Ikrar setulus jiwa pendekar gagah Setia sebangsa.
Tentang Akad Berahi
Kau semak wajah mulus itu Buat kesekian kalinya Pada dinding cermin Yang membingkaikan gemilang parasmu Yang melontarkan gema ranum Ke setiap sudut kamar gelap itu. Dan gemilang wajah itulah Yang kau umpankan Pada setiap mata liar Yang khusyuk menjilatjalar Pada setiap sudut wajah itu Pada setiap inci sosok itu Panas darah mengomboh debar Hangat syahwat meruntuh sabar Dan lewat malam nanti Kau semak wajah mulus itu lagi Merah gincu tercalit mereng Rambut kusut terbingkai asing Sudut kamar menjadi saksi Gelap lazat akad berahi.
Tentang Pencarian di Sebalik Baris-Baris Excel
Aku mencarimu, Tuhanku
Di antara baris-baris aksara ini
Yang menggumpalkan merah hitam nikmatMu
Yang menghitungkan segala ciptaanMu
Selembar demi selembar
Aku menzikirkan semua kurniaan ini
Setiap selirat sungaian rahmat
Setiap tandan buahan lazat
Deru luruhnya menggunung ranum
Manis nikmat menguntum senyum
Nah, ternyatalah
Setiap baris dan lajur
Yang terbentang luas ini
Tiada tercukup untuk mengira setiap rezeki
Tiada terangkum acap syukur kami.
Tentang Mimpi Api
Kau turuni lembah itu
Mata marak menyimbah segala
Setiap gerakmu menggetarkan alam
Yang melutut gentar dikakimu
Dengan sekilas pantas kau hunuskan pedang api itu
Kilau amarahnya membakar angin lalu
Memanggang setiap mata
Menyinggung setiap jiwa
Merahpadam itu enggan redam
Marahmu itu tak mungkin diam.
Tentang Dua Ratus Hari
Dua ratus hari
Luruh bak dedaunan tua
Yang jatuh rebah di kaki usia
Satu demi satu
Dua ratus hari
Pantasnya bergulir lalu
Sekilas bayang dan terus menghilang
Dan matamu melirik resah
Menyanyikan sekurun gundah.
Tentang Kekusutan
Fikiran kusut, berselirat, merewang. Jiwa tak khusyuk.
On China’s Unstoppable Rise
After more than two decades of riding the wave of globalisation, and forging itself into “the world’s workshop”, it appears as if the Chinese economy is drawing to a skidding halt. Is this a temporary setback, or a more permanent subordination of what is now the world’s second largest economy?
We have seen the USA do this before. There was a phase in the 1980s when the rise of Japan struck fear in the hearts of American policymakers and industrialists – that Japan was going to get to Number One, supplanting the USA. Of course, we know how things played out: the US forced the Plaza Accord on Japan, casting the Japanese economy into a deflationary tailspin that the island nation is only slowly attempting to come out of.
I think the outlook for China will be different, and that no matter how America will be pulling out all the stops to halt the rise of China, there is really no stopping the Chinese economic juggernaut, and that the current economic slowdown is merely a blip in the long sweep of Chinese future history.
The first reason for this belief is that the recent rise of China is really a decades-long process of a reversion to the mean in human history. China has been a coherent political entity and a global economic powerhouse for most of the past several thousand years – the recent rise of the West and the ascendancy of the British and later the American empires are really anomalies in the longue duree of human civilisation. Anyone who has read the accounts of Marco Polo would remember that for most of humanity, the riches and wealth of China were the stuff of legend. This is also the glue that is binding the Chinese nation together in its loyalty and obeisance to the Chinese Communist Party – more than anything else, the economic reform and rise of China over the past two decades is a nationalist project, to redeem the dignity of the Chinese nation after two centuries of prostration to the West.
The second thing worth mentioning is that unlike Japan, the challenge of China to American hegemony is a contest of symmetric equals – both the US and China are continental powers, with a large and vibrant population and a deep-seated faith in their respective ideologies. The belief in the inevitable ascendancy of the Middle Kingdom has a rhyming resemblance to the ideology of American exceptionalism. Both peoples are firm believers in the manifest destiny of their respective societies.
A third reason to believe that China will continue to be a legitimate competitor to the US is that unlike Japan, China was never militarily conquered by the US. The bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the dictatorship of Douglas MacArthur after the Second World War, were both events that carved a deep scar into the Japanese political psyche. There are no such hangups within the Chinese political class today. They have exorcised the ghost of British colonialism with the takeover of Hong Kong in 1997, and China’s recent initiatives – the ongoing BRICs summit, and the globe-spanning Belt and Road Initiative – show their confidence in their ability to carve out a path as a leader in the rise of the Global South, if not in direct opposition to the West, at least in standing tall and toe-to-toe against the inheritors of the legacy of European colonisation.
A fourth reason for why I believe China will not fade quietly into the geopolitical night is that China has positioned itself well to take advantage of ongoing inflexion points in the global economy. The global energy transition away from fossil fuels has been embraced openly by Chinese industrial conglomerates that have invested heavily into solar, wind and other forms of renewable energy. The rise of digital technologies is also another important vein of future economic development that has been successfully tapped by China, evolving rapidly from mere assemblers and manufacturers of devices for Wester companies, to become principal manufacturers and innovators themselves.
One could surmise that while the US, and world at large, has definitely benefited from the growth of China as a hub for global manufacturing, the geopolitical genie is now out of the bottle. China’s “wolf warrior diplomacy” and unwavering assertion of its “nine-dash-line” hegemony in the South China Sea demonstrates a newfound confidence that is here to stay. The US is frantically trying to push the genie back in the bottle – I think this effort will prove to be futile. We will all need to learn to live with an aggressively confident and hegemonic China in the decades to come.
Tentang Hakikat Azali
Apa yang sedang kau cari?
Sekaut harta, nikmat duniawi?
Semuanya itu fatamorgana
Halusinasi dunia sementara
Pulanglah ke jalan asalmu
Hakikat azali masih menunggu!
Tentang Merdu Rembulan
Terangnya bulan
Tinggi atas kayangan
Merdu cemerlang.
On the “Good Man” Theory of Politics
More than five years after the upheavals of 2018, it is slowly dawning to the consciousness of the Malaysian electorate that “semuanya tak boleh diharap.” There is a level of disillusionment amongst Malaysians at the politics of the day, that is certainly unexpected when we think back to those hopeful days after the electoral defeat of the Barisan Nasional.
There was an expectation, then, on both sides of the aisle, after six decades of unbroken Alliance / Barisan Nasional dominance, that the electoral revolution that brought Mahathir Mohamad back to the premiership would also presage a new era of democratisation for Malaysia. The past few years have put paid to such hopes.
A significant part of this mismatch in expectations, I believe, comes from a built-in sense of undue deference to political leaders that probably arises naturally within a polity still engrossed in feudal concepts of leadership and fealty. As a society, we are naturally predisposed to think of our leaders as “good”, and that all we need to do is elect the right leaders, and these “good” leaders will naturally do what is correct and necessary.
This tendency manifests itself most clearly in that Malaysian habit of “blame the penasihat” for when things are going tangibly wrong. The initial instinct for many Malaysians is to believe that the leader must be infallibly correct and good – and so when circumstances clearly indicate some weakness or failure in leadership, the immediate response is to say “oh, this must be because the PM is getting bad advice from so-and-so.” Others would say “ah the PM needs to sack his incompetent advisors. Once he gets better advice, things would surely get better.”
This sentiment arises naturally due to the nature of power-distance dynamics in Malaysia – and is entirely unhealthy. The unfortunate truth is that sometimes bad leaders make it all the way to the top, and by the time they get there, others are too timid or too afraid to say no to the boss. In the most extreme cases of such feudal cowedness, millions lose their lives because they aren’t enough people in the system with the courage or strength to say no to a Pol Pot or a Mao.
Maybe it is simply the nature of an immature polity, that we continue to hold out for that “good man” in political leadership. Maybe it will take several more instances of living through tyranny before our society finally comes to its senses and realises that only through democratic restraints on our leaders can we compel them to put the public interest ahead of their own personal agenda.