Category: Life

Posted on

On Being “Local”

When I was in school in the mid-1980s, we used to say, of something inferior, that it was “local”.

Kasut kau local, lah.

Baju dia local betul.

It was certainly unreflexive – you hear the word bandied about amongst older boys in school, you try it on in your own conversations, you get familiar with how it fits into the way you praise or deride something.

It was only much later in life, when I was older, that I would reflect on these conversations, and especially that term – “local”. I suppose it was a natural reflex for a young nation, still grappling with its sense of identity and self-pride. Industrialisation and manufacturing was still a nascent thing in 1980s Malaysia, and there was a natural expectation that anything manufactured locally would be inferior, sub-standard, poor.

I am old enough to remember when the first Proton Saga appeared on our local roads. Most Malaysians were still happy to use second-hard Corollas and Civics, and there was a real skepticism that Malaysians could make something as complex as a car.

Today, “Made in Malaysia” is no longer a pejorative, and we are known throughout the world as a major hub for manufacturing, especially in electronics and electrical goods. I doubt if children still use the term “local” to describe something sub-par, and I suppose it is a mark of the times that no one says this anymore.

Posted on

On MUDA and Political Disruption II

Back in Sep 2020, I wrote some initial thoughts about MUDA, the new kid on the block of Malaysian politics. Having left Bersatu after the spectacular implosion of the Pakatan Harapan government in 2020, former Minister of Youth and Sports Syed Saddiq Syed Abdul Rahman decided to form his own political vehicle, tapping on the idealism and energy of a new generation of young voters. While the Malaysian United Democratic Alliance was never specifically an “age-ist” organisation, the fact that the party’s acronym was a Malay word for “young”, and that the President himself was in his 20s, suggested that MUDA was always going to pitch is political message towards the younger segment of the Malaysian electorate, which was expanded greatly following a bipartisan vote in Parliament to extend the right to vote to Malaysians aged 18 and above.

The party started on a real swing of momentum, and came into its own during the great floods of 2021. It was quick to marshal support to the most affected areas, and made its presence felt in many flood areas across the country, with many young volunteers choosing to participate via MUDA’s coordination.

However, as mentioned in my Sep 2020 essay, the prospects of newly-formed political parties in Malaysia have never been especially stellar. Like many developing countries, political parties tend to be very tribal, and the political base of the largest political parties tend to reflect the major cleavages within society, be it ethnic, religious, class-based, or geographic.

In the case of MUDA, they were very clear on their primary target market: young, liberal urban and suburban voters, typically in their 20s and below, mostly affluent enough to believe that they have “transcended” the primal ethnic lenses of their parents. The problem, of course, is that this voter bank is already hotly contested by both PKR and DAP, both of whom typically would split the urban/suburban vote between themselves amongst ethnic lines: the more Chinese-dominated areas like Kepong and Batu would be natural DAP home ground, while PKR has staked its political fortunes on the Malay suburbs of Gombak, Setiawangsa, and Bandar Tun Razak. Where does MUDA play in all this?

As it happens, we saw the play in the recent general elections. MUDA was mostly squeezed out of the selection process for the main urban and suburban seats that they had pitched their hopes on. Today, they still have only one Member of Parliament, with Syed Saddiq holding on to Muar. To add insult to injury, the Unity Government secretariat has been taking great pains to snub MUDA, having held several meetings without MUDA representatives being invited.

What does the future hold for MUDA? Without any natural voter base to speak of, and the polarisation of Malaysian politics set to continue to play itself out primarily along racial lines, I think MUDA will probably only survive for another one or two election cycles, before it gets swallowed up, most likely into PKR, from my perspective. Unless MUDA begins to take clear measures to carve out a distinctive and meaningful niche for itself in Malaysian politics, I believe it is fair to say that the beginning of the end for this plucky political party is already well under way.

Posted on

On Political Tourism

Those who know Kat and I well would know that we both have an abiding interest in politics. In fact, the first time Kat and I ever met was at the Putra World Trade Centre – during the UMNO General Assembly back in 2007! I was working for Pak Lah then, and Kat was working as a political analyst with Karim Raslan Associates.

Over the years, while both of us have drifted away professionally from the world of politics, we both have maintained deep interest especially in Malaysian politics, and the general broad lens of public affairs remains a common point of interest for both of us.

So much so, that one of the things we have been doing, on-and-off over the years, is what we both call “political tourism”. The usual expression of this is when elections would take place somewhere – whether it is general elections season, or a more locally-focused by-election – we would take the time to drive around, have a look at the poster game, maybe even chat up the locals on their take of politics on the ground at the local gerai or mamak. In the recent general elections of November 2022, Kat and I both made it a point to attend as many political ceramah and rallies as we could, taking care to try to attend events held by each of the major political parties. Often, the mood and fanfare of the events as they take place, and the level of energy and excitement amongst the speakers and the audience, are a very good barometer of political sentiment, and often a good leading indicator of how the political tea leaves would fall in place come Election Day.

We have walked through a crowd of mostly Chinese onlookers in the audience, eyes transfixed on me being this one obviously Malay dude, as Lim Kit Siang spoke on stage in JB to explain why it was it was time to punish Ah Jib Gor and UMNO. We saw, in Shah Alam, the tepid response to Arul Kanda’s arguments on why he believed that everything was ok with 1MDB. We saw, in Gombak, that the level of enthusiasm for Amirudin was going to carry the seat for him against Azmin. We were in the audience one rainy November evening, the crowd undampened by the weather as fireworks streamed to the sky and we realised that Perikatan Nasional – contrary to my initial expectations going into the November 2022 elections – were going to win big. It’s been a great ride, and many memorable moments, so far.

Recently, we just realised that we are about to – inadvertently, I must add – find ourselves participating in yet another jaunt in our long string of political tourism over the years. Should be fun!

Posted on

On Being Here

A reminder: when the future seems murky, or even meaningless, often all you can do is just to be present and focused on the Here and Now – do your best, and trust that He will be there for you.

Posted on

On The Proust Questionnaire

The Proust Questionnaire is a set of questions answered by one of my most favourite authors, the French writer Marcel Proust. The questions started out as a popular Victorian parlour game, but has taken a life of its own, as a prod for others to reflect on things important to them, and as a way of sharing their perspective and selfhood with others.

Today, I thought I’d take a stab at the questions, and see how I go. To make this a tad more amusing (at least for my own self), I thought I’d list down Proust’s answers, alongside my own.

  1. Your favourite virtue.

Proust: “The need to be loved; more precisely, the need to be caressed and spoiled much more than the need to be admired.”

Z: Loyalty and Reliability.

  1. Your favourite qualities in a man.

Proust: “Feminine charm.” 

Z: Courage. Integrity. Intelligence.

  1. Your favourite qualities in a woman.

Proust: “Manly virtues, and the union of friendship.”

Z: Kindness. Grace. Intelligence. 

  1. Your chief characteristic.

Proust: [blank]

Z: Kindness. 

  1. What you appreciate the most in your friends.

Proust: “To have tenderness for me, if their personage is exquisite enough to render quite high the price of their tenderness.”

Z: The integrity and strength of character to be able to share their innermost thoughts and concerns with me – to be fully “real” with me in sharing who they are as human beings.

  1. Your main fault.

Proust: “Not knowing, not being able to ‘want’.”

Z: Lack of courage. Fearfulness in trying something new, or making a fateful decision. 

  1. Your favourite occupation. 

Proust: “Loving.”

Z: Reading. 

  1. Your idea of happiness.

Proust: “I am afraid it be not great enough, I dare not speak it, I am afraid of destroying it by speaking it.”

Z: Reading a good book while sitting at home with Jah and Monkey.

  1. Your idea of misery.

Proust: “Not to have known my mother or my grandmother.”

Z: To be hard at work in an office, doing something utterly meaningless and Sisyphean. 

  1. If not yourself, who would you be?

Proust: “Myself, as the people whom I admire would like me to be.”

Z: A mathematician, or an author. Someone who works with numbers and/or words.

  1. Where would you like to live?

Proust: “A country where certain things that I should like would come true as though by magic, and where tenderness would always be reciprocated.”

Z: In a small cottage with great Internet connection and a full shelf of books in Cambridge, England.

  1. Your favourite colour and flower.

Proust: “The beauty is not in the colours, but in their harmony.”

Z: Dark, royal blue. Jasmine.

  1. Your favourite prose authors.

Proust: “Currently, Anatole France and Pierre Loti.”

Z: Marcel Proust. Leo Tolstoy. Cormac McCarthy. 

  1. Your favourite poets. 

Proust: “Baudelaire and Alfred de Vigny.”

Z: Walt Whitman. Chairil Anwar. Pablo Neruda. 

  1. Your favourite heroes in fiction.

Proust: “Hamlet.”

Z: Pierre Bezukhov. Jean Valjean. 

  1. Your favourite heroines in fiction.

Proust: “Berenice.”

Z: Dorothea Brooke. 

  1. Your favourite painters and composers.

Proust: “Beethoven, Wagner, Schumann.”

Z: Van Gogh, Turner, Monet, Degas. Bach, Chopin, Mahler, George Michael, M Nasir, Ebiet G Ade.