From Perkasa to Pekasam?

From PERKASA to PEKASAM?

Azly Rahman

I am following with interest the development of the collaboration between non-governmental organizations and political parties. I try to analyze the role of local NGOs and international NGOs viz-a-viz the parties they augment or even sabotage. In a free country such as Malaysia, we will see more of the interplay between hegemonic and counter-hegemonic forces as they deal with angelic or demonic political groups. It is not easy to read this as we members of the public are always presented with perception in this endless game of invented realities. I wished Malaysian are by now well-equipped with the skills of critical media analysis and political economy to engage in discussions on the current happenings to be able to do an intelligent readings of the politics of the day.

Mediating PERKASA

How would one read the media hype over PERKASA? How might one read Dr. Mahathir Mohamad’s patronage of this interesting group? How about the pledge by retired and aged UMNO leader to uphold the struggle on the rights of the Malays? How do these go with the never-ending story of the present regime to hold on to power as the 13^th. general elections greet us?

The image of PERKASA and its members brandishing the keris must have terrified Malaysians again– as if there is no repentance, remorse, and shame in the way the Malays conduct their war on perception. I feel that these constructed set of Malays are merely an embodiment of a crude image of an insignificant and diminutive group disengaged from the larger group of Malays that are now global, cosmopolitan, and multicultural in its outlook.

The image of PERKASA is akin to a propped up image of Hang Tuah made of marshmallow. Inside of PERKASA is a suppleness of what UMNO is about these days. At a time when 1Malaysia seems to be desperately promising the gradual phasing out of all race-based political parties, a return to multicultural Malaysian Malaysia, and a close monitoring of hate-group and fascist-leaning NGOs, PERKASA seems to be an organization which need not have to be born. At a time when the people of Malaysia are more aware of the decades of race-based divisive politics that has made the concept of tolerance and unity daunting, PERKASA might be perceived as a fermentation of the concept of ketuanan Melayu. In other words, it is a pekasam, as the Malays themselves would call it – a ferment that is offensive in smell to those who loves good things in life guaranteed, and a great and addictive delicacy for those who loves fermented food.

Fashioning PERKASA

In an age wherein NGOs are fashionable creations in which whatever that political parties cannot achieve and NGOs can help do with good funding, PERKSASA is a perkasas or an instrument/tool of parties that are pushing the ketuanan Melayu Agenda desperately – to what conclusion we are yet to see.  As many NGOS can be created – 10s. 100s, 1000s, etc. – the more the louder although not necessarily making the argument for racial superiority more intelligent.

In an age wherein Malays are now questioning everything – themselves, truth, religion, government, media, and even their “Malay-ness” --- NGOs like PERKASA is an easy target for the philosophical reflection of Malay-ness. These days Malays are asking: who is PERKASA and will it be an embarrassment to the image of the progressive and thinking Malays? How much does it cost to create a PERKASA? would be another question, Malays in general might ask.

As a keen observer of Malaysian culture, I am interested in seeing the process of fermentation and fragmentation of the Malaysian mind as a consequence of the interplay between technology, culture, and politics.  The level of consciousness of Malaysians in the early 1970s is different than now, 40 years later. It is not easy to incite violence based on truncated race-based arguments on who owns this or that and how many percent of the economic pie should that be.  Today, it is the classes of this or that race that determine the nature and structure of poverty and wealth. It is the mainstream media controlled by the ruling parties that are still primitive in analyzing the causes of the wealth of Malaysians. It is the controlling interests behind the production of perception that are still creating conditions of poor visibility in telling Malaysians what actually is the nature of stratified society they are in. 

“The center cannot hold/things fall apart,”  as the poet William Butler Yeats  once wrote – verses that can aptly describe what is happening in Malaysian politics as we witness the age of uncertainty dawning upon us.  But maybe in the case of PERKSASA, we are seeing it fermenting after all, into a pekasam wherein the image of Hang Tuah the immoral historical-obedient fool in the court of Melaka is slowly becoming uglier as in the portrait of Dorian Gray, slowly melting as in a propped up marshmallowed-mannequin in all its uselessness of the semiotics of ketuanan Melayu – an assertion of idiotic pride and an anti-thesis to UMNO’s own 1Malaysia, a slogan that is desperately in need of blind followers.

May this nation be spared of hate groups.

One Malaysia -- Pepper sprayed with liberty, justice, for all ...

With Sheikh Hisham Kabbani at Rutgers University, March 28, 2010

Class divisions in access to Malaysia's healthcare

Class divisions in access to healthcare
Azly Rahman
Mar 22, 10

'Why can't all Americans have the same access to healthcare to those enjoyed by members of Congress?' is a popular question on the ObamaCare debate.

At the time of writing I am following the debate over universal healthcare for all Americans. If the US$1 trillion Bill passes, it will help insure 32 million Americans that do not have access to healthcare.

This is another controversial issue in the tradition of Democrats and Republicans. This is a good case study of one of the enduring issues of an advanced capitalist state.

I know friends who do not have health insurance and who question the human rights dimension of it - right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, endowed by the Creator who insist that 'all men are created equal' and cautioned by the Enlightenment thinker Jean Jacques Rousseau that “… everything is good in the hands of the Author of Things and everything degenerates in the hands of Man”.

From the point of view of the Democrats, the health insurance system is broken and in deep crisis. Millions cannot get proper medical health. The insurance system is predatory. Expanding health coverage and lowering prescription drug prices, and giving rebates to insurance companies are the main features of this proposal.

From the Republicans' point of view, Americans need health reform but not to the point of bankrupting the country. A Bill which covers the cost of abortion is the controversial part of it; that Americans must not pay for those who do not have the respect for life. The Bill is said to be a wrong approach that will make winners and losers in the system. Essentially it will open up other complications in virtually all aspects of the system.

Whatever the outcome of it, Americans will still be divided ideologically on this issue. The argument is emblematic of the American political philosophy: what is the role of the government vis-a-viz the social contract between the 'ruler and the ruled'?

It is a classic Jeffersonian-Franklinian debate. America has evolved into a country envisioned by Benjamin Franklin - America which is more of the big business and less on the man on the street.

Americans are taught to not trust governments; its history is that of a revolt against British colonialism famed by the slogan 'taxation without representation' and therefore 'give me liberty … or give me death', as the revolutionary leader Patrick Henry said.

Americans went to war and bankrupted the nation. It was a Republican war. That drained trillions of dollars, perhaps contribution to the near-collapse of the American Empire, as many a Complexity theorist would propose. The Butterfly that flapped its wings in Baghdad, near Saddam Hussein's mansion has contributed to the turmoil in the Obama Office.

Rights of all Malaysians

But what is the situation in Malaysia, as we have evolved as a modern state enculturalised by happenings in other advanced countries such as the US?

How do we care for the sick? Essentially is there also a class system in our healthcare system? Do the poor get the same treatment as the wealthy members of parliament or those in the list of billionaires?

With the proliferation of private hospitals, are we creating the foundations of a class system that will inherit the problems the Americans are trying to resolve?

Or is this merely a natural progression of an economic system that is also predatory in culture - that the rich will be richer and the poor growing in numbers?

With the urge for Malaysian private hospitals to venture into 'medical tourism', will our good doctors abandon their Hippocratic Oath in favour of professional hypocrisy?

Marx would say that we are defined by the economic condition we are in - we are homo economicus. I suppose how we live and how we die and how we are taken care of in-between this period of 'borrowed time', depends on how the state defines what human rights mean vis-a-viz our ability to pay for healthcare and how we lived our lives as a economic beings.

We must consider that each human being is a cog in the wheel of Capital. Those who own the machines of production oftentimes influence policies through political-economic arrangements.

A wealthy country such as Malaysia that prides itself on tall buildings and a growing number of billionaires ought to start reflecting on the need to ensure that each citizen will have affordable healthcare.

One wonders what the limit of wealth creation is and where the moral dimension is in capitalism, when the rich control the lives of the poor.

By shaping ideology and creating installations to change the social relations of production - and by doing this through the control of mind, media, machinery, and materials - we expect that wealth is to be shared. Socialism for the rich must be replaced with capitalism for the poor.

It's 11pm here in New York. The historic Bill has just been passed, 219 to 212 in the House. God bless the life of 32 million more Americans. Let Malaysia learn from this victory!

TAKE FIVE: Smoke on the water

Meditations on a Malaysian philosophical society, preamble to a Malaysian cybernetic republic

Meditations on a Malaysian philosophical society, preamble to a Malaysian cybernetic republic

Azly Rahman

(Questions pertaining to a possible virtual forum of a Malaysian Philosophical Society, circa 2010)

We continue to live in interesting times in an age wherein, like Lao Tzu would say, the only permanent thing is change. We are living with a hope that one day a “republic of virtue” ruled by a “philosopher-transformative-ruler” will come into being. While we work to construct such a utopian state, let us explore the following set of questions:

i) How are human beings controlled by those who own the means of intellectual and economic production? How does power, in its raw and refined form, operate? How is it dispersed? How is power sustained? How is truth produced and owned? How is truth multiplied, disseminated, and broadcasted? What is the relationship between culture and truth?

ii) How is the self constructed? How are we alienated? What is inscribed onto the body and into the mind, in the process of schooling? How is human imagination confined and how might it be released? How is the mind enslaved by the politics of knowledge? How is historical knowledge packaged? How do we define our existence in this Age of Information?

iii) Who decides what is important in history? What is an ideal multicultural society? How have our ideas of multiculturalism influenced the way we organise our lives? What historical knowledge is of importance? What tools do we need to create our own history?

iv) How is the individual more powerful than the State? How might a philosopher-ruler be created? How is an authentic system of justice possible? Who should rule and why? How is a society based on distributive or regulative justice possible?

And finally our ultimate question will be: how might we realise and establish a democratic-republic of virtue -- one that is based on a form of democracy that is meaningful and personal?

These are also some of the questions that come to my mind as I plough daily through the writings in Malaysia Today and other progressive online national and international news and views portal in search of a terrain to plant the seeds of frontier thinking.

Throughout the course of my study on the origin and fate of this society, I have learned how much the work of those who have contributed to the social construction of the Malaysian self and the democratic ideals that this nation aspires to realise.

I have learned how the early philosophical journeys of the Malays, Indians, and Chinese look like, what kind of statecraft was practiced, what the metaphysical system of these peoples constitute, what form of social-humanism is to be fought for, what a Malaysian social justice may mean, what a multicultural Malaysian might look like, and finally, what brand of nationalism must be embraced in an age wherein, as W.B Yeats say, “the Centre can no longer hold”.

However, the answers they provided are inadequate especially in these challenging times.

I am essentially a student of Trans-cultural Philosophies/Cultural Studies interested in education for liberation and to promote the idea that in this age of hypermodernity and rapid technological changes one can advance to different levels of thinking and acquire wisdom. I want to help people ask relevant questions so that one can explore meaningful relationships between the Self and the Culture/Environment/Social Structures one inhabits.

I want to explore the history of the questions asked and to find out how we arrive at this or that historical juncture. I believe these questions will help us go back to the origin of things and in the process, to understand the world we live in.

I believe that these questions can help us go back “to the Centre” and to our “Primordial Nature”, through what the French philosopher Jean Jacques Rousseau calls “sentimental education”, or, to explore, as the Indonesian poet W.S. Rendra once said in his play The Struggle of the Naga Tribe (Kisah Perjuangan Suku Naga), the “world within and the world outside”. Through these questions I believe one can break free of shackles of domination and release the imagination and create better utopias.

And as Rousseau continues: “Man is born free…..and everywhere He is in chains”, and that the first language he needs is the cry of Nature.

Based on a Columbia University thesis I produced on the intellectual origin of the city of Cyberjaya and its relationship to hegemony and utopianism, I am currently further developing a social theory of how nations develop and hyper-modernise as a result of trans-cultural flow of ideas, impacted by emerging technologies of human control. I want to know, in the process of developing and explanation of how the human being loses its essence, gets alienated, and become conditioned by the system of signs and symbols; by its genealogy, anatomy, chemistry, and its cybernetic properties.

Ideas dance and flow gracefully from one nation to another; from the mind of one group of people to another, from a nation at the centre to those in the peripheries and the hinterlands. But in their dance there is always beauty and deadly persuasion.

It is believed that, in this age, we are born into a matrix of Chinese complexities, and we will spend our lifetime understanding it, possibly escaping it, and consequently constructing an understanding of our Existential self.

We are born to be makers of our own history, not as victims or victimisers, nor objects of history to be forgotten and reduced to statistics. In this world without borders, are all essentially, trans-cultural citizens differentiated only by our national identity cards and our passports.

I want to share the experiences I have in developing the human mind and in the teaching multiple perspectives of knowing. I am looking forward to these contributions. At the end of my writings, I hope we can name the inherent contradictions between our existentialism and the world of cybernetics we inhabit.

Let us exchange ideas so that we may produce the thesis and anti-thesis of ideas, guided by the spirit of inquiry. We will be all the more enriched on this intellectual journey we are to embark upon.

“Format of Discussion”

Let us all, through this interactive forum and through your experiences and multiple perspectives of knowing, develop a manifesto of social change using radical and alternative tools of analysis and prescriptions. Let us construct the foundations of a “republic of virtue”; one based of trans-cultural ethics, peace and social-justice, meaningful democracy, and science for the people. Let us challenge ourselves with the ideas we are going to explore, to expand, and to exhaust so that in the final analysis, we will generate more questions than answers to deconstruct and shatter paradigms we are familiar with.

Let us have opinion leaders and lawmakers read the synthesis of our thoughts and help them understand and mediate issues plaguing us. Let us become many niccolo machiavellis who will advise our princes and princesses so that the latter may better serve and transform the lives of the paupers in our society.

I look forward to our virtual and intellectual engagements. You are also welcomed to produce ideas in Bahasa Malaysia/Melayu.

Lastly, my gratitude to Malaysia Today for granting me a space to share my ideas and experiences – since 2005.

'Malay' -- a construction of an illusion?

'Malay' - a construction of an illusion?
Azly Rahman
Mar 8, 10
3:42pm

“Man has no nature, what he has is history”
- Ortega y Gasset, Spanish philosopher

“The strategic adversary is fascism... the fascism in us all, in our heads and in our everyday behavior, the fascism that causes us to love power, to desire the very thing that dominates and exploits us.”
- Michel Foucault, French philosopher


Is it not time, like an ideological excavator of ideas and a keen student of race and social dominance, an educator for peace and transcultural philosophies, and an initiator of multicultural revolutions – is it not time for all these that we deconstruct the meaning of “Malayness”?

From the standpoint of philosophy of culture, or ethno-philosophy, I propose that there is no real ethnic group called 'Malay'. We have hybrids and border-crossers. 'Malay' is a historical construction of an "imagined community.

Race is merely a 'construct'. It many have been the most powerful ideological perspective to construct nations and build base and super-structural foundations of the modern state, but in the eyes of an evolutionary biologist, or a bio-semiotician, race does not carry much weight.

The problem plaguing Malaysians, hindering approaches to distributive and regulative justice that are 'race-blind' is this false consciousness of what a Malay is. The question of what a Malay is and what it is not has become a most contentious issue in the discussions of nation-building circa post-Mahathir era.

The lack of understanding of how one should view the New Economic Policy (NEP) and now the New Economic Model (NEM) - itself based on false premises on ethnicity and citizenship and Natural Rights - also makes the argument daunting, and of late dangerous.

Special rights

In governmental and non-governmental organisations championing the special rights of the Malays, there are members whose parents are not even called 'Malays'. Their parents are perhaps Chinese, Malabaris, Tamils, Pakistani, Javanese, Ambonese, Communists, Socialists, Capitalists, Scientologists, Turkish, Siamese, Bugis, Melanau, Batak, Bajau, Iban, Portuguese, and a hybrid upon hybrid of all these.

The word 'Malay' as conceived and perceived these days, has become a political tool to destroy economic and social foundation of this nation, in fact. immigrant groups coming into Malaysia will reconstruct themselves to become a 'Malay'.

Constitutionally a Malay is one who speaks the language, practices the religion of Islam, and performs the rights and rituals of this or that culture.

Psychologically and culturally one may not be so. NGOs fighting for this or that 'already-enshrined-in-the-Constitution-Malay-rights' are fighting for the dominance of the wealthy class and of robber barons financing the rise of this or that 'new Malay consciousness'.

A Malay community is an imagined community. It exists primarily as a reason to exert social dominance. It rests upon myth, legends, and massaged cultural artifacts and scriptures, to propel that dominance.

The writing of Sejarah Melayu, designated as a 'world heritage' is a political act that is meant to consciously promulgate and propagate a myth of a nation that arises out of a bourgeoisie culture whose origin is drawn from myth, legends, and the supernatural.

What are all of us Malaysians - cross-culturally? Where are our ancestors from? Is a history of Malaya based on class rather than race or caste possible for Malaysians to co-construct?

Can we begin to have a dialogue on the economic, social, and technological history of the peoples of Malaysia conceived from the perspective of re-humanisation?

The essential question is: what are all of you ancestrally?

The potentials within

This brings us to how we view education as a process of “drawing out the potentials within”; as what educare from the Latin means.

We are excavating knowledge and reconstructing our realities, so that we can ask the right questions, rather than living with incorrect answers based on false premises. Since Merdeka, we have been learning a lot from the issues we raise -- self, religion, spirituality, politics, economics, culture.

Ultimately we are analysing ideology and trying to identify what is ailing this nation. Dialogue can be painful - but critical conversation is the bedrock of social progress, and academia.

In order to look at what's wrong with the present, we must excavate the past - like an archaeologist of knowledge and power. If we must destroy heroes, villains, myths, legends, rulers, despots, and inscriptions and installations or even ancient scriptures that oppresses and mystifies, destroy we must.

Aren't we human beings not Preserver, Cherisher, Destroyer, and Sustainer - all at once? We live in an illusionary word - a 'maya' yet we are forced to find the truth in all these. How do we do this? Maybe by rebelling against all conventions and questioning the producer of those truths. That is the beginning of liberation.

Critical questions

Our history classes and courses in Citizenship/Malaysian/Ethnic Studies in our public universities love the strategy of “rote-learning”. Critical questions are rarely entertained nor asked, especially those that will deconstruct information that has been filter-funneled into the mind of students.

Rote-learning does not bring progress to the educational system. Rote-learning is a pedagogy borne out of the Industrial Age of the beginning of mass schooling and an ideology to train children to become merely good workers and obedient citizens. This style of learning and teaching will not create the most conducive environment to nurture brains to create new knowledge.

It is a good environment to breed followers, not leaders - let alone frontier thinkers. It is not a Constructivist approach to education. The teaching of race and ethnicity vis-a-viz Malaysian national development has been based on the Essentialist perspective of the 'Malay-centric' domineering ideology.

Rote-learning destroys the culture of critical consciousness in viewing 'Malay-ness' as a reality and not an illusion.

Perhaps a critical/philosophical question on this explosive issue of race and ethnicity for Malaysia is this:

How has race been falsely conceived and skillfully utilised as a tool of power and hegemony in an age of deconstructionism?


What economic, political, and cultural conditions and system create cases of massive corruption in all spheres of life and how might a total and radical restructuring of the system not only heal the system but also curb enthusiasm for crypto-crony-corporate capitalism and ultimately bring human beings back to their Natural Self and to Nature - by also destroying all signs, symbols, and semiotics of elitism and the insatiable urge to be greedy and corrupt?


How can Malaysian history be conceived from a technological, social, and humanistic point of view - as a history of classes of people rebelling against human bondage and servitude?

Malaysia's own Rockefellers

The image presented to the public, to hide the image of conspicuous consumption of the elite, is the image of the growing number of bumiputera billionaires and millionaires - the notion that everybody can make it in a society that is increasingly entrepreneurial. If a Felda settler can become a millionaire, why can’t a politician become a billionaire? This is the psychology of corporate crony capitalism that is forming the basis of our base and superstructure.

Do we need more cell phones, more satellite TVs, more cars, more malls, more junk TV programmes, more technologies that are being pushed to the public? Who is creating these ‘needs’ out of the things they do not want? We have created the ‘untouchable class’ of the political-economic elite that will use the ideological state apparatus to maintain its status quo so that they can plunder more and project the image of hard-working ‘natives’ who knows how to do business. Little did they realise that their economic activities, in collaboration with the ruling party, create (according to Chaos Theory) these shifts of ‘butterfly effects’ that will create changes in the indices of the stock market that will inevitably change the lives of millions of people (the masses) whose livelihood are tied to the decision made by those who owns the means of intellectual and economic production.

From the time of the second premier Abdul Razak Hussein and his alliance with the World Bank and International Monetary Fund up to now, we have been trapped in this kind of economic thinking. It is this framework of thinking about economic arrangement and power relations that hides the issue of the growing gap that is already becoming a major focus of struggle of the Opposition parties as well the enlightened ones in the ruling front.

The collapse of the economy in 1997 is a testament to the fragile economy that has weak fundamentals. From the period of 1969-1997 (almost 30 years in the Kondratiev cycle of a nation) we saw the breakdown of social-capital accumulation.

Emulating a robber baron?

A 25-year-old can become a multi-millionaire with these dealings based on the business-political nexus, and next use his/her ‘intelligence’ to control people, things, places and politics, given the right connections. That is a recipe of the emergence of the modern dictator. And given this context of success and given the fact of how one uses the media to craft one's glory, this is possible. But what will the Malaysian story of the American dream mean to the 25 million poor?

Is the individual more glorified that the society in which he or she exists? One has to look closely - not just the at individual and how he/she writes his/her own story of success in this land of the rising son/son-in-law,  daughter/daughter-in-law, brothers, sisters, etc..

If there is a control mechanism to human desire to accumulate wealth and unfairly transform the lives of others, we will have a society conscious enough not to let the rich become richer and the poor living their lives as modern-day slaves. Are there anti-trust laws in Malaysia, to break monopolies? Or probably we should elect a truly nationalistic government that will reverse the trend of privatisation and rethink Malaysia Inc, so that we can better control human desire and the desire to build personal empires.

The story of America's and the world's first billionaire, John D Rockefeller, clearly shows this ethos of the insatiable urge to monopolise. It is a story of monopoly capitalism executed in the name of Protestant ethics. It is about capitalism that is enmeshed contradictorily - make lots of money and control everything until anti-trust laws slow one down. The individual became bigger than the (already corrupt) state.

The control of oil (Standard Oil of Ohio) led to the control of the steel industry and lead to the control of resources in other parts of the world related to the global ideology of industrialism. Rockefeller in the 1900s controlled 90 percent of the American oil industry. We glorify billionaires without asking the question - how did he/she get all the money, at whose expense, and how is it possible in a nation whose riches need to be shared equitably as promised by those who promulgated the statements of our declaration of Independence?

How much durian can one eat in a lifetime? How much land and water is used to build the playground of the rich and famous in Malaysia at the expense of the land of the poor who frequently gets thrown out of squatter areas? How many more helicopter pads the poor in the squatter areas in KL need to see - with envy? How much can the rakyat endure the burden of rising costs when many are struggling to make ends meet, and when even the middle class are living from paycheck to paycheck?

Think. Think about reinventing our economic reality.

Are we seeing the seeds of destruction germinating in this nation that is now looking like the 297th colony of the American Empire?

Our dream might turn into a nightmare.

Of crossing overs and cultural cancer

Of crossing overs and cultural cancer

Azly Rahman on facebook: http://www.facebook.com/people/AzlyRahman/689079971 on twitter: http://twitter.com/azlyrahman on blog: http://azlyrahman-illuminations.blogspot.com/

Should I cross over for those millions of ringgits? That is a two million ringgit question. How much does one get for ‘crossing over’ these days? I do not know. But if there are millions of ringgit involved, this nation will continue to rot as corrupt politicians continue switching allegiances, getting appointments to good positions, and making horrifying decisions for you and your children. We must destroy this culture and heal anew. We were convinced things will be better after the elections. We were sure that the revolution was going to benefit the masses and no party hopping would occur. We are wrong. Things are getting more complex, in a complex time of rising prices. This is my template letter to anyone on the verge of party hopping for money, based on an advise I gave to a politician who wrote to me -- his/her dilemma over switching party allegiance: Dear sir/madam, Don’t make this mistake. Don't do it if it’s for two million ringgit. Or for any amount of money you do not earn ethically. Stay to be free, and speak up against internal party corruption. You will die satisfied that you have not sold your soul to any other party in whose ideology you actually do not subscribe to. These ‘party jumpers’ have no clear intention, just clear benefits for themselves. Principles not resource If resource is the issue, think of how you can take your party to newer heights without more money. Make your party appeal to the younger generation. Know your party’s roots and make it dynamic. You may not have the money, machinery, and the media at your disposal as means to influence the masses, however you have the will. Focus on helping people and problem solving at the grassroots level. ‘Small is beautiful’ Think about the 'class' struggle we are in. Prevent a generation of our children from the dehumanisation of a new class system. Worker rights need championing in this globalised economy and you can win them their minimum wage for starters. Figure out how to deliver what you promised and will promise, and find your place in the party’s equation. Phenomenological questions can help you understand your existence and purpose. Without it you are just part of a game of hypocrisy. Don’t flatter yourself with state honours presented to you in fine and archaic language meant to elevate you beyond what you are. You are not meant to be a ‘yes man/woman’ for powerful people and make others beg for your favour. Politics is about doing societal good not Machiavellian scheming. A simple life is a virtuous life. Love others and commit yourself to good. Corruption of the soul is the beginning of all corruption.Sages such as Socrates spoke against this. Those sacred scriptures warned us against entertaining our greed more than meeting our needs. How much more do should we become agents of social destruction with the power we have as leaders? On the question of limited financial resources in pushing our political agenda, here are some thoughts. Leverage the Internet as a cheap and powerful tool of your campaign, while leaning on traditional methods of appeasing your constituency. Also the SMS system to mirror 'multilevel marketing' for effective campaigning. Brainstorm with the young. Be creative. The greatest tool of human progress is the two pound universe one carries around - the human brain. The greatest enemy of knowledge is of course, ignorance, said Socrates.Tell the young that it is wrong to be engaged in corrupt practices and to take more than you need. The things we take from society belongs to the poor, the marginalized, the oppressed, the orphans or all races. Everything that we do is interconnected in this cycle of life. We live a life of complexity, or chaos, and constant change. We must understand too that we are makers of our own history and masters of our own destiny. If we do not live an unexamined life, it will not be a life worth living.   Past wisdom The great soul MK Gandhi did not have much at his disposal yet he brought down the British empire. He was armed with a deep sense of spirituality and the principle of satyagraha. Ahmad Boestaman, Tunku Abdul Rahman, Tun Dr Ismail, Onn Jaafar, Nik Aziz, Lim Kit Siang, V Rajaratnam, and many others have shown us what dignity and ethics mean. Learn from them but enrich these concepts of ethics to meet the needs of changing times without losing sight and vision of political realism. Learn from the many around you who are not servants of money. However if you are logically convinced that your party is on the road to destruction due to massive corruption amongst its leaders, then by all means leave! You have one life to live - make it the best life, for yourself and for others. At a time when we have entered the world of multiculturalism, do not revert to blind ideology of racism. Ultimately if you take those millions offered, sit in Parliament making decisions for our children, you will be a major crook who continues to rationalise his or her crookedness. You too will sink with the Bahtera Merdeka. The rakyat will help you sink with your two million, bahtera and all.   Like a saying goes, taken from an American Indian tribe: we do not inherit the Earth, we borrow it from our children. To add to this. we do not want to leave a dirty and corrupted world behind -- from the Creator we come, unto the Creator we return.   May the Universal God bless Malaysia. And save her from total destruction. OUR USUAL REMINDER, FOLKS: While the opinion in the article is mine, the comments are yours; present them rationally and ethically. AND -- ABOLISH THE ISA -- NOW!

Renewing the Malay dilemma

Will a hundred Perkasa-type NGOs solve the Malay dilemma? Or is it a moot question? Rather, what is the Malay dilemma, if there is any?

A REPUBLIC OF VIRTUE
Azly Rahman
on facebook: http://www.facebook.com/people/Azly-Rahman/689079971
on twitter: http://twitter.com/azlyrahman
on blog: http://azlyrahman-illuminations.blogspot.com/
 

It must be a difficult time for the common and insignificant Malay; this beautiful people whose psyche has been consumed not only by feudalism but also by the ideology of cybernetic-neocolonialist feudalism in the form of party politics funded by big 'glocal' corporations. The poor Malay in the urban slum and in the kampong will continue to enjoy the spectacle of dynastic wars that are designed, like the idea of Vision 2020 that was crafted to blind the consciousness.

The common Malays are victims of slogans - from the cleverly crafted legend of Hang Tuah (allegedly a Chinese warrior transplanted by the court historian of the decadent Malacca sultanate) to the story of fantastic 'imagined communities' such as Vision 2020 that requires 'human capital' (modal insan) as its obedient labourers.

The authoritarian self

Our political leaders wish to become emperors. In the process of building empires, we let our leaders gain control of the ideological state apparatuses and we let them own the Fourth Estate (the media) so that it is easy for them to feed us with propaganda daily. We let these emperors make themselves bigger than life and more fictional than factual.

We let our leaders become autocrats - 22 years was a long time. We cannot continue this tradition if we are to evolve into a more humanistic polity. Because we allowed that long of a reign, we cannot undo this political-psychological mess.

Our cultural system is now operating based upon who gets to control the most strategic resources; who owns the material and cultural capital. It is the utilitarianism of John Stuart Mill (the ends justify the means) that forms the basis of our political-economic psyche. Our politics continue to cement the ideology based on the structure of inter-locking directorate-ships and the political-economy of transnational capitalism that feeds the elite with wealth and weapons to guard territories and to build personal empires and new Malaysian dynasties.

Our nation was borne out of the womb of colonialism and inherited the ills of neo-colonialism, moving into a difficult period of coming to terms with the 'Balkanisation of Malaysian politics in the Age of Post-Hegemony created by the Mahathir administration'. The Malays are experiencing the phenomena of the fall of the Berlin Wall right in their own backyard. We must be prepared for its ramifications. We must read the graffiti on those falling walls.

Silver platter

The handing over of Independence, on a silver platter, after a convenient post-colonialist arrangement of power relations, in the form of the formation of the National Alliance, prepared a transcultural flow of a somewhat 'flawless' political design that exacerbates and alleviates, in a nationalistic form, the divide-and-rule political economy.

The practice of keeping political leaders the longest in power and installing the variegated systems of control, from the traditionalism of cultural politics to computer-mediated systems of controlling human beings, has its price.

This practice has cost us the growing up pains we are experiencing - from the way we build our highways to the way we architecture the mind of our children and we broadcast 'live' the ingredients of our state propaganda.

And now, we have this 76 or so Perkasa-type of NGOs that will continue to shape the direction of Malay politics. It signifies the “subcontractor-isation” of Malay protest movement no longer being dome by Malay-centric political parties.

The real Malay dilemma

But for thinking Malays, there is an alternative view to the advancing new Malay dilemma, beyond the Perkasa shadow-play. It concerns not only the political fate of the Malays, but of Malaysians as a people yearning for a republic of virtue. We have lived in epochs of mind control - from the mythically-useful idea of daulat in the clever invention called the divine rights of kings to the mantra of cybernetic technology, installed and institutionalised through the smart partnership with international profiteers skilled in the design of the post-modern slavery system.

If one analyses the system of international labour in Malaysia since we were granted independence, one may conclude a similar pattern of modern slavery on a global scale - international capitalists collaborate with the local elite in transforming the natives and imported natives into indentured servants.

We continue to switch masters, in accordance with the flow of 'paxes' - Pax Brittanica, Pax Americana, to Pax Nipponica, to Pax Corporate-Crony Malaysiana. The nature of our either-or politics, as I see it, is navigating us towards another form of hegemony; one that might be even more dangerous that what is currently prevailing in its most corrupt practice. It is taking shape in the form of 'illiberalism' grounded in the politics of vengeance, and alliance based on the insatiable urge to impose some form of cybernetic-theocratic rule that is scaring those of us who are strong believers of radical and social multi-culturalism.

We are charting our future ruins based on the politics of desperados inspired by a decadent ideology no longer in synchrony with the real issue of the day - the emergence of cultural classes of people, silently reproduced by the post-industrial and hyper-modernising state.

The real Malay dilemma lies in its inability to realise that Vision 2020 was a strategy to blur the masses of the political-economic nature of controlling interests in Malaysian politics; that Vision 2020 built by robber barons and emerging dynasties. It is our own Orwellian document of doublespeak.

What then must the silent spectator Malays do? Where will this Malay-Perkasa dilemma lead this country to?

Will we fester like a raisin in the sun -- or will we explode?