GE13: Racial Dynamics & Politics in Malaysia

This article was originally written and published online on the verge of the last general election, GE13. It offers a voice of reason. If we belong to a political group or a set of ideologies it is important to really seek to understand other opposite perspectives in the process of national reconciliation for a better Malaysia.

The main hypothesis presented in this article has mainly been proven by the general election results after which Barisan Nasional (BN) stays in power mainly due to the support from rural areas while Pakatan Rakyat (PR) continues to gain popularity in major cities in Malaysia.

In specific, this article explores the relevance of major political parties in Malaysia with respect to Malaysian racial dynamics from the perspective of individual paradigm shift* from being dependent to independent and interdependent.

Dependent citizens always depend on government assistance for basic and other needs through subsidies, preferential treatment, etc. On the other hand, independent citizens does not need any government assistance to live a comfortable life. The final stage is when all independent citizens, regardless of skin colors, are working together to effectively compete in global economies for the betterment of the country.

In the context of Malaysian politics, race-based political parties are still perceived as relevant. Malays who embrace the Quranic verse, "God will not help a group of people unless the group help themselves", will always make a political party like UMNO, or PAS, relevant. In fact, as long as there is a majority of dependent constituents, especially in rural areas, Barisan Nasional and its component parties will arguably, always be relevant.

On the other hands, Pakatan Rakyat and its ideologies are more attractive to independent citizens, regardless of their races, especially in major metropolitan areas. This group typically has higher education, has completely satisfied their basic needs, and are longing for a much better governance and quality of life. BN, in general, is struggling to maintain its relevance with this group. At best, this group perceives BN-led government as inefficient, at worst, corrupted. The perception has been improving with the implementations of the Economic Transformation Plan (ETP) and 1Malaysia, but will remain stagnant without any serious effort to make the government more transparent (e.g. asset disclosures instead of symbolic pledges). PR, however, will continue to struggle to attract the dependent constituents. Even with brilliant ideas to address poverty and quality of life, PR’s lack of experience and inconsistency in governance pose a huge cloud of uncertainty for dependent citizens to abandon the status quo. Also, who’s there to guarantee that every facet of PR or any alternative party in power will be clean? Clean politics can be seen as an oxymoron, no matter what your political brand, and no matter if you are talking about politics in Timbuktu, Kuala Lumpur or Washington.

Going back to the paradigm shift spectrum, UMNO is actually quite adept to deal with its dependent and independent constituents. It is perfectly conceivable to have an UMNO leader brandishing a dagger and antagonizing other races at an event in the morning, and in the afternoon the same leader can put a straight face at another event to promote 1Malaysia. Datuk Seri Najib and UMNO leaders have to be maverick to play the tricky game. They understand that forcing Malays too quickly to be independent by taking away multitude of subsidies and preferential treatments would only make UMNO irrelevant. It would also be bad for everyone else because the gap UMNO would leave would quickly be filled by another entity like PERKASA. However, UMNO with its ideologies still needs to advance Malays from being dependent to independent, hence an UMNO dilemma - quite akin to the Malay dilemma, coined a long time ago by Tun Mahathir.

Eventually, when everyone is on the same level of playing field, when we all can look at each other beyond the skin colors, we will reach the final stage of the paradigm shift to be interdependent with each other. When this time arrives, we will abandon "horizontal" or racial-based politics for "vertical" politics where people forget their differences and work together to focus on what matters most to improve the quality of life for everybody. We will identify our true competitive advantages, and focus on expanding the size of the economic pie in the global economy instead of fussing over for ⅓ or ⅔ of the existing pie. It is not always a zero-sum game - a rising tide lifts all boats. Until we embrace that, we have to bear with a hint of some good politics with dollops of bickering and sensationalism.

*This concept was popularized by Stephen Covey in The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People

p/s: Transformation Continues:  http://wacanamalaysia.blogspot.com/2013/05/transformation-continues-open-letter-to.html