A wish for less politicking
by marina mahathir
Sunday, 30 Dec 2018
I DOUBT if anyone has noticed but I’ve been away quite a bit in the last three months. “Away”, though, is a theoretical word in this age of social media. I may be physically absent, but it means very little when every morning, before I even have my first coffee, I get a barrage of messages telling me what is happening at home (various interpretations) and asking what I think of it all.
It’s partly because when I wake up, everyone else has been busy agitating and cogitating (in that order) for at least half a day already and therefore I have at least 15 issues and 30 different viewpoints on the same to consider.
I wonder if the PM feels like I do when this happens: Why not just go back to bed?
You’d think that social media was invented just for Malaysians, given the way we have taken to it. Judicious use of it, however, is not in our vocabulary.
Obviously, intelligence has its limits; or rather, social media does a good job of bamboozling people into believing their eyes and not their brains – if it’s on YouTube, it must be true.
So my pre-2019 policy is this: If I don’t comment on it, it means I don’t think much of it. Or at most, since I don’t want my friends particularly to make fools of themselves, I will post something that debunks whatever fantastic thing they just sent me. Hopefully it stops them from further spreading foolishness.
Which brings me to the cacophony that Malaysia’s democracy has become. People now seem to think that democracy means that you can say what you want, the louder the better.
Taking a digital leaf from the Internet, people now know how to use keywords so that what they say comes up first on Google and they can get their foot in first, so to speak. Often, it’s also their feet in their mouths.
Let me state here that I totally and completely believe in the freedom of expression and speech. Which means that everyone has a right to express their opinion on anything they want, as long as they are not inciting hate towards anyone. (More on this later.)
But it would be really nice if people used their freedom to express intelligent speech rather than the drivel that we are subjected to every day – everything from wild claims about why people are having lunch with certain people, to pronouncements about how allowing children to get married is a good thing and therefore allowing them to have legitimate sex, while at the same time declaring that sex education is bad because it causes people to run out and nuzzle each other or worse.
Mind you, the fact that this doesn’t gel with the number of people actually caught doing more than nuzzling and then being arrested for underage canoodling does not seem to matter to these people.
Even worse are those who fail to exhibit the slightest ounce of empathy with or sympathy for others who have had to suffer natural disasters that, unfortunately, their natural geographical locations make them vulnerable to.
When terrible tsunamis have killed or made homeless thousands in nearby Indonesia – that land that lies on the Ring of Fire with so many active volcanoes – people with not a shred of compassion in their hearts fill the need to declare these disasters the result of immoral activities and therefore a warning to the rest of us to be good and simply pray for our own salvation.
When disasters, debatably natural, occur in their own backyards, those are then pronounced NOT a result of moral decline. Only other people are morally wanting and therefore have God’s wrath visited upon them, WE are constantly pure and blessed. Despite high rates of poverty, unemployment, drug use, HIV, and children given away in marriage. If one were so blessed, you would think that would be a blissful place to live in, where no one needs to travel far to find jobs.
Then there are those who, sitting in their cosy homes, sipping their cups of tea, tap out hate on their news feeds, as if this is their mission in life to gain enough points on their Touch ’n Go cards to heaven’s gates. So what if some people, after reading their exhortations, think it amusing to go out and beat someone to death because they are different and therefore not quite human?
There’s a Malay saying about throwing a stone and then hiding your hand behind your back. That’s what these calls of hate on social media are. They can say that they are only expressing their opinion and are not actually responsible for the actual beating. Donald Trump uses that excuse too every time one of his white supremacist supporters beats or kills a black person.
If we insist on the rule of law, then nobody can beat anyone else without suffering the full brunt of the law. Otherwise, why have laws against such violence at all?
But more than that, we need very clear communication from the government that such violence is unacceptable, regardless of whether you approve or disapprove of someone’s lifestyle, looks, sexuality or national origin. At the very least, Article 8 should be taught in schools: everyone, no exceptions, is equal under the law.
Perhaps the one thing we should wish for in 2019 is not just a freer media but one that is held to higher standards. This is where citizen journalism, where people report what they saw and heard, is important to complement what we read in the media, especially the mainstream media.
News needs to be filtered for political bias, and sometimes even our own biases. When sound bites are picked out over substance, we need to switch our sceptical buttons on.
Finally, in 2019, I think what I, and hopefully most citizens, wish for is an end to politicking. There are people who cannot seem to help airing all their domestic troubles in public until we are all bored or, worse, nauseated by it all.
Can’t they just get on with work, please? Aren’t there other issues to deal with that affect a great many people than whether you’ve got a position or not? Doesn’t everyone have a role in making Malaysia Baru the dream nation that we voted for?
I’d really like to see the Cabinet speak as one, or at least coordinate their communications. Nothing is more confusing and annoying than to hear different ministers saying different things. Some of them really need a good communications person to advise them on optics if nothing else.
Having said that, while we have an imperfect government that’s still finding its way in this new environment, I would still say this: I prefer this current situation than anything this time last year when we were collectively depressed and feeling hopeless.
As flawed as our leaders may be right now, I have no wish to go back to the days of repression, unbridled greed and corruption of the previous regime.
We used our power to change, it’s now our duty to keep our new leaders on the straight and narrow. Not by constantly sniping but with substantive and constructive criticism.
And with that, have a Happy New Year everyone!
by marina mahathir
Sunday, 30 Dec 2018
I DOUBT if anyone has noticed but I’ve been away quite a bit in the last three months. “Away”, though, is a theoretical word in this age of social media. I may be physically absent, but it means very little when every morning, before I even have my first coffee, I get a barrage of messages telling me what is happening at home (various interpretations) and asking what I think of it all.
It’s partly because when I wake up, everyone else has been busy agitating and cogitating (in that order) for at least half a day already and therefore I have at least 15 issues and 30 different viewpoints on the same to consider.
I wonder if the PM feels like I do when this happens: Why not just go back to bed?
You’d think that social media was invented just for Malaysians, given the way we have taken to it. Judicious use of it, however, is not in our vocabulary.
Obviously, intelligence has its limits; or rather, social media does a good job of bamboozling people into believing their eyes and not their brains – if it’s on YouTube, it must be true.
So my pre-2019 policy is this: If I don’t comment on it, it means I don’t think much of it. Or at most, since I don’t want my friends particularly to make fools of themselves, I will post something that debunks whatever fantastic thing they just sent me. Hopefully it stops them from further spreading foolishness.
Which brings me to the cacophony that Malaysia’s democracy has become. People now seem to think that democracy means that you can say what you want, the louder the better.
Taking a digital leaf from the Internet, people now know how to use keywords so that what they say comes up first on Google and they can get their foot in first, so to speak. Often, it’s also their feet in their mouths.
Let me state here that I totally and completely believe in the freedom of expression and speech. Which means that everyone has a right to express their opinion on anything they want, as long as they are not inciting hate towards anyone. (More on this later.)
But it would be really nice if people used their freedom to express intelligent speech rather than the drivel that we are subjected to every day – everything from wild claims about why people are having lunch with certain people, to pronouncements about how allowing children to get married is a good thing and therefore allowing them to have legitimate sex, while at the same time declaring that sex education is bad because it causes people to run out and nuzzle each other or worse.
Mind you, the fact that this doesn’t gel with the number of people actually caught doing more than nuzzling and then being arrested for underage canoodling does not seem to matter to these people.
Even worse are those who fail to exhibit the slightest ounce of empathy with or sympathy for others who have had to suffer natural disasters that, unfortunately, their natural geographical locations make them vulnerable to.
When terrible tsunamis have killed or made homeless thousands in nearby Indonesia – that land that lies on the Ring of Fire with so many active volcanoes – people with not a shred of compassion in their hearts fill the need to declare these disasters the result of immoral activities and therefore a warning to the rest of us to be good and simply pray for our own salvation.
When disasters, debatably natural, occur in their own backyards, those are then pronounced NOT a result of moral decline. Only other people are morally wanting and therefore have God’s wrath visited upon them, WE are constantly pure and blessed. Despite high rates of poverty, unemployment, drug use, HIV, and children given away in marriage. If one were so blessed, you would think that would be a blissful place to live in, where no one needs to travel far to find jobs.
Then there are those who, sitting in their cosy homes, sipping their cups of tea, tap out hate on their news feeds, as if this is their mission in life to gain enough points on their Touch ’n Go cards to heaven’s gates. So what if some people, after reading their exhortations, think it amusing to go out and beat someone to death because they are different and therefore not quite human?
There’s a Malay saying about throwing a stone and then hiding your hand behind your back. That’s what these calls of hate on social media are. They can say that they are only expressing their opinion and are not actually responsible for the actual beating. Donald Trump uses that excuse too every time one of his white supremacist supporters beats or kills a black person.
If we insist on the rule of law, then nobody can beat anyone else without suffering the full brunt of the law. Otherwise, why have laws against such violence at all?
But more than that, we need very clear communication from the government that such violence is unacceptable, regardless of whether you approve or disapprove of someone’s lifestyle, looks, sexuality or national origin. At the very least, Article 8 should be taught in schools: everyone, no exceptions, is equal under the law.
Perhaps the one thing we should wish for in 2019 is not just a freer media but one that is held to higher standards. This is where citizen journalism, where people report what they saw and heard, is important to complement what we read in the media, especially the mainstream media.
News needs to be filtered for political bias, and sometimes even our own biases. When sound bites are picked out over substance, we need to switch our sceptical buttons on.
Finally, in 2019, I think what I, and hopefully most citizens, wish for is an end to politicking. There are people who cannot seem to help airing all their domestic troubles in public until we are all bored or, worse, nauseated by it all.
Can’t they just get on with work, please? Aren’t there other issues to deal with that affect a great many people than whether you’ve got a position or not? Doesn’t everyone have a role in making Malaysia Baru the dream nation that we voted for?
I’d really like to see the Cabinet speak as one, or at least coordinate their communications. Nothing is more confusing and annoying than to hear different ministers saying different things. Some of them really need a good communications person to advise them on optics if nothing else.
Having said that, while we have an imperfect government that’s still finding its way in this new environment, I would still say this: I prefer this current situation than anything this time last year when we were collectively depressed and feeling hopeless.
As flawed as our leaders may be right now, I have no wish to go back to the days of repression, unbridled greed and corruption of the previous regime.
We used our power to change, it’s now our duty to keep our new leaders on the straight and narrow. Not by constantly sniping but with substantive and constructive criticism.
And with that, have a Happy New Year everyone!
