Let's call this IPOs - not Initial Public Offering, but Instant Political Opening. After all, Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak crowed last Friday that the trend shows democracy in Malaysia is thriving. How easily the vacuous Najib twists reality.
On Najib's scatty ebullience alone, a humbug borne by his natural predilection for fatuity and one not dissimilar to his mentor Dr Mahathir Mohamad, new political enterprises could well rise like the Phoenix from deep within Malaysia's jungles. Don't be surprised if this dredges up communist diehards from the Emergency days and World War II Japanese soldiers, all of whom, for all you know, may well have turned over to new lives, unsuspectingly ensconced as members of Najib's Felda farmers - his nouveau riche.
Either the springing of new political parties in recent times signals the inexorable march toward some form of genuine democratisation from the embedded tyrannical, patrimonialist past - in which case many Malaysians wouldn't want to miss this most edifying development that no doubt will see Malaysia turn the corner from being a Third World political pariah - or there is money to be made by political parties, and this is open to conjecture.
If the former is true, then you should not be the slightest bit startled if the Najib regime - which rules Malaysia with arbitrary authority and the sharp end of the keris, axes, parangs, lobbed-off pig and cow heads, chickens with slit throats, death threats, the loose guns of its mostly uneducated police and security forces and the steel-cap boots of its almost wholly Malay officers - suddenly tells Malaysians that this new democratic turn will become a model for export to the Third World.
Who can forget the blithe hyperbo
le of previous Umno regimes that boasted that the Malaysian economy was a gloriously exportable template, as though it were the world's first genetically modified cabbage of immeasurable benefit to all humanity. So much so, even Zimbabwe's klepto-megalomanic president, the spiteful and murderous dictator Robert Mugabe, flushed the Malaysian model down his toilet.
Here's a snippet on just how competently and comprehensively the Umno-BN manages the economy. Government debt, according to the Auditor-General's Report, rose to 53.7 percent of GDP at the end of 2009, the highest in five years. Wait; there's more. Twenty-four ministries and departments that were directly involved in 109 national projects had overshot their budgets to a cumulative RM527.43 million. Guess who pays for Umno-BN's incompetence?
Until today, Najib has not offered Malaysians an account of his regime's grossly criminal negligence. And - surprise, surprise - Malaysians have never questioned him. So, where did that miracle economy template end up? Easy. Flat on the faces of those who had routinely peddled bare-faced lies. Lying is elemental; it's the core of Umno-BN's religion-based morality.
Umno's argument on the Malaysian political economy was diabolically simple or, more to the point, simplistic. Asian economies would grow and grow and leave the rest of the world for dead, especially the decadent, racist West.
Either the springing of new political parties in recent times signals the inexorable march toward some form of genuine democratisation from the embedded tyrannical, patrimonialist past - in which case many Malaysians wouldn't want to miss this most edifying development that no doubt will see Malaysia turn the corner from being a Third World political pariah - or there is money to be made by political parties, and this is open to conjecture.
If the former is true, then you should not be the slightest bit startled if the Najib regime - which rules Malaysia with arbitrary authority and the sharp end of the keris, axes, parangs, lobbed-off pig and cow heads, chickens with slit throats, death threats, the loose guns of its mostly uneducated police and security forces and the steel-cap boots of its almost wholly Malay officers - suddenly tells Malaysians that this new democratic turn will become a model for export to the Third World.
Who can forget the blithe hyperbo
le of previous Umno regimes that boasted that the Malaysian economy was a gloriously exportable template, as though it were the world's first genetically modified cabbage of immeasurable benefit to all humanity. So much so, even Zimbabwe's klepto-megalomanic president, the spiteful and murderous dictator Robert Mugabe, flushed the Malaysian model down his toilet.Here's a snippet on just how competently and comprehensively the Umno-BN manages the economy. Government debt, according to the Auditor-General's Report, rose to 53.7 percent of GDP at the end of 2009, the highest in five years. Wait; there's more. Twenty-four ministries and departments that were directly involved in 109 national projects had overshot their budgets to a cumulative RM527.43 million. Guess who pays for Umno-BN's incompetence?
Until today, Najib has not offered Malaysians an account of his regime's grossly criminal negligence. And - surprise, surprise - Malaysians have never questioned him. So, where did that miracle economy template end up? Easy. Flat on the faces of those who had routinely peddled bare-faced lies. Lying is elemental; it's the core of Umno-BN's religion-based morality.
Umno's argument on the Malaysian political economy was diabolically simple or, more to the point, simplistic. Asian economies would grow and grow and leave the rest of the world for dead, especially the decadent, racist West.
Yet the regime still heavily depends on Western markets for its national export income. Malay students are still being sent to colleges and universities in the West on taxpayer-funded state scholarships. Umno's cronies and politicians continue to buy properties in the West. They also holiday in Western countries. They wear Western clothes. And Malay youth shamelessly ape the licentiousness of Western popular culture.
'Asian Century' prophets
Asian Century proponents were so filled with moral and cultural supremacy that they confidently added a new tag line. Asian democracy, they said, would not lag far behind economic liberalisation. In fact Asian democracy was as inevitable as the free-marketisation of Asian economies. Both will flourish, and in concert. But Asian democracy, they qualified, will not be the same as Western democracy. Asian democracy will have Asian characteristics - inevitably.
Inevitable because the model was assured of bearing fruit. It held to a long promise - the unavoidability of history. This was, after all, the overriding part of the Japanese-American scholar Francis Fukuyama. His neo-liberal thesis, 'End of History' merely came back to haunt him. Fukuyama was compelled to deflate it later as nearly approaching tripe. He copped out of his universalising liberal democracy that would sweep the world and then began rolling out a culture driven narrative for the evolution of democracy or democratic tendencies in Asia.
Similar ideas more or less also formed
Anwar Ibrahim's thinking in his version of an Asian Renaissance. Anwar, however, took the all-inclusive cultural relativist position, despite all its inherent intellectual and practical problems. But Anwar conveniently ignored them. He was dead-certain of his thesis. He thought it would get worldwide traction. And Asians lapped up his servings as though they were chocolate-laced pudding.
Anwar placed tremendous emphasis on harnessing thriving Eastern religions, cultures, philosophies, the arts and literature as the basis for transformational change in Asian politics and economies, and which would lead ultimately to achieving freedom and justice. All of which, and for all his trouble, came back soon enough to bite Anwar on the backside. This was, to be sure, part of the egregious attempts by certain quarters, in the seemingly constant remake of the old East-West civilisational contest, to champion Asian values.
Singapore's former diplomat Kishore Mahbubani, author of 'Can Asians Think?', 'The New Asian Hemisphere', and 'Beyond the Age of Innocence', was partially right about Asian leaders modernising their national economies. Not all Asian countries, though, and not without a great deal of help from Western (and Japanese) capital.
'Asian Century' prophets
Asian Century proponents were so filled with moral and cultural supremacy that they confidently added a new tag line. Asian democracy, they said, would not lag far behind economic liberalisation. In fact Asian democracy was as inevitable as the free-marketisation of Asian economies. Both will flourish, and in concert. But Asian democracy, they qualified, will not be the same as Western democracy. Asian democracy will have Asian characteristics - inevitably.
Inevitable because the model was assured of bearing fruit. It held to a long promise - the unavoidability of history. This was, after all, the overriding part of the Japanese-American scholar Francis Fukuyama. His neo-liberal thesis, 'End of History' merely came back to haunt him. Fukuyama was compelled to deflate it later as nearly approaching tripe. He copped out of his universalising liberal democracy that would sweep the world and then began rolling out a culture driven narrative for the evolution of democracy or democratic tendencies in Asia.
Similar ideas more or less also formed
Anwar Ibrahim's thinking in his version of an Asian Renaissance. Anwar, however, took the all-inclusive cultural relativist position, despite all its inherent intellectual and practical problems. But Anwar conveniently ignored them. He was dead-certain of his thesis. He thought it would get worldwide traction. And Asians lapped up his servings as though they were chocolate-laced pudding.Anwar placed tremendous emphasis on harnessing thriving Eastern religions, cultures, philosophies, the arts and literature as the basis for transformational change in Asian politics and economies, and which would lead ultimately to achieving freedom and justice. All of which, and for all his trouble, came back soon enough to bite Anwar on the backside. This was, to be sure, part of the egregious attempts by certain quarters, in the seemingly constant remake of the old East-West civilisational contest, to champion Asian values.
Singapore's former diplomat Kishore Mahbubani, author of 'Can Asians Think?', 'The New Asian Hemisphere', and 'Beyond the Age of Innocence', was partially right about Asian leaders modernising their national economies. Not all Asian countries, though, and not without a great deal of help from Western (and Japanese) capital.
Meanwhile, Asia on the whole has failed wretchedly on the larger questions of human rights, democracy and justice. Not a single ruling or opposition party in Asia, least of all in Malaysia, has to date clearly enunciated its political programme for promoting Asian values while pursuing human rights, justice and democracy for the people. Why?
Although Mahbubani will not say it outright, for obvious reasons, the real problem for the latter issues in triplicate lies squarely on the façade of Asian values, for all of its pomposity and stunning hypocrisy. Indeed, the Asian values hype and dribble is code and excuse for Asia's so-called leaders to employ more, not less, repression even if Asian economies progress. It is also code and excuse for Asian politicians to cultivate, ferment and utilise racism, including reverse racism, to their extreme radical forms to entrench their personal power.
Alliance of carpetbaggers
In Malaysia, the ones who turned the tables on Anwar and poured cold water on his Asian Renaissance were the lazy, narrow-minded, falsely puritanical, trenchantly racist and hypocritically Islamist Malays in Umno, led by their esteemed evangelist, Mahathir.
Although Mahbubani will not say it outright, for obvious reasons, the real problem for the latter issues in triplicate lies squarely on the façade of Asian values, for all of its pomposity and stunning hypocrisy. Indeed, the Asian values hype and dribble is code and excuse for Asia's so-called leaders to employ more, not less, repression even if Asian economies progress. It is also code and excuse for Asian politicians to cultivate, ferment and utilise racism, including reverse racism, to their extreme radical forms to entrench their personal power.
Alliance of carpetbaggers
In Malaysia, the ones who turned the tables on Anwar and poured cold water on his Asian Renaissance were the lazy, narrow-minded, falsely puritanical, trenchantly racist and hypocritically Islamist Malays in Umno, led by their esteemed evangelist, Mahathir.
Today, the same
work is being conducted on Umno's behalf by Umno sanctioned Malay non-government organisations, such as the ultra neo-nationalist Perkasa, which gives Islam a horrifying reputation. Perkasa's spiritual leader is none other than Mahathir.
And let's not forget Umno's supporting casts. There are the manifestly crooked Chinese in the MCA - the kongsi of filthy rich businessmen and a scandal-infested leadership who care little for culture, justice, morality, equality and the environment. They are much too preoccupied with money, praying to their money-gods, and practising bad manners.
And who can ignore (although Umno does, and rather easily) the absolutely useless and pointless MIC, the white silk dhoti-clad, loanshark chettiar class of Hindus who dominate the party, and whose feet are reverentially kissed - it could be worse - by S Samy Vellu and his newly-minted successor G Palanivel, while they continue to disgracefully sell out their fellow Indians.
Together, this alliance of carpetbaggers dances around open fires to the drumbeat of money, self-aggrandisement and political repression led, again, and first and foremost, by the manifestly unscrupulous, scurrilous, chief bigot and repugnant autocrat Mahathir, whose nastiness has continued with his magnificently pretentious, bleeding-hearted, gratuitous protégés in Abdullah Ahmad Badawi and now Najib.
In Malaysia, politics does not change for the sake of the economy or its people. Rather, the economy changes only if and when it suits the ruling class so it can appropriate the monetary value of economic growth without hindrance. Local politics will be adjusted accordingly so as to ease their passage of rorting the system.
If Malaysia's monarchs have any conscience whatsoever about fairness and justice, they would intervene in Umno-BN's continuous and biggest political bastardry and economic thuggery in contemporary Malaysian history. But they haven't.
Malaysia's economy isn't growing anywhere near China's or India's pace, even if the constantly massaged statistics by the Umno-dominated politico-economic bureaucrats - the ones Lim Kit Siang aptly called “little Napoleans” - might otherwise say.
To believe Umno's statistics is rather like placing the ridiculously fabled holy book in the hands of the Chinese Communist Party's Central Committee. It's a no-brainer. Luckily, despite the shenanigans of the ruling regime, its culpability in siphoning off national wealth for itself, and its cronies and nepotists, the Malaysian economy is growing, but at a slower rate. work is being conducted on Umno's behalf by Umno sanctioned Malay non-government organisations, such as the ultra neo-nationalist Perkasa, which gives Islam a horrifying reputation. Perkasa's spiritual leader is none other than Mahathir.And let's not forget Umno's supporting casts. There are the manifestly crooked Chinese in the MCA - the kongsi of filthy rich businessmen and a scandal-infested leadership who care little for culture, justice, morality, equality and the environment. They are much too preoccupied with money, praying to their money-gods, and practising bad manners.
And who can ignore (although Umno does, and rather easily) the absolutely useless and pointless MIC, the white silk dhoti-clad, loanshark chettiar class of Hindus who dominate the party, and whose feet are reverentially kissed - it could be worse - by S Samy Vellu and his newly-minted successor G Palanivel, while they continue to disgracefully sell out their fellow Indians.
Together, this alliance of carpetbaggers dances around open fires to the drumbeat of money, self-aggrandisement and political repression led, again, and first and foremost, by the manifestly unscrupulous, scurrilous, chief bigot and repugnant autocrat Mahathir, whose nastiness has continued with his magnificently pretentious, bleeding-hearted, gratuitous protégés in Abdullah Ahmad Badawi and now Najib.
In Malaysia, politics does not change for the sake of the economy or its people. Rather, the economy changes only if and when it suits the ruling class so it can appropriate the monetary value of economic growth without hindrance. Local politics will be adjusted accordingly so as to ease their passage of rorting the system.
If Malaysia's monarchs have any conscience whatsoever about fairness and justice, they would intervene in Umno-BN's continuous and biggest political bastardry and economic thuggery in contemporary Malaysian history. But they haven't.
Malaysia's economy isn't growing anywhere near China's or India's pace, even if the constantly massaged statistics by the Umno-dominated politico-economic bureaucrats - the ones Lim Kit Siang aptly called “little Napoleans” - might otherwise say. It's a truism, of course, that more money is made when an economy is growing, but not everyone shares equally in this bounty if one is reduced to the margins of the polity or submerged on the lower rungs of social hierarchy. Only those who ply direct power, or have access to the political class, will make the most money, and with ease. As will the regime's debauched business cronies who feed the shamelessly depraved narcissus of their political patrons. Umno, and its BN 'component' parties - perfunctory cogs in a slimy wheel - have directly benefited from the economy for years, without accountability and without transparency, because they exert control in Stalinist-style totalitarianism.
BN swagger
Needless to say, opposition political parties need lots of money to launch election and other general campaigns if they are to assert their ongoing presence, recognition and importance to the highly conservative and timid voting public. Public and corporate donations to opposition parties are typically scant.
Conversely corporate donations to Umno, MCA and MIC are massive. But they are wholly unregulated, and thus forge a covert and unethical relationship between crony and other businesses and the ruling coalition to buy influence and state-financed projects. Recall Mahathir's privatisation policy, soon after he became prime minister.
With its huge war chest, Umno-BN will do all it can to starve or block opposition parties of and from crucial funding, as does the PAP regime in Singapore of its opposition parties. Perhaps all is not lost if Tunisia presents an example of organic forms of people power. The big difference, though, is that Tunisians are far braver than Malaysians in running open political gauntlets against a dictatorial, corrupt and murderous regime.
Najib can afford to
swagger. Few Malaysians, including opposition parties, have real avenues to actively protest or criticise his regime, which has a chokehold on the mainstream media, almost all of which are owned by the political parties in the ruling coalition. Today the Najib regime is preparing legislation to also control news websites and bloggers critical of the regime.Najib boasted last week that he could easily demolish Anwar in any economic debate. He has all the crucial information, presumably on the state of the country's finances, and Anwar and the opposition parties do not. Such a declaration immediately predisposes or sidelines opposition parties to, like it or not, positions of considerable shortcomings, rendering them as anything but effective. When one controls information, George Orwell reminds us, then one controls e-v-e-r-y-t-h-i-n-g. Where's Najib's 'thriving democracy' trash-talk now?
Joseph Heller famously wrote: “Some men are born mediocre, some men achieve mediocrity, and some men have mediocrity thrust upon them.” Najib shouldn't flatter himself. His swagger always only brims with pithiness and inconsequence, except for the poor Mongolian woman, Teoh Beng Hock and others like him, and those whose bodies and identities have been snatched by Islamic zealots.
Najib's claim to wielding information power is an appalling but unsurprising indictment on Malaysian 'democracy' and political values than his inherent idiocy allows him to fathom the Leviathan. His inchoate immaturity marks his swank that repeatedly demonstrates beyond doubt Umno-BN's bastardry of Malaysian politics and especially rival political groups or organisation.
It shows just how routinely the Umno-BN regime abuses political power as though it comes from the barrel of a gun and not plebiscites. But, sadly, and rather ironically, Malaysian votes can be easily bought. Or Malaysians allow their allegiance to be bought. Or they can be effortlessly inveigled by mere threats of state terrorism.
What will new and old opposition parties do to surmount the hard realism of Malaysian politics and still win elections so as to arrest Malaysia going more and more to the dogs?
By: MANJIT BHATIA is an Australian academic, writer and journalist. He is also research director of AsiaRisk, a risk analysis consultancy. He now divides his life and work between Australia, Britain and the US.
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