NST: It just regained credibility in my eyes

While the Sunday Star front page was all about cars, the New Sunday Times published the best journalism I have come across in years. It published several articles wholly relating to the race relations act, including TWO two-page interviews with Datuk Professor Dr Shamsul Amri Baharuddin, and Unity, Culture, Arts and Heritage Minister Datuk Seri Shafie Apdal.

Every one of us should know his limits, says Shafie Apdal, Source: NST

[caption id="attachment_143" align="alignleft" width="168" caption="Race Relations Act needs more thought, Source NST"][/caption]

Click on pictures for link to article.

Congratulations Tan Choe Choe and Elizabeth John, for doing these two WONDERFUL articles, they’ve really gave people something to think about. I’d nominate both of you for a journalism prize. Suck eggs The Star! NST is back in the game. (Don’t throw molotov cocktails at me)

Then NST complemented the two interviews with follow-up articles:

Tan [Lian Hoe]: Law on race relations not necessary

She said there were many laws to deal with the matter, such as the Sedition Act, and another piece of legislation would be redundant.Tan said the proposed law would also give the impression to the world that Malaysia was a racially-divided nation.

Seriously, really.

Race discrimination laws worldwide

EDITORIAL: No haste in race relations

and finally, another piece of good news for political science students:

Race Relations: Pilot study to monitor status

The institute’s founding director, Datuk Professor Dr Shamsul Amri Baharuddin, said the project would do this by looking at the country’s 222 parliamentary constituencies and analysing their state of ethnic relations.It will use the quality of life index as the measuring tool.
“What is the unhappiness in this country if not about quality of life?

Totally awesome! Researching Malaysia and making assertive claims about Malaysia has been so difficult because such on-the-ground evidence is absent. It’s going to fill a very, very, large void.

Sadly, ALL OF THESE ARTICLES NEED to be in Bahasa Melayu. Sorry folks, but that’s the sad truth. I was wondering what the Malay newspapers were saying instead, so I went out to buy a Berita Harian (Berita Minggu on Sunday).

Instead, I got this editorial.

Di Luar Lingkaran: Berfikir waras mengenai masa depan by Johan Jaaffar

Demikianlah sindrom Melayu baru yang melanda kita. Semua ini kerana kita lemah. Lemah kita kerana kita tidak bersatu. Sekiranya bersatu menjadi kesalahan dalam konteks hari ini, maka orang Melayu harus menerima hakikat bahawa mereka lambat laun akan hilang di dunia. Hari ini untuk mengajak pada perpaduan sudah menjadi semacam kesalahan.

DUN DUN DUNNNN! I’ll have to write about these things another day because I’m out of time. More commentary on Shafie Apdal, Shamsul AB and Johan Jaaffar coming to here soon.

Project Malaysia commentary: What else to talk about besides race

Last installment in Project Malaysia commentary.

The Politics of Race by Malik Imtiaz Sarwar & Michelle Gunaselan

It is not insignificant that in almost any discussion about public life in Malaysia, be it the state of the civil service, the education system or economic development, to name a few areas, the matter of race will invariably feature. Race, its implications and its consequences permeate through our lives, and shape them, in a way that is unparalleled anywhere else in the world.

I can’t build or criticise this one. It’s really a factual piece which I haven’t got any space for analysis at the moment. But I do want to highlight three issues that are the opposite of race, in the sense that while race ALWAYS pops up, these three issues NEVER pop up despite being as important as race. They are:

1. Political policy positions.
2. The bureaucracy.
3. ASEAN.

We never ever ever compare political policy positions of all the parties substantively when it could mean so much to our country. The best I’ve ever seen is a link to all of them. You can count on a majority of people to not read ALL the manifestoes in-depth. What about pre-announcing cabinet line-ups? We want to know that you’re going to put capable people into power. Maybe I should go compile analysis for the next general elections.

We never ever talk about the bureaucracy. There exists a whole bunch of literature on public administration, and all I get is one lousy book dated 2003, and it’s not written very well. If political leadership is the cornerstone of Malaysia, the bureaucracy is the pillars that keep the house standing despite political turmoil. We need to diversify for representativeness. We need to make sure that economic planners are sufficiently autonomous. We need a solid way to gauge the corruption and efficacy levels. We always say that implementation of policy is poor in Malaysia, but it’s always stopped at that because ITS A FRIGGIN BLACK BOX.

We never talk about ASEAN at the domestic level. Somebody’s driving ASEAN economic integration, but it’s certainly not domestic civil society! Actually, according to some political science logic, extraneous factors can cause a state to weaken, therefore allowing the opportunity for social revolution. We need to weaken crony capitalism in Malaysia (and all of South East Asia actually), and ASEAN may be the solution because it breaks down the borders that protect them.

Anyway that’s the end of it. Finally, I declare this the most awesome quote of the volume so far.

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?

RESET: Race Politics (Part One) by By Suflan Shamsuddin

I have a feeling something similar could be said about PKR, but it’s somewhat at arms length right now.

Project Malaysia commentary: “Onion theory” of identity not useful yet

Back to more commentary on Project Malaysia.

Integration with Integrity: Are we Malaysian First?By KJ JOHN

Therefore, my honest question for our current leadership of Malaysia, can we ever really and truly ever become a nation which considers ourselves Malaysian first and ethnic second?

The logic of the above argument; where feelings of ethnicity give way to a more comprehensive Malaysian mindset can be understood in one of two ways, based on my worldview analysis model. Such an analysis can be done either from the outside in or from the inside out. Humans are much like onions; with layers and layers of social, cultural and religious filters, which define our personal, communal, and ultimate loyalties based on our worldviews. These worldviews are sociological and cultural constructs we hold about our world and life views.

How do I (not) express my anger at this article in a polite and rational manner? Jeez. Frankly speaking, I do not like it and I personally feel it is poorly written and thought out. I can credit it for containing some commentary about the state of Malaysia, having done its homework for interesting sources and containing readable snippets of Malaysian life, I think it completely fails at analysis.

This article fails at analysis despite giving a model of analysis. In fact, that really is all it gives, a model for analysis and hastily concludes with another set of questions that it really should have answered for itself. So I quote:

So, why is it then so important to have race-based parties, race-based everything defining everything else? What should it matter if the Prime Minister is a Malay or Kadazan or Murut so long as he is head of the party leading in Parliament with the highest number of supporters? Why is his religion really important, when the Federal Constitution and the Council of Rulers will always protect and preserve that interest in Islam?

Since he hasn’t given a proper analysis, the answers are not readily apparent. In fact, I’ll try to demonstrate why his “model” doesn’t actually give a useful answer. So to do that, i’ll have to try to show the inherent flaws in his model and argument.*crack knuckles*

Okay, so he goes that according to his worldview analysis model, Malaysians, just like the author, have five different levels of identities. First, the national, then the religious, then the ethnic-communal, then psychological, and finally the conscientious. He attempts to reduce each layer to show that everybody’s really the same at each level, thus proving that Malaysians are not all that different after all, and hence an obvious “it isn’t important at all!” answer to the rhetorical questions in the conclusion.

opening criticism: The onion anology is a poor analogy.

While it seems commonsensical that identities should be ordered in that 5-4-3-2-1 way, the actual reason is that the “outer layers” are sociallly constructed and have more primacy, and the “inner layers” are more pre-defined and have less primacy.

I would think that both (and many) identities often come into conflict with each other, and often times wes struggle to prioritize them. Our conscience “doing the right thing” can conflict with our national identity “kill the enemy soldier for your country”, or even national “let’s not bring up racial questions” against the communal “our community is being neglected”. There is no primacy between identities and logic of each identity.

first criticism: nationalism first

The author gives a poor reason for nationalism being first. While the author and Tun Dr. Mahathir, former prime minister both can trace their geneology to Malayalee, he is an Indian while Dr. Mahathir is considered Malay. The concept of the “Malay race” is a veil for a social construct designed to satify political conditions set by ultra nationalists. Thus, there really is no difference between both of them and they both must be equal Malaysians.

Unfortunately for the author, the constitutional definition for a Malay is a person who speaks Malay, practises Islam and follows Malay culture. It’s simply not an geneological-ethnic definition, but a pure cultural one. I’m no expert on law, but it sounds possible that a Chinese baby adopted into a Malay family could be considered Malay.

second criticism: religion second

Likewise also, in the case of Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamed too, I am sure his family has been Muslim for many generations; probably even before the Malays of Malaysia. What does that really mean for both of us, as Malaysians? We are both Malaysians first, but that we are Muslim and Christian second, respectively; based on our genealogies and current worldviews of choice. Consequently, although our faiths may differ and define who we really are and what we believe, we are Malaysians all the same.

I really don’t see the argument here that they are Malaysians first and religious persons second. It does not follow. The whole debate about secularism that continues today is about why we shouldn’t put religion first ahead of national issues. Ever heard about the Iranian revolution? Iran was a secular state, just like Malaysia now, until the Shah got overthrown.

He then goes on to comment on the failure of the judiciary in the Lina Joy case. I don’t see how that’s relevant in proving that the religious is indeed secondary to the national, but only relevant to ought to be. (Keep that in mind).

third criticism: Ethnicity and community third

Now, with mixed marriages, the culture gets infected with each others’ cultural values, but the nationality need not be and the faith need not be. Therefore, we can argue that nationality is a more primary form of identity, before faith and before even ethnicity.

What? Doesn’t religion change, even more so that culture?

Ethnicities are embedded in our past and are natural to us, but not so our faith and nationality.

What what? Didn’t he just say that ‘These worldviews are sociological and cultural constructs we hold about our world and life views’? So is ethnicity and community a construct or a naturally occuring phenomenon? A naturally occuring social construct is somewhat of a contradiction.

I won’t bother to riddle “conscience” with holes.

Concluding criticism:

The author’s mode of analysis is somewhat misguided and disarrayed. When one is presenting a paper in the format of a model-analaysis, FIRST, one explains the model and justifies why the model is not wrong. THEN only can the model be used for analaysis. The author fails at doing both.

First, his model is a shaky one. He doesn’t give firm reasons for us to believe that there is such a hierarchy, and deep down he is conflating (mixing up) ought and is. Have our national identities always overriden our subjective consciences? No, really, he’s giving a case for WHY it shouldn’t be. He’s giving a normative (value judgement) model of primacy of identities. The overarching pattern of his argument is “This is the model of how things should be and this is how it isn’t in reality” when a useful analysis should be “This is the model and the model explains why things are as they are in reality.” Only in the latter will the former provide a value-neutral roadmap for understanding Malaysia.

Secondly, the former mode would eventually entail how these these interact in Malaysia. The ideas of multiple identities might be useful. We know that identities are fluid. I am not the same today as yesterday or tomorrow. I might be religious today, but secular tomorrow by some causal chain. It is entirely plausible that broad changes cause trends in individual shifts in primary identity, and their implications for Malaysia as a whole. (However, that also renders personality and conscience “dead” concepts). All he needs to do is to identify such sweeps and how to react to such changes such that the Malaysian identity attain primacy among others.

This article had a lot of potential. Really, I wanted to like it because it touched on salient issues. But it suffers from a lot of unnecessary detail, isn’t to the point and difficultly coherent. After sifting through it, I found that he’s doing a comparison of a ‘Malaysian Dream’ to ‘Malaysia in real life’ instead telling us why we’re not all Malaysians first.

Project Malaysia Commentary: Another article has the same ideas as mine

Okay I’ve been going through a few preliminary reactions to the last Mahathir post. So I decided to go see what other people have been writing on, and I go visit a site I’ve been meaning to go read iup a bit on, which is Project Malaysia.

First, to plug project Malaysia. It’s basically a web journal — journal in the sense of “academic journal”. The articles are wordy and they try to straddle a middle ground between readability and depth. Around this time, the articles are based on the theme of “Politics of Race”.

So I have some thoughts on some articles posted there, enough to cobble together a substantial blog post. So here we go:

New Revolutionaries – The Solution to Race PoliticsBy Zubin Rada Krishnan

This new notion of ‘we’ based on race-blind trust in contrast to the old battlefield of ‘us versus them’ may not however, manifest naturally. We need revolutionaries [...] ordinary people who stand up and take action to grow our civil society and our stock of social capital. From the mundane rock band fan clubs and local badminton leagues, these new revolutionaries will rise forth and usurp considerations of race from their routines, fostering trust across race lines so that it becomes a force of habit.

Zubin Rada Krishnan is the article I refer to in the title of this blogpost. We basically come to the same conclusions: bridge the ethnic divide at the social, civil society level. Both of us basically draw from Robert Putnam’s Bowling Alone, which itself is a modern interpretation of Tocqueville (and has over 3500 citations on Google Scholar). Instead of Putnam’s bowling leagues, he sneakily puts in badminton leagues. It’ll be a sad day when Malaysians practice badminton alone

There is a difference between his piece and mine. I make the causal chain longer — not necessarily a good thing. His argument essentially is “stronger civil society, stronger trust, less racism”, true to the theme of this volume of Project Malaysia. My argument begins from a democracy-administration point of view, in which racism is treated as a subservient issue to being able to make good decisions democratically. In less words, “stronger civil society, stronger trust, less racism, better democracy, no need for authoritarian rulers”.

His piece is also overtly political, in the sense that he uses rhetoric. He’s compelling Malaysians to be the social change that we want to see in Malaysia. However, he hasn’t given several ideas on how to bridge that social divide. I’m going to attempt some new ideas here.

I’m going to throw in a bit of Gramsci here. Tocqueville’s useful to a point, but Gramsci is the real deal in social revolutions. As a communist revolutionary, he wrote his stuff while the government kept him in prison. My lecturer even tells me that when she first read it, it explained the universe.

He basically goes that THIS MEANS IDEOLOGICAL WAR. We fight not only class warfare, but also in ideas. This basically means that just because our ideas are great doesn’t mean that everybody will immediately love them. We’ve got to get down to the trenches and make sure they spread good and well. Guess where the trenches are?

They’re in the ideological apparatus of the state. Basically, it’s the institutions in which ideas are indirectly taught to people, often flying below the radar of politics, such as schools, churches, the state-sanctioned media, and what not. As revolutionaries, we’ve got to dig through all these institutions that give ideological support to the state and seed our ideas.

What does that mean to Malaysians who want to see a Malaysia for Malaysians?

• National service isn’t such a bad idea. Just need to stop kids from DYING and remove that idiotic nation-building module. No nation-building module is sufficiently taught at the pre-university level.
• Let’s start an United Malaysians National Organization NOW. We’ll acronym it UMaNO.
• More local exchange programmes. Between rural and urban homes, and between races. No matter what.
• Really brush up your Malay. or English, to the point of near-native proficiency.
• In fact, I really need to bridge the English-speaking Chinese and Chinese-speaking Chinese divide.
• Non-Malays need to start attending Malay things and vice-versa.
• Like each other’s night markets. Are there any Chinese dudes who go kapchai racing with the mat rempits?
• Start attending talks on which race-religion is a topic and be civil. Non-Muslims, attend talks on political Islam. We need to make sure we’re not silently mistreated. Dittto for Muslims.
• If it means no beer or hard drinks so that Malay Muslims attend, so be it (can’t believe I just WROTE that.) On the other hand, can we be not so hard up on the non-halal food being served?
• make a bloody effort to make friends.
• If there is somebody of another race who’s a minority, be extra nice to them. Yes, don’t take them for granted unless they fit perfectly in. (Actually, this applies regardless of ethnicity.)
• Take up smoking just to have a chance to talk to people of all races. (not recommended).
• When touring Malaysia, go ask your friends for contacts to show you around. Preferably not your own ethnicity.

Okay, I can’t churn anymore. Next article up tomorrow. I’m trying to pre-write it and automate publication.

Does Malaysia need another Mahathir?

I’ve lost most of my youthful confidence and idealism in democracy. People are stupid. Stupid people vote for slightly less, but still overwhelmingly, stupid people. Said stupid people make short-term decisions like bailing out AIG. That, and insidious PAP influence on my thinking. Maybe Malaysians needs a Lee Kuan Yew.

In response to Rajan’s thoughts, I’ll also try to sum up my thoughts on the Malaysian political situation at the moment.

First, I still stick by my stand that Mahathir shouldn’t rejoin politics. The reason being is that is it incredibly short-sighted for Malaysia, we need to find new (and younger) leaders who are capable both in terms of technical skill (like managing the economy) and political skill (being able to gather political support from inside and outside the party).

Secondly, my thoughts are a bit lengthy on the authoritarian leader issue. Assume that Malaysia has two options: a pro-development authoritarian leader like Lee Kwan Yew or Mahathir, or a more substantive democracy. Now, Rajan’s criticism is that in a democracy, stupid people will collectively make stupid decisions.

I don’t disagree. I’m pretty Aristotelian on the issue, democracy is bad when bad people make the choices. However, I think that this is unqualified democracy. Democracies, especially modern representative democracies, need to have several qualifications before they become feasible. They need political institutions in which every single voter can be educated of their choices and the implications of each choice.

It’s not only the media, although they do matter to a large degree. It’s also about the degree of interaction of Malaysians. I’m not talking about simply getting along and not killing each other, but actually being able to civilly discuss what each party wants so that the most optimal solution becomes more evident. That’s why civil society organizations which cut across all demographics and racial boundaries are important. (also look at Tocqueville’s thoughts on civil society.)

By civil society organizations, I’m not referring to think tanks and NGOs. I’m talking about non-political organizations like car clubs, sports clubs, and possibly websites (Read Robert Putnam’s Bowling Alone, which attributes US decline in democracy to the decline of these clubs). We need people to interact with the different elements in society so that they transcend their little own narrow personal or racial interests. (Read Rousseau’s thoughts on democracy, who says that people ought to vote not on their personal interests, but what they think is the best decision for everyone.)

This is just obviously one way among many in which we can make-up for stupid people in society. In simple terms, we need the institutions to turn stupid people to less stupid people. Think tanks and social research organizations help articulate real knowledge and turn criticism into solutions. The arts can help raise awareness — although with the state of the arts being quite elitist in Malaysia I cannot foresee a very large impact. Intercommunity dialogues work only at the elitist level since they’re representative instead of egalitarian.

If democracy is the way to go, what’s the action plan? First, we really need to bridge the ethnic and religious divide at the grassroots level. At the MSLS barbecue at Yang Jerng’s place, a niggling thought was that it was going to be an effective non-Malay affair. Even at MSLS itself, it was difficult to hear the different interests represented among the students. We really need to talk to more Malay friends (and Indians, and East Malaysians, and different regional Malays) hear their views, and form our opinions after.

Knowing Malaysians, that really is a tall order. How many times have I visited a Malay pasar malam? Of my friends in Malaysia, how representative are they? My Malay is pretty much shot to hell too.

I can see the attractiveness of authoritarianism. Granted, I think that the nature of power in Malaysia prevents an authoritarian from stagnating the economy like Ferdinand Marcos in the Philippines. But authoritarianism entrenches cronyism and the social status quo when it is clear that both are no longer needed in the current state of Malaysia. Cronyism is stifling the growth of the economy. The social compact of the Reid Commission and the race-based system of Malaysia needs to be renegotiated. Furthermore, authoritarian regimes seldom outlive their rulers — very clear across the political science literature, very clear after Malaysia.

That’s why in the long-term Malaysia has to make a transition to a more broad base of self-governance.

SPOILER ALERT: Death Race will do you in.

I went to watch Death Race, with full consciousness of its B-movie status.

One sentence review: Go in with low expectations, and enjoy the spectacle.

Proof

Longer review:

It’s not a bright movie. It’s not a smart movie. In fact, I’d call it a videogame movie, only that the videogame was produced in 1976. Lots of death, lots of gore, and a few awesome scenes. Some of them that made it for me:

• Robin Shou (“Liu Kang” of Mortal Kombat) shouts “Ta lei ge lo mo!” which translates to Smack yo momma while shooting a rocket at an airborn car.
• Powerups. There. are. literal. power-ups. to electronically activate weapons on the race course.
• Boss vehicle. It’s a modified 18-wheeler with high calibre machine-gun turrets, flame-thrower, wheel spikes, and a cannon stolen off a tank.

Now the premise of the show is that High Master Queen Bitch runs a prison Death Race, winner — or last driver alive — gets go free. She then wires up the entire racecourse and televises it on pay per view over three days for profit. Prisoners work on building up cars wiith rocket launchers on their roof and machiguns on the hood.

Don’t know how the vehicles can go anywhere near fast with the junk they’re carrying. Jason Statham’s car itself has two gatling guns on the right side of his hood and a 6-inch thick steel armour plate the size of a dining table attached to the back of his car– plus another half-inch armour all around. Add another half-ton of ammunition.

Basically, just pretend that youve paid that 250 dollar deal that the movie advertises the pay-per-view package for. Don’t think about the morality of it, don’t think about how bad the shaky camera is, don’t complain about the shitty rap music they use to mean how “prison is so ghetto” or how “hot Natalie Martinez is” (it really is an overused technique), or how that nerd mechanic ended up in maximum security prison. In-movie people pay to watch real people die in giant fireballs, you too are paying to watch actors fake-die in simulated fireballs.

Now, when’s the videogame tie-in going to come out?

[edit] Second thoughts. While the boss vehicle was awesome… the final leg sequence wasn’t terribly awesome. Needs something that makes it go, WOAH.