A very Malaysian result

We gave every party just enough; not enough to make anybody ecstatic but enough that they can console themselves that they did partly well.

FOR the last year, it was almost imaginable that we would get to this day, after the general election.

Everything was put on suspended animation first because we did not know when the elections would be, then because we did not know what would happen afterwards.

Now we know and in many ways, it was a very Malaysian result.

We gave every party just enough; not enough to make anybody ecstatic but enough that they can console themselves that they did partly well.

It may not be good enough for the people who want all or nothing but the one thing about democracy is its unpredictability.

As Plato said: “Democracy ... is a charming form of government, full of variety and disorder; and dispensing a sort of equality to equals and unequals alike.”

This general election, Malaysians turned out in record numbers, which speaks well for our growing awareness of the importance of voting.

Yet we have kept our cards close to our hearts.

I went to several ceramah from both sides in the run-up to polling day and it was difficult to tell who would come out on top.

If you stay just within those you agree with, then it was possible to get a distorted view of things. But if you cross over to the other side, you get an idea that nothing is certain.

Unlike the cheerleaders, the most circumspect people were also the most cautious and refused to predict a definite outcome.

Perhaps there were a few heightened characteristics of the election campaign this time.

First is the incredible amount of advertising being thrown at voters from every possible direction.

You can’t drive anywhere without seeing banners and posters, some of which should have been taken down by JPJ for obstructing the view of drivers.

Social media talks about nothing else and even the most innocuous update gets connected to politics.

You can’t even play games online without having to first endure a political video.

To be sure, the campaign advertising war was hugely one-sided to the point of overkill.

Besides banners, posters, billboards and T-shirts, there was the free merchandise.

I once counted 12 types of merchandise in one markas.

I’m still wondering how wing mirror covers win elections. The money could have been better used to provide information on what candidates stood for and where you could meet them.

In the last days of campaigning, three human traits became obvious – fear, paranoia and mistrust.

All sides used fear to create paranoia and mistrust and unfortunately many allowed themselves to be used by politicians in that way. It made some Malaysians turn against other Malaysians as well as foreigners and tolerance, understanding and respect went out of the window.

This is not the future that we expected where all humans would enjoy equal rights. Instead, we fell to making distinctions between one human and another, based on suspicion and conjecture.

We should really reflect on how easily this ugly side of us came out when provoked.

No doubt we can blame various parties for creating an atmosphere in which this was possible. But we fell for it.

In the name of democracy, we be­­came undemocratic.

But this is the day after and we have to move on.

Again, do we rely on our leaders of whatever stripe to lead us in moving on or do we do it ourselves?

As the ever-cynical writer Gore Vidal said: “Democracy is supposed to give you the feeling of choice, like Painkiller X and Painkiller Y. But they’re both just aspirin.”

My feeling is that we will learn from this and we will focus on the next elections where we will insist that all sides have to earn our trust and therefore, our votes.

I don’t think we will succumb to manipulation any more.

I also think that the most crucial reform needed is in the media that truly needs to redeem itself from its outrageous behaviour during the campaign, dispensing with any semblance of objectivity or balance.

We need to demand from the media an accounting of how much it thinks it contributes to national unity and healing.

The people voted out the worst proponents of disunity and the media should take heed of that.

Meanwhile, we have to watch as a new government takes shape.

I would really advise the Prime Minister to stop thinking of Cabinet posts as a form of reward but rather as assigning tasks of huge responsibility.

For that he should not choose the same old faces.

To really show he is sincere about change, his criteria for his ministers should be talent, youth and gender, three things that were wholly absent before.

Only then will we believe this is a fresh new beginning.

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Improving education

There are still many problems in our education system yet the reforms needed are moving at a glacial pace, compared with the world our children will grow up in.

A RECENT headline claimed that Malaysia’s education system is fast becoming the world’s best.

I really had to blink several times because it seemed as farfetched a claim as Malaysian women now being equal to our men.

Further down in the article it said that we still had a long way to go before we could “justify” the claim that we are at par with the world’s best.

Once again, we are handed a confusing statement. Are we improving or are we not?

According to our Government Transfor-mation Plan (GTP) report: “The rate of improvement of the system in the last 15 years is among the fastest in the world.”

But that actually says very little because it can mean that while 15 people can now read when previously there were 10, it still means there are only 15 literate people.

I really wish the media would ask tougher questions of pronouncements like this.

One of the GTP targets is to get 92% enrolment in pre-schools.

For a long time, we have been proud of our literacy rates. But it turns out we measure our literacy rates through school enrolment rates, which any schoolchild will tell you is not the same thing. Just because you went to school doesn’t mean you’re literate.

Indeed, just because you pass your school exams, it doesn’t mean you’re literate either, as any frustrated employer can tell you.

So achieving high enrolment should be only part of the goal, the rest is about giving our children quality education.

Undoubtedly, there are supposed to be four key GTP initiatives to improve the quality of education but this does not necessarily translate into a “fast-improving” education system.

Our problems are so numerous yet the reforms needed in our education system are moving at a glacial pace, compared with the world our kids will grow up in.

I also have a problem with the stated target of reducing the rural-urban achievement gap by 25%. What is the gap in the first place?

If it is huge, is reducing it by 25% enough? When will this be achieved?

In another study a few years ago, urban parents who cannot afford to care for their children in the cities are sending them to their home villages to be cared for by their grandparents.

Undoubtedly, the schooling that these kids will get will be inferior to what is available in the city, not to mention other disadvantages they will have, including the lack of civic amenities in the rural areas.

What’s more, the family background they will be in may not be as conducive to high achievement as if they stayed with their own parents, who are in all likelihood better educated than the grandparents.

Are these issues considered in the Education Blueprint? What would be the psychological cost of separating children from their parents for most of their impressionable years?

While a good educational foundation is good for our children, we should not also neglect the other end of the educational scale – tertiary education.

Assuming our children survive their early education to get to tertiary education, what happens there?

As it is, employers are complaining about the quality of the graduates we bring out. What are we doing about this end?

And here’s a question: If our youths coming out of public universities are not meeting employable standards, how is it that we are going all out to market our universities to foreign students? What will they get out of it?

It makes me wonder why any foreign student would want to come here and study because if the quality of our local graduates are not up to par, then they cannot be much better off.

But yet in our public universities, there are thousands upon thousands of foreign students here. How do we select them?

Are we selecting the best and the brightest, or just anyone who can pay the fees?

What exactly is our reason for opening up our low-ranking universities to foreign students?

A neighbour of ours has made it their policy to give scholarships to the best and the brightest from the countries around them. In this way they not only attract the best brains to study there but eventually these brains don’t want to go home.

Even if they do, like all foreign students who study overseas, they will retain friendly ties with the country of their alma mater, useful for both parties in the future.

Our policy, however, is not to invest in brains, whether it’s ours or other people’s.

As long as foreign students pay to put their warm bodies behind our desks, we don’t care what they have to offer, and then feign surprise when some of them get into some very troublesome activities.

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It’s war – mostly online

We should be grateful that the war of words doesn’t actually spill blood because otherwise the cyber sphere would be strewn with dead bodies by now. Still, there must be a lot of wounded.

IN 1982, two largish nations went to war over a tiny group of islands. One of them, Argentina, decided to assert a long-standing claim over the islands they call the Malvinas. Unfortunately, the islands had long been a British “dependent territory”.

One country saw it as a “re-occupation” while the other saw it as an invasion. And so the Falklands War began, ending only 72 days later with 649 Argentine military personnel, 255 British military personnel and three Falkland islanders dead.

I don’t want to go into the politics of that war but it was between two countries trying to protect their sovereignty. Unlike the Iraq-Kuwait war in 1990, the war between Great Britain and Argentina remained between just those two countries.

Eleven years later, a group of people representing no country “attacked” the United States and set off wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and basically changed the world for the worst, with many deaths, mostly of innocent civilians.

All of this to me seems to point to one thing, which is that war doesn’t make sense. Which is why we should be careful when declaring war on anyone.

In the last few weeks, a ragtag band of people have occupied a bit of our territory mostly to draw attention to their alleged claims to that piece of land.

We took a while to realise that they were serious, and seriously armed, and once we did, suddenly it was war.

Now I use the word “war” loosely here, meaning that our authorities finally decided that they had to deal with this group aggressively.

We could not actually declare war on another country because no country had invaded us, only the delusional citizens of a neighbouring one.

This fine point seems to have been lost on some. All at once, “war” broke out, mostly online. We should be grateful that the war of words doesn’t actually spill blood because otherwise the cyber sphere would be strewn with dead bodies by now. Still, there must be a lot of wounded.

Suddenly, otherwise mild and liberal people turned belligerent and the baying for blood abounded. Patriotism morphed into nationalism, then into plain old-fashioned jingoism. Flags flew high and fervent prayers for victory were said.

Those of us who were shocked by the gall of these people scrambled around to get more information.

The appalling lack of it on our side pointed to one obvious deficit in our country: there is hardly anyone here who can explain what this is all about.

This invariably led us to scour the news sites in the Philippines for some explanation of these people and their claims.

While some of the Philippine media are just as sensationalist as ours, the more serious ones published several articles by academics with a good grasp of the historical background of those islands where the invaders come from.

On our side, we have only one academic who, at this time of writing, has done 26 interviews on the subject.

Unfortunately, not everybody is interested in nuance and historical background. Suddenly because it is “war”, everything becomes acceptable, including violent name-calling.

I began to understand the real effect and relevance of Bush’s “war on terror”, how it made jingoism in the United States acceptable and how demo­cracy could be so easily suspended. Already we are possibly seeing some “collateral damage”.

In times like these, talking about peace becomes politically incorrect. To be properly patriotic, one must shake one’s spears and not hold out bouquets of flowers.

Yet this was what a group of young people did last Friday in a project called Ops Bunga. They went to the Philippine embassy to place bunches of flowers as a gesture of peace towards our neighbours.

A tiny gesture but a much needed calming one, a moment of solidarity among Malaysians and a hand extended in friendship.

It is instructive that in moments of tension, it is almost always young people who think up positive ideas to smooth the waters.

Resolutely apolitical, these young ones refuse to allow any hijacking of the issue by politicians. Indeed, they could be said to be a response to the political grandstanding that often accompanies these events.

Meanwhile, I have to wonder where our usual rabble rousers are, the ones who are ever ready to pick fights with their fellow citizens, yet who have become strangely silent. Confused maybe?

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My shopping list

Though nobody has officially announced the date of the general election, an official announcement now seems redundant as some have already been campaigning for about two years.

ONE morning, my breakfast was marred by someone with a loudhailer announcing a political ceramah in my neighbourhood.

Then I found an infestation of political party flags and banners by the roadside near my house.

For a moment I thought I must have missed the news: Had the Parliament been dissolved already?

In a few days, the flags and banners disappeared. Apparently, they were put up by one party to coincide with the ceramah by another party. How this is meant to influence votes is unclear to me.

Despite so-called rules, it is clear to anyone that there are lots of people revving up to have an election.

In fact, some of them have been campaigning already for about two years.

Yet nobody has officially announced the general election. Indeed, an official announcement now seems redundant.

So let’s just say the general election is on but only the actual polling day is unknown, a fact that is the source of quite a bit of irritation since nobody can make plans for anything.

Everyone is adopting a wait-and-see attitude because they don’t know what will happen.

Recently, Prime Minister Julia Gillard of Australia announced their next general election date a full nine months ahead of time.

Her reason was that it “enables individuals, investors and consumers to plan their year. It gives shape and order to their year.”

No doubt our year has been bent out of shape because of the constant speculation. Maybe it does make sense to have a designated date for the elections like the Americans.

Then nobody can pretend that they are not campaigning when in fact they are.

Having put up with all manner of ridiculous political one-upmanship for the past year or so, now we have to tolerate even more.

There may be many who made up their minds a long time ago but for some of us, it ain’t much of a choice.

Perhaps that’s why I’m one of the few people who have not received any SMS greetings, invitations to gatherings or boxes of oranges by my local friendly potential candidates.

They all know doing any of these things is likely to raise their irritability factor with me.

If any potential government is at all interested in what this one person thinks, I will outline a few things I would tick against their box if I were comparing my choices.

You can call it my comparative shopping list.

Firstly, I am looking for leadership, a statesman or woman who is ready to make a stand about what’s right and what’s wrong, someone who’s not scared of every shadow in case shadows vote.

I’d like someone who knows how to draw the line between good behaviour and bad, and doesn’t throw up his or her hands to disclaim responsibility when other parties behave badly, obviously on his or her behalf.

I cannot possibly teach my children good manners and ethics if there are public bad examples like these.

Secondly, I am looking for bridgebuilders and peacemakers, the sort of people who know how to turn down the temperature, not raise it up for political expediency.

I’d like to see someone who reaches out and builds bridges with sincerity, and doesn’t feel the need to bring along lots of media when he or she does it.

Thirdly, I really want a politician to say out loud that he or she believes that men and women are equal. Really, is it that difficult?

Fourthly, I’d like to hear someone say that we are part of the community of nations of the world and we will stop thinking we are different and better in everything.

There are global standards that we should adhere to, and some so-called “poorer” countries are doing better than us in some areas. Otherwise, no need for participation at international forums or even study tours. What would be the point?

Fifthly, when people say they want us to be progressive, they really mean it in every way. Not just in terms of technology and hardware but also in attitudes towards education, towards women and young people, towards those in need.

And sixthly, I’d like “moderate” to mean in terms of spending, in terms of politicking, in terms of word and deed. And that moderation is not just for foreign consumption but also for us at home.

Surely that’s a shopping list that isn’t too difficult to fulfil?

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It’s possible to be a builder of bridges

For so long we have managed to live together quite happily, regardless of race or religious differences.

THEY say fact is often stranger than fiction. Well, real life can often be better than slogans.

Long before we had this slogan about being all one, Malaysians already were.

We went about our lives familiar with diversity, used to being citizens of many different hues.

I suppose it’s true when we say that we are not in fact a racist people, just that when something happens – an economic crisis, political insecurity – then we express ourselves through racist behaviour.

In Jared Diamond’s book Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, he shows how inter-racial or inter-tribal conflict often arises out of some economic issue, over land, food or some other ingredient essential to survival.

But the point is, when everything is going fine, people are not really racist and would probably remain so, even in troubled times if opportunists did not stir things up.

After all it is as much a choice to explain things through economics as it is through a racist lens.

I for one generally believe that our people are essentially good, especially if left alone.

For so long we have managed to live together quite happily, regardless of race or religious differences.

And we have numerous real-life examples to prove it.

A friend was telling me about a family he met in Sabah that comprises a brother who is a Christian priest and a sister who is an ustazah.

Both had made conscious choices to take these paths in life, and they remain loving siblings.

In Sabah and Sarawak, it is not a situation that anybody bats an eyelid at.

In the peninsula, in urban areas I think there are many more of these mixed families than we really know.

While it may be unusual to find such a situation among siblings, it is not unusual inter-generationally.

That is, the parents may be of one religion and the children another.

Nor would it be unusual among cousins and in-laws.

I know one family where each daughter married a Christian, a Muslim and a Jew, respectively.

Thus, their children would be all cousins of different religions. Last I heard it wasn’t an issue.

When I worked in HIV, too, neither race nor religion was an issue in our everyday work.

Since we were dealing with a virus that doesn’t care what anyone believes in, neither could we discriminate against anyone if we wanted to be effective.

We are all human with a common enemy.

It did not make any sense to fight it individually in our own little corners.

I know of one story that truly illustrates how Malaysians can be caring without looking at people’s race or religion.

It also shows how the lack of political interference can allow people to be easily humane and compassionate.

Several years ago, our army and police peacekeepers in Timor Leste befriended some orphans and took their orphanage under their wing.

In the course of this, our medical corps realised that some of these orphans were in dire need of medical treatment that could not be found in that very poor country.

So they arranged for them to be flown to Malaysia and one by one, each got the treatment they needed and most of them recovered very well.

Today, 12 of the original 17 are still here studying because the Malaysians who cared for them realised that for them to have any chance at all in life, they had to be educated here.

And here’s the best thing of all: these orphans are being looked after by a whole array of Malaysians who have simply ignored any racial or religious differences in order to do the best they can for these kids.

Timorese are very devout Catholics but the army and police personnel who have been looking out for them are mostly Muslims.

They organised their medical treatment and since they have been living here, often take them out for treats, invite them for Hari Raya open houses and lavish much affection on them.

Additionally, a group of ladies from a Buddhist society helps to fund their groceries while others from various religious and social backgrounds assist in fundraising for their schooling and other daily needs.

A local doctor – Muslim – lets them stay in a house he owns rent-free and doesn’t fuss when they hang up religious pictures or builds a nativity scene at Christmas.

Every time I visit, my heart swells with pride at how generous and hospitable Malaysians have been towards these kids.

Not only are these orphans getting a school education, they are also learning that people of different races and religions can live in peace together and not have to descend into civil war like their home country did.

It is possible to be bridge-builders. As long as we don’t listen to politicians.

■ If anyone would like to help the Timorese kids in Malaysia, please contact Touch of Hope Charitable Society (Secretary: Ms Chua Lay Choo at melakanyonya@yahoo.co.uk).

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