Page 2 of 2 In search of the perfect
Malaysian By Michael Vatikiotis
divergent interest groups,
not the harmonious blending that the "Malaysia
Truly Asia" commercials on the Cable News Network
soothingly portray. Malaysian politicians today
have to work just as hard as they did in Tun Dr
Ismail's day to prevent friction and maintain the
ethnic status quo.
There are perpetual and
often insistent demands from the religious right
to strengthen Islam as the core of Malay identity,
which
deeply
offends Indian- and Chinese-Malaysians. Why after
all these years are there still quarrels over
church building and temple erection, and why do
Malaysia's religious minorities still feel so
threatened? Then there are the concurrent demands
from the minorities to do away with the National
Economic Policy (NEP), which mandates special
treatment for the Malays but irks the Malay
mainstream.
It's a delicate balancing act
and one that Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi
struggles to achieve - just as his predecessor
Mahathir Mohamad did. In his Lunar New Year
message, Abdullah reminded Malaysians of the need
to preserve racial harmony and also hinted that
the NEP would not be around forever. Yet at the
UMNO assembly late last year, leaders of the
party's youth wing brandished a Malay dagger and
swore to uphold the special privileges of the
Malays in a way that provoked fear and anger in
the ethnic-minority communities.
Cultural culpability Culture is
also partly to blame. It is hard in the Malay
language to talk about tolerance and moderation
without imparting a sense of weakness. Malay
political culture places great stress on the
struggle for purity of ideals and loyalty to race
and religion.
The Tunku, therefore, for
all his great charms, comes off as something of a
flawed role model for Malays. He gambled and drank
liquor. He was affable and rather Western in his
outlook. The same went for Tun Dr Ismail, who
loved to play golf and drank in moderation.
There's a whole generation of rather clubbable,
golf-playing, English-speaking civil servants who
tended to grow up playing with their Chinese or
Indian neighbors and are lionized in pluralist
circles.
Mahathir was a famous UMNO ultra,
but he comes across rather better because even
though he worked hard to cultivate an image of
himself struggling for the Malays, defending their
culture and religion, in his personal life and
actual family background he was less than an
archetypal perfect Malay gentleman. The non-Malays
liked him because he projected a secular image. He
went up against the Islamic party PAS (Parti Islam
SeMalaysia) - and lost two states in electoral
battles to Islamic rule - and because he was
impatient and wanted fast results, he dished out
patronage to Malays and non-Malays alike.
Yet under Mahathir's tenure the halls of
the Putra World Trade Center, where UMNO holds its
annual convention, were decorated with colorful
murals of Mahathir and other Malay leaders in
traditional dress, some brandishing daggers and
charging forward as if into battle. Against whom
it isn't certain, but they are certainly not
pictured arm-in-arm with their non-Malay fellow
Malaysians. And there is no celebration of
pluralism in the art.
In the end it's hard
to find an ideal Malaysian profile that satisfies
both Malay and non-Malay constituencies. Prime
Minister Abdullah appears to come close by
combining the qualities of racial fair play and
tolerance with an Islamic outlook on life.
Together with Anwar Ibrahim, a former deputy prime
minister and current opposition politician,
Abdullah represents the kind of Malay who has
tried to harness religion and culture to project a
moderate image, rather than embracing Islam as a
weapon to shore up Malay identity.
The two
men in fact share a mixed heritage - both claim
descent from the southern Malay provinces of
present-day Thailand. They appeal to the Malays
because of their non-secular image and are both
secure about their Malay identity, something that
many of the ultras were not. The trouble is that
it is hard to imagine Chinese- and
Indian-Malaysians ever really trusting Malays who
try to project modern values of tolerance and
pluralism using Islam as a vehicle.
Abdullah's Islam Hadhari, or
civilizational Islam, is a brave effort, as was
Anwar's modernist "Asian Renaissance" rhetoric of
the mid-1990s. Sadly, there is too long a history
of mistrust and uneasy co-existence among the
races and their religions, and there is far too
little co-mingling in terms of intermarriage and
conversion from one religion to another.
Blame a successfully managed brand of
political pluralism on both sides of the causeway
for this - keeping the races apart and respecting
boundaries rather than breaking them down. And
therefore expect continued nostalgia for a
generation of Malays like Tun Dr Ismail who, even
though they were nationalist pioneers, were in the
end mostly products of the long-gone colonial
milieu.
Note 1. The
Reluctant Politician: Tun Dr Ismail and His
Time by Ooi Kee Beng is published by the
Institute of Southeast Asian Studies in Singapore.
The full name of Tun Dr Ismail (1915-73) was
Ismail Abdul Rahman; Tun is a Malay honorific for
a senior official.
Michael
Vatikiotis is the former editor of the Far
Eastern Economic Review. He is currently regional
representative to the Center for Humanitarian
Dialogue based in Singapore.
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