Diversity, not race, our strength

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IMPORTANT MESSAGE FOR ALL

The articles are captured from the original writer, MsMarina (with her permission). SambalBelacan is just compiling articles to make easier to find. Any comments received will remain un-respond because it's not mine.Reach her at her very own blog at http://rantingsbymm.blogspot.com/ Please.

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Wednesday March 26, 2008
Diversity, not race, our strength
Comment by MARINA MAHATHIR


I HAD two jaw dropping experiences this past week. The first was while viewing a video of an aspiring YB facing a group of citizens concerned about unfettered development in their area.

The potential YB not only refused to answer the questions directly but instead displayed a performance so outstandingly arrogant that you had to conclude that he did not really want to be elected. It was an abject lesson in how to lose an election.

Then I saw a report in a Chinese newspaper on how the newly appointed MB of Perak had stunned a Chinese crowd in Ipoh by speaking to them in Mandarin, Cantonese, Hokkien, Tamil, English and Malay.

It may well have been no more than words of greeting but still, the very idea of a Malay politician speaking to a Chinese audience in their own language and dialects is novelty enough these days to be impressive.

Our recent elections has been a jaw dropping experience overall. Perhaps that is only because we are not used to these things that we find them unusual and curious.

As with anything else, there may soon come a day when seeing politicians and other public figures “cross over” racial lines becomes something very normal and no longer anything to remark on.

Perhaps the day when vertical thinking along racial lines is nearer than we dreamt.

I had the opportunity to listen for the second time to Carlos Ghosn, the CEO of Renault and Nissan, the other night on how diversity should be viewed as a strength.

He said he was impressed with Malaysia because it was obvious that our success comes from our natural ethnic diversity.

Coming from a diverse background himself and successfully managing two very different car companies with very different cultures, Ghosn knows what he is talking about.

The important thing, he said, is to acknowledge and respect people’s separate identities and view that as a strength that can be tapped for success. These days, smart global companies don’t impose one type of management style all over the world but adapt to each cultural situation.

If only he knew how hard it is to convince our own people of this. People in political power still think that championing racial rights is their only raison d’etr.

Yet the elections have shown that people vote across racial lines because they are more concerned about pressing issues that affect everyone. They thought that people who used the racial rights argument were waving an old tattered banner, out of a lack of ideas.

To be sure, some issues affect some communities more than others. But these are not genetic; they are related to the circumstances that some members of these communities find themselves in.

The challenge is to alter those circumstances in a way that the communities themselves can find their way out of these problems.

We yearn these days for leaders with new ideas. We want to be given hope for the future, not revisit the same old problems over and over again. Not that we want history ignored because we need to know where to start from but we do want to see that shiny path ahead of us clearly and within reach.

I read the extraordinary speech made by US Presidential hopeful Barack Obama in Philadelphia where he tackled the problem of race.

In reviewing America’s history with race, he said: “I chose to run for the presidency at this moment in history because I believe deeply that we cannot solve the challenges of our time unless we solve them together – unless we perfect our union by understanding that we may have different stories, but we hold common hopes; that we may not look the same and we may not have come from the same place, but we all want to move in the same direction – towards a better future for of children and our grandchildren.”

Some of the issues that have concerned Americans have also concerned us, and the lack of unity is one of them.

To this, Obama responded by acknowledging his mixed ethnic background and saying, “It is a story that has seared into my genetic makeup the idea that this nation is more than the sum of its parts – that out of many, we are truly one.”

And indeed Democratic voters agreed with him and voted for him even in states that had seemed prejudiced against black men.

The same thing happened in our country. Unfortunately, race politics has not really died down yet, and some people reacted as if ethnic cleansing had just taken place.

Where is our own Obama to lead us into our future, with faith and hope? Have we heard yet one speech of optimism recently that inspires and unites us all?

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The voters have spoken

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IMPORTANT MESSAGE FOR ALL

The articles are captured from the original writer, MsMarina (with her permission). SambalBelacan is just compiling articles to make easier to find. Any comments received will remain un-respond because it's not mine.Reach her at her very own blog at http://rantingsbymm.blogspot.com/ Please.

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Wednesday March 12, 2008
The voters have spoken
COMMENT
By MARINA MAHATHIR


If politicians should learn one lesson from these elections, it is that humility is the keyword, both for winners and losers.

FOR many it was like the proverbial saying, being caught between a rock and a hard place.

Vote the despicable but familiar, or take the leap into the unknown and vote for the other side. In the end, many decided to chance it.

Going by the various confessions that I have been hearing, many older people – those who have voted in every election and who have voted for the party in power each time – decided that they would try something new this year.

For some, it was an emotional decision, for others it was easy. But all felt they had to do it because they could not take it anymore.

To vote in a government that simply seemed out of touch was un-bearable.

Many said they were simply fed up. They wanted to teach the Government a lesson.

So they just went for it with a vengeance and spared few, felling even those who had been good MPs, and electing untested candidates with few credentials.

Perhaps they had taken a leaf from other countries where unpopular governments had been summarily dismissed.

Of course, being Malaysian, we always have an out clause.

We change most things but not everything. So we left a familiar Government but just made it substantially weaker.

But in four states, and Kuala Lumpur, we decided to try out entirely new administrations.

To bagi chance, as many put it.

It’s a chance for them as well as for us, so that next time round, we can truly make an informed choice and get to compare apples with apples.

But, to see the types of excuses being given by those who lost, one would think that the lesson of this election has simply gone over their heads.

It is everyone else’s fault but theirs.

One even blamed the very voters he had so assiduously courted before.

Others still believe that despite the debacle, people still want them and they should continue.

It’s a bit like a spouse who doesn’t believe the marriage has broken down even when he or she is served the divorce papers.

In the face of denial such as this, there is no room for subtlety.

As polite as we are normally, this is not the time for it when unwanted people just don’t understand.

We should come out and say, “We didn’t vote for you because we don’t like you, that’s all there is to it.”

And even if we didn’t personally reject you because we couldn’t vote in your constituency, the fact that we rejected your cohorts elsewhere is a clear enough signal that we want you out, too.

It’s about that concept known as accountability.

How often do we read of major corporate executives who had to resign because they lost their companies millions and billions of dollars?

Or politicians elsewhere who had to step down because of some major scandal?

Someone has to take responsibility for not performing.

And what else is a general election but a report card on performance, which in this case, (the Government) gained a D, if not an outright F?

What’s more, it takes a courageous and noble man to take responsibility.

By refusing to acknowledge responsibility, our former and current leaders are showing not only arrogance but also cowardice.

They believe that by staying in office, they will be protected from possible demands for answers to tricky questions.

And why should they not believe that, when they have done the same to others?

So staying in office is not an act of responsibility, but one of weakness and cowardice.

It is also an act of wilful blindness and deafness.

To wear eyeshades and earplugs is only a temporary measure to block out the growing mumblings among the electorate that their will is only being partially obeyed.

If this continues, then they will make that will known in the not-too-distant future by punishing those who ignored their message.

That will be even more humiliating. So while the opportunity exists for an honourable withdrawal, it should be taken.

Not to say that those who won should feel too triumphant.

If politicians should learn one lesson from these elections, it is that hubris has no place in their make-up.

Humility is the keyword, both for winners and losers.

The thing about arrogance is that, by nature, it cannot be hidden.

The public is not as blind as the arrogant would like to believe.

Nor is the public unable to detect a lack of sincerity and genuineness.

I watched one politician emphatically calling for respect for her opponent at all her ceramah, only to be summarily booted out last Saturday.

The major lesson is that power rightfully rests with the people.

It’s all in that little piece of paper every five years.

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Still a man’s world, politically

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IMPORTANT MESSAGE FOR ALL
The articles are captured from the original writer, MsMarina (with her permission). SambalBelacan is just compiling articles to make easier to find. Any comments received will remain un-respond because it's not mine.Reach her at her very own blog at http://rantingsbymm.blogspot.com/ Please.
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Wednesday February 27, 2008
Still a man’s world, politically
Comment: By MARINA MAHATHIR.


THE election season is upon us in full force, and since the day Parliament was dissolved, nomination lists have been scrutinised and re-scrutinised, with several dramatic drop-outs and resurrections. It’s a soap opera almost worth prolonging.

But nomination day finally arrived and microscopes were out, poring over each and every candidate to see who’s who.

So far the most remarked on fact seems to be the numbers of sons, daughters, sons- and daughters-in-law, nephews, brothers (but not sisters) that have been fielded.

Which rather makes you wonder if we are becoming like some countries where electoral seats are passed down within families.

My interest is, of course, in how many women candidates have been fielded this time. A rough count has yielded me at least 85 names that I recognise as female (the difficulty is that there are some names whose gender is difficult to ascertain), which is an impressive number.

Most of them are in state seats, and my impression is that the Opposition has fielded more women candidates than the Barisan Nasional. Which is rather interesting, given that at least one of the Opposition parties has always seemed rather women-unfriendly.

I would certainly like to know why political parties have fielded more women this time. Did they heed the call of various women’s NGOs and the Women’s Ministry to have more female candidates?

If so, their response is far from universal, since Perlis has fielded no women candidates at all. To add insult to injury, they had picked one woman candidate for a parliamentary seat only to take it away from her after a few hours.

Another woman, an incumbent, lost her seat to her own brother, which leads you to wonder why they couldn’t have just found him another seat instead of taking hers away?

Three women won their seats uncontested. At least one of them won due to the incompetence of her potential rival; but it would have been good to know what the mettle of the other women actually are, gauged through an actual election battle.

Several women candidates are pitted against other women candidates, leading us to wonder if the sex of the candidate is a factor at all. In any case, we should celebrate anyway since, win or lose, we will have a woman representative in.

Some people have asked why it is necessary to be concerned about the numbers of women elected representatives. Why, they ask, can’t we just choose people based on ability, rather than sex?

The thing is, politics by and large is a man’s game. It is stacked against women in every way, from the finances needed to run for office, to the long hours, to the types of issues that are promoted.

When women come in, they are pressured to not push for any women’s issues because these are seen as “discriminatory” against men. They are supposed to be “gender-neutral” instead.

But gender-neutrality is not the same as gender equality when the playing field between men and women is not level.

When the head of the state-level Wanita branch can be denied a seat because someone’s brother wants it, it makes for a strong argument to have seats reserved for women.

Otherwise everybody’s brother, son, son-in-law or nephew will elbow out every single woman candidate available, especially when the one who has the final say is a man.

Still, having more women representatives does not necessarily mean better representation. But the higher numbers are more likely to yield more quality representatives than low numbers of women.

Besides, women are less likely to make quips about leaks and tunnels, already a bonus in itself.

We are supposed to be aiming for 30% female representation in elected bodies. That’s below the actual proportion of women in the population. Yet, there are people who think this is too much.

Worse still, there are women who are in the position to make this happen who think that we should go slowly on this. As if waiting 50 years isn’t slow enough.

There are going to be women representatives who will make blunders because of lack of experience. They will be judged far more harshly than male representatives of similar ilk. It will be seen as a far greater weakness than male incompetence.

Sexism prevails, unless the women themselves want to change it and will unite, regardless of party affiliation. For that too, they need the numbers in order to be strong.

If more women win seats this time, they will gain the confidence to stand up for their rights, or at least for greater respect in the House.

Meantime, we need to decide whom to vote for, and get out there and vote. No excuses this time. It’s too important.

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Nasi tumpeng for all occasions

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IMPORTANT MESSAGE FOR ALL

The articles are captured from the original writer, MsMarina (with her permission). SambalBelacan is just compiling articles to make easier to find. Any comments received will remain un-respond because it's not mine.Reach her at her very own blog at http://rantingsbymm.blogspot.com/ Please.

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Wednesday February 13, 2008
Nasi tumpeng for all occasions
Comment: MARINA MAHATHIR


MAY I take this opportunity to wish all Malaysians, Gong Xi Fa Cai! It might be funny not to be race-specific wishing people that, but thus far every non-Chinese I’ve wished has automatically wished me back. So maybe, being the only non-religious festival we have here, Chinese New Year is the only Malaysian holiday we have.

I have just returned from a holiday in Indonesia, exploring the cities and countryside of Central and East Java and Bali. Most people who don’t know much about Indonesia – or at least Indonesia as it currently is – may think that Chinese New Year is not celebrated at all there.

After all, during the Suharto years, the Chinese minority were discouraged from having Chinese names (although not everybody complied) and nothing written in Chinese was allowed.

This translated across the water over here as absolute discrimination towards the Chinese minority, underscored by the terrible witch-hunts and rapes that occurred during the economic crisis that led to the downfall of Suharto.

In fact, there has always been a thriving Chinese community in Indonesia. Chinese-Indonesians founded some of the largest corporations, such as the Lippo Group.

Ong Hock Ham, who recently died, was a prominent historian. Josephine Komara, the batik designer and promoter, is also Chinese, as are many others in the textile and fashion industries.

In Indonesia, Chinese New Year is called Imlek, a word I have not been able to find the origin of. Although there aren’t as many decorations as we have here, you do now find shops selling red lanterns and other festive decorative items.

What was even more surprising for me was that on TV, there were Imlek specials to celebrate the occasion.

We visited the home of a Chinese friend who is also an antique dealer in Malang, East Java.

In so many ways, our friend and his wife are exactly like our friends back home with one exception; their very strong Javanese accent.

I guess to us, it’s a bit like listening to a Chinese person with an American, British or Australian accent, except that when they’re in Asia, you expect them to sound more familiar.

But the Javanese accent can be very thick and not always easy to understand. It does make you realise the folly of ignoring diversity within communities.

One thing that is common among the Indonesians, regardless of ethnicity, is the inherent courtesy that everyone seems to have. Unlike in many countries where you feel constantly hassled because you’re a tourist, in Java we never did.

People tried to sell us their crafts, but never so aggressively that it was off-putting. If we asked to see something, people smiled and said “monggo” which means “silakan” or “please do”.

Whenever we stopped to ask for directions, which was often, since signage in Indonesia is no better than in Malaysia, people always tried to be helpful. In the hotels we stayed in, the staff members were unfailingly polite and went out of their way to assist us whenever we needed it.

What became clear to us on this trip was that Indonesians have an abiding awareness of their culture and their history. There are historical monuments everywhere and streets named after heroes that people actually know about.

In the smaller towns, not everything has been torn down to make way for shiny new towers.

As a result you still get to see beautiful houses built in the style of a bygone era, even if some of them are no longer residences but used for commercial purposes.

As always, food is a unifying factor. Food stalls and simple restaurants abound, and all are delicious. Traditional music groups sing at nasi liwet stalls, dressed in sarong kebaya. You can still hire kerongcong groups to come and sing at home when you have dinner guests.

Visits to the keratons or palaces in Jogjakarta or Solo are true cultural experiences because the people who work there have done so for generations, and the rituals and dances are practiced as part of palace life, and not just for tourists.

It’s amazing that a country so much more culturally rich than ours can be so poor at marketing itself.

Our holiday wound up in Bali on the eve of Chinese New Year so we didn’t experience what it was like to celebrate the arrival of the Year of the Rat in Muslim Indonesia.

But on the front page of the largest newspaper Kompas, there was a photograph of Chinese-Indonesians praying at a Jakarta temple on New Year’s day.

What was interesting to me was the offering they made at the temple; nasi tumpeng, yellow rice shaped into a cone, surrounded and decorated by all sorts of accompaniments.

It’s a Javanese dish that is typically presented at every festive occasion regardless of religion or community.

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The bogeyman’s to blame

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IMPORTANT MESSAGE FOR ALL

The articles are captured from the original writer, MsMarina (with her permission). SambalBelacan is just compiling articles to make easier to find. Any comments received will remain un-respond because it's not mine. Reach her at her very own blog at http://rantingsbymm.blogspot.com/ Please.

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Wednesday January 30, 2008


The bogeyman’s to blame

By MARINA MAHATHIR

We see the constant blaming of foreign workers for all our ills, but none of it can really stand up to scrutiny.

IT’S a tried and true political strategy that when things aren’t quite rosy, one should distract the people by focusing on something else or coming up with a bogeyman.

The former diverts attention from what is really on peoples’ minds, while the latter seeks someone or something else to blame. Sometimes politicians even attempt a combination of both.

A recent survey by the Merdeka Centre for Opinion Research polled people on several issues, including what they deemed most currently important. At the top of the list was price increases and inflation.

Second, they are concerned about ethnic inequalities; and third, about crime and public safety. Everything else, including politics, corruption, drug abuse and illegal immigrants rank much further down the list.

What we think people should be concerned with, and what they actually are, can sometimes be very different. But anyone with a modicum of insight will already know that the issues highlighted in the survey are what people talk about all the time.

People are concerned about how they may go about their daily lives at a reasonable level of comfort and safety.

Can their lives carry on as before, or even improve? And can they and their families walk about without fear for their personal safety?

They obviously also see ethnic inequalities as a contributing threat to the peaceful environment in which they can earn a living, work and play securely.

But are these what matters to those up there? Instead, we have old stories regurgitated to distract from what is new.

For instance, the old story that in an opposition-held state supermarket lines are gender-segregated came immediately after an uproar over similarly-segregated schools in government-held states.

At least, in the first instance, this was a policy that was announced by the government in power, but in the second it was happening in defiance of regulations.

Both cases are of course “Band-Aid policies”, where male bad behaviour is accepted as normal while females are inconvenienced, rather than (shock, horror) empowered to deal with it.

The bogeyman tactic is rather like Margaret Thatcher starting a war over some distant islands in order to distract the populace from local economic issues.

Here, we see the constant blaming of foreign workers for everything, from lack of jobs, to crime and violence, and to the spread of diseases. None of it can really stand up to scrutiny.

It may be politically correct to complain about foreign workers taking jobs from locals, but these are not jobs that locals want.

Who exactly wants to work in plantations, clean toilets or care for other people’s babies?

If it were true that locals want these jobs, then we should set up job agencies specialising in filling up these vacancies with only locals.

It is disingenuous to say that foreigners keep “pouring in” to take up employment here when we know that many of these foreigners are being duped into selling everything they have to pay unscrupulous agents, and then finding that no jobs await them here.

If these jobs do not exist for them, then obviously they don’t exist for locals either.

Neither is it honest to say that foreigners are contributing to the rise in crime in this country. The police statistics themselves dispute these.

According to a fascinating paper by the Royal Malaysian Police, in 2004, the proportion of crimes committed by foreigners was only 2% of the total crime index, and on a per capita basis Malaysians commit more crimes than foreigners.

Incidentally, the police statistics do not really support the perception that there is a huge rise in violent crime. Most crimes in the country are in fact property crimes such as car theft.

But it serves political purposes to fuel this negative perception of foreigners with racist and stereotyped “facts”. For instance, it is not true that foreigners are running around full of disease and infecting locals.

Malaysians still make up the vast majority of people infected with HIV, and they are certainly infecting each other and not foreigners.

To imply that we should bar foreigners from coming in because of their alleged criminal intent and diseases is actually not going to contribute much to any sustainable solution.

Incidentally, the same police paper puts the blame on economic inequalities and unemployment as the reasons for crime, a situation not unlike many countries in the world.

Ahead of elections, we need to keep focused on the real issues, even while politicians try to distract us with fairytales. Like former US president Bill Clinton used to say, “it’s the economy, stupid”.

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