Malaysiakini: Pakatan Rakyat ready to rule? by Azly Rahman

Pakatan Rakyat ready to rule?

- by Azly Rahman
Malaysiakini: Dec 20, 2010

Just do it.” – Nike slogan.

As a disinterested and apolitical analyst of Malaysian politics I believe that for the good of all Malaysians, democracy needs renewal, either through evolution or revolution all through its inevitable march towards its final solution. It is not political philosophy that is at issue here but the people that translates it into practice.

Except for the allegedly orchestrated bloody racial riots of May 13 1969, Malaysia is fortunate to have seen peaceful stages of evolution although her prime ministers hailed from the bourgeoisie-class of hybridised Malays helming the race-based party that has no clear ideology; a party that is losing its effect in rallying the Malay electorate due to its own poor understanding of the meaning of nationalism and cosmopolitanism in an age of cybernetics and globalisation.

Is the death of Malaysia’s National Front or the Barisan Nasional near? Can Malaysian politics be “gentlemanly” or borrowing Kung Fu Tze’s word for gentleman, “Chuan tze” enough for the 50-year race-based coalition regime to give way for a coalition of multiculturalists such as Pakatan Rakyat to rule for the next 50 years? Are Malaysians ready enough for this gentlemanly act that will give meaning to the evolutionary democracy Malaysian-styled?

Perhaps the nation is ready. An era awaits no nation. It only needs to be cemented by political will.

A historical juncture
We have come to a historical juncture in which the debate between the hegemonising nationalism of one race is giving way for an emerging amalgamated cosmopolitanism of many races. America of the 100-years-ago Teddy Roosevelt era gave way to the America of Barack Obama; the idea of a WASP (white anglo-saxon protestant) America has succumbed to the global hip-hop Obama’s America in which the hyphenated, hybridised, and heteroglossic form of Americanism is prevailing.

While the current regime of the National Front continues to insist on its Machiavellian hypocrisy in its push for a Malay-centric Malaysia amidst trumpeting its 1Malayisa slogan, the voices of the subaltern of a generation of hyphenated and hybridised Malaysians fed up by cliché, slogans, and double-speak are coming out in the open voicing their support for a Malaysian Malaysia that demands for all the rights accorded them in the constitution.

While the intensity of the hypocrisy of the ultra-nationalist sentimentality intensifies, in the form of ideologically-ridiculous village/kampong-Malay type of organisations such Perkasa and Pekida continue to make headline news in ultra-Malay nationalistic-tabloidic publications, voices of multicultural reason calling for political change becomes louder.

The younger generation are Malaysia’s global hip-hop Obama generation of the salad bowl/rojak bowl Malaysia, wanting to make changes so that their generation will not become victim to race-based discrimination left as a truncated historical legacy and so that they will not have to become a victim of the sins of their grandfathers.

Enter the Pakatan Rakyat as an emerging powerful force not only as a check and balance to Malaysia’s outdatedly-ideologised and romanticised race-based coalition party, with the waning of the effects of Mahathirism and Samy-Velluism or Ling Liong Sik-ism – a tripartite of truncated political-tribalism.

Enter Pakatan Rakyat as a viable force for the most exciting general election Malaysia will ever see; a coalition of the willing in the Malaysian political scene that will willing to be scrutinised for its transparency, efficiency, and accountability by the public fed-up of 50 years of governmental secrecy and massive corruption.

Un-allowables to be allowed?
As the general election approaches, Malaysians must choose wisely.

Do they want a government that will continue to build useless world’s tallest towers, allow fascistic NGOs spewing hatred to be left unreprimanded, allow corruption left un-chemotherapied, allow university students with enquiring minds to be stupefied, allow prices of basic necessities to rise uncontrollably, allow every by-election to be a fiesta of gift-giving and a beggar’s banquet of the already-corrupted voters, and a host of other un-allowables in a democratic society to be allowed?
Or do they want a fresh mandate and be able to keep the new-ly elected regime on its toes and free to boot it out when it fails to deliver or fails to be truthful in its act?

Philologically and semantically the word “National Front” contains both a falsehood and a truth. It is false as a claim of a “national” derived from “nation” derived from the French “nation” since Malaysia is not a nation. It is a salad bowl of diverse cultures and peoples who have surrendered their natural rights to the general will called the state; so that they may enjoy the rights as a citizens.

The truth of the “National Front” lies in the word “front” of which the 1955-born Alliance Party has been putting a “front” or a “façade” of democracy whilst abusing the ideological state apparatuses in pursuit of a corporate-capitalist-cronyistic developmentalist agenda. The slogans employed since its inception as that coalition have become bricks in the “fronting” wall of the National Front.

Are Malaysians ready to start a brand new day? Will they give Pakatan Rakyat a mandate? This is a question of survival – of a gentlemanly nature.