The changing mental landscape of the Malays?

Ariff Sabri

Dear Dato, I am 65 and have no stable job. I have been following your blog for quite sometimes and I find it informative, direct and dare to point out weaknesses in Umno, the government and the Malays in general.


My favourite newspapers used to be Utusan and the New Straits Times. I have stopped reading them. And now I also stop watching TV3 and RTM news. I just cannot stand it anymore.


I am not a member of any political party. As an ordinary citizen, like most other citizens of this country, I want a Malaysia which is progressive, modern and tolerant and most importantly a government which practices fairness, justice, etc. I want to see the government fight corruption whole-heartedly, practice transparency and stop cronyism.


The government says they are doing all these. What I can see is all talk and no action. I sometimes cannot comprehend the reasoning and logic given by judges, including those sitting in the highest court. DS Najib has been talking non-stop of everything that can bring good to the country. But I didn't see any result, as if he forget everything he said once he finished talking.


Our DPM has a brain more like a 17-year-old. And I didn’t hear anything worth listening from the Umno vice-presidents, and what more senior ministers, especially Rais Yatim. When I think of the country’s future I feel hopeless. I don’t think Umno, under the present leadership, can lead the country forward. I hope your writings will be more forceful and cover wider subjects especially on reinventing the Malay minds.


Actually, the Malays has nothing to be proud of. We have to understand and accept our weaknesses. We are lacking in so many things. As I see it, the Malays are going backward. The Malay mind has to be revamped and re-programmed. We cannot go forward using the current mind-set. What can people like Ibrahim Ali help to advance the Malays?


What happen to our government servants? Every decisions, however minor, has to be brought and decided by committees. What’s the use of sending them to Harvard, Cambridge, Oxford, etc. Where is the delegation of duties in the government? Even buying stationeries has to go to the committee.


You can see the quality of Malay university professors talking on TV talk shows. They talk to please their hosts and to protect their positions, rather than truth and facts.


Another sore point for me. When a problem occurs in our society most Malay leaders point out the lack of religious education as the main cause. To me this is too simplistic and sometimes irrelevant. But the Malays in general can accept this line of reasoning, which doesn’t requires THINKING.


Anything bad that happen in society is blamed on the lack of religious education. We know that society’s problems are very complex and cannot be solely attributed to religious factors. But the Malays seem to think that religion is everything, at least a large majority of them.

The above was a letter I received over the e-mail from a Malay gentleman. I have chosen not to reveal his name. What if this gentleman’s personal perceptions represent what the typical Malay now thinks of?

Our government needs to recognise this. The way we govern may no longer be sustainable. We govern with the belief that our population stays in villages, shut out from information waves and excluded from rising awareness.

So we think, we secure people’s blind trust when we give free houses to a certain number of applicants. For 100 people who got free houses, there may be 1000 people cursing the government why they didn’t get the houses. They blame the penghulu, they blame the ketua kampong, they blame the district office they blame the ADUN for skewed selection process. The sad truth is, they are probably right.

In a few years, most of our population will live in cities. Villages and kampongs change in character, as the old give way to the young. People develop different expectations.

Children who are better educated tell parents a different story. That’s reverse counsel. Parents aren’t equipped to tell children what’s good for society. Educated children at various levels tell parents what’s good for society – things like right to a decent living because government exists to manage the economy properly.

And standards of assessment such as what the above gentleman is saying – good governance, fair, free from cronyism, free from corruption. People no longer want to accept the arguments of “democracy tax” whereby democratic countries have to tolerate certain levels of inept bureaucracy, certain levels of nepotism and cronyism, certain levels of corruption. Why? Because people are better informed and this agitates and move them into action.

A government that sits stubbornly refusing to adapt to a changing political landscape, is simply pushed to the back seat. If Umno doesn’t adapt to these changes, it loses relevance.

How does the government reach out to the people? I was listening to the talk given by Robert Fisk yesterday. He was talking about Palestine mainly but he also touched about journalism in general. People all over the world, and not just the gentleman above no longer believe and even read mainstream journalists any more. They believed that mainstream journalists no longer report the truth. They just earn a living from the owners of newspapers.

So in Malaysia if the mainstream papers are actually owned by the government, eventually the government will not be believed. Bob Fisk was telling, tongue in cheek I hope, that you have to start a new newspaper.