Realising an Independent Nation in Malaysia

If you follow what I write, you'll realise I'm quite a pessimistic and skeptical person. "It comes with the territory" of being an intellectual, Anwar Ibrahim told me. I don't know how true that may be, but I do know I'm probably one of the few people who's put enough thought into writing an article entitled The Death of Malaysia — and ended up being forced to clarify it after some friends of mine misunderstood my intent.

But, yes, I am pessimistic. I don't like how Malaysians think our country is so great, that just by not murdering each other and maintaining an uneasy status quo where our leaders just threaten to murder each other every now and then without following through, we have accomplished something wonderful. I'm not fond of how sensitive Malaysians argue we should suppress the truth lest the truth harm our reputation. We're not perfect, and let's face it.

And yet, I've also written a not-so popular piece entitled Unhealthy Pessimism for Malaysia's Future. Our prospects may be dark, but that is no excuse to abandon our country. The true test of love is not whether you stand by those close to you when the weather is fair and the sun is shining, but whether you remain at their side when the sky is black and the outlook is gloomy. Pessimism is unhealthy if it is used as an excuse for apathy.

The 50th anniversary of the Malaysian nation's independence has been depressing for me in so many ways. Most of them can be fairly and easily summed up by many others. But in short, the whole thing has been rather anti-climactic — the fireworks unimpressive, the reenactments just as boring as the typical propaganda churned out by the regime in power, and most palpably, the total absence of the spirit of freedom, independence and nationalism.

It should say something that the one thing that brightened my thoughts was a negative blog post by an acquaintance of mine, Lim Su Ann. Her Not So Happy Merdeka is probably the best piece I have read commemorating Malaysia's 50th national day, and I really cannot more highly recommend it.

The main reason I'm so enthused by what Su Ann wrote is not the quality of her writing, or the thought that went into the post — by those standards, it's good, possibly great, but not enough for me to get really excited about.

What excites me is that the educated youthful elite may finally be waking up. If you follow Su Ann's blog for a while, you realise that she's by no means a sociopolitical blogger — hers is what would be called a lifestyle blog. (Some uncharitable people would call it a bimbo's blog.)

Su Ann fits the profile of the stereotypical disenchanted, apathetic, somewhat aware but yet painfully ignorant, insulated, educated and wealthy youth of this country. These are the people who, if they blog at all, stick mainly to lifestyle blogging. The zeitgeist of this group about Merdeka and the state of the country is summed up perfectly by Su Ann:

ya ya ya malaysia is going down the drain ya ya government stupid opposition stupid all also stupid ya ya cant wait to migrate ya ya when i graduate there’s no way i will come back to work here blablabla aiyah but then actually ah deep down inside ah i really love Malaysia wan. because we got damn good food and we invented Manglish! so, happy Merdeka everyone!!!!!!!!

If this demographic cannot wake up, cannot realise that the path Malaysia is on is a path to disaster and death, then the country is fucked. Not pleasant words to use, but true words nonetheless — if the most educated, most informed, most free to think (both in terms of time and power) demographic in the country cannot realise this, what hope can there ever be for spreading this realisation to the marginalised and disempowered, whose minds and bodies have been shackled for so long?

That Su Ann so succintly sums up all the reasons Malaysians cannot afford to assume all is well, that everything will work out somehow for our country, really warmed my heart — something that is hard to do, considering that most of the time, I behave as if I have no heart.

I finally understood what some Malaysians say they feel like when they read my writings. To be frank, I have never really and truly appreciated the compliments I have received from people who say I inspire them, who say I give them hope for the country's youth.

I mean, really, why the hell am I in any sense representative of my country's youth? In almost every respect, I am set apart from them. I'm not as socially well-adjusted as the typical youth, I'm almost completely unable to relate to their thinking, I read economic texts for fun while my typical friends are getting wasted on alcohol. If you ask me, to find me an inspiring hope for the country's youth is to find, say, George W. Bush a depressing pox on the ability and calibre of American politicians for all time.

But what gladdened me about Su Ann's post is that she is the kind of person who is representative of Malaysian youth — or at least the elite, upper- and middle-class youth. She shares their interests, and almost certainly can relate to their thinking (she would definitely be far better at it than myself).

That she could write something so critical, so analytical, and so perceptive — now that is inspiring. And even more inspiring are the comments on her post, most of which are written by people in the same demographic.

That the people of my generation are able to relate to Su Ann's thoughts and sentiments (which virtually perfectly mirror mine anyway) — now that is inspiring.

This website is not hope for the future generation of Malaysian leaders. My website is nothing more than a collection of writings by one man, one very odd and strange outlier on the normal distribution of life. The hope for the leaders of tomorrow rests on websites and blogs like Su Ann's — sites which are actually representative of how Malaysian youth approach this country's future.

My outlook for this country, frankly speaking, is very bleak. Fifty years after independence, we are still talking about unity, about a sense of belonging to this country, because we don't have unity and we don't have a sense of belonging. In short, we don't have a nation, rendering any "national day" rather meaningless.

That is the number one reason I see little good in this country's future. What is the point of fixing the nation's corruption, tossing out draconian laws, when we don't have a nation to believe in, a nation to belong to? How can we fix a nation that doesn't exist?

That is why we need change so badly. That is why we cannot afford to rest on our laurels — we have not even begun to earn our laurels. If we want a Malaysia to be there for our children and grandchildren — if we want them to be able to eat nasi lemak and speak Manglish fifty or a hundred years from now — we must work towards building a nation, before we can even get started on fixing this nation.

A lot of us like to be complacent. As long as nobody touches our roti canai, nobody hurts our rice bowl, we don't complain. But we fail to see that as long as we are not one nation, as long as we only feel a sense of belonging to our race, or our territory (West versus East Malaysia, anyone?), we may not have these things for very much longer.

And that is why Su Ann's post made me so happy. Because it pointed out the horrifying flaws in this nation that has yet to be born — and made a call to arms for Malaysians to get out of our rut of apathy, and to think about where we want our country to go — whether we wish to see ourselves divided, segmented and ultimately ejected from the land of our birth.

It's been fifty years since our nation supposedly gained its independence. But we're not even one nation yet. And our pseudo-nation is a nation that is not even independent. How is the regime in Kuala Lumpur any more accountable, any more responsible, than the former regime in London? The skin colour of our oppressors might have changed, but ultimately, we still dare not dissent, we still dare not criticise, we still dare not speak our minds about what is wrong with our pseudo-nation. How can we call ourselves free? How can we call ourselves independent? We are neither independent nor a nation.

A lot of people view this as depressing. I got quite a bit of flak from my pro-opposition friends for supposedly turning people off to the idea of changing this depressing state of things — for ostensibly making people believe the country is unsalvageable.

Perhaps I am not the norm, but I see such a depressing statement as a call to arms to salvage the unsalvageable. The important thing is to recognise that being a Malaysian, I cannot jettison my country. I cannot just toss up my arms and say "Oh, well, that sucks. Guess I'll just forget about Malaysia then."

I may emigrate; I may stay. That is immaterial. Ultimately, I am a Malaysian, and ultimately, I care about my country's future. Those who would view my description of Malaysia's problems as a call to abandon the cause of change for Malaysia are those who do not belong here — they are the people who we would not want as Malaysians anyway.

And what is wonderful is that this point of view seems to have been taken up by someone who actually isn't a freak outlier like myself. Like myself, Su Ann and the youthful demographic group which follows her blog believe that our country is riddled with problems — that our country is neither independent nor a nation — but that these problems are not intractable, that these problems can be solved. It may never be explicitly said, but it is always implicitly understood, that we criticise not because we seek an excuse to abandon ship, but because we seek a better country to bequeath to our children than the shame of a country that was bequeathed to us.

We cannot lie to ourselves. If we love our country, we must fess up to the fact that this country of ours is, simply put, in deep shit. Or, as Su Ann puts it:

and while you’re at it, why not hop on the Eye on Malaysia. invest some moolah in the PKFZ. take a drive down that dumb Smart Tunnel. eat a plate of nasi lemak, because you know, apparently it rights all the wrongs in our country.

And if we acknowledge that our deadly problems cannot be washed away by a flood of teh tarik, then we must work towards a better Malaysia. These problems are not an excuse to abandon our country in her hour of need. These problems are a challenge to our generation: can we bequeath a better country to our children than what was bequeathed to us?

Let us rise to the challenge, my friends. All the flag-waving and slogan-chanting in the world matters not one bit as long as we remain complacent, as long as we think we can put our country's problems out of our mind as long as there are Bollywood movies to watch and nasi lemak to eat.

Our country does not need more people mindlessly wishing each other a happy national day. Our country does not need more people chanting "Merdeka!" Our country needs people willing to rise to the challenge of building an independent nation, with an independent people. Let us celebrate our 50th national day by committing ourselves, wherever we may be and whoever we are, to rising to this challenge and to birthing a nation that the next generation of Malaysians can be truly proud of.