Merdeka! Merdeka! Merdeka! ..Are we there yet?

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Category: Merdeka Stories/Essays

Published: Sunday, 31 August 2008 16:11

Posted by mob1900

What is Merdeka?

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Category: Merdeka Stories/Essays

Published: Sunday, 31 August 2008 03:11

Posted by Eugene Chua K.H.

By Eugene Chua K.H.

August 31, 2008

Merdeka! Merdeka! Merdeka! Merdeka! Merdeka! Merdeka! Merdeka! This resounding proclamation of joy rang out over the Merdeka stadium fifty one years ago, representing freedom and hope to all the people of Malaya, and subsequently Malaysia. What does this word mean today, after so many years? I think that Merdeka means that we get to call ourselves, Malaysians, a people with a nation of our own. Those of my generation are said to be unmindful of history, unappreciative of the sacrifices made, the struggles faced and overcome, in order to enjoy the freedoms of a democratic country and the economic comforts that the first people during that first Merdeka did not enjoy, nor could they have imagined. Yes, Merdeka!

But what is Merdeka, when a young man and his friends, out for supper at a local stall, receive no service at all, and instead get hostile looks from the other patrons? What is Merdeka for a young boy who gets singled out and called all manner of terrible names by his teacher in front of his fellow young impressionable students, all because his skin colour is darker? What happens to Merdeka, when a student leader from one of our leading universities sends out a memo, vetted by the university’s student affairs department, telling one group of students that they should be prepared to stand against other students and fellow Malaysians?

I thought that Merdeka means freedom, freedom for individuals to have meals with fellow Malaysians without being distanced, freedom to learn and study in school under the care of his teacher. I thought Merdeka means freedom to fulfil our potentials as individuals for ourselves, our fellow Malaysians and our beloved country. So, what is Merdeka then?

I receive Merdeka when I receive kuih raya from family friends who are celebrating their religious festivity. I know Merdeka when my parents were invited to a wedding of someone of a different culture and religion, and where people mingled without thinking that they should avoid each other, and where the best photographer in town, a friend of the groom’s father, thought the couple look lovely together without thinking that they were different from him. I smell Merdeka when I smell all kinds of different styles of food prepared at various food stalls. I hear Merdeka when people who go to temples or churches stand alongside people who go to mosques during the Johor floods. I see Merdeka when two young innocent school children have no fears or worries of falling in love with each other, where two best friends think that the word ‘race’ is about fast cars and not the differences in their skin colour.

But, I had to pause to think again about Merdeka, where after extending a hand of kindness, I was asked incredulously whether I was of their race or another. It hurt slightly, but hurt it did. Because the answer to that question shouldn’t have mattered. Because they did not expect kindness from me, as I come from another race. I wondered about Merdeka when someone is called a traitor of his race by the university chancellor for thinking of inviting a meagrely small number of students of another race to study with fellow Malaysians of another race. I’m no longer sure that there is Merdeka when those painful racial incidents were reported in the papers over the past months. I do not know what has race anything to do with Merdeka, when people cheered together fifty one years ago without thinking of races.

But I do know this, that I will not allow those ugly incidents in the past and those that are likely to happen in the future, to make me retract my hand, because I will continue to extend my hand, in respect, in kindness and in love, to my fellow Malaysians.

Will you hold my hand then,my fellow Malaysian, and help keep Merdeka alive?
 

A Different Merdeka

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Category: Merdeka Stories/Essays

Published: Sunday, 31 August 2008 03:37

Posted by Wan Fadzrul Wan Bahrum

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.

______________________________

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

A Merdeka upside down?

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Category: Merdeka Stories/Essays

Published: Sunday, 31 August 2008 02:52

Posted by Dr Azly Rahman

MERDEKA ESSAY: A Merdeka upside down?

By Dr Azly Rahman

August 31, 2008


Education is the solution. I believe we need a radical overhaul of everything, philosophically speaking. We have the structures in place but we would need to replace the human beings running the system.

"Our Nation, Malaysia is dedicated to: Achieving a greater unity for all her people; maintaining a democratic way of life; creating a just society in which the wealth of the nation shall be equitably distributed; ensuring a liberal approach to her rich and diverse cultural tradition, and building a progressive society which shall be oriented to modern science and technology.

We, the people of Malaysia, pledge our united efforts to attain these ends, guided by these principles:

• Belief in God

• Loyalty to King and Country

• Upholding the Constitution

• Sovereignty of the Law, and

• Good Behaviour and Morality"

                     - From the Rukunegara, circa 1970

 
The words above constructed and proclaimed in 1970, after the bloody riots of May 13, 1969, contain internal contradictions if we are to analyse them today.

As we approach Aug 31, our independence or Merdeka Day, we read the following stories:

- an irate prime minister mulling action against a blogger for flying the Malaysian flag upside-down in cyberspace;

- a by-election campaign in Pematang Pauh in Penang, that shows up the ugliness of smear campaigns focusing on race, religion, and personal issues instead of presenting solutions to national crises;

- an aborted Bar Council forum on conversion to Islam, disrupted by groups claiming to represent the survival and dignity of Malaysian Muslims;

- an angry Vice-Chancellor of an all-bumiputera university threatening to sue the chief minister of Selangor for the latter's suggestion that Universiti Teknologi MARA be opened to non-bumiputera;

- a teacher in Selangor reprimanded and transferred for hurling racial slurs at her Malaysian school-children of Indian origin;

- the continuing and intensified work of the prime minster's propaganda outfit, Biro Tata Negara, in ensuring that the ideology of Ketuanan Melayu remains funneled into the minds of Malay students, educators, and civil servants;

- the continuing refusal of the Ministry of Higher Education to grant freedom to students to gain concepts and skills of political consciousness by its refusal to radically revise the University and University Colleges Act;

- an increasingly cacophonic and toxic relationship between the Executive, Judiciary, and Legislative as a consequence of the 22-year rule of the previous Prime Minister, Dr Mahathir Mohamad;

- a hyper-modernised country trapped in the excesses of nationalism and globalisation at a time when the global food and energy crisis is taking a toll on the economic and political lives of nations.

After 51 years, what do we have?

These are among the snapshot items of Malaysia circa 51 years of Merdeka or independence. The composite image of divide and conquer left by the British colonials continue to be artistically refined into subdivisions of divide and conquer, aided by the propaganda machine of the ruling class.

What can now be seen in Malaysia are images of the little brown brothers becoming the new colonisers and transforming themselves into 'emperors in new clothes'.

If the words of the 1970 proclamation are to be our benchmarks of Merdeka, we must ask these questions:

- How have we fostered unity amongst the nation when our government promotes racism thorough racialised policies and by virtue that our politics survive on the institutionalisation of racism?

- How have we maintained a democratic way of life, when our educational, political, and economic institutions do not promote democracy in fear that democratic and multicultural voices of conscience are going to dismantle race-based ideologies?

- How are we to create a just society in which the wealth of the nation is equitably distributed, when the New Economic Policy itself is designed based on the premise that only one race needs to be helped and forever helped, whereas at the onset of Independence, poverty existed amongst Malaysians of all races?

- How are we to promote a liberal approach to diverse culture and tradition when our education system is run by politicians who are championing Ketuanan Melayu alone and ensuring that Malay hegemony rules at all levels and spheres of education, from pre-school to graduate levels?

- How are we to build a progressive society based on science and technology when our understanding of the role of science and society do not clearly reflect our fullest understanding of the issues of scientific knowledge, industrialisation, and dependency?

A failed Malaysia? Across the board, the country is in distress. Education in shambles, polarised, and politicised. The economy is in constant dangerous flux. The judiciary is in deep crisis of confidence. Public safety is of major concern due to declining public confidence in the police, and politics remain ever divided along racial and religious lines.

This is the Malaysian depiction of Dorian Gray, one that shows the image of a "vibrant nation of progress and harmony, racial tolerance and a robust economy" but behind that is actually a deformed Malaysia, a mere continuation of the past's feudal and colonial entity.

Broken promises

The colonised have become the colonisers. The state has become a totalitarian entity using the ideological state apparatuses to silence the voices of progressive change. The nationalists have nationalised the wealth of the nation for themselves and perhaps siphoning the nation's wealth internationally.

This is the picture of the broken promise made by those who fought for independence; the vices of the early radical and truly nationalistic Malays, Chinese, Indians, Ibans, Kadazans, Sikhs, etc, of the early Merdeka movement.

How then must Malaysians celebrate their 51st Merdeka? By flying the Jalur Gemilang upside down? Or to do better than this – by putting justice in place, by engineering a multicultural jihad against all forms of excesses of abuse of power and to de-toxify the nation entirely, and then next - begin Year Zero of our cultural revolution by using a gentle enterprise called peaceful education?

Education is the solution. I believe we need a radical overhaul of everything, philosophically speaking. We have the structures in place but we would need to replace the human beings running the system.

We have deeply racialised human beings running neutral machines. We have ethnocentric leaders running humane systems. We have allowed imperfection and evolving fascism to run our system.

We have placed capitalists of culture behind our wheels of industrial progress; people who have the dinosaur brain of ketuanan this or that.

We have created these monsters and have unleashed them to run our educational, political, economic, and cultural systems. We have Frankenstein-ised our Merdeka.

We need to re-educate ourselves by reinventing the human beings we can entrust to run our machines. We must abolish the present system and create a new one; just as how we created our new cities – Putrajaya and Cyberjaya – the symbols of our oriental despotism and Asian capitalistic decadence.

We must be aware that class in the broadest and most comprehensive sense of the word is what we are dealing with and through class and cultural analyses, we can arrive at a different path to a new Merdeka.

This Merdeka, the rakyat, armed with wisdom of a new era, must now speak softly but carry a big stick. Our struggle for Merdeka has only just begun.