New resolutions for a new decade

New resolutions for a new decade
MUSINGS
Sunday, 29 Dec 2019
By Marina Mahathir

THE city fathers of Sabang in Aceh recently issued a ban on its local residents celebrating the New Year. Apparently, after 2,020 years, they’ve decided that such festivities are not in line with their local customs and traditions. However, they will still welcome tourists. Presumably not the celebratory type. A destination for the dour only.

On our very own eastern shores, a state mufti has declared that anyone who so much thinks of wishing anyone of another faith a Merry Christmas, Happy Deepavali or Happy Wesak Day is taking a giant step further away from heaven. The ladder up is steep and it’s so easy to slip and slide down a lot of rungs just by being beneficent to an infidel.

What strikes me most about these pronouncements, besides their intent on pouring cold water on anyone’s celebrations, is the sheer joylessness of it all. I picture some grumpy old men who have never had fun in their lives and are obsessed with spoiling everyone else’s.

Never mind that most people, regardless of their faith or station in life, have probably come to the end of the year mentally and physically exhausted and are looking forward to kicking back and hanging out for a few days before the grind resumes.

After all, many of us are not just sitting in air-conditioned offices thinking up spoilsport edicts but are actually trying to make a decent living or help others live a bit more comfortably.

Most of us are trying to keep body and soul together and have no time to think up schemes to suck the joy out of everyone’s lives, rather like a nasty vacuum cleaner that can’t rest until the last bit of so-called immorality is eliminated from this earth.

What is it about pleasure that sticks in these people’s craw so much? Or rather, what is it about other people’s joy that pushes that sharp stick up some people’s bottoms that they have to find ways to rain down unhappiness on everyone?

Is there a law somewhere which says that misery on earth is in inverse proportion to happiness in the hereafter? The more you suffer, the more points you earn towards the gates of that blissful place. Even if that were true, surely those who are ensuring that you have no laughter in your life are having the time of theirs.
By their own logic, this would be a bit like landing on a snake square and sliding down to its tail, forcing them to work even harder at sorrow to regain their place.

Unless they actually believe that their lives are even more agonising by making ours miserable and therefore, they are always ahead of us in the unhappiness stakes. You know, the old “this is hurting me than it hurts you” syndrome.

I suppose that is the way dictators, demagogues and despots work. They are convinced that they are doing us all a favour by keeping their people destitute. Smiles and laughter would be a sign of immorality, or worse, subversiveness.If people want to dance, ban it. If they want to sing, tell them it’s a sure ticket to hell. If they want to be neighbourly and greet friends of other faiths on their festivals, remind them that they will have to answer under the unrelenting sun of the Day of Reckoning why they bought that greeting card or sent over that jar of cookies. Beware!

To guarantee our virgins in paradise, not a body less than 72, we must never smile in this festering swamp that is the earth. For the unfortunate others who can only hope for golden umbrellas, just don’t complain about that pain in your heart, those bruises on your face or that broken arm. Comfort and safety are for the faithless, don’t you know? You owe it to yourself to endure. You’ll be rewarded later.So never mind those poor souls who have nothing to eat, who live in homes that flood every time it rains and whose kids go to leaking schools that teach them that the only way to get ahead in life is to make someone else’s life miserable. Hope for nothing in this existence and you’ll never be disappointed.

Those of us who bristle at these edicts also secretly wonder why these party poopers have no qualms about taking the day – sometimes several days – off during these heathen festivals. Isn’t not having to work a happy thing to do? Isn’t such joy subtracting a few steps along that highway to heaven? Isn’t it better to speed your way along by actually going to your cubicle on those festivals you keep tut-tutting about? Refusing to holiday along with everyone else would be the ultimate radical statement, a veritable vroom-vroom towards those virgins!

But instead, that “enforced” leave would be an opportunity to think of more ways to dump wet blankets on the populace. Merrymakers will be marked down! Point some pain at those panderers to paganism!

Let us fight back. Given that we are at the end of a decade and about to begin a new one, perhaps we should embark on some 10-year resolutions. I propose that we simply decide that we will find joy in every corner of our lives and ignore those who are intent on projecting their own despair onto us.

We will complain only when it’s warranted and not wallow in woefulness. We will do more to alleviate the unhappiness of others.

We will appreciate the beauty of nature and all that live in it. Most of all, we will sing, dance and laugh. Mostly because these days, those are revolutionary acts.

I hope you had a very Merry Christmas and wish you stomachs, pockets and hearts that are full in 2020. Happy New Year!

Marina Mahathir believes that smiling and laughing are acts of necessary resistance these days. The views expressed here are solely her own.

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Wishy-washy silence is not golden

Wishy-washy silence is not golden
MUSINGS
Sunday, 01 Dec 2019
By Marina Mahathir

THEY say that if you don’t come out strongly against something, it means you’re for it. Silence means acquiescence. It’s an affliction that particularly affects politicians who, ever wary of potential controversies, stay clear of taking unequivocal stands on most subjects.

So you have, to give an international example, a Jeremy Corbyn who won’t say he’s against Brexit. Which leaves us to speculate what he really thinks about it or whether he simply doesn’t want to agitate his pro-Brexit supporters.

Nearer home, we get the same sort of wishy-washyness from some of our politicians.

We thought the new Malaysia would be a dynamic and energetic one but yet there still is so much ambivalence in so many policies.

We thought a crowd pleaser would be major reforms of our education system but so far the so-called reforms have been superficial, involving shoes, writing and irrelevant languages.

So we’re still waiting on that one.

We have had people who have disappeared. This is by no means normal for our country.

Isn’t it a horrible thing for the families who are left wondering where their loved ones could be, whether in fact they’re still alive?

Why is there so little empathy for a wife who is suddenly husbandless, with no clue where he’s gone but only some suspicion that somebody took him.

Is it so hard to sympathise with that predicament, even when you can’t give any good news?

Are our tongues so heavy that we can’t express any solidarity with people who are suffering?

Even if it’s not from illness or loss, is it not possible to try and give some comforting words to people who have less?

Just the cost of living these days can bring enough misery for families, who are often left with nothing at the end of the month.

Can’t there be reassuring words, to be followed by actions of course, about lowering the cost of food, or of transportation. Talking about transportation, I was listening to a radio programme about the Malaysian so-called reluctance to use public transport. 

Apparently, we like the privacy of our own cars, to gather our thoughts, listen to news and music and therefore we’re not very inclined to use public transport because we have to share space with other people.

I understand all that although I was shocked to hear that Malaysians apparently have the most number of cars per capita in the world. Headphones though are a marvellous invention for use in public places. But place those individual luxuries against the cost of running a car, enduring traffic jams and looking for parking, and I think public transport becomes a viable alternative, just as it does in more advanced countries.

Funny that we have no qualms about using the Tube or buses in London, say, but not in KL. The reasons though are plenty.

Public transport over there is clean, efficient and well-organised. If you miss one train or bus, you know another one will arrive shortly. You can even track the arrival of the next bus.

What’s more, public transport there is not a class issue. It’s used by everybody regardless of their station in life, because it works.

But here, while cars still remain a symbol of upward mobility, there’ll always be a separation of people in our transport environment.

Ride-hailing cars evens it out somewhat but they still put cars on the roads. We need a more positive campaign to promote public transport and use technology to build a more efficient system.

So some sympathy for the average working person who has to spend a lot of money on transportation to work wouldn’t go amiss.

I also read somewhere that good public transport benefits poor people mostly because they often can’t afford to buy cars and all that goes with them, especially petrol.

So if you want to be a good government working for the poorest people, you’d have to invest in the best public transport system, because that’s the best way to get people to their workplaces.

If they can’t get to work, they can’t earn much money. If they can’t earn much, they’re forced to live far from their workplaces because that’s all they can afford.

But without good public transportation, they’ll spend most of their money and time trying to get to work. It’s a vicious cycle that needs to be broken.

But back to silence about issues potentially signalling agreement.

I am puzzled by the lack of will on eliminating child marriage.

Using the excuse of state reluctance to raise the age of marriage may be an excuse although a pretty poor one. But why can’t public figures make a stand about what they think of child marriage? Do they really think it’s OK?

Or it’s not OK but they cannot deal with bureaucracy? It’s really shameful to see the sheer reluctance to say outright that child marriage is wrong and harmful for our children. And I don’t even buy the excuse that it would lead to a high number of pregnancies and abandoned babies.

Marrying them young would still lead to pregnancies and not necessarily better care for those children because after all they’re being brought up by children.

There is a principle of allowing lesser harm if it averts a bigger one.

In this case, not allowing a child to get married is better than the long term harm of early marriage and early pregnancies.

But where our politicians are reluctant, the people are not.

It’s heartening to see a social media campaign begun by ordinary citizens calling on the states who have not raised the age of marriage to do so.

It should shame the states that are still recalcitrant unless they don’t want to listen to the people who voted them in. In which case they risk facing more Tanjung Piais.

Marina Mahathir sometimes wonders why people are so eager to marry children off, and yet when people do get married, still penalise them for having babies too soon after their weddings and label them illegitimate. The views expressed here are entirely the writer’s own and do not necessarily reflect the official stand of Sunday Star.

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No dignity in half-measures

No dignity in half-measures
MUSINGS
Sunday, 03 Nov 2019
By Marina Mahathir

You might need to do some unpopular things to right some wrongs. But if you look at the long-term benefits, the answer will be clear.

SPIKED. A word that describes an uptick in numbers such as an increase in followers after you’ve said something really dreadful or a sudden demand for a vitamin drink after someone admirably healthy for his age has been seen drinking it. An abrupt jump in interest in a particular subject is also a spike.

But spike also means something sharp, something that can prick you, hurt you or even be the place your head is impaled on if you were so unlucky. When your article gets spiked by your editor, it means it won’t see the light of day, at least in the pre-social media world. Thus, a spike can be a good or bad thing, depending on your point of view.

I suppose for some people the recent spike in the word dignity can be seen as a good thing. To them, making a spectacle of themselves frothing at the mouth while at the same time projecting themselves as victims is the way one displays one’s dignity to others. I feel so sorry for all the truly victimised peoples of the world, those who have been hounded from their homes and land, those bombed into oblivion, those cut off from the world by the mere shutting down of cellphone services, who do not have a chance to dress up, mount a stage with a great sound system and flattering lighting to moan their fate.

Imagine waking up in the morning, ready to dress in special outfits in order to gather with your fellow moaners, the multitudes who feel deprived of esteem, mostly of the self. To be sure, many of them truly believe that their lives are miserable, and someone needs to be blamed for it. But their lives were already dismal long before someone decided their dignity was being affronted. Only now they’ve fixated on a bogeyman and that is The Other. The one, that according to one poetic person, has the skin of the langsat fruit. (Said poet also called some other people mangosteen-skinned. Which leaves me to wonder what fruit my people’s skin is. Ciku?)

I don’t doubt that the lives of many of the ciku-skinned could do with improvement. A dignified life is one where you have a roof over your head, enough food on the table, decent schools for your children and opportunities to better your life. It’s not a dream that’s exclusive to only one group of people. Generally speaking, those are what every human being wants and deserves.

But it cannot be gotten by merely holding one’s cupped hand out and expecting riches to be poured into it. Nor can it be gotten by insisting that preferential treatment be given, university places even, to children with poor grades. There is no dignity when you are held to the lowest standards just so that you get a piece of paper that says you supposedly qualified in a profession. Dignity is mired in mud when you erase all competition so that you climb up a ladder you have no business being on. There is no dignity in knowing that every position you get is under false pretenses, that when you are put to the test against those who actually worked to attain those posts, you will invariably fail. Where is that dignity when you are made to look like a fool?

I don’t think that those who don’t do well in life are necessarily indolent. There are certainly all sorts of structural barriers that some people simply cannot overcome without some help. I see people working several jobs to make ends meet. By no definition can they be called lazy.

But the problem is the sense of entitlement and the totally unrealistic expectation that, if it weren’t for you-know-who, everyone would be living in mansions, riding in limos and carrying designer handbags. And all our children would have university degrees, regardless of their intellectual capacity or the quality of their education.

To secure any dignity, respect or standing in anyone’s eyes, we need to understand that everybody is entitled to all these aspirations, regardless of what fruit their skin resembles. The most basic needs of everyone have to be catered for first.

I was having a conversation with someone about another country which, after many years of seeming prosperity, has suddenly exploded in violent unrest. His opinion is that the events that led to the unrest were simply catalysts, the matches that lit fires that had long been simmering. If anyone had been more clear-eyed, they would have seen that the very basic need for decent affordable housing was becoming increasingly unattainable. And not having permanent shelter can make people very very angry. In Chile for example, the current demonstrations were sparked by a seemingly small thing, the increase in subway fares. Poor people found that going to work took even more of their hard-earned income.

Which seems to me that the conversation that needs to be held is not about dignity or entitlements but about inequality. How a few people can have so much while so many have so little. It’s the same story all over the world. Unfortunately, many leaders respond by finding someone to blame rather than actually doing the hard work of looking for solutions.

It strikes me that the ones who are truly lazy are those tasked with finding solutions to the problems we have. Yes, it takes a lot of time and energy to find out what the dilemmas are. Indeed, you have to talk to many people, with different expertise to come up with workable ideas that solve these issues. Thick books and studies might need to be read. You might need to do some unpopular things to right some wrongs. But if you look at the long-term benefits of such thorough thinking, they will all be clear.

However, if you only have your eyes set on the next elections, which is not far in the distance, then you’re not going to do the hard work of finding the answers that everybody needs. This has been a rampant disease among our policymakers from times past and still infecting them now.

There is no dignity in not wanting to think, or to not roll up your sleeves to find the type of results you want. Nor is there dignity in settling for half-measures because that is all you can be bothered to do.

As Martin Luther King, Jr. said: “All labour that uplifts humanity has dignity and importance and should be undertaken with painstaking excellence.”

Excellence. Now that’s a dignified word.

The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of The Star.

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Look for what we can offer the world

Look for what we can offer the world
MUSINGS
Sunday, 29 Sep 2019
By Marina Mahathir

While Malaysians look inwards and find new non-issues to hyperventilate over, other Asian countries are looking at the rest of the world and finding ways to export their cultures.

THESE are the things that make me weary:

A university professor inventing a so-called anti-hysteria kit that retails at RM8,000 and which he hoped to sell to, of course, the government because hysteria seems to happen a lot in government girls’ schools. And how else can you get rich but by selling things to the government at overinflated prices?

People getting hysterical (it’s getting to be a habit) over alleged porcine DNA in chocolate. Which begs the questions: How much chocolate do they eat that they need to worry about it, and aren’t there better things to get hysterical about? Or better still, let’s just not get hysterical but do something worthwhile, like protest the climate crisis.

And now once again, we are exhorted to beat our chests and tear our hair out because apparently there’s pig-based tallow in our bank notes. Mind you, this was not based on actual research into the composition of our money but on “information from an industry player”. Firstly, we really ought to question an academic who spouts alarmist stuff based on unclear information from an unnamed industry player. What does “industry player” even mean? And which industry was he from? The hocus-pocus industry?

I decided to do some research on the matter and came across an article from 2017 about the Bank of England stating that they will keep using animal fat or tallow in their bank notes despite protests from various groups.

There had been a petition protesting that the use of animal fat in bank notes was offensive to vegans, vegetarians, Hindus, Sikhs, Jains and “others in the UK”. Some Hindu temples had even banned the £5 note because of this animal pollutant.

The Bank of England, however, said it would not change to the other possible product because it was too expensive and not “environmentally sustainable”. And what was that product? Palm oil.

So basically, that so-called Malaysian academic could have teamed up with all the vegans, vegetarians, Hindus, Sikhs and Jains and in one shot, eliminated animal fat in our bank notes and at the same time lobbied for our palm oil industry. Which all gives new meaning to the phrase “greasing palms”, no?

But that’s the opportunity lost when people try to be clever and wind up showing how clueless they are.

On a more serious note, I get completely brain-weary when our newspapers get filled with nonsense like this. Is this truly the only way to sell news, by publishing sensationalist rubbish? Why do we prolong the dumbing down of our people by continually giving space to rumourmongers and gossip vendors when there are truly more important things to think and write about?

Lately, we have been worrying ourselves about the haze. Which is something we do every year. What we really need is a Greta Thunberg who would really call out the politicians, plantation owners, and other complacent people who yearly allow their voters and consumers to fill their lungs with smoke and ash.

I wonder if at the next elections, voters will remember this and make the haze and climate change an issue? When thousands of schools have to close and our children’s education is disrupted, isn’t this a political and economic issue?

It’s not as if our children are getting a holiday because they can’t go outside and play, and parents are going crazy trying to figure out how to deal with children at home all day.

As it is, there are issues about how our children are being educated, but when they lose days because of the haze, will these thousands and thousands of children ever catch up? Are there plans by the Education Ministry for how schools should manage these disruptions?

While we are getting our knickers in a twist about whether we’ll go to hell for handling money, eating chocolate or using the same supermarket trolleys as unknown persons, while we wind ourselves into paranoia about anything and everything, other people in the world are looking outwards and figuring out how to conquer the world. Not by military means, that’s so old hat. But instead by, horror of horrors, entertainment.

There’s a new book that everyone should read, just to see how far behind we are. The Pakistani author Fatima Bhutto has just published a book called New Kings Of The World: Dispatches From Bollywood, Dizi And K-Pop. In it she chronicles the global rise of the new soft power from India, Turkey and South Korea.

As we already know, Bollywood is huge. But do we know how huge it really is? Hindi movies have reached so many places where they don’t speak the language at all, including Russia, Eastern Europe and Latin America, not to mention many parts of Asia.
Shah Rukh Khan is a much bigger star than anyone in Hollywood and has devoted fans in places as varied as Peru and Germany. There’s a group of middle-aged German aunties who follow him around the world because they adore the fact that his movies allow them to cry. And his fans in Latin America are invariably poor and indigenous people who see themselves in him.

Turkish “dizi” television serials, each episode some two hours long, have also conquered the Arab world and Latin America. They feature stories from the Ottoman past and also modern-day issues. One series features a woman who fights for justice after being gang raped. Fighting for justice has universal appeal, much more than worrying about porcine elements in food and banknotes.

And finally, we all know this phenomenon called K-pop. An entirely manufactured, strategically planned industry so successful that a group of pretty boys like BTS gets to speak at the United Nations. Not a bad gig by any measure. It’s allowing young women in hijabs everywhere to learn to speak, sing and dance in Korean, want to travel to Korea and wear cosmetics just like Korean girls. Now that’s total domination.

So while we look inwards to keep finding “innovative” ways to up our points on our way to heaven, other people, some of them even Muslim, are looking at the rest of the world and finding ways to push back against Western cultural hegemony by inventing new forms of entertainment.

It’s not all perfect, of course. We should question these new hegemonies as much as we did the old ones. But they’re interesting because they’re so effective.

Maybe we can devise a global strategy to export our own “cultural technology”, as the Koreans call it. But to do that, we have to first decide what our cultural products actually are. Now there’s the rub, isn’t it?

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Whither our Merdeka spirit

Whither our Merdeka spirit
MUSINGS
Sunday, 25 Aug 2019
By Marina Mahathir

Our independence was built on the spirit and willingness to accommodate. Now we have the best chance to write a new inclusive chapter in our country’s history, for the sake of our children.

IN six days we will turn 62 and I sometimes wonder if those six decades have taught us anything at all. Have we capitalised on the wisdom of these long years to know what we want for ourselves, for our children and for our country? Or are we only able to see just beyond the tip of our noses and no more?

I must say that I have been puzzled by several pronouncements over the past month. First was this decision to introduce khat in vernacular schools, a decision that apparently was made in the previous government. To me, that provenance alone is good enough reason to have nixed the entire plan. Instead, in a classic case of giving yourself avoidable grief, our Education Ministry goes ahead and announces it.

The logic, if there was any at all, escapes me. Why talk about art forms at all when our kids barely get exposed to any of the arts?

Even if it is meant to be an additional writing system, has anyone assessed what future use it would have?

We used to complain about irrelevant mathematical formulas in school but at least some could be used in real life. Khat can really only be mastered after years of study if you want to be a master calligrapher.

I’ve been learning brush calligraphy. It’s a nice skill to have but only a few of us will make a living out of it. And as far as Jawi is concerned, I believe the only Jawi newspaper we had folded a long time ago for lack of readership.

I must say I was equally puzzled by the furore from those who feared that khat was a step closer to the proselytisation of Islam.
If all it takes to convert people is a writing system, then I fear for the strength of some people’s faith.

As far as I know nobody has converted to Taoism by learning to write Chinese.

Similarly, nobody should worry about khat’s supposed hidden religious power. It is quite possible, I am sure, to write swear words in Jawi if you were so inclined.

On each side either people feel threatened by a writing system or by the refusal to accept this imposition.

Is this a good way of spending one’s time? But I return to my original gripe: it was all unnecessary angst. In the end we’re back to square one. In retrospect, it’s probably more worthwhile to encourage children to write with fountain pens again since typing sentences has probably done untold damage to handwriting. Let’s have a letter-writing competition with actual pen and ink and judge them on the quality of handwriting and content. Now that would actually be educational.

But that is a small issue compared to some others that beset us these days. I hope that some people are finally waking up to the presence of a tumour in our society that threatens to metastasize and spread all over our collective body.

Once upon a time we decided take in a carcinogen and allowed it to breed.

Despite the poison it kept emanating, we turned a blind eye to the toxins that were spreading.I hope we woke up early enough to stem the flow. It’s heartening to see so many voices speaking up warning of the dire consequences of not removing the tumour soon. Already we see some hotheads wanting to behead those who are raising the red flag about the danger. I’d like to know how their lives are improved by such vileness. Is the path to heaven lined with hatred?

Sixty-two years ago, we freed ourselves from the yoke of colonialism. Yet, since then we have only tethered ourselves to other aspiring colonialists, outsiders who insist on telling us how we should live as a society. The premise is clear: we don’t know how to determine our own lives, so someone else has to tell us how to do it. In their dubious mould of course.

We worship at the feet of foreigners because they wear beards and skullcaps. Supposedly we chafe at any attempt to introduce languages other than our own in our schools, but we don’t mind listening to someone with a barely comprehensible accent speaking in what apparently passes for English. How low are our standards! How easily are we fooled by the most superficial veneers of religiosity!

We claim rightly that ours is a religion of peace, that it is certain people who interpret it wrongly and give it a bad name. Here we have the prime example of someone besmirching the image and still we defend it. Even when our hospitality, the one that all Malaysians are known for, is abused.

Our independence was built on a generosity of spirit and willingness to accommodate. That has served us well for most of our nation’s lifetime. Sure, there have been glitches here and there, but we have always learnt from those mistakes and moved on. Now we have the best chance to write a new inclusive chapter in our country’s history, for the sake of our children. Can anyone imagine a Malaysia that is not full of a diverse array of peoples and expect to have all the things we have gotten used to?

I don’t want to gloss over our problems. We have plenty still. But we need to sit down and solve them ourselves. We don’t need anyone else pouring oil on the fire. It’s just not their business, especially when they’re dependent on our hospitality. A guest needs to respect the kindness of their host.

As the Quran says in Chapter 31, verse 19: And be moderate in thy pace, and lower thy voice; for the harshest of sounds without doubt is the braying of the ass. (translation by Abdullah Yusuf Ali)
Selamat Hari Merdeka everyone!

Marina Mahathir only listens to people who speak softly and with a smile in their eyes.

The views expressed in the article are entirely her own.

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Don't let the young tune out and switch off

Don't let the young tune out and switch off
MUSINGS
Sunday, 28 Jul 2019
By Marina Mahathir

SINCE I’ve been back I have not been reading the news. Partly that is because I have so much work to do. But I have to admit that I am also very disinclined to read the news because, well, most of it is dreadful. There is absolutely nothing cheery about it, nothing that makes me feel that there’s light ahead or anything to look forward to.

In this, despite the age gap, I am not different from young people in the UK. According to a report in The Guardian recently, young people in Britain have almost entirely abandoned television news broadcasts while half the country gets its news from social media.

If anyone can be bothered to do a similar study in Malaysia, I will bet anything that they’ll find the same results here. People get their news, if they were so inclined, online from either the websites of the mainstream papers or from the online-only news portals.

When it comes to television, I’m sorry to say that I don’t think anyone actually watches news on TV anymore. They may watch FB livestreaming of some events but actually watching someone drone on about what miserable thing has happened today in some part of the country has become an activity that you would only do if you’re really masochistic. There’s increasing competition from numerous cable channels not to mention online movie sites and Youtube.

In Britain, the average person aged 65 and over watches 33 minutes of television news per day. Young people aged 16-24 on the other hand watch no more than two minutes a day. Some news sites have even introduced reading times for their articles, most not exceeding five minutes in order to try and keep the short attention span market. Writing clickbaiting headlines has become the norm because people don’t read anything more than the headline. They may spend hours on their laptops, tablets and phones watching programmes but none of that is news. I’m sure young Malaysians aren’t much different.

What is happening is that we’re getting a generation of people who don’t watch the news, don’t know much about current affairs and don’t care. And we expect them to vote in the next elections.
I’m all for reducing the voting age to 18 and the automatic registration of voters. But registering voters does not automatically mean they will vote, nor does it mean they will know who to vote for. It is really imperative that we educate our young on how the government works and what their role in it is. That has to be done in school, probably from age 16 onwards. When I did my A-Levels in the UK many years ago, one of my exam subjects was the British Constitution. We were taught about the origins of the UK’s unwritten constitution, the role of the monarch, Parliament, the judiciary and all the important government institutions that contribute to the running of the British government.

Over here, all we know is that our Parliament is modelled after Westminster and we choose our MPs once every five years or so. I remember once asking a tableful of otherwise mature, educated and experienced adult Malaysians how our Dewan Negara is formed, and no one knew what the answer was. Today we have Wikipedia to consult but surely it is something that every citizen should know. Perhaps we should introduce the Malaysian Constitution as a school subject so that every Malaysian knows how to talk about the workings of their own country in an informed way.

But returning to the consumption of news by our young, if everyone agrees that this is an important issue, the question is really how does one deliver it to this audience? The usual ways, newspapers and television don’t quite cut it anymore.

Today everything is about social media. People, young and old, now consume news through Whatsapp, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and whatever new platform is being rolled out every year. If anyone can reach back in their memory to just fourteen or so months ago, they might remember that they were almost exclusively receiving news about the election campaign via Whatsapp and Facebook. For those who voted this government in, the mainstream propaganda channels were the news sources best avoided.

This is the challenge for the government. Our leaders need to remember that where once they were seen as cool because they were in the Opposition, they are now no longer so because of the simple fact that they are now the Establishment. Using the old ways of communicating news and information only underscores their unhip status. This is why the current Opposition, or maybe it’s just one person, can do a totally vacuous campaign basically rebranding himself as some hideous saviour and people lap it up. What else is there for free entertainment?

No government is going to be perfect. But they don’t also have to be clueless about communicating what they are doing to the people who will vote in the next elections. It might be too much to expect civil servants to suddenly become well cued into the zeitgeist of young Malaysians but there are people out there who know how to advise them. All the government needs to do is to ask and I am sure a lot of people would volunteer to show them what needs to be done and how.

While the means of communicating is important, the content of the communications is even more so. For heaven’s sake, nobody wants to know what anyone is doing in the privacy of their bedrooms unless they truly have empty lives. There are seriously more pressing issues, like how to get an affordable quality education that would prepare young people for an unpredictable future, or how to afford a decent living in increasingly costly times. Economic issues are very real for most people but if anyone is doing anything about it, and monitoring whether their measures work or not, they are also not telling us, in the way that we now consume such information, about them.

If we don’t fix this communication problem, assuming that very real policy is being implemented, then young people will simply not turn on and tune in, they’ll just switch off. And that should spell danger to any aspiring future government.

Marina Mahathir doesn’t think that anyone’s invented a mind-reading machine yet. The views expressed here are entirely the writer’s own

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Never too late to start a new chapter in life

Never too late to start a new chapter in life
MUSINGS
Sunday, 30 Jun 2019
by marina mahathir

FEW people seem to have noticed that I have not been around in Malaysia for the better part of the last nine months. That’s one of the benefits of social media, that we can always seem present in the virtual world without being in the same physical space in the real world. But dear readers, in case you haven’t twigged, I have been away doing something I have always wanted to do: pursue a Masters in Creative Writing.

Many people have told me that I write very well and for that I am grateful. But there is nothing quite like that niggling feeling inside that tells you that you can do better.

For the past 20 years or so, I have been writing this column that typically contains between 800 and 1,500 words.

A book typically contains 70,000 words on average. I thought that was a colossal mountain to climb and I was curious to find out how so many authors did it.

So at age 61, I decided to go back to school. It was a decision I hesitated over for a long time because the thought of it was scary. I tested my back-to-school ability first by doing an online creative writing course and discovered that I not only enjoyed it but also, with guidance, could learn to write differently. I then looked around for an actual course and in my naivete, simply looked at not only the best and most well-known but also the most difficult to enter.

I still hesitated until the universe decided to push me. I was in Bangkok for a conference and went to listen to a young man who had written a book on Rwanda. He told me he had just graduated from the very same course I was thinking of applying to. Hmmm...

Soon after, I was in Singapore for a reception for a university that I am involved with. Feeling the need to make some polite chitchat, I asked a young woman next to me what she did. “Well,” she said, her eyes shining brightly, “I have just finished my Masters in Biography and Creative Non-Fiction at the University of East Anglia.”

I could not have been more thunderstruck. Not only was that exactly the course I was thinking of applying to but the fact that the universe conspired to get me to meet two recent graduates within a month of each other struck me as more than just providence. This must be a sign of some sort.

In early 2018 I filled in the application form. Besides my immediate family and very close friends I told no one. I thought that piece of news should be reserved for when I got accepted, or buried forever if I did not.

Meanwhile GE14 happened. Amidst all that excitement I almost forgot about my application. In mid-June, my future course tutors asked to do a Skype interview. I was in the midst of a women’s rights workshop at a resort outside KL but set up my laptop in the garden to talk to them. For some reason I could see them but not vice versa. It caused some puzzled looks on their faces when they heard birds tweeting while I was trying to answer questions.

That was a year ago. I did get accepted and even though there were some friends who were shocked that I would go away at this particular moment in our country’s history, I figured that since the likelihood was high that I would be the oldest person in class, I really could not wait much longer. As it happened, I was the second oldest person in a class of 15 people, with ages ranging from 23 right up past me by a few years.

What was it like to go back to school 40 years after I first graduated? In the beginning it was nerve-wracking. I was so sure I would be surrounded by the new wunderkinds of the international publishing world.

UEA after all has a Nobel Laureate, Kazuo Ishiguro, as alumni as well as many other acclaimed authors. Our very own Tash Aw also has his books displayed on the very full shelves labelled “UEA Alumni” at the campus branch of Waterstones bookstore.

As it turned out, my non-fiction cohort are absolutely lovely. We are diverse in every way, from our ages, experience and interests. But that diversity means not only that we bring different and enriching viewpoints to our work, it also means we are not in competition with each other.

We are free to support and encourage one another. In so doing, we have become a very warm and close group and for this I have to send much affectionate thanks to my course mates.

My tutors too have been great guides. They made me see, very patiently, what I needed to learn to improve my writing. It has sometimes been painful for the ego but wonderful for my skills, and eventually for my self-confidence when I saw that there has been a trajectory in my learning. I hope they felt their gamble in accepting me was worth it.

What am I going to do with all this? Hopefully there is a book in the future. Meantime there is still a final dissertation to do. So although I will be home, I still have some more disappearing to do until the end of August when I submit it. But as you might have already detected, I am already writing differently. And hopefully, also better.

Ed. note: As writer Jodi Picoult said, “You can always edit a bad page. You can’t edit a blank page.”

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Getting the ‘right sort’ of education

Getting the ‘right sort’ of education
MUSINGS
Sunday, 26 May 2019
by marina mahathir


I just finished a wonderful book that everyone should read: Educated by Tara Westover.

It is the true story of a Mormon girl from rural Idaho who grew up in a survivalist family with parents who mistrusted authority so much that they refused to send their children to school, never vaccinated them and would treat them at home when they were ill, even when they had very serious and life-threatening injuries.

Despite that horrific childhood, Westover managed to attend university at 17, work­ing so hard that she eventually went to Cam­bridge and Harvard Universities. The book has sold over two million copies worldwide.The best books are those that talk about universal human values. Westover’s book will resonate with many Malaysians. We will recognise the conservative background she comes from and realise that we’re not the only people like that. And we might learn something from that indomitable human resilience and spirit that manages to overcome the most unimaginable odds and make something of themselves.

But the most important message in the book is the importance of education. Westover recalled that when she went to university, she attended a class on Shakespeare because she “had heard of the word” but in fact didn’t know anything about him or what he wrote.


She had never heard of Islam until Sept 11 happened. She didn’t know how to write essays or even why people bathed with soap. But through sheer determination and hard work, she ended up with a doctorate from Harvard.

Westover’s thesis about education is that you need it to enlarge your world, that without it, you will believe that the entire world is what is immediately around you and that every human being is just like you. You will think that everyone thinks like you.

Education, done the right way, opens up your mind to the vast expanse of the universe and the limitless knowledge within it. It makes you understand and appreciate how things work, what motivates people to do what they do. If you get the right sort of education, it should make you both curious about many things and also empathetic towards other people.


To be sure, not all so-called educated people have minds that are open to the possibilities of this world of ours. That’s perhaps because our definition of education is so limited. We often think that because we have a certificate we can put on the wall,

we are “educated”. That’s such a common assumption that people will go to great lengths to get fake degrees to give themselves that veneer of prestige.

But it’s always bemused me that while everybody grumbles constantly about getting places in our universities, nobody actually questions the quality of education they are getting. I really do think the fact that we’re such an uncurious people says a lot about the type of education we are getting. How is it that there are so few in-depth studies on the very many social issues we face?

Ask any recent graduate what books they have read, outside their required course reading lists. Indeed, ask their teachers what they have been reading. Have they been reading to expand their minds or just because they have to pass exams?

I don’t know why nobody worries that the books that sell the most in Malaysia are romance books.

But ultimately if you at least know how to read, you will, with some encouragement, grow to enjoy reading books, even very long ones. If the story is absorbing enough,

books are far more satisfying than reading Whatsapp messages or even articles online.

Witness how kids plough through the entire Harry Potter series, regardless of how many pages each volume is. When you start trying to ration the pages of a book you’re reading because you don’t want it to end, you know you’re on to a good one.

Back to education. Let us reassess what we define as education in our country. When we do, we’ll find that we really have not been educating our people much at all, especially when we see that we have so many literalists but not literate people in our midst. How else do we explain the amount of rubbish that is believed and circulated on social media?

Education has become ideological instead of something fundamental for all human beings, indeed a basic human right. When someone can’t even do the sort of basic research to check when particular stamps are issued, you know they have had no education. When someone thinks privilege and position trumps any sort of hard work, then their lack of educational foundation is telling.Of course, we’re not the only ones whose education is limited. A recent survey of Americans found that 56% disagreed that Arabic numerals should be used in the United States. If we had the same survey here, would 60% of our people insist that we should use only Arabic numerals? Both results come from the same ideological reason: because they are Arabic.If we don’t do anything drastic about our education system soon, chiefly if we don’t ensure our children are educated in the true sense of the word, then we can expect to lose out in the world. Ask any of our children who are studying abroad how hard it is to cope with not just the intricacies of language, but the type of critical thinking they are required to do.

Our children need to be exposed to the sciences and the humanities not just for the knowledge, but for their own personal development. It’s important to know geography so that we understand that the world is big. It’s equally important to understand the history of the world so that we won’t repeat the mistakes of the past. Everybody needs to know science as it affects every aspect of our lives.

There’s nothing to be proud of when we only know the names of celebrities and brand names. We only make fools of ourselves when we think calling a corrupt person BossKu is cool; we don’t even see how self-serving that is and how it demeans everyone who follows him.

When we are disrespectful to elders just because we are born into privilege, it not only betrays the lack of wisdom that comes from a limited education but also a dysfunctional upbringing.

We’d better do something quick for the sake of our children.

And meanwhile, let me wish you all Selamat Hari Raya Aidil Fitri, maaf zahir dan batin.

Other books Marina recommends to read for pleasure: Dadland by Keggie Carew, Animals Strike Curious Poses by Elena Passarello and We That Are Young by Preti Taneja.
 

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Let’s have a happy first anniversary

Let’s have a happy first anniversary
MUSINGS
Sunday, 28 Apr 2019


AS the cliche goes, time has whizzed by. Wasn’t it just yesterday we were queuing up by the thousands at polling stations, and then getting together with friends to wait for the results? And waited and waited?

Meanwhile, our phones buzzed with unofficial results. Yet on TV we were made to twiddle our thumbs until the early hours of the morning. Another long tense wait followed. We voted for the government we wanted and yet we didn’t know for an entire day whether it would be sworn in.

Who doesn’t remember the emotions of that day? The camaraderie at the polling stations, the frustration of people not being allowed to vote past closing time despite the extra-long queues, the exhilaration of winning and then that long agonising wait for the new government to take over.

Whichever side you may be on that day, all Malaysians should take pride in one thing: in this chaotic violent world today, we were arguably the only developing country that changed governments – after sixty years! – in the best way possible, through the ballot box.

It was certainly a new experience for everyone, to see a new government sworn in.

Faces we had barely seen in the news were suddenly ministers.

But how refreshing that was to see a Cabinet that looked like us, instead of a bunch of tired and jaded entitled folk who had been there too long.

But reality can be a hard bone to swallow. Only those who believe in fairy tales could have expected things to become wonderful overnight.

We didn’t get extra change in our pockets and justice and equality the day after the elections.

There are only four people in the Cabinet who have actual experience in governing, two at the Federal level and two at the state level. It’s not a skill that one picks up overnight.

Furthermore, they were inheriting an almost broken machine that had to be fixed up first. Some patience is needed.

Having said that, one year on, the government’s track record is uneven.

On the one hand, we are finally seeing some people being brought to court. The media has a new freedom, which even they are finding it hard to get used to.

I read a letter from a teacher who praised the Education Minister for lessening the burdens put on teachers in schools.

The Environment Minister was very proactive and quick in dealing with the Sungai Kim Kim toxic fumes disaster.

I’m sure there is more but we just don’t hear about them.

The good news is being overwhelmed by the bad news. Partly this is because of the relentless attacks by the opposition.

I do wish they would behave like a good opposition because a good democracy always needs one.

But they’ve become single-issue fanatics. Everything is only about race and religion.

I do understand that they are unable to talk about corruption without a lot of the mud splashing back on their faces but seriously, are there no other policy issues that they are interested in?

What are their views on climate change for instance? Or equal pay for equal work for women?

What do they think about the attacks on Yemen, causing the deaths of 5200 civilians, and a further 50,000 deaths from famine?

What are their views on genocide, say, in Myanmar, and what do they think is the best way to deal with it? What do they think is the appropriate response to attacks on houses of worship around the world that cause so many deaths?

What is their stand on nuclear arms? On what issues would they be willing to join the government in a bipartisan stand?

I would really like to know the answers to these. Is it simply too much to expect this from the opposition or from their paid trolls on social media?

I live in hope though because if they intend to rule again, the least we can expect is a government that can sing more than one note.

But we cannot lay the entire blame on an opposition deprived of ideas.

The government too needs to stop looking like amateurs. I don’t understand why a government that was so soundly voted in should get defensive at all about any of their policies. Especially social policies.

Why be afraid to raise the age of marriage and ban child marriage altogether? Why attack minorities who voted for you just because the other side keeps baiting you on them?

Why the need to respond to every single thing that reporters ask you about? Some things benefit from better investigation and longer reflection.

Other things are best left to the technical people who actually know what they’re talking about.

I think some people forget that they’re now in government and they don’t have to fight for media coverage anymore.

The one thing I really wish this government had done from the beginning is to have some sort of coordinating mechanism so that ministries no longer work in silos.

This was a huge problem in the old government when, for example, the Health Ministry didn’t know how international trade agreements affected them simply because they were negotiated by the International Trade and Industry Ministry.

Or how only the Women, Family and Community Development Ministry dealt with gender issues when in fact women are affected by policies from every ministry.

In Indonesia, there is such a thing as a Coordinating Minister whose job is to ensure horizontal cooperation between ministries.

Something like that would be very useful here too in my opinion.

But since it’s the first anniversary coming up soon, let me end on a positive note.

I remember the days when we all felt like there was not enough air to breathe, when hate poured out of our TV screens like poisoned rivers, when nobody could even fly a balloon without being arrested and taken to court. Those days must never return.

For at least the next four years, I wish to see a kinder, gentler and fairer government – one that considers every single citizen in this land a Malaysian, whether they voted for it or not.

I’d like to have a government that respects us all and not treat us like ignorant children, that spends its resources on what would benefit all of us and not on monitoring imaginary insults.

It would be terrific if this was a government that raised the level of intellectual discourse in this country, that doesn’t ban books but instead invites people to debate them in an orderly civilized way.

A government that shows us through very clear values and by example how to be exemplary citizens.

It’s not just about putting down the other side, it’s also about how you raise the bar for governance.

Raise standards and the other side will have to keep up. And the rakyat wins either way.

Happy first anniversary in advance, Pakatan Harapan. And happy first anniversary, rakyat Malaysia Baharu.

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Get your scepticism on

Get your scepticism on
Sunday, 31 Mar 2019
by marina mahathir

SOMETIMES when I read the horrific toxic messages that go around WhatsApp groups, I have to wonder about my people. Do we enjoy being whipped up into agitation? Do we find reading bad news pleasurable? Is it really blissful to wallow in ignorance? Don’t we mind being manipulated by irresponsible people?

I once came across an old handbook of “bazaar Malay” produced by the British Allied Land Forces in 1945 as they prepared to return to Malaya after the Japanese occupation ended. Besides the instructions on how to speak simple Malay, albeit not always grammatically or pronounced correctly, there are guides to “knowing Malays”. It seems that Malays are friendly “mannered” people who are quite happy to help, “provided they are not intimidated, shouted at or insulted”.

Why they did not refer to the other people living in Malaya at the time remains a mystery. Perhaps they meant to condescend to one lot of folks at a time.

What interested me is that trope of how we are really nice people until we are intimidated, shouted at or insulted. There is probably some truth in this, because it suggests that we have some dignity and pride in our psychological makeup, that we will stand up to any form of affront from other people. We are cooperative if we are asked politely and we won’t stand for any insults. All well and good.

But what do we find these days? First of all, we are intimidated, shouted at and insulted by our own people. Was this something we learnt from our former colonisers on how to “control” people?

Just use heavy-handedness and loudness, never mind who’s right or wrong? Insult people by telling them they’re ignorant of democracy, while at the same time limiting democratic space? Rush to the police station to make reports, without ever bothering to find out what the actual issue is?

I am really puzzled by this. But even more, I am bemused by the willingness of so many people to be intimidated and to swallow whole whatever is fed them, despite the fact that what is being shoved down their throats are really insults to the intelligence. Have we become so indolent that we are unwilling to use our brains to be a bit more sceptical of what we are told?

I see people who accept the mis-characterisations of very simple events as gospel. A women’s march becomes an LGBT march. An international convention becomes a threat to sovereignty. A plan to save an institution becomes a conspiracy to destroy it instead. Some of these are things made up by people with evil on their minds, people who are intent to destroy, not support and develop a nation. Some are paid to pass on these disgusting messages especially on social media. They are soldiers of unhappiness and despair whose only aim is to make us disgruntled and frustrated.

I’m not saying that everything we are facing now is wonderful or that our new government is getting everything right. Very often our current ministers are also capable of insulting our intelligence. But nothing beats the outrageous lies that are being perpetrated on social media which people pass on and on. Everybody really needs a good dose of scepticism. Or do we just love to believe conspiracy theories, even the most unlikely ones, because they sound so fantastic that they must be true. Fact is supposed to be stranger than fiction, right? So, if someone tells us that a two-headed half-cat half-dog appeared in their backyard, we must believe this. Because these things happen.

And we think this makes us smart?

There is already so much misery in the world without us needlessly adding to it with false stories. There are still people starving, being bombed, having to run away from their countries on precarious journeys, being beaten up daily, that we don’t need to drown people in more depressing stories which aren’t grounded in fact.

Or worse, twist facts to suit our own ends, even when the net result is actually more unhappiness.

The thing is, some of the spinning that is being done online and viralised is only meant to make a few people happy and the majority forever in chains, if not literally but at least mentally. I don’t understand why we don’t worry about our people’s lack of scepticism and critical analysis of anything they are told. Our students who go overseas often find that they are severely handicapped by their inability to look at anything they are taught with a critical eye. Their overseas counterparts then shine in class while they flounder. It is the result of our woeful education system but we don’t seem to see the long-term impact of this. We are breeding robots who are only able to think, do or say what they are programmed to.

I saw opponents of a particular international statute cite the arguments put forward by some white guy as justification for not signing it. It’s interesting that in wanting to defend so-called sovereignty and privileges they still needed to refer to a Western person as if that is the only way to establish authority. But nobody seemed to have taken the trouble to look up the guy and see what a dubious person he is. Incredibly, white guys are considered really good when they support whatever position you want them to regardless of whether they actually have any credibility at all. This must account for the number of people who think Hitler was cool, without realising that the Fuhrer would just as soon send them to the ovens too for the simple reason of not being Aryan. By the way, white supremacists would secretly admit to admiring old Adolf as well if they wouldn’t get arrested for saying it publicly. You know, the type that shoots people up in mosques. All bred from the same Hitlerite petri dish.

When I see the type of nonsense that passes for news going around social media and WhatsApp, its hardly surprising that there is such a mental health crisis these days. More and more people are depressed and I’m pretty sure that it is because, besides actual bad news that floods them daily in the media, of all the fake and distorted stuff that pings into their chat groups relentlessly every minute of the day. None of it is happy news. None of it makes you feel better about yourself or about your neighbours and country. Sure, occasionally there are some well-meaning homilies about friendship or gratitude or cute cat pictures. But the majority of the stuff is guaranteed to make you ill. Considering that some of these things come in all night, don’t you wonder about the health of people who never seem to sleep?

I think we need to get a grip and really examine what we are doing to ourselves. Sure, we need to voice out our concerns on what we think is not right. But can we at least promise ourselves to first take a deep breath and not jump on the online podium the minute we read something; second, find out whether what we’re reading is true or not, and third, write a cogent argument against whatever we disagree with, backed by facts? Can we remember that the “information” we get are often sent by people who are paid to make up stuff just to make us angry?

Can we honestly call ourselves an intelligent people, rather than a gullible one?

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All upside down

All upside down
Sunday, 24 Feb 2019
by marina mahathir

I REMEMBER more than a year ago feeling dizzy because I thought the world had turned upside down. Things that used to be true were then declared fake, values that used to be upheld were discarded and their opposites lauded instead.

I remember feeling disorientated; something felt very wrong but it was not discussed out in the open.

Turned out I was not the only one who felt that way.

Enough of us couldn’t ignore that niggling feeling in our gut and decided enough was enough and threw the people with confused values out. I thank the Almighty every day for saving us from that disaster.

I read about an incident when a young minister who had gone to campaign for the Semenyih by-election had been verbally abused and attacked.

That was bad enough but when I read the comments, I realised that for some people, their values are totally based on their loyalties, rather than principles, and these can get very warped.

Many suggested that if you venture into “enemy territory”, then you should expect violence. Really? This is news to me. Unless of course our politics scene is now ruled by that sort of gangster mentality.

Previously anyone could go and campaign during an election or by-election without expecting violence. That was the sort of country and people we were. Now has violence become the norm?

Worse still, some people were actually proud of it. Poor things, nothing else in their lives to be proud of perhaps? (And all this coming from self-proclaimed champions of the Malay race, the race that used to be lauded for our good manners.)

This is not the only upside-down value we are seeing these days. Some people see nothing wrong in promoting their colleagues’ wives to special positions, even excusing this as “women empowerment”.

If this is to support the 30% allocation for women on boards and other decision-making positions, then they must show the total number of women appointed and what their qualifications are.

I have no doubt that some very qualified women are married to public figures. In that case, publish the candidate’s full CV and the requirements of the position and let the public judge.

Building a wall between those candidates and their husbands might be a good idea too.

As children we are often told to think before we speak, so that we don’t say anything offensive to others. I do think that it’s equally offensive when people open their mouths and say things that are completely tone-deaf.

When women find themselves victims of abuse and violence, there should be outrage.

Instead, often there is victim-blaming, including that she should not have been out alone. Women frequently have no choice but to go out on their own. And when you need to get into a lift, are you supposed to wait until there are lots of people in it? Especially so early in the morning?

Another case of upside-down values: misrepresenting one’s qualifications. First of all, have we as a society put so much premium on having a degree that we don’t care anymore what quality is involved? Is this why all that our folks care about is getting their children into universities and not what sort of education they are getting?

Apart from that, for whatever reason a person needs to misrepresent their qualifications, I have to wonder what they tell their children. We constantly remind our children to study hard in school, scold them when they don’t do well and celebrate when they do. We expect them to burn the midnight oil when they go to university because we know that a good degree gives them a head start in life.

But if you get your degree without doing any of these, how do you explain this to your own children? Or do you tell them that it’s okay not to work hard because they can still get a good position anyway, by embellishing their educational credentials?

That only works in certain fields but in the private sector at least, or indeed in any company or organisation that cares about the quality of its employees, those credentials will be scrutinised very closely.

I once went to Harvard Business School on a short course where they were trying to see if business principles can be applied to the running of non-governmental organisations. It was a great experience and I learnt a lot. But I cannot say I got a degree from Harvard Business School.

Such warped thinking needs to be corrected. It is a hundred times better to say that you have no degree but have the savvy and street smarts to rise up in the world than to pretend that you have a non-existent degree.

There is nothing wrong with not having a degree; lots of amazing people have made it without one. The degree you get from the university of real life is sometimes better than any paper one.

Of course, if you have a degree, and, even better, a post-graduate one, then you are expected to think and speak at a level that should be more sophisticated than the pedestrian one that most people do.

Which makes me wonder if we should scrutinise every public figure’s academic credentials, given the whimsical way they often speak.

The new Malaysia has no room for thugs, fakes, conmen, snake oil salesmen and all the other charlatans we see coming out of the woodwork these days.

We need people who have integrity, who know their stuff, who have principles and who are unafraid to act on them. Good leaders set the tone for the country, they provide the moral examples that the rest of us follow.

We have already had the leaders who bent the rules to their advantage, who made lying permissible and naturally their followers slithered in their footsteps.

But we’re tired of all that. We’ve seen where dishonesty has taken us, as it has so many countries around the world. We deserve better than that.

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