Where are we heading?

By Bunga Pakma

Who of you has read Melville’s great novel Moby Dick? It is not an impertinence to connect this book with Borneo. The Pequod’s cruise took her by the coast of Sarawak. A turtle-egg gatherer on Talang-Talang might have seen her hull-down in the offing.

In chapter 124 Capt. Ahab notes something amiss. He demands what course the helmsman is steering. The man at the tiller replies “East-sou-east,” and yet the sun is rising over the ship’s stern.

It proves that the strong electrical fields of a storm the night before have turned the compass, that is, reversed the poles. In such a case, one easily corrects the transposition by sailing the exact opposite direction from which the compass reads. The narrator, Ishmael, takes the opportunity to describe a more serious case:

…In instances where the lightning has actually struck the vessel, so as to smite down some of the spars and rigging, the effect upon the needle has at times been still more fatal; all its loadstone virtue being annihilated, so that the before magnetic steel was of no more use than an old wife’s knitting needle… [T]he needle never again, of itself, recovers the original virtue thus marred or lost; and if the binnacle compasses be affected, the same fate reaches all the others that may be in the ship; even were the lowermost one inserted into the kelson.

In retracing history, I had brought myself to a what I considered an adequate understanding of how Sarawak was set on its course 40 years ago, and I ended my last piece in HU with the observation that since the installation of the Melanau dynasty, nothing significant has changed.

These past two weeks I have been searching for a way to make sense of what then appeared to me as stasis, and link it to the most recent events. As I sifted through the comments that passed through my mind, I could find nothing that satisfied me. It’s the same old, same old, for all the commotion in the public world, nothing was moving anywhere. Politicians squabble, court cases and inquiries grind on endlessly. I felt myself reaching for a metaphor, and what I grasped was the trite commonplace of “traffic jam” and “gridlock.” These signify “getting nowhere slowly” in a way we all understand in our bowels.

Then my subconscious reminded me of Moby Dick and I had to admit that we as Malaysians are moving. Sarawak’s past 40 years has been one long, smooth, sure slide into ever vaster destruction of nature and Sarawak society. We can now also see where Sarawak’s ship of state is headed, towards the complete stripping of the state’s resources and the total impoverishment of Sarawak’s people.

One person had a compass that worked, and he has lead us to this end.

I wonder whether his compass has not been knocked galley-west. I wonder whether the violent force-fields that have risen from the storms of competing political and personal interests haven’t demagnetized all our moral compasses. Any move in one direction is blocked by forces that turn it in the opposite direction.

Recent events offer a few examples. A Dayak kid in Kuching brings pork and rice to school for lunch and is caned by a teacher, contrary to law and all notions of decency. When those who uphold this flagrant bigoted action have their arguments confuted, some YB claims that the boy’s father is a Muslim. That should be easy enough establish, and so far nobody has done it. The YB dropped this allegation simply to create maximum confusion in a clear-cut moral issue.

The Federal Court is using every means to avoid ruling on the status of minors claimed to have been converted to Islam. What are we, the rakyat, supposed to believe are our rights in such cases? The court will not make a decision.

Finally, Zaid’s quarrel with the PRK leadership and acrimonious exit from the party. Kua Kia Soong recently commented in Malaysiakini that for all he has heard about “vision” from Zaid and other PRK politicians, he has yet to told what the substance of that “vision” is. Six months ago Zaid was a martyr to principles and a champion of the people. Now he looks miffed because, like any garden-variety politician, he wanted to be Big Chief and couldn’t. How do we tell which of these opposites is the North Pole that attracts him?

All of these people have their own interests, hence their own courses. We, the rakyat, cannot safely plot a course towards our goals because, regardless of what politicians tell us, they are careful to keep their real motives, opinions, desires and fears deeply hidden.

In countries with a mature democratic culture, crackpots and extremists have a hearing. The public knows how the forces of the political sphere are arrayed. If a politician were to come out openly and state that eating of pork should be strictly banned in Malaysia, he would be sincerely stating the wishes of a certain group with strong feelings. In a mature democracy, such a crackpot would be heard—and then he’d have to deal with the laughter and disdain—and serious debate—which his words aroused.

I have taken a religious stance as my example. Religion is, however, only one of the many important issues officially judged to be so “sensitive” that the powers that be taboo their discussion. Issues are not “sensitive.” People are the creatures who take offence at this or that. A small number of people are far more prone to take offence than most of us, and public debate in Malaysia is forced into a stifling, obscurantist and hypocritical “propriety” simply to please this timid and unenlightened minority.

So far the Malaysian public has put up much irritation from the narrow-minded, and responded generally with restraint and dignity. With so little transparency everywhere—with so little clue as to the directions we are being made to take—I don’t fear so much for civil disorder as for moral anarchy.

courtesy of Hornbill Unleashed