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2 In search of the perfect
Malaysian By Michael
Vatikiotis
SINGAPORE - The history of the
Malay Peninsula, with its ethnic commercial
enclaves at both ends and torpid factional
personality politics in between, has long been
subject to emotional study revolving around race
and religion. This is the burden of the rather
distinct mathematics of ethnic pluralism and the
legacy of colonial immigrant labor policies.
The principal tension is between those
seeking an ideal harmonious balance among the
races - Malay, Chinese and
Indian
- and those fighting to preserve the special
rights and privileges as well as political
supremacy of the Malays. Not surprisingly, the
minority Chinese and Indians (together more than
30% of the population) champion the former, the
majority Malays the latter.
Fortunately,
rather than confrontation between these two views,
a kind of antagonistic harmony reigns, similar to
the way that muscles of the forearm work -
opposite forces of contraction and expansion
producing a single forward movement. It works like
this: members of the Chinese and Indian minorities
are supportive of Malay figures who are liberal
and tolerant - that is, secular in outlook - and
open to collaboration and cooperation with
non-Malays.
Meanwhile, the Malays seek to
stock their pantheon of heroes with personalities
who stoutly defend cultural and religious values,
and tend to look askance at those who might
otherwise be considered urbane and liberal. It
should be recalled that when Jafar Onn, the
founder of the ruling United Malays National
Organization (UMNO), sought to open the fledgling
party to non-Malay membership, he was virtually
expelled.
In many ways, this existential
struggle over what constitutes exemplary Malay
leadership mirrors the contemporary East-West
divide on Islam. The non-Muslim Western world
considers the moderate, tolerant Muslim the ideal,
while many Muslims reserve respect for those who
have struggled and sacrificed their lives for
principle and dogma. As Malaysia approaches its
first half-century of existence, so the debate has
begun about who the nation's exemplars should be.
A recently published memoir of the late
Tun Dr Ismail, The Reluctant Politician [1]
by Ooi Kee Beng, a Malaysian from Penang, sits
firmly in the minority camp. The former deputy
prime minister and one of the founders of modern
Malaysia was known in Malay political circles for
his uncompromising stance against corruption and
toughness on national security issues. He was
greatly feared, if not loved.
Among
non-Malays he is fondly remembered as someone who
embodied the values of fair play and moderation.
In the words of Singaporean Minister Mentor Lee
Kuan Yew, who was interviewed for the book, Ismail
was "a source of moderation and common sense, a
stable man not given to extreme views". The key
words here - "moderate", "stable" and "extreme" -
reflect the minority's instinctive fear of
untrammeled Malay nationalism.
Implied in
the biographical work that has been undertaken on
pioneering Malaysian leaders such as Tunku
Abdurrahman (or Abdul Rahman; 1903-90) and Tun Dr
Ismail is the deep respect afforded them by
non-Malays because they generally stood for fair
play and equality among Malaysia's constituent
races. The Tunku's political demise was at the
hands of the so-called "ultras" in the ruling
UMNO, those who criticized the country's founding
father for being too generous in political terms
to non-Malays.
The trouble is that many
Malays regarded these pluralist qualities to be a
political weakness precisely because they
threatened Malay privilege and supremacy. Both the
Tunku and Tun Dr Ismail found themselves at odds
with younger Malay leaders such as Mahathir
Mohamad, who saw patronage and privilege as the
path to securing power for himself and the Malays.
"I am confident with the passage of time, the
Malays will be quite capable of meeting the
non-Malays in normal competition, without the
special position," Tun Dr Ismail said in a media
interview back in 1969.
Enduring racial
politics Half a century after independence,
these issues remain just as relevant. Racial
identity continues to be the dominant leitmotif of
Malaysian politics. The predominant political
parties remain racially defined. The coalition of
racial parties and the special economic privileges
for Malays that people like Tun Dr Ismail
considered a temporary fix while a more mature
multiracial Malaysia developed are still firmly
entrenched.
The major obstacle preventing
the development of a full-blooded multi-racial
Malaysian society, in which all component races
have equal opportunities, is the enduring special
status of Malays and the racial character of
political parties. The central role played by
Islam in Malay identity has reinforced rather than
loosened ethnic boundaries, while there continues
to be staunch resistance to the membership of
non-Malays in UMNO. It amounts to what non-Muslim
Malaysian scholar Eddin Khoo has described as the
creation of a "political racial identity".
So why then is modern Malaysia often cited
as a model multi-racial society? Its constitution
was considered a model for South Africa as it
emerged from years of apartheid. More recently,
Iraq's wobbly government has expressed interest in
the so-called Malaysian model as a possible path
to national reconciliation. Perhaps this is
because the Malaysian model is based on managing
and preserving rather than completely eliminating
racial divisions, which is handy in situations
where assimilation is an unrealistic immediate
possibility.
For Malaysia, the
preservation of racial boundaries has proved a
successful means of maintaining power for the
ruling Barisan Nasional (National Front) coalition
led by UMNO. Malaysia is therefore at best a
successful and enduring accommodation of
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