BN’s neutralism at a time of moral crisis

The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who in times of great moral crisis maintain their neutrality, said the poet Dante Alighieri.

This quotation is not meant as criticism of the stance taken by Barisan Nasional (BN) to remain non-aligned or neutral in the current stalemate between contending coalitions, Pakatan Harapan and Perikatan Nasional, for the right to rule the country.

In the first place, BN may think the present deadlock is not on the order of a moral crisis.

They might argue the electorate got what it deserved in not choosing BN, experienced wielders of federal power who though evidently flawed, is still preferable to upstarts Harapan and PN, when it comes to governing the country.

In this view, BN might view that a period of uncertainty will help clarify matters in voters’ minds.

“Depend upon it,” said Dr Samuel Johnson, “that if a man knows he’s going to hang in two weeks’ time, it concentrates the mind wonderfully.”

BN may well think that the country will not be badly off in the interregnum between an equivocal election result and emplacement of a government in Putrajaya.

But economic pundits hold that the longer the hiatus lasts, the more jittery would be the confidence of investors. And that is not a good thing for a trading nation like Malaysia.

Not especially when there are rosy hues to the trade figures recorded in the third quarter of this year, a robust sign of recovery for an economy rendered anaemic by the ravages of Covid-19 in the past two years.

Truth to tell, as a stance neutralism has a dubious reputation in the annals of national and global affairs.

“Neutralism,” in the stentorian tones of John Forster Dulles, “is immoral.”

By framing the conflict between the communist bloc and the free world in moral terms, President Dwight D Eisenhower’s secretary of state tried to lecture India’s Jawaharlal Nehru, Yugoslavia’s Josip Broz Tito and Egypt’s Gamal Abdel Nasser into abandoning their non-aligned stance in the Cold War.

These three leaders saw their stance of non-alignment as helping to reduce tensions between both blocs and as contributing to world peace.

The trio felt that nothing could be more self-blinding than to frame the free world vs communist bloc conflict in moral terms.

But the Dulles crowd argued that though their stance was not all virtuous, the need to take a stand - and action - in the face of evil was imperative.

They held with Goethe that “conscience was a virtue of observers, not of agents of action.”

One had to act even when the side one is taking is not all good.

Equal repugnance?

This activist stance, even in the face of the moral ambiguity of people whom one is siding with, was preferable to being neutral.

One could draw up an inventory of the cases where a neutralist position had helped protagonists in conflict-ridden situations, just as one could list the cases where it has not helped.

Nehru discovered the bitter truth of the latter when his pleadings against China’s border invasion of India in 1962 did not nudge friends Tito and Nasser from a stance of sympathy to moral denunciation of China’s action.

More often than not, a stance of neutralism, when it ignores or slights the underlying moral issues extant, is a stance that boomerangs on its protagonists.

Umno-BN has chosen a stance of neutralism in the contention between Harapan and PN for the right to take over Putrajaya.

In a way it is saying there is nothing for them to choose from; both are adversaries of equal repugnance.

The philosopher Blaise Pascal held that thought makes the whole dignity of man. Therefore, he elaborated, endeavour to think well, for that is the only morality.

No doubt, Umno-BN would beg to disagree. - Mkini

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TERENCE NETTO is a journalist with half a century's experience.

The views expressed here are those of the author/contributor and do not necessarily represent the views of MMKtT.