World Bank official Apurva Sanghi recently spoke of the five things we must know about Malaysia. It was a careful mix of both praise and criticism. Nothing new here.
However, what was puzzling was the suggestion that somehow, we were punching well above our weight. Really?
Our lived experience tells us we should be in a much better place than where we are now - politically, economically and socially.
Yes, comparisons with Singapore are not fair given that it is a city-state and a winner since 1819, made spectacularly successful by the genius and statecraft of its former prime minister Lee Kuan Yew.
So here are five things you must really know about Malaysia.
Lost opportunity
First, we would be a shining star in the world if only we had better leaders and more honest politicians. We have endured much at their hands. Mostly corrupt, often vainglorious and certainly self-serving, they squandered countless chances and innumerable opportunities. What a pity.
We must not forget that for the first two decades after independence, the ringgit traded closely with the Singapore dollar. And why not? We had tin, rubber, oil palm, petroleum and a vibrant small and medium enterprises sector. Well before that, Malaya in the 1920s and 30s was second only to modern Japan in its living standards.
And up to the 1980s, we and Singapore had the field to ourselves. The Marcoses had messed up the Philippines, and Indonesia was slowly finding its way out of the shambles of the Sukarno era that ended in 1966 after a military coup led by Suharto.
Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos were being bombed back to the stone ages by the mad duo of Kissinger and Nixon beginning on Dec 18, 1972 - the infamous Christmas bombings.
And coup-prone Thailand’s bars and brothels were crowded with GI Joes while once-rich Burma suffered the strongman rule of Ne Win, a sore loser.
At the Merdeka Stadium, we routinely thrashed the South Koreans in their ill-fitting football jerseys, while in hockey, athletics and badminton, we held our own against the best in Asia and the world.
The Mahathir era
The second thing you must really know is how much wealth and hope were destroyed in the “Mahathirian madness” of taking a leaf from former Chinese Communist Party chairperson Mao Zedong’s doomed Great Leap Forward.
The triumvirate of Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels and Vladimir Lenin Marx, Engels and Lenin were nudged aside, allowing the “Mahathir, Me and Myself” triumvirate to create a “Brave New World” in his image.
It did not take long for Crooked Crony Capitalism to become the faceless triumvirate of a political leadership that saw itself as world-beaters, epitomised by the empty cry of “Malaysia Boleh!” even as they brazenly siphoned more and more of the nation’s wealth into their personal bank accounts.
For 22 long years, former prime minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad was the “know-all” man. To his followers riding on his gravy train, he could effortlessly catch lightning and put it in a bottle long before we heard of solar panels and magic lanterns.
But he certainly knew how to rob Peter to pay Paul and pass it off as nation-building.
Looking back, his ideas of wealth creation and distribution are laughable: First, make some millionaires among his chosen people, and they in turn will serve as torch-bearers and beacons for his toiling masses under the new mantra of “To get rich is not only glorious, it is also patriotic.”
Today, it is bandied about that 14 million people have been taken out of poverty since the 1960s. Where have they been taken out to? To the B40, of course.
Not surprisingly, the latest statistics of three million households in this category work out to some 15 million people waiting anxiously for handouts. It didn’t end there.
We churn out graduates by lowering standards with each passing year. No pun intended. But do our graduates, doctorates included, have the maturity, thinking skills and knowledge to become thinkers, innovators, entrepreneurs and inventors? Or leaders who will help the nation find its place in a changing world?
Cartels, monopolies and offshore accounts
It brings us to the third thing you must really know. Owning valuable assets beats holding a job any day. Ask French economist Thomas Piketty. Ask the privileged and the connected few.
Whole chunks of our most valuable assets were corporatised in the name of racial fairness and equity, of transferring wealth from the haves to the have-nots. Then came the cartels, monopolies and the offshore accounts.
Assets once owned by the government for the common good are now held by top-dog politicians, their children, spouses and hangers-on.
“Corporate mafia” is a new term for an old game. Standard operating procedures and tender exercises, the smoke and mirrors of fixing a deal, are merely procedures on the easy road to the “Big Easy”, aka “The great senang”.
De-fanging the judiciary
Are the excesses of Mahathirian madness a thing of the past? Nah! We are still corrupt to the core, which brings us to the fourth thing you must really know.
Every strongman, every authoritarian leader and every dictator knows this truth: To have a free hand, you must first de-fang the judiciary.
Ours was not only de-fanged, but it was also decimated. Former lord president of the Federal Court Suffian Hashim held the view that it would take at least three decades for our judiciary to recover from this debacle of top judges being removed by Mahathir.
He wasn’t far off. Former chief justice Tengku Maimun Tuan Mat restored its voice recently, but it is not out of the woods yet.
The true heroes
The fifth thing you must really, really know is this: The true heroes of this country, the real pahlawan (warriors) are the common people from all walks of life and of all races and creeds. It is they who have kept this country going, toiling from dawn to dusk, paying their dues and expecting little in return.
These same men and women who never gave up the fight for a better Malaysia now fear that this country is once again falling back to its old ways, where citizens were set against citizens while powerful political elites and their cronies plotted and schemed to take for themselves what belongs to us.
We do not underestimate or misunderstand them, Sanghi. We need more press and fewer platitudes to highlight our efforts and our courage.
Perhaps this conclusion adds a sixth to the five things you must really know about Malaysia. - Mkini
MURALE PILLAI is a former GLC employee. He runs a logistics company.
The views expressed here are those of the author/contributor and do not necessarily represent the views of MMKtT.
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