Keeping the balance pays off
By Prof. Dr. Shamsul Amri BaharuddinPublished in The Star (FOCUS: Thoughts for the 21
st
Century) 7th May 2000 (p.20).
Both in the popular and academic idiom, Malaysia has been called “plural society”.It simply means Malaysia is a society where different ethnic group lives side by sidein their separate enclaves and are involved in different economic activities butrarely interact except, literally, at the market place.Malaysia is instead a multi-ethnic society. It is one in which the different ethnicgroups not only interact at the marketplace but in almost all avenues of social life.Malaysia’s multi-ethnic society therefore is characterized by an ever-present andever-evolving pluralism, indeed positive and creative one. That pluralism is framed within a set of social structures that have evolved andinstituted within the context of our social and natural history.For instance, there exist a range of social divisions within Malaysian society; ethnic,sub-ethnic, regional class, linguistic, gender, demographic and so on. Each has apositive and negative potential to contribute towards the maintenance of thecountry’s social stability. There is an obvious presence and co-existence of different societal forms - from thehunter-gatherer type found around the orang asli group to the post-moderncorporate high society in urban Kuala Lumpur – indeed by an astonishing range byany standard.Such social structures are bound to create contradiction and tensions. It is nosurprise that some describe the social condition in Malaysia as being in the “state of stable tension”.Perhaps it is useful to recount and reflect not only how we began as a plural societyand evolve into a multi-ethnic society but also how a set of enduring values andstrengths have come to underpin this successful transition. The plural society is the result of colonial construction, especially after the Britishimported indentured labor, since late 19th century, from south China and SouthIndia. That the major ethnic groups – Malay, Chinese and Indian – were able to survivewithin their own social and cultural spheres was the result of the British divide-and-rule policy, which included administrative, educational, land and labor policies thatensured the ethnically-divisive pattern survived, thus safeguarding British economicand political interests. The British rule was not unchallenged. There were the nationalist, the tradeunionist, and renegade colonial officers.
It, however, managed to keep a relatively peaceful and stable society through theimplementation of coercion rules, discouraging the formation of across ethnicgroups alliances, such as the multi-ethnic and multi-class trade unions, andpursuing a highly ethicized educational policy in the form of vernacular primaryschool system.It is within this important historical-conceptual development that we have tocontextualise the bitter experience of the Second World War and the JapaneseOccupation, an experience that forced the locals to rethink about the past and thefuture.For instance the indigenous and the immigrant population came to realise that the
orang puteh
(literally white man) was not invincible. The popular image was that theBritish army in armoured cars was humbled by the Japanese army on bicycles.Also, the pro-indigenous nationalist policy of the Japanese allowed some Malays, ina limited way, a taste of power and to have its own little political space. Many of thelocal Chinese were instead massacred by the Japanese who had just won the war inManchuria. It was no surprise than that the British won the Chinese over to providea strong anti-Japanese movement. The downside of the Japanese occupation on inter-ethnic relationship, especially of the Sino-Malay, was that it transformed the nature of the relationship from that of a“peaceful difference” to an “armed confrontation”. The latter erupted immediately after the Japanese surrendered to the British. Soonafter the British imposed military rule in Malaya and it lasted until 1960, first as theBritish Military Administration and later the emergency 1948 – 1960.It was in the first 15 years (1945 – 1960) after the war that the plural societyinvented by the British was slowly reshaped, gradually moving towards multi-ethnicformation. This time for a different reason – largely economic but not entirely. The efforts at the Nation-Making in Malaysia began in earnest through an endlessseries of bargaining between the different ethnic groups in Malaysia.In 1948, the federation of Malaya Agreement was instituted which became thefuture basis of Malaysia’s enduring political framework, that is, federalism. The 3 central key features of the reinvention of Malaysia’s plural society and itssubsequent transformation into a multi-ethnic nation-state were ethnic bargaining,development planning, and security. The introduction of modern electoral politics, where ethnic based parties wereallowed to be formed and to contest in open, democratic elections but as coalitionpartners, was the central pillar of the “ethnic bargaining” process. The subsequentsuccessfully drawing-up of the Constitution of post-colonial Malaysia was indeed themost significant outcome of the bargain.
Indeed; the Malaysian Constitution, with all his imperfections, has been perceivedpopularly by many as the “social-contract” that binds all the social groups.In the economic sphere, the British launched the first five-year plan, the DraftDevelopment 1950-1955, not only as an effort to organize and control publicspending and resource allocation but also as a platform where an economic bargainbetween the ethnic communities could be struck in the most amicable way. To ensure economic stability, security became critical. The emergency in the 1948 –1960 set the standards. Many rules and regulations were introduced. The introduction of the identity card, the Internal Security Act and other rules wereoriginally meant to safeguard national security. But it is also obvious to everyonethat the meaning of national security could be redefined by the powers-that-be.Nonetheless, these three key elements – ethnic bargaining, development planningand security – became the enduring values and strengths as well as basis of theframework for multi-ethnic Malaysia. The stiffest test to this framework happened during the May 1969 riots in KualaLumpur. The contents of the three key elements were reconstituted once again.For instance the National Consultative Council with multi-ethnic representation wasimmediately formed after the riot. The Rukunegara, an official ideology of nationalunity, was also created as a guide for all Malaysians. The Pro-Malay affirmative action policy called the New Economic Policy (1971-1990)was introduced to bridge the economic gap between the bumiputera and the non-bumi-bumiputera. The NEP has largely been a success even though not everyone was pleased,especially when Malaysia was hit by the economic crisis in the mid 1980s, which ledto the reorientation of the economy from that of agriculture dependent toindustrialization-driven. This work well for Malaysian for nearly a decade when it experienced an annual8+% growth rate, This occurred within the framework of the new NationalDevelopment Plan (NDP), introduced in 1991, that replaced the NEP.Prior to the NDP’s introduction, Prime Minister Datuk Seri Dr. Mahathir Mohamad,launched in 1991, arguably, the most innovative ever strategy towards fosteringnational unity.It was “Vision 2020”, in which he stated that the creation of a “united Malaysiannation”, or Bangsa Malaysia, is a pre-requisite to Malaysia’s ambition of becoming adeveloped, industrial nation by 2020.When the world financial crisis struck Malaysia in July 1997, the Government formeda National Economic Action Council consisting of representatives from the public
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Keeping the Balance Pays Off
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