Another key contributor to the institutional matrix that is constantly taking us of the course of truly becoming a people with a common home is the mad rush to become a developed nation economically, any which way. Certainly, urban Malaysia looks plush. It looks rich and well provided for. But scratch the top a little and you begin to see another configuration of realities and the character of our growth.

The excessive focus on economics has produced a highly consumeristic-possessive and materialistic culture. The economic bottomline i.e. profits, seems the only ‘benchmark’ of our being, our achievement, our success and our relationships. Even though we live in the midst of a rich values environment nurtured by numerous religions, everything seems still defined and directed by the profit-motive. In fact, our economic success is provided as measure of our religiosity! We will destroy history, heritage, communities, neighbourhoods, landscape, friendships, flora and fauna for that extra-dollar. It is one of the key bases of our individual and national social identity. All these have led to the aggravated growth of haves and have-nots, across and within the communities.

Thus, income inequality has, for instance, arisen significantly. According to one source, the Malaysia’s Gini coefficient (a measure of inequality), for instance, is around 0.47 (0 = perfect equality; 1.0 = perfect inequality). Compared to poorer countries like Indonesia (0.32) and Vietnam (0.36), the Malaysian figure is significantly higher. It also beats countries like Philippines and Thailand with a higher Gini coefficient, and gives us the ‘honour’ of being second worst in Asia (of all the Asian countries for which data is available).

Horizontal and intra-communal inequality has also grown significantly. A race-based affirmative action policy had led to class-based consequences, where even within the Malay Malaysian community, the major beneficiary of the affirmative action policy, income disparity has increased. The present approach to affirmative action is no guarantee of sustainable prosperity for a large section of the Malay Malaysian community. The character of our national economic practice and how it marginalises most of us in different ways, irrespective of our ethnic affiliation, will be clear if only we care to look.

High-risk society

There are other problems. In the early 80s, we introduced privatisation policy to contribute and strengthen the private sector but ended with increasing the cost of economic transactions which eventually meant market distortions, institutionalisation of corruption, transferring of costs to innocent consumers/citizens and the development of a highly materialistic culture. Without any serious effort to create a level playing field for all, our government then was careless enough to withdraw from the redistribution-of-wealth function, increasing the problems of the poor. To continue this line of growth, we gave up the progressive tax regime and moved towards a regressive tax regime, with the institutionalisation of an indirect taxation, which shifts the tax burden to the poor and labouring classes.

We trumpeted the idea of a ‘caring society’ but our economy only produced a ‘high-risk society’, exposing a large section of our people to the vagaries and punishments meted out by a demand-driven market. In a demand-driven market, real needs are substituted by the demand variable. And in such a market, the poor, including our indigenous communities, do not enter the calculation of the demand variable and are effectively non-existent. Our economic ideology has been aggressive and imperialistic and has certainly hurt the indigenous people and their environment.

In a sense, ‘economic extremism’ has produced an all round unsustainable trajectory of growth both for the ecology that supports us and human and non-human communities that inhabit it.

The world is exploring new ways of organising the economy and society. While we are so quick in copying ideas and models the Corporate West offers us, we pay less or no attention of important sustainable and/or indigenous ideas. We are, for instance, stuck with the notion of Gross National Product but completely blind to such notions as the Gross National Happiness. While the world is witnessing the growth of social enterprises guided by triple bottomline initiative (economic profit, social responsibility and ecological sustainability) and supported by value-based social investment norms with a strong socially committed shareholder community, we are largely ignorant of these efforts/developments. While a few public-listed Malaysian companies show growth of their CSR activities, many still see it as a small part of their marketing or public relations effort or their accounting culture and certainly not their social commitment to community or the building of social capital.

Eventually, we need an economics based on the sustainability principles and practices of balance, limits and inter-connectedness of being to counter the forces of imperialistic consumerism and destructive materialism, both of which have the power to destroy Mother Earth.

Executive supremacy

Ethnocracy and economic extremism are not the only problems we have. Major socio-political institutional destruction took from the 1980s to the end of the last century. This part of our national history saw one of the worst periods in our national life -- certainly a black period as far as the democratic institutional history is concerned. By systematically crippling the judiciary, the media and the royalty, Malaysia achieved the politically unsustainable growth of “executive supremacy”. By design, democratic power was transformed into authoritarian power. That is certainly one the main reasons why our “democracy” became a “demo-cracy”.

Modern power in Malaysia is young and unfortunately corrupt. Instead of leading the economy, it has succumbed to pleasures of economic affluence and has become its powerful servant. Like the ‘proverbial teenager’, it has learnt all the bad habits and has resisted good habits as alien or inconvenient to practice. It knows its capability but abuses it for short term benefits, whims and fancies. It is cunning and considers the idea of a dialogue-based multicultural and just Malaysia as enemy-of-the-state.

Such orientation never allowed democracy to mature. One just has to review the history of ISA and ISA detainees in Malaysia to get a picture of how in the name of upholding law (and o/Order), the spirit behind Law was periodically strangled/killed. There are also a number of legislation that inhibit legitimate collective action, that restrict communication and dissemination and that isolate and control through a regime of pain, ‘inscribed’ on the bodies of those who oppose.

Power wants to ensure that there is a memory of pain – real and potential - in the Malaysian oppositional party and non-party body politic. Such a reality simply introduces a culture of silence and fear. It disengages people from the process of creative involvement in politics (and other areas of national life). We become passive followers. The present shape of our politics needs passive citizenry.

Those who rule seem to believe that they are the only ones who have the well-being of the nation at heart; everyone else who presents how our nation could be different or greater is seen as against order and therefore agents of chaos. The psychological warfare department of the Officialdom has been working so hard to establish this. Instead of being guided by democratic ideals, vested interests guide “democracy” here. And the executive arm of the government always has the last say.

Some time ago, along with many other orientations to a just Malaysia, Charles Anthony and Nadarajah had suggested a future political agenda consisting of (a) a genuinely competitive electoral environment with critical reform of the electoral process, (b) promotion of direct democracy and removal of political middle-men, particularly brokers of the ethnic kind (c) expansion of public spaces for popular participation and engagement (d) well-institutionalised safeguards against the state’s misuse of power the citizens have given it (e) introduction of referendum and plebiscites into the Malaysian political culture (f) repealing of draconian legislation and (g) building of non-ethnic political framework based on trust and governed by a common destiny. Another kind of politics and Malaysia are possible.

Where to from here?

We need to collectively overcome ethnocracy, economism and executive supremacy in order to create an environment that can function as a social womb to nurture another Malaysia and a new generation of Malaysians. We need to break the unjust and unsustainable institutional matrix that we have built and entrapped ourselves and future generations. An alternative set of private and public institutions is urgently needed.

We need a dialogue-based multicultural and just Malaysia...an emotion that took root but was marginalised when this nation was struggling to be born. We urgently need a second Merdeka based on trust, hope and common destiny to recover that emotion and to take that path.

Part 1: Anthother Merdeka? Return of the repressed


DR M. NADARAJAH is a sociologist by training. He is Secretary of the Asian Communication Network (ACN), an inter-faith and inter-disciplinary social communication initiative, based in St John’s University, Bangkok. He belongs to the Asian Public Intellectuals (API) Community, a community of filmmakers, theatre people, song writers, poets, activists and academics working in Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Philippines and Japan for a better Asia. His work focuses on cultural and sustainability issues.