A Different Merdeka

By Wan Fadzrul Wan Bahrum, YouthSpeak Coordinator

August 31, 2008

I have a confession. I am not the most patriotic Malaysian out of our vast sea of 26 million. I am, in the most recognized term, an apathist; albeit one that is fully aware of what he is apathetic about.

With all these years gone by, Merdeka Day had always been just another weekday or weekend holiday. I wasn’t amongst those who woke up at 7 o’clock to watch soldiers march and tanks rumble down a wide boulevard. Nor did I ever take notice of the latest patriotic songs or even our current Merdeka Day motto.

Nevertheless, things had somewhat changed recently, not that it has anything to do with the current state of our national politics. But by a surprising group of determined Malaysians bent on raising our consciousness.

In the previous weekend, I had the unexpected pleasure of spending a few days with an improbable group of political activists from a budding think tank. The ‘improbability’ mentioned here are both in terms of their private and shared ideological standings – being members of opposing political parties as well as advocates for classical liberalism. My apologies to the reader, but I feel reluctant to divulge their details, but let it be enough to say that one of them is a London-based lifetime member of PAS, another is a staunch UMNO affiliate of Kelantanese extraction, and the third is an enigmatic cross between gregarious law professor Azmi Sharom and an English schoolboy. God forbid if it’s our version of Larry, Moe and Curly.

The resident pessimist – yours truly – did not expect a high-powered discussion to come so soon; considering most of the participants are students, and being students are mostly idealistic when engaging in a civil discourse. Nonetheless, I was blindsided by the vocality of the floor; the opening deliberations on the politics of ideas brought up strong feelings from both the facilitators and participants. Self-described Islamists, Marxists, libertarians, even anarchists freely went on verbal sparring in and between sessions; issues of liberal Islam, state welfare, subsidies and individual rights were our battlegrounds; and most importantly, ideas were our arms. It was surprising that during this ‘war of ideas’, not even the slightest notions of religious or ethnic issues were deemed ‘too sensitive’ to discuss. And at some point, I had an epiphany; this is the spirit of Merdeka I had sought for all this while.

And that spirit of freedom went on throughout those two days; lectures on the nature of individual freedom, its relation with the state, with successive governments and with our politicians, to what was finally revealed that our concept of Merdeka is far from the one our Founding Fathers had hoped for. The fact of our ever-increasing dependence on the state to provide for us is an unequivocal proof of this. How can a citizen be truly free if political tides govern his wellbeing? How can there be fair governance if politicians bend to the will of a few? Should this nation be devoted to the workers or to the industrialists? To the poor or to the rich? Should we even trade one form of discrimination for another?

Or, should we let each Malaysian decide how to live their life? Truth be told, being independent in the national sense is meaningless of one is not independent as an individual. We may try to justify our dependence on the basis of need, but as Benjamin Franklin had warned, “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.??? And that, my dear reader, should be in your mind before you hold out your hand to your ministers and MPs.

As for this author, his pessimism still holds; he still couldn’t recall this year’s Merdeka song or motto; and he’d still sleep till noon on August the thirty-first. But as he finishes this little piece at a WiFi-ed mamak stall, he couldn’t help but smile for this faintest ray of hope at the horizon; not from the bickering politicians in Parliament, but from truly independent Malaysians refusing to let others do their thinking for them. Selamat Hari Merdeka.

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Wan Fadzrul is currently a final-year student at Monash University reading Finance and Economics, and holds a keen interest in public finance, and developmental economics. Fadzrul and John Lee will jointly coordinate the YouthSpeak section. Share your thoughts and ideas with him via:  wanfadzrul[at]gmail.com