These days I can’t tell
the difference between the
cops and the robbers.
On Anwar Ibrahim, Zahid Hamidi, and Madani
Overheard earlier today:
“You know, if I was Anwar Ibrahim, at that point when they were negotiating for UMNO and BN to join the Kerajaan Perpaduan, Anwar should have just told Zahid: ‘Sorry bro, I do need you and your team with me in this Government, but I cannot have you in my Cabinet – I spent the past 15 years talking about Reformasi, and now that I’m about to become Prime Minister, I want to have a government that’s whiter than white. Your UMNO colleagues can come in, but for you, not yet. Stay out of Cabinet dulu, clear your name in court. And when you’re properly exonerated, I will happily make room for you in my Cabinet. Otherwise, all my rhetoric about Reformasi and tatakelola would be meaningless and hollow.’
“And you know, if Anwar actually said this, I am pretty sure that Zahid would simply play along. He had no other choice. And we would have had a very different tone to the start of this Kerajaan Perpaduan.
“Now look at us. Nak sebut nama dia kat ceramah pun tak selera. Susah bro.”
“Yalah. What to do. Madani, bro.”
-Tammat-
On InvestKL and Making Greater Kuala Lumpur a Regional Economic Hub
During a recent episode on Malaysia’s number one podcast show (kena lah jack sket kan haha), Shahril Hamdan mentioned that it would be a good thing if we can attract Singaporean companies to relocate to Malaysia – either in JB or in KL – not only to take advantage of the cheaper Ringgit, but also to benefit from the world class infrastructure and talent pool available in Malaysia.
Of course, Shahril (who I consider to be a good friend of mine) was speaking in the context of making the best of the current situation with the Ringgit continuing to weaken – a case of looking at the silver lining amidst cloudy days.
I felt compelled, however, to write about this because I know for a fact that there is already a government agency called InvestKL whose very mandate is to attract MNCs to set up their regional headquarters here in Kuala Lumpur. InvestKL was one of the key initiatives under the Greater KL National Key Economic Area (“NKEA”) in the Economic Transformation Programme, and as a former Director for the Greater KL NKEA, I had the privilege of sitting on the Board of Directors for InvestKL.
The work that InvestKL does is very interesting, and important: how to make Greater Kuala Lumpur a true regional hub for talent and high value economic activity. Indeed, when global oil prices declined rapidly some time back around the mid-2010s, InvestKL did sterling work to attract a number of oil & gas companies, then based in Singapore, to relocate to Kuala Lumpur and take advantage of cheaper costs, while still enjoying the quality infrastructure and deep talent pool that KL had to offer.
I am proud to say that despite budgetary constraints (we had to go cap-in-hand every year to Ministries to beg for money to continue to operate!) and the challenges of trying to sell Malaysia as a regional hub (very very hard to do when you have a neighbour like Singapore at your doorstep!) I know that my colleagues and friends in InvestKL are continuing to do great work in helping to contribute to the Malaysian economy through the addition of high-value added economic activity.
Tentang Kesamaran
Burung gagak terkurung duka
Sesak dalam cengkaman sangkar
Arah mana negarabangsa?
Sesat dalam cahaya samar.
Tentang Kewargaan
Pertama kali saya benar-benar menguliti istilah “warga” adalah pada tahun 2009, apabila mantan Perdana Menteri, Tun Abdullah Ahmad Badawi (yang lebih mesra digelar “Pak Lah”), sedang menyiapkan ucapan besar yang terakhir buat beliau, iaitu ucapan terakhir beliau di Perhimpunan Agung UMNO pada bulan Mac tahun tersebut. Sebuah jawatankuasa kecil telah disusun untuk membantu dalam proses penggubalan deraf ucapan tersebut, yang mana saya merupakan salah seorang pegawai kepada Pak Lah pada ketika itu, dan menjadi salah seorang ahli muda dalam jawatankuasa tersebut. Pena utama dalam jawatankuasa tersebut dipegang oleh Datuk Seri Annuar Zaini, mantan Pengerusi Bernama yang juga merupakan salah seorang penasihat yang dipercayai oleh Pak Lah. Dalam deraf ucapan pertama yang dirangka oleh Datuk Seri Annuar Zaini, beliau menekankan kepada konsep “warga” sebagai suatu teras dan tonggak utama yang mendasari retorika deraf ucapan tersebut.
Maka setiap kali saya bersemuka dengan perkataan “warga” ini, saya senantiasa teringat akan proses penggubalan ucapan tersebut, yang sememangnya sarat dengan melankolia dan juga kesyukuran. Hakikatnya, pada waktu Perhimpunan Agung itu, telah jelas bahawa UMNO telah hilang kepercayaan kepada Pak Lah, dan Timbalan beliau pada ketika itu iaitu Dato’ Sri Najib Tun Razak telahpun ditunjuk sebagai “heir apparent” untuk jawatan Presiden dan Perdana Menteri. Pak Lah pada ketika itu sememangnya dirundung kesedihan, khususnya dengan pencapaian UMNO dan Barisan Nasional yang begitu mengecewakan dalam pilihanraya umum yang berlangsung pada bulan Mac 2008.
Warga. Istilah ini jarang sekali kita ketemui, melainkan dalam konteks perkataan “warganegara” yang tertera pada setiap kad pengenalan seseorang rakyat Malaysia. Dan istilah “warga” ini, pada hemat saya, adalah suatu istilah yang terpinggir, yang sepatutnya lebih menonjol dalam perbahasan dan perbincangan politik dan budaya nasional, tetapi amat kurang mendapat perhatian.
Istilah yang lebih popular, iaitu “rakyat”, adalah suatu istilah yang bersifat “leper”, yang sekadar menerangkan: ya, inilah orang-orang yang menjadi populasi dalam sesebuah negara. Deskriptif semata-mata. Memanglah perkataan “rakyat” itu ada kaitan yang menghunus – yang membandingkan “rakyat” dibawah “raja ”, yang meletakkan “rakyat” sebagai kuasa dan pemegang daulat dalam sesebuah demokrasi.
Tetapi bandingkan pula dengan istilah “warga”, yang mengimbau hakikat hak-hak dan jaminan buat seseorang yang telah termaktub dalam perlembagaan sesebuah negara. Jika dibandingkan dengan istilah “rakyat”, maka perkataan “warga” itu pada saya lebih “bujur” sifatnya: seseorang warga itu diiktiraf sebagai seseorang yang mempunyai hak di bawah perlembagaan negara, sebagai seseorang yang mendapat pelbagai jaminan hasil dari kewargaannya – keselamatan diri, kebebasan bersuara, kebebasan berpersatuan, perlindungan daripada perbuatan jenayah dan sebagainya. Seseorang warga itu juga adalah seorang yang hakikatnya berpunya kepada dan dipunyai oleh sesebuah negara: kewargaan adalah sifat seseorang yang bernaung kepada negara tanah tumpah darahnya, dan menaungi kedaulatan dan ketunjangan demokrasi dalam negara tersebut.
Bagi saya perkataan warga ini tepat sungguh dengan falsafah politik Pak Lah yang sarat dengan kerahmanan dan kerahiman: rahimnya seseorang pemimpin Melayu kepada masyarakat dan parti pimpinannya tidak boleh sesekali memadamkan kerahmanan yang perlu bagi menaungi dan memimpin seluruh negarabangsa Malaysia yang majmuk. Warga itu merujuk kepada hak-hak dan jaminan yang senantiasa absah, selagi wujud negara dan masyarakat Malaysia di bumi tempat kita berdiri ini.
Kesinambungan Malaysia sebagai sebuah negarabangsa hanya boleh wujud sekiranya kita mengambil insaf akan istilah warga ini, dan menyulami sepenuhnya falsafah kewargaan dalam politik dan budaya negara kita. Kita semua sebagai warga Malaysia telah mengambil ikrar taat setia kepada Raja dan Negara, dan ikrar ini seharusnya senantiasa diulangtegas dalam kehidupan seharian kita. Jangan terlalu taksub dengan kepompong bangsa dan agama kita masing-masing, sehingga kita lupa bahawa hakikat kewargaan Malaysia adalah asas serta benteng kewujudan dan kemajuan negara yang kita kongsi dan bina bersama.
On Political Ambition
When I was in university, I got involved in student politics, and got bitten by the politics bug. Perhaps it was natural – at a place like Cambridge, you suddenly find yourself a small fish in a big, big pond, filled with many other fishes, big and small, many of whom have grand ambitions for themselves. I remember, in my earliest days at university, visiting the room of one of my fellow Malaysian students, and noticing a copy of Margaret Thatcher’s memoirs on his bookshelf.
It is a small and flitting memory, but distinct for several reasons.
The first is that after many years of being in high school where I got ribbed often for reading too much, I had found myself in a new social environment, one in which it was almost taken for granted that everyone reads. More than that, it was an environment in which ambitious and competitive young students would often compete to see who has read what. It took a while to get used to this.
The other reason why this was so memorable was that I had finally found myself in a place where mostly everyone would have some opinion on politics, and many others would (often not-so-secretly) harbour ambitions of politics. I remember hearing, in hushed tones, of recently-graduated seniors having been recruited to become a special officer to so-and-so. I had contemporaries who were themselves scions of political dynasties, or hungry to make their own.
Of course, little did I know that coming up to university in the summer of 1997 was soon to thrust me into a world I had scarcely imagined, when the comfortable assumptions of what I thought I knew about Malaysian politics would be exploded by the arrest of Anwar Ibrahim and the rise of Reformasi.
I am old enough now to see friends in university now taking on important jobs in Cabinet, and many others over the years in the halls of government, as speechwriters, as special officers, as political operatives, as aspiring front-line politicians themselves. And of course there are many others who started out with that fire in their eyes – but later on, choosing different paths in life: corporate law, or working in MNCs, or taking up big jobs in GLCs, or investing in private equity.
What I can say, after having lived this long on this earth, and observing others and myself as we wrestle with our own individual hopes and ambitions, is that there is no one right way to live life. The years will come and go, and the fires of youthful ambition, as important as they are, are only as important as you would like them to be.
Know why you are carrying this ambition within you, and if and when you let go, know for whom and why that decision is made. For those who are still in the arena, I congratulate you and I wish you all the very best. In the end, we have nothing and no one to answer to but our own selves, and our Creator who will be waiting for us at the end of this long journey through existence.
On UMNO’s (and Malaysia’s) Survival
In a few weeks’ time, we will likely see the dissolution of the legislative assemblies for the six states of Terengganu, Kelantan, Kedah, Pulau Pinang, Selangor, and Negeri Sembilan. What was once a strategic measure on the part of the competing political parties to conserve their forces for the 15th General Elections in November 2022, has become a major headache especially for the ruling Unity Government. The nascent coalition of necessity under PM Anwar Ibrahim is still embroiled in internal frictions, especially between DAP and UMNO, while also having to contend with an aggressive and bullish Perikatan Nasional.
There are many moving parts, of course, to these upcoming state elections, but from most people I talk to, one of the greatest preoccupations of observers for this coming elections is: how bad will UMNO get whacked? The 15th General Elections was a chastening experience for the Grand Old Party: not only did UMNO and its Barisan Nasional partners fare poorly in the urban seats all across the country, which have increasingly become strongholds for the likes of DAP and PKR, but PAS and Bersatu have routed UMNO in its rural heartlands. UMNO was a distinct third choice for Malays across the peninsula.
Amazingly, not only did the party leadership escape unscathed from accountability over this atrocious performance, it achieved a major coup, becoming an integral part of the governing coalition under Anwar Ibrahim, and succeeding in purging or silencing many of its critics.
The problem for UMNO, of course, is that nothing has changed since then. Its performance in government is nothing to shout home about, and there has been precious little red meat that its representatives in Government have been able to bring back to its remaining supporters. Even being told to vote for DAP candidates has become a touchy and controversial subject in the party.
Quo vadis, UMNO?
My own take is that many of its remaining state seats will go the way of how it was in the 15th general elections: in the direction of PAS and Bersatu. The Malay rejection for UMNO will likely be encompassing and total. Will non-Malay votes from local DAP and PKR supporters help to shore up UMNO’s position? Perhaps. But I suspect that once the dust has settled, the ongoing momentum of Malays walking away from UMNO will become even more pronounced and undeniable. UMNO might survive this coming PRN, perhaps with DAP and PKR votes in its corner, but it might win the battle only to lose the war for its long-term relevance and survival.
UMNO, of course, has shown great resilience in the past. It would be foolish to fully count out UMNO. But under the current leadership, the party appears adrift, unclear of its purpose and existence, and unable to forge a new narrative for itself in a new political environment.
The ideal post-PRN outcome for UMNO, existentially-speaking, is that another seismic defeat will force its leadership to finally demonstrate accountability. After the fiasco of the recent party elections, there is only a small window of opportunity for UMNO to rediscover its mojo, and for it to articulate a clear vision for the future of the party to its members and supporters.
It is not enough to claim that the party needs to play third fiddle for the sake of “unity”. Everyone knows that there is a ticking clock to this coalition – will UMNO honestly accept being subordinate to PKR and DAP over the long term? Will the Sarawakians tolerate being in permanent coalition with DAP, its only real competition in its own backyard? How will the Sabahan political winds blow come the next general elections?
More importantly, I believe that the long term stability of Malaysia rests on it being governed by a government that approximates the formula that was forged by Tun Razak under the Barisan Nasional: Malay-led, centrist, competent, trusted, inclusive, pragmatic. The nation cannot long survive a tussle in which maximalist politics are pursued to the detriment of peace and public order. What role UMNO will play in that future, or if it will even survive these next few years, will be a pivotal question in determining whether Malaysia as a nation makes it safely through these next few years of political uncertainty.
On Hard Choices for Malaysia
There is a palpable sense of frustration and crisis in Malaysia today. After the democratic revolution of 2018, having turned out the Barisan Nasional coalition that had ruled the nation for more than six decades, Malaysians can only look back at the past four years with a sense of loss at the missed opportunities.
After witnessing the Pakatan Harapan coalition win power at the Federal level back then, many had begun to dream that Malaysia was finally ready to move forward beyond the shibboleths of the past. It was an error similar to that committed by many Americans who had believed that Obama’s victory in 2008 was heralding a new post-racial future for the US. And like the US, today Malaysia is arguably even more racially polarised than before.
There is a cancer at the heart of the Malaysian body politic, and this is the malignancy borne out of the fateful compromise we made at the inception of this nation. For the Malays, they were promised a truly independent nation at last, and provisions in the Constitution were made to reserve a number of rights for the Malays: scholarships, civil service jobs, land ownership. For the non-Malays, an immediate and irrevocable pathway to become citizens in the land that they had made into their home, and the right to have their children educated in their own mother tongues.
This fudge, this two separate but entangled strands of rights guaranteed for citizens of Malaysia – lives lived apart but united as one nation, different but yoked together by history – this has become the foundation for our lived history as a country, but also the dark heart of our troubled nation. The ways in which our political lines are drawn are an expression of the blurred compromise that is the foundational puzzle at the heart of our constitution.
It is my humble belief that this nation will find no true or real peace, until we come to grips with that foundational puzzle: is this a Malay nation, or a Malaysian country?
And from that core question, the subsequent and subsidiary questions roar in strong and hard: What does it mean to be Malaysian? What does it mean to be Malay? Who is the pendatang? What does it mean when we declare that Islam is the official religion of the Federation? Is it Bahasa Malaysia, or Bahasa Melayu? Why shouldn’t we have a united national education system? Why shouldn’t our children be taught in the national language, and no other?
One explanation for the chaos around Malaysian politics today, is that for many Malays, the political contract forged by the Barisan Nasional has been broken. The genius of the Barisan Nasional was to build a truly multi-racial coalition, but forged out of parties representing the various races, with the Malay party, UMNO, in the primary leadership position. It asserted the political dominance of Malays, but in a configuration in which the Malay leadership was broad-minded and not parochial, and able to restrain the more unruly and extreme strands of Malay nationalism, in favour of a more inclusive formula for nationhood. It was a compromise, but it worked for its time and in response to the trauma of 1969. It brought in peace and prosperity – but it was an uneasy truce.
In some ways, that uneasy truce was never truly stable. Every public argument, every racial incident, every uproar and every conflict that has occurred in the public life of Malaysia since the 1970s can be traced back to the way in which the foundational puzzle was kept in place, almost in stasis, and how the can was kicked further up the road every time.
But we are coming ever closer, I feel, now, to a point of decision. The old Barisan Nasional consensus is broken. A new coalition is in charge today, but an uncertain and roiling one.
The collapse of UMNO is the seminal political event of my lifetime. The Grand Old Party has been riven by crisis, tarred by corruption, and now reduced to a rump of its former self, its leadership ranks now staffed by sycophants and chancers. PKR, Bersatu and PAS have all feasted on seats lost by UMNO: all three imagine themselves to be the possible new axis around which Malaysian politics could revolve around in a post-UMNO world.
The centre could not hold – could a new centre be forged out of the ashes? Or will we be torn apart by the ever-present centrifugal forces that has forever attended our multi-ethnic polity?
And herein lies the existential challenge for Malaysia: each of the three parties I mentioned, and perhaps UMNO included, will have a different offering, for what they think Malaysia’s social contract ought to be.
One of them (maybe more than one!) will tell us that the social contract of 1957, reaffirmed in 1963, is what has taken us this far, and that we should stay faithful to a working formula. Another (actually, certainly more than one!) will tell us that a new Malaysia requires a new formula that revolves around a common and equal citizenship: a “Malaysian Malaysia”, if you will. Yet another (you know which one) will tell us that only Islam can save us: that sacral as well as national salvation rests on God’s path.
My contention is that that axial leadership of Malaysian politics will fall to that entity that would have the courage to articulate a new social contract for Malaysia: forged for a new generation of Malaysians who have known no other home but Malaysia, and having the courage and conviction to finally break through the fudged compromise of our nation’s foundational puzzle, and articulate that new social contract, with confidence and conviction and grace.
We have always come close, but never quite articulating what it means to live in the way that we live: a multi-racial, multi-religious nation, brought together by geography and colonial legacy. There is no utopian solution here: at least none that can be forged without bloodshed. So negotiate we must, if we are to continue living in peace, but this time around, with true and real peace: a calm and serenity borne out of a polity that has truly come to terms with the messiness of its past and present, and having the courage and maturity to forge a peaceful and shared future.
There is no alternative: we can either forge that peace, however uncertain, or risk national disintegration and oblivion.
Tentang Siapa Aku
Kau tak kenal aku siapa? Akulah Datuk si Fulan bin si Fulan Dahulu aku Pegawai Khas Datuk Sri Fulan Perdana Menteri al-Adl wal-Ihsan Takkan tak kenal aku siapa? Akulah pengasas Syarikat Al-Fulan Melabur uang juta-jutaan Satu KL kagum dan segan Akulah taikun duit berkoyan Kau belum tahu aku siapa? Bini aku artis kenamaan Paras terlawa, jadi bualan Hensem dan cantik, memang sepadan Di Insta dan TikTok jadi pujaan Semua kenal aku siapa! Esok mengopi dengan Datuk Fulan Lusa bergolof dengan Tan Sri Fulan Inilah aku Datuk kenamaan Hidup teratas arash kayangan!
On Pitying the Ringgit
Pity the Ringgit,
down to its worst against the
Singapore Dollar.