Rules of engagement

We all know the risks. Unfettered and unruly discussions, especially conducted under the cloak of anonymity on the internet, tend to degenerate into explosions of unexamined prejudices, emetic verbiage, and even naked hatred.

As far as I know, here in Malaysia, we have yet to have a successful instance of an inter-faith public discussion. I can imagine that the best that the participating parties can do, is to state their respective entrenched positions, and agree to disagree, if they are prudent enough not to start pointing fingers.

Likewise, any meaningful inter-racial discussion, either in public or in private, seems well nigh impossible. The gap between the worldviews of the various races is so wide, and the language they use coloured with powerful emotions, that little real exchange of minds and hearts can take place.

Therefore, more than a few good souls would be tempted to throw up their arms in despair, declare their distrust in the ability of "men on the street" to discuss these issues rationally, and wonder if freedom of speech is actually good for our health.

Then somebody is bound to invoke that shadowy ghost of May13, and express their sympathy for a blanket ban on all discussions on these sensitive subjects, as our government is wont to encourage us to do, in justifying the continued existence of the Sedition Act and the ISA.

I suspect that, at this point in time, these critics of freedom of speech are not entirely wrong, even if they may have missed the point that they like you and me are part of this much abused myth of "men in the street."

Nevertheless, I am more than uncomfortable with such a blanket ban on racial and religious discussions. Like a pair of jagged claws suffocating the larynx of the nation, the Sedition Act and the ISA have been in place for decades. The racial and religious tensions have merely gone underground, unarticulated and beyond control, festering like an unseen sore on the body politics of Malaysia, and handed down from generation to generation behind the closed doors of family homes.

Besides, supporting such a ban would place too much burden on the honesty and integrity of our politicians. Electoral gain and political power are the bread and butter of realpolitik, much more so than politicians' declared motive of serving any nobler higher cause. As long as racial and religious sentiments remain as the most primordial instruments of mass mobilisation, politicians will always be far more dangerous than your "men on the street"!

Almost all amateur and professional observers of Malaysian politics agree on this one point: politics in Malaysia is condemned to be politics of race. If this is in fact true, then our political parties which are communal in nature have been the main cause of racism in Malaysia.

In honest reflection, I have to concede that in the past decades, strong-armed legislations have succeeded in sensitising politicians on both sides of the power divide to the need for more restrained actions and words when it comes to discussing racial and religious issues.

However, the silencing of all public discussions on so-called sensitive issues of race and religions have merely given the ruling elite the monopoly to define political correctness in such crucial matters, when their policy on these matters is but one among many. You may very well question as to why their solution is better than others, other than the fact that they are in power.

Although the policies of affirmative action implemented through the NEP and its derivative form over the last three decades, have been partially successful in addressing some of the problem of some racial imbalance, the adverse consequences are obvious.

There has been massive loss of public funds, through inexperience, misconception, mismanagement, misappropriation, and downright corruption. Racial polarisation has also been entrenched into a national ideology, to the extent that national unity has become an ever elusive dream.

Cynical observers would even declare that it is the very intention of the essentially multi-racial ruling elite to keep the population racially polarised. When voters are divided along racial and religious lines, opposition parties will always be splintered and cocooned in their respective ethnic or religious constituencies.

This is the catch-22 of opposition politics in Malaysia. The voters are so ossified in their racial and religious alienation that you cannot survive and win seats, unless you appeal to their communal or religious sentiments. PRM is the lone brave exception that proves the rule. The tragedy is that, the opposition parties that survive on communal or religious support can never hope to agitate for a trans-racial trans-religious coalition that can mount a credible challenge to the BN.

Whether the curb on freedom of speech across the board has outlived its usefulness, however, is a matter of debate. The national landscape in 2003 is vastly different from the troubled tumultuous circumstances of 1969. Much water has flowed under the bridge, and race-relation despite the batik curtain of veiled but ever-present racial segregation in the minds of citizens has evolved into new shapes and hues, especially among our youths.

(Some young Malays and Chinese I talked to have only a hazy idea about what May 13 and NEP mean to them.)

At the same time, government stranglehold on public speech and public assembly has been applied to purposes for which they were not intended. They have given undue advantage to the ruling parties during supposedly democratic elections, and in between elections.

The situation is so lopsided, and the opposition so marginalised in their access to their constituents, that an alternative government in Malaysia seems like impossibility in the near future.

In short, the various laws constraining public discussions on sensitive racial and religious issues might have their justification in repressing inter-ethnic tension at one time, but in the long run, the logic of power struggle dictates that their practical application would work towards the advantage of the ruling parties.

The real victim is the nurturing of an egalitarian civil society based on universal values such as the ultimate dignity of the human individual, meeting the real needs of the people, and the development of their potential in all fields of human endeavour.

The worst casualty of this state of affair is probably the state of our economy, and so the well-beings of our citizens. Cloaked by overriding racial consideration, hidden from public scrutiny, and crippled by rampant corruption at all levels of government, our investors can hardly reap fair returns for their investment, and work, business and professional ethics are in a dire strait. Even consumers cannot become enlightened consumers.

Let us try to think above partisan politics here. Whether it is BN or BA in power in Malaysia, the Democrats or the Republicans in the US, the Labour or the Tory in England, only by the possibility of forming alternative governments can the voters be truly empowered in reforming the power relation between the ruler and the ruled.

At the moment, the single hurdle that stands in the way of a possible change of government is the ethos of racial and religious antinomies, which we have inherited from the legacy of the May 13 incident and the NEP.

Issues of race and religion are real problems in our diverse population, and they need to be discussed. But the national narrative, as well as the officially instituted rules for this discussion (or the lack of rules), have distorted the real needs and real concerns of our citizens.

If you think about it, meaningful inter-ethnic or inter-faith dialogues have never taken off in any organised manner in this country. The governing parties cannot be expected to do it, and the opposition parties are too preoccupied with electoral contests and political survival to be bothered with such a project. Of the many excellent NGOs involved in advocacy or grass-root agitation, not one is dedicated to the single cause of race-relation.

Therefore, the recent spate of discussion on race and religion in the letters column of malaysiakini has come as a pleasant surprise.

For the first time in my experience as a Malaysian citizen, I read some really reasoned and informed arguments on these sensitive and contentious subjects. (The "voting with the feet" is not one of them.) More ingratiating still, is that writers begin to think beyond their substantive beliefs in these matters, and explore the very rules of engagement to which participants should subscribe in order to engage themselves in such discussion.

Surely, the secret of success in inter-ethnic and inter-faith discussion must be anchored around some common rules whether written or unwritten for the conduct of these difficult discussions.

Malaysiakini has proven that, given some editorial monitoring, there can be meaningful discussions on the most volatile subjects in our life. If the process of national reconciliation and mutual healing is to take place gradually, then this virtual public space has already set a good precedent.