The failure of reformasi thinkers

The dismissal of the appeals against the conviction (1) of ex-deputy prime minister Anwar Ibrahim and his adopted brother Sukma Darmawan Sasmitaat Madja has resulted in the expected response from all quarters: The Appeal Court upheld their convictions and rejected their demands for bail, while Anwar's supporters from the reformasi camp immediately accused the government of 'kezaliman' (cruelty). o­nce again pejorative terms such as "Mahazalim", "Mahakejam" and "Mahafir'aun" have made a comeback, notably o­n the numerous websites that dot the infinite reaches of cyberspace.

As if the dismissal of Anwar and Sukma's appeal was not sad enough, the Malaysian public now has to endure the tirade of sentimental hogwash and bile that is making its rounds in the Internet sites and chat-rooms.

Browsing through these sites over the past week with a bowlful of anti-depressants and aspirin close at hand, I was saddened to see how little has changed in the country over the past few years. Increasingly it appears as if the radical dislocation that had set in during the 1998 political crisis was but a chimera, an illusion of rupture and excess, that was contained and domesticated as soon as it was let loose from the box.

For those who care to remember, the so-called 'reformasi' moment was seen by many (myself included) as o­ne of those rare moments when politics and the political culture of Malaysia could have been successfully reinvented and reconstituted anew.

This was a time when practically every taboo was broken, and the Malaysian public was discussing everything under the sun: from race relations to the impact of an Islamic state, the special privileges of the bumiputeras to the place of gendered minorities in the country.

Many of us felt that we could have introduced an entirely new vocabulary to Malaysian politics, taking this country o­ne step beyond the narrow communitarian politics that it is known by, and making that great leap from ethno-nationalism to a truly inclusive and universal nationalism that would have redefined the contours of the nation-state itself.

Instead, as soon as the starting gun was fired, the familiar cast of hacks and weirdos got into the act. First came Shahnon Ahmad's Shit which compared the workings of the nation's political system to the constipated innards of some unfortunate, culminating with the great 'climax' when the digestive/political system is 'freed' when the man finally defecates o­n the masses around him.

(If anyone can make sense of this or see the redeeming qualities of the story, please let me know. Five years o­n, I am still trying to make sense of this best-seller.)

Then came a host of similarly outlandish and shallow 'political' analyses, that can best be described as suitable toilet reading material for fans of Shit. Most of these authors seemed preoccupied with the task of venting their spleen o­n the figure of the prime minister, Dr Mahathir Mohamad, and the government, blaming him/them for everything that was wrong under the sun, including the exceptionally long draught season of that year.

Upon the figure of the prime minister was heaped an entire catalogue of names and titles: "Mahazalim", "Mahakejam", "Mahafir'aun" et al. It seemed as if there was no end to the list of 'Mahas' that the man could be, though none of these words even began to touch o­n the real problems that riddle this country till today: the in-built structural inequalities and power differentials that continue to divide our society and marginalise the many other Malaysias that co-exist along the margins of the normal and accepted.

Worse still were the vacuous prognoses from those of the religious camp, who argued that what this country needs is a 'reform' along religious lines, and to replace the already oppressive laws we have with even more oppressive laws sanctioned by religion. As if it wasn't bad enough that mandatory executions take place in Malaysia, the Islamists wanted to add an even longer list of 'moral crimes' that would be punished with flogging, amputation and/or stoning to death. Reformasi had done a U-turn and gone down the road of lunacy and ridiculousness in a frightening way.

Lest it be forgotten, the political culture of Malaysia as in the case of practically every other country in Asean is fundamentally based o­n neo-feudal understandings of power and authority. Those of you who think that we live in the modern age had better do a reality check and look at the overwhelming evidence around you: All over Asia we see how modernising regimes have used the tool of modernity to construct systems of governance that have not evolved very far from the days of the great Dewarajas (God-Kings) of Angkor, Srivijaya or Majapahit.

We may live in seemingly modern societies that have the Internet and cell-phones that incorporate Short Messaging System (SMS), but this same technology has also been used to create oppressive tools of surveillance and control that are intended to police the private space of individuals and get into our homes and our heads.

Asian governments monitor the contents of Internet sites, read the private mail of their citizens and use the secret police to get information about them in exactly the same way that the all-seeing eyes of the Khmer ruler Jayavarman VII (2) stare vigilantly into space, monitoring and policing the lives of his subjects o­n a daily basis.

Despite the overtly 'western' appearance of our societies (most of us know how to tie a tie and wear jeans, and we have certainly how to consume junk food like our western counterparts), our system and culture of politics remain essentially feudal and Asiatic. Ours is a political tradition that goes back to antiquity, long before trendy concepts like democracy and human rights ever came to the fore.

Being basically neo-feudal societies, our political systems cherish and uphold the values of the feudal era most of all: undying and absolute loyalty (be it to the prime minister, president, mullah or the tok guru), and deference to power.

These are precisely the values that have been valorised and promoted so much by the pro-kerajaan hikayats (epics) of the past, from the Sejarah Melayu to the Hikayat Hang Tuah (3).

Incidentally, this is also the 'crime' that many commentators and observers suspect the ex-deputy prime minister Anwar Ibrahim to be really guilty of: disloyalty to his political mentor and his party. In the bad old days of the Malay sultanates, such disloyal subjects were not given the privilege and luxury of being beaten up by the head of police. Instead they and their entire families were chopped to pieces and left unburied for others to see.

This is also why the so-called reformasi movement had it actually managed to do anything was seen as such a threat to the status quo. By putting everything under question and reversing the established order of things in the world, it threatened to rock the entire order of knowledge and power that our neo-feudal socio-political order rests upon.

But the reformasi movement failed to do this, because it allowed itself to be hijacked by religious crackpots and traditionalist apologists who were not prepared to push the logic of reform to its logical apotheosis.

They were prepared to put o­n reformasi T-shirts, honk loudly as they drove, buy the magazines, books, key-chains and stickers that came with the circus, but were not prepared to go all the way.

They claimed that the Internal Security Act (ISA) was unjust, but were not prepared to question the basis of racialised voting, communitarianism and racial quotas in the country.

They were not prepared to say that punishments such as public flogging and stoning to death were also incompatible with the age we live in.

They were not prepared to say that freedom of religion, equal opportunities, gender equality and a secular democracy were things worth fighting for.

In the end, all their huffing and puffing came to naught, and the age-old bastions of the neo-feudal power structure remained as solid as ever. The Dewaraja had won the day, and history has been re-written by the victors.

The apparent failure of the reformasi project today stems from its inability (or even reluctance) to break from the stale clichs and stereotypes of cultural analysis and adopt the tools of political critique instead.

Failing to do so, the reformasi movement could not do the o­ne thing that was needed the most: to offer a critique of the present system along rational, progressive, objective and scientific terms. Instead all the public received was a deluge of self-hate and angry complaints about how wrong everything was, but without the attendant solutions.

This was the case when the Moghul empire of India was in its last stages of decline as well. After decades of costly and unproductive rule leading to the construction of enormous 'mega-projects' that had no use or utility for the masses the Moghul rulers were left with little to do but design even greater and costly monuments. After Akbar's 'ideal city' of Fatehpur Sikri came the even more grandiose and overblown Taj Mahal of Shah Jahan (4), a monument he built for his dead wife Mumtaz Mahal but served no practical purpose for the masses over whom he lorded over. (And in any case his wife did not live to see it.)

In the centuries that followed, countless Indian scholars wrote, spoke and debated about the causes of the Moghuls' decline, and most of them argued that it was due to decadence and moral corruption. The orthodox and conservative Islamists were convinced that it was all due to Akbar's habit of having a glass of wine too many after dinner. Others claimed that it was due to the hashish that the Moghul emperors smoked right up to the time of the last emperor Bahadur Shah

But the Moghul empire did not decline because of wine or hashish, or even the bawdy orgies or drunken parties the emperors had when their friends were around. The Moghul empire collapsed for economic and political reasons, such as the gradual bankruptcy of the imperial coffers thanks to a taxation system that was unfair and falling apart; an over-extended bureaucracy that was multiplying its tasks and drowning in red tape, and an over-ambitious construction programme that led to costly mega-projects that could not be financed by government spending.

The Taj Mahal was the most costly and ruinous project in the history of the Moghul dynasty. It was so expensive that it bankrupted the empire's coffers, and Shah Jahan was forced to increase the land tax from 30 percent to 50 percent of the value of the crops produced. The opening up of new markets and trading centres abroad also robbed Moghul India of its competitive edge. These were, and remain, factors that have received very little attention from scholars of Indian Moghul history. Instead of wasting his time consulting mystics, astrologers and soothsayers, the Moghul emperor should have hired a decent (secular educated) economist to remind him: "it's the economy, stupid".

Asia today is at a crossroads. After the American victories in Afghanistan and Iraq, the leaders of Asia should realise that this is not going to be 'Asia's century', but rather the United States'. As the fall of Saddam's regime has shown, those governments that do not care for the welfare of their own people and do not address the structural inequalities in their midst will invariably come under the heels of the US, who will simply force through a 'regime change' in order to install their own puppet and proceed to rob the country blind.

If Asia's reformers want to stop this from happening, they had better get back to the drawing board pronto. Practically every Asian society today suffers from uneven development, the lack of economic, financial and administrative transparency, and high-level corruption. Apart from that, Asian societies remain fundamentally authoritarian and despotic, ruled and governed by politicians who seem to think that they still live in the era of the Dewarajas of the past, deluding themselves with visions of grandeur and power and wasting the public's wealth o­n costly national development projects that are environmentally-destructive, unproductive and soon redundant.

Changing this trend is not going to be easy, and it will require sacrifice and hard work. It is also going to require some new thinking and a new political vocabulary that breaks from the chain of intellectual dependency to the past. The question is, are we up to it?

Thus far, the proponents of reform in Asia are few and those who have come to the fore seem decidedly dubious.

For a start, in the area of market reform their own solutions seem suspiciously similar to the neo-liberal ideology of the neo-conservatives of North America and Britain. Though they talk of transparency and fighting corruption, it is not clear if their own political programmes are linked to the opening up of their respective economies to their own people, rather than foreign multinationals. (Sam Rainsy of Cambodia, the Western media's idol at o­ne time, comes to mind.)

In the Malaysian case the reformasi movement has yet to provide us with a coherent economic and political strategy that will get this nation out of the morass that it finds itself in.

Are the reformasi activists prepared to take up other causes related to reform, which are linked to democracy, human rights, the fundamental right of belief, the end of the death penalty as well as other forms of judicial torture and abuse (that may be the case in some 'religious' punishments?)

Are they prepared to say o­nce and for all, that in this nation of ours every Malaysian citizen regardless of race, gender, religion must have exactly the same rights, privileges and responsibilities as his/her fellow citizen?

Today some of us may be appalled by the fact that o­ne of those accused Sukma Darmawan has been sentenced to caning with the rotan. The reformasi camp may claim that this is an example of the kezaliman of the government, but are they willing to say the same about the so-called 'religious punishments' that some of their allies in the Islamist camp want to introduce should they come to power?

If caning with the rotan is cruel and dehumanising which it surely is then the same can and should be said about stoning someone to death or cutting of his or her hands for theft. Surely the same can be said for whipping or flogging in public, too? Has the reformasi movement got nothing to say o­n these matters that should be of equal concern? And can it not come up with a radically different view of crime and punishment itself, o­ne that addresses the fundamental economic and socio-political roots and causes of criminality itself?

Even more worrying is the 'adoption' of the reformasi cause and the plight of its founder-leader by the American government (yes, the same government that has just bombed Iraq back to the Middle Ages in order to help 'liberate' the people from their oil). That the Americans can talk about protecting the human rights of persecuted politicians, writers, intellectuals and activists today beggars belief, considering its own shameful record of propping up tyrants and demagogues all over the world whenever it has suited its interests.

But what should concern us here is not that the janus-faced American government can show its sympathy for Anwar Ibrahim or anyone else for that matter, but rather the geo-political factors and variables that are involved in our own convoluted local drama of realpolitik.

In the final analysis, what all this boils down to is that any attempt to understand the initial appeal and subsequent demise of the reformasi project and what it sought/seeks to do has to be predicated o­n a sound understanding of politics and the workings of the political process. Talk of "Mahazalim", "Mahafir'aun", "shaitanisme", "kezaliman", etc may well make up the stuff of discursive activity, but discourse is never far from politics and indeed if o­ne takes the Stalinist/Maoist line, then o­ne could argue that nothing escapes the political.

In this day and age when so many people use the term 'discourse analysis' as if it was as easy as ordering a teh tarik and roti canai, it pays to remember that what seems as a trendy post-modern fad actually began as a serious philosophical project with a political agenda: Its aim was to examine how our construction of reality was shaped by the terms we use and the vocabulary that we employ.

But discourse analysis never broke from its materialist moorings, and neither should we. The sort of shallow cultural analysis that passes as serious political commentary in this sad nation of ours may be the stuff we see o­n a daily basis, but it is no substitute for serious political science.

As soon as the reformasi thinkers begin to talk about structures of domination and control, power differentials in society and the proposed concrete measures to deal with these inbuilt structural inequalities and injustices, we will sit up and listen.

1) o­n Aug 8, 2000, High Court judge Arifin Jaka found ex-deputy prime minister Anwar Ibrahim guilty of sodomising Azizan Abu Bakar, the former driver of his wife and opposition Keadilan president Dr Wan Azizah Wan Ismail. He also found Sukma Darmawan guilty of sodomising Azizan and abetting Anwar, but allowed the Indonesian national bail and stay of execution pending appeal. The bail was revoked and stay of execution lifted by the Appeal Court o­n April 18, 2003.

2) Jayavarman VII inherited the throne of Angkor after the death of his father Dharanindravarman II. Angkor was then at war with Champa and the Angkor kingdom had been badly ravaged by the Cham invasion of 1177. After defeating his local rivals and expelling the Chams from Angkor, Jayavarman VII was finally crowned king in 1181.

During his time, the power of the kingdom of Angkor was at its height. Angkor's power and authority extended as far as the north of the Malay peninsula and westwards to Burma. During the latter period of his rule order and stability was restored to Angkor and during this time Jayavarman VII fervently promoted Buddhism as the official religion of the court.

While previous rulers of Angkor concentrated their power in the symbolic form of the golden royal linga, Jayavarman VII built a sanctuary in the Bayon (the central temple of Angkor Thom) that housed the statue of the Buddharaja instead. The towers of the Angkor Thom were likewise decorated with the multiple faces of the Buddharaja, facing in all directions in the form of the Bodhisattva Lokesvara Samanthamuka a symbolic reminder of the panoptic vision of the omnipotent and omniscient ruler who could see everything that was happening within his kingdom from a God-like perspective.

Through a combination of religio-political ideas (rationalised via the cult of the Buddharaja centred o­n Jayavarman VII himself) and a massive national development project that was co-ordinated and directed from the political centre, Jayavarman VII managed to unite his kingdom and monopolise all worldly and sacred power at the same time. Through his development of the cult of the Buddharaja he managed to turn Buddhism into a statist discourse of power and authority. Jayavarman VII finally died in 1218, and upon his death was deified and given the sacred title Mahaparamasaugata.

3) For a realist critique of the Hikayat Hang Tuah that deconstructs the class and power-related underpinnings of the text, see Kassim Ahmad's edition of the Hikayat Hang Tuah (Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka, Kuala Lumpur, 1968), particularly the introduction. Kassim Ahmad's critical analysis of the text reveals the extent to which Hikayat Hang Tuah was a pro-establishment courtly narrative that concealed the class differentials and power relations within the Malaccan sultanate via recourse to a cult of absolute leadership (sanctified and justified o­n Islamic grounds) and the culture of blind loyalty to the ruler. His interpretation of the text reverses the established polarity of the Hang Tuah-Hang Jebat dichotomy and presents the rebellious Hang Jebat as the first archetype of the Malay rebel who was able and willing to challenge the absolutism of feudal Malay political culture.

4) Emperor Shah Jahan (1628-1658) maintained the warring and conquering tradition of his forebears and the Moghul king Babur in particular. By the time he came to power the Moghul empire was slowly fraying at the edges, and the first campaigns undertaken by Shah Jahan were intended to eliminate the possibility of internal revolts within the empire. The capital of the empire was moved back from Agra to Delhi, which had been the traditional seat of Muslim power in India since the days of the Delhi sultanate.

Shah Jahan had Delhi fortified behind 60-foot walls, constructed the Red Fort and built himself the fabled Peacock Throne (that would later be stolen from the Afghani ruler of Persia in 1739). His greatest architectural wonder was the Taj Mahal in Agra, built in honour of his favourite wife Mumtaz Mahal who died during childbirth. The Taj Mahal was the most costly and ruinous project in the history of the Moghul dynasty. It was so expensive that it bankrupted the empire's coffers, and Shah Jahan was forced to increase the land tax from 30 percent to 50 percent of the value of the crops produced. This was a major reversal of his grandfather Akbar's policy and it was a mistake that cost the Moghuls dearly, for it led to widespread resentment from the ordinary people and the Hindu peasant classes in particular.