Reflecting on “The Malay Dilemma Revisited”

In a previous post, I said that I would be reading up for the Malaysian Student Leaders’ Summit. I’ve just finished going through 150 pages of M. Bakri Musa’s “The Malay Dilemma Revisited”. Its 328 pages long, so I’m really half-way through. The style is familiar though. I’m not sure how many of his ideas in his book are original and truly influenced Malaysian thinking, but essentially this is what politics — not political science — is made of.

Now, let me make a claim: there are two things that you do in politics (not political science). First, is securing power. For purposes here, we can take power to be “getting other people to do what I want them to do”, for whatever purposes, self-aggradizement, progressive change, etc.

The other thing that you do in politics is interpretation: you take a piece of information from an observation you make, gossip you here, news you read about, and you interpret its significance. For instance, affirmative action in Malaysia is interpreted by non-Bumiputeras as “unfair” and simplistically “bad” while Mahathir in The Malay Dilemma interprets as “their privilege” , “necessary for equality” and ultimately, “fair” and simplistically “good”.

Now, what the Malay Dilemma Revisited is, is pure interpretation of political events. M. Bakri Musa takes pieces of his own experiences, coupled with anecdotal advice from similar countries, and then makes a conclusion. His conclusions might go either way, right or wrong, but the only thing certain is that this is what politics is made of.

The Malay Dilemma Revisited has 20 chapters, with one introducing the original book by Dr. Mahathir, and the traditional last summary chapter. If this was a rigorous political science treatment of the questions, each chapter would be a mini-book with hundreds of citations. That’s the science of political science: while still maintaining non-mathematical argument, authors attempt to prove beyond reasonable doubt that x is the cause of y by presenting sufficient evidence so that it would be extremely difficult to argue the contrary. (That’s also why its a whole field in itself.)

I did not feel like The Malay Dilemma Revisited was that rigorous. Many times he used argument by analogy, a persuasive but ultimately faulty mode of reasoning. It made claims about x,y, z things in Malaysia but has not demonstrated unquestionably the proof of x, y and z.

For instance, he claims that Malay leadership in public positions suffer from “sultan mentality”. If this were true, then it would be a grave problem to Malaysia. However, he did not do justice to this claim: he only cited from personal experience, accounts of friends and analogy to Malay weddings which treat the wedded couple as though royalty. Other times, when he quotes academic studies, he mentions only one and develops that one only. All the time, the evidence is insufficient to make a proper case, because he did not prove conclusively that his experience was not an exception.**

Granted, these things are not easy to verify, especially when he is living in California. But he did not make completely strong case for them. I wish he did. I truly wish he did cite more sources, show that in the newspapers so-and-so did this, quote some figures, draw a few charts from reliable sources, do something to show that he had done extensive research to prove his convictions were true.

There’s another bone I need to pick.

In his book, he is biased towards science, engineering and math graduates, because they are “the ones who would solve the nation’s myriad problems, execute its complex transactions, and keep the nation’s institutions running smoothly (page 139). He says that most government officials are also liberal arts graduates, and that most Malay(sian?) students graduating as liberal arts or law students is ultimately detrimental because they have bad math skills and they are not adept at (cutting-edge?) technology.

This cuts deep. No matter how much I think I’m doing a science, “social science”, its still “liberal arts”. I am an arts student, and always has been since the natural sciences has been truncated to just “science”. Looking at just the NUS arts faculty, I would estimate that 70% of the students here are bad at math. (The economics majors can’t afford to be bad at math.)

I might be able to consider myself a cut above the rest with respect to the natural sciences because I did science at A levels. But whether my generation and I stay at the cutting edge of technology to stay relevant and sufficient for the progress of our nation (Singapore or Malaysia), is a major question. If we can rely on the fundamental nature of human beings to be LAZY, then I suppose we’ll follow suit.  I’m sure our fathers and grandfather were familiar with the technology of their era, its the technology of the future I’m worried about being able to adapt.

As a political science graduate, my role in society is definitely not the same as an accountant or an engineer. An engineer drives industry, the heart of all modern economies, and the accountant keeps track of the money in the economy, the blood of all modern economies. The worth of a political analyst to a nation is secondary but intangible: we help people make sense of the world.

On page 147, he makes the analogy between a ruler and a president. While the ruler’s sycophants feed him what he wants to hear, the president’s aide push him to continue to work for the benefit of the country. That’s what we do, essentially.

But obviously, this is a very romanticised account of my role in society. I can turn out to be disenchanted. One of my fellow students became disenchanted with the study of international relations, saying, “there’s nothing much I can do about it anyway.” She plans to go to finance.

Aye, but let me say this. The measure of democracy is not by elections. It is how people react when they see an injustice: “It is not my problem, the government can solve it”, or “Lets do something about this”.

**Granted, I am also not citing enough of M. Bakri Musa to conclusively prove that he’s not citing as much as he should. But do you really want to read that? It would take about a few thousand words per chapter. Critiquing his book would essentially take another book, which I am not prepared to write on at the moment.

1000-ish words.