must be stopped.
We always talk of reforms needed in the country. This must be the first reform, change of mindset from “we and they” to “we all”.
What a weekend it was.
Saturday 3.30 p.m. at Telstra Dome, Melbourne. Then, at 6 the same evening, off to Milton's Suncorp Stadium,Brisbane. By 11.00 p.m. was halfway across the globe at Highbury, North London. Sunday was no different. Melbourne, Brisbane and back to England at 9.45 p.m., but this time to Liverpool.
And the best part was that I didn't have to "borrow" DCA's plane. All travel was done in the comfort of the armchair. The cost? A couple of beers, chips and salsa source.
In the event, Arsenal remained at the top of the Premier League, Les Bleus (France) got into the Rugby World Cup semis and I was a very happy man on a Monday morning.
Its odd that Weekends should appear on a weekday. But after reading Farish Noor's article in Beritamalaysia "(Re) building democracy - from the bottom up" I felt that his message deserves a wider audience and hence this post.
Over the past week, much has been said and written of the hopes and wishes for a "new" Malaysia by all and sundry. In the main, it was a wish for the Pa La led government to right the wrongs of Mahathirism (of which there is no need for me to elaborate given the wide coverage it has garnered).
But is this all there is to make this country one we would be proud to call MY country and want to live in more than any other? Why look only to Pa La for change? Why not us the people of Malaysia? Why only issues of injustice and loss of human and democratic rights, selective ones at that? What about such important issues like the prevalence of sectarian politics and the need to uphold the secularism in our system of government?
Farish Noor discuss this and more in his article. Suffice it here to reproduce the parts I concur with and make good food for thought.
"Well, for a start we can try to get back to the principles of the 1957
constitution while jettisoning the racist communalist politics we have been practising all along. The Malaysian reform movement has to adopt as one of its central tenets the idea that the basis of Malaysian politics has to be the principle of citizenship, above all else.
We cannot continue to think of ourselves as Malays or non-Malays, Muslims or non-Muslims. (In fact, the first thing we need to get rid of is this negative dialectical mindset which poses the Malay-Muslim as the norm and the rest as the constitutive Other, forever labouring under the negative
epithet of 'non'.)
Surely after nearly half a century of spectacular development and even more spectacular failures we should have learned our lesson by now. What pride can we claim for ourselves if this country has the tallest building in the world (no longer, as of two weeks ago) but still cannot develop a form of democratic politics where each citizen is seen as an equal by his/her neighbour?
What use, pray tell, is having the longest bridge in Asia if we cannot even cross that bridge as one nation of individuals, respected for who we are rather than the ethnic or religious group we belong to?
All this talk of knowledge economy, hi-tech society, first world mentality etc. is of no value if we cannot even discard the sectarian mindset that continues to divide us according to the lines of race, ethnicity or religion. For that to happen we need to develop a democratic politics that not only rises against sectarianism but makes the battle against sectarianism its goal"
[...]
In the long run, however, it is up to us - the Malaysian public - to take part in this public discursive space and to make our contribution to the political education of the country as a whole. This is not only a right, but also a responsibility of all citizens in a healthy democracy.
While doing so, we need to bear in mind the reason why we are doing this and the goal of our struggle: to build a genuinely democratic Malaysia, by Malaysians and for Malaysians. At present there is much idle speculation about what the new leadership of the country can, will and will not do for the nation as a whole.
Up to the people
But a nation is the sum total of all its members, and not just the head at the top. The last leader of this nation did indeed build up the country - but this was a construction effort that also ended up destroying many of the vital institutions of the state and which effectively dismanted what little remained of its democratic culture, norms and values.
We cannot put our faith in one leader alone. A democracy is not built from the top-down, any more than a house is built from its roof downwards. We need to start (re)building the democratic structure of this state from the bottom up, and its basic building block is the democratic citizen. And each democratic citizen has to be democratic in his/her outlook and values, freed from the mental shackles of herd mentality, communal prejudice and narrow sectarianism - be it of the ethnic, racial or religious variety.
This is, lest we forget, our nation. Malaysia is what it is only because there are Malaysians. But the faults, weaknesses and prejudices of Malaysians will be the frailties and flaws of the nation as a whole.
We owe it to ourselves and the generations to come, to see to it that the rot stops here. All this talk of reform from above and changes by the new leadership of the country is hogwash for the reasons stated at the beginning of this article: the institutional inertia and paralysis that has set into this country will see to it that continuity, rather than change, will be the norm.
Rather than ask the new PM what he wants to do, we should go out and do it ourselves, as citizens with an equal claim on this country and its future.
It is only when we manage to build a Malaysian Malaysia, that reflects the internal diversity and pluralism within its body politics while not
privileging one group over another, that we can change the script of the Malaysian story.
The song remains the same for now - but it is, and has been, a boring tune all along. For the sake of that abstract entity called the Malaysian nation, we need to think of a new national narrative.
As is my habit, every lazy weekend is spent reading comment or opinion pieces rather than news items. This week it was no different except that 2 pieces “tug at my heart strings” - one made me realized how lucky or “blessed” (as some would prefer to call it) the missus and I are and the other something I can relate to.
Old and Alone by Shareem Amry (Nuance. Sunday. 2/11/03)
Shareem wrote of her visit to the National Registration Dept. in P.J. to apply for the new MyKad and her observation of a “fragile-looking elderly couple(‘s)” seemingly helplessness at their attempt to get the new cards. And she has this to say –
Where were their children, grandchildren, or friends? Was there no one in their lives they could turn to for this small favour?
There were other elderly people in the crowd who seemed to be on their own, including a trio of women, one of whom needed a one-handed walker to get around. On his way back from the washroom my father ended up helping another aged gentleman, who couldn’t even get his pen to work and was struggling to write his name down.
One colleague wasn’t surprised by this sorry tale: Every Chinese New Year she and her group of pals take turns hosting an elderly friend who has nowhere else to go. Her two adult children who are still in the country don’t seem interested in having their mother over for the traditional family reunion.
Those of us who were at the NRD office that day should be getting our Smartcard ICs in about two months. It’s good to have technology at your fingertips, but it’s also sobering to know that in this same day and age, the elderly are relying more and more on the kindness of friends and strangers to get by.
Shareem is correct. Where have all the good sons and daughters gone?
And it is not peculiar to our country only. A few years ago our neighbor down south had to resort to legislation to “force” children to care for their parents.
Maybe the extended family system is now archaic, replaced by the conjugal family. A sign of the times, prompted by economic reasons and also the urban drift. And with progress values have also changed, “filial” is no longer in the vocabulary of many. Who are we to passed judgments, then?
But still, we are not without feelings. Is it so difficult to love and care whatever your station in life?
Strict dad, doting Tok Det by Sharon Kam (The Sun Special Focus. 31/10/02)
From the overload of writings about our ex-PM, I found this article interesting. It showed the personal side of the Tun.
Kam wrote that “while Mahathir had wielded the big stick with his own children, he now treats his grandchildren with kid’s gloves.” She added that “Mahathir’s 15 grand-children, most of them under 10 years of age, can get away with anything with their grandparents…..and they can call him at Seri Perdana any time.”
And like all daughters (and sons), Marina Mahathir was quoted in the article as complaining about her father’s “double standards” .
“At that time my daughter was still a baby. She was being naughty so I just spanked her a bit. Wah, suddenly I hear my dad scolding, ‘Don’t touch my granddaughter!’ Amboi,” Kam quoted her.
Sounds all too familiar. The power these little imps, devils, rascals, darlings, sweethearts (or whatever you call them) have over us – aunties, uncles, mothers, fathers, grandmothers, grandfathers and Prime Ministers too.
So Tun, despite all that has been said, you have a heart too. Happy retirement.