50 Posts to Independence: #30 The Dream of My Father

Thanks to MENJ who tagged me to write the 30th entry on 50 Posts to Independence started by Nizam Bashir. I have been reading a few of the posts before this, and it’s an honour to be part of the meme. I’m tagging Idlan to write the 29th entry. And I apologise in advance for the length, but its something close to my heart.

When I was young, many of my friends were amazed how old my father was. I was the few Generation M who had both parents born before Merdeka. In fact, both of my parents were born before the Second World War. I remember my parents telling me what it was like to sing God Save the King (and later Queen) at school, alongside Selamat Sultan. My mother in fact joined in the celebrations for Merdeka as her family was in KL to send her elder brother to further his studies.

Like many post-NEP Malays, I was a first generation middle class city kid. My father – who was 52 when I was born came from a petit bourgeois family in Kota Bharu, belonging to a long line of religious scholars and small-scale farmers. Like many of his family members, he began his formal education in an Arab school, and was set to continue his studies in the Middle East like his father, grandfather and uncles. But his father’s lack of means meant that he could not follow the same path, and upon the advice of his uncle, he switched to English stream at Sultan Ismail College. He was already 16 then, so they reported that his birth certificate was lost and registered that he was only 13.

He remembered learning more about War of the Roses and Queen Elizabeth I rather than about the Malaccan Sultanate. Local history tend to be dated by the ‘discovery’ of Malaya by the West. In spite of that as well as the challenge of switching to English stream at a late age, my father worked hard and excelled. He was shortlisted to go to sixth form, which was not available in Kelantan at that time. He ended up in Victoria School, Singapore and stayed at the residence of Mansor Adabi’s family, who was married and then separated from Natrah Maarof / Maria Hertogh in the huge controversy in the early 1950s. Later my father was among a small number of Malays who managed to get a place in the University of Malaya, Singapore to read history.

Upon graduation, like many of his peers, my father joined the civil service to shape a nascent nation. The civil service was the most popular job at that time, and my father began a three-decade career in bureaucracy. When the racial riots erupted on 13 May 1969, my father was already married, with a young family living in Kuala Lumpur. Until today he would recall vividly the sense of fear and panic that engulfed Malaysia. “The British gave us ten years before we would collapse amidst racial turmoil,” my father would frequently recall. “They were wrong by only two years.”

Along with many young Malays at that time, my father was sympathetic to the Young Turks in UMNO: Dr. Mahathir Mohammad, Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah and Musa Hitam (who was my father’s peer in UM). My father believed that the government was not doing enough to elevate the status of the Malays, which resulted in a lot of dissatisfaction and disgruntlement not only among the Malay grassroots, but among the small Malay middle class. When Tun Razak decided to implement the NEP, my father passionately embraced it and was at the forefront of its implementation. Until this day he has fond recollections of Tun Razak’s energy, drive and leadership in a mission to provide dignity to his people.

I remember a Chinese friend who once worked as a political aide to an UMNO politician who remarked that this generation – the clique that formulated and implemented the NEP – while believing that the policy was necessary, also understood that it was temporary. They knew that it was a compromise, and that it could not go on forever. Furthermore their thinking was shaped by their relatively open education and environment.

My father personified the unique ideals of this generation when he – hailing from a family of Muslim religious scholars and noted for his strong Malay (or even Kelantanese) views – sent all his children to Christian missionary schools. Three of my eldest sisters went to BBGS; the fourth was educated in Assunta while I studied at La Salle PJ for my primary education. His reasoning was simple: he understood the strong esprit de corps fostered by missionary schools as well as their multiracial nature. “It’s dangerous to have them grow up as Malaysians without knowing students from other races and religions.” Earlier, as a roommate to Ramon Navaratnam (now Tan Sri) in UM, my father impressed him due to the fact that while he was a rare breed of Malays in university who faithfully observed his religious requirements, he wanted to do so without making his non-Muslim roommate uncomfortable, even if just a bit.

My father retired in 1988, two years before the NEP was supposed to end. It formally did, but its ideals and objectives were perpetuated under a different name, while its abuse and misuse began to grow. The excesses of the Operasi Lalang and the Judicial Crisis of 1987 had probably made him further disillusioned with the government. Tuan Guru Nik Aziz visited our home just prior to his retirement, and offered him to run in Kelantan to provide the PAS government with a man who understood the government. My father was keen, but my mother was not. My father took a few advisory positions and joined the board of a GLC scholarship foundation, in recognition to his role in the earliest years of our scholarship policy. It was the typical path of a senior civil servant pensioner.

Ten years later, Reformasi erupted. At that time both of my parents – including my previously apolitical mother – flocked to the movement, even before I was truly convinced. He stopped buying the New Straits Times out of disgust and faithfully attended various Opposition programs. A pensioner who had passed his opportunity to enter politics, it was left to his young brothers who would be active players in the movement (one contested in the 1999 election, the other in the 2004 election), and he faithfully supported their endeavour.

I remember at this point of time, as I was grappling what Reformasi meant to me, that I debated with my father on the NEP. Our generation gap was after all bigger than most, in terms of time, background and upbringing. A brash young man then, fiercely idealistic, I believed that the policy was wrong – both from the perspective of Islam and social justice – in that it focused on race, instead of needs. I recalled how the Muslim rule in Andalucia as well as Salonica had promoted a welcoming, tolerant and meritocratic culture that nurtured its Golden age, while Muslims in this modern day and age dream of creating ghettoes in the West and closed, oppressive cultures back home. My father, coming from a different perspective, engaged me in conversations on why he and his generation felt that the policy was necessary.

In fact, while the UMNO Youth continue to focus on the issue of corporate equity, we overlook that the NEP’s greatest success was the creation of a Malay middle class. We could and should be proud of that. But it is indeed a tragedy when the children of the NEP continue to believe, and continue to promote the belief, that Malays will need crutches forever to succeed. The NEP was created not for the beneficiaries’ own children to continue being beneficiaries, but so that they could independently hold their own. That is the only way we can sustain, and eventually improve on our previous achievements. Yet we have UMNO Youth leaders trumpeting the need to defend the 30% equity policy when this only benefits certain Malay elites without solving the basic problems of the pakciks and makciks in the kampungs.

A close friend of mine would perhaps best illustrate the success story, and the subsequent tragedy of the NEP. His parents were pioneer Felda settlers, and he was the last of ten children. He was educated in a boarding school, received 10A1s, and with it, a scholarship overseas. He was the pride of his family, but when he came home, he was cocooned in a GLC job that made a mockery of his abilities and qualification. As he lamented, he remarked how a policy that was supposed to help the Malays is now holding them back.

My father would watch in horror on how the debate on the NEP developed in a way which he did not envision when they were working on its blueprint thirty years ago. These young post-NEP UMNO leaders take the NEP for granted, thinking that the one way forward is to cling to it forever. The most vocal Malays are not the self-confident, hardworking Malays he dreamt of, but populist demagogues. The dangers are further multiplied by the fact that many are now educated in a system that no longer promotes free inquiry and critical thinking. The NEP has now turned into a shibboleth, a sacred cow, as we slide into mediocrity. Questioning it will not only be deemed ungrateful, but is regarded as almost blasphemous. As they continue to focus their energies on defending the perpetuation of this policy, bigger issues that the country needs to deal with are swept under the carpet, waiting to explode and haunt us along with tensions created by the abuse of the policy in the future.

Now, one who has turned into one of the staunchest advocates of this policy is an Oxford graduate who was educated in overseas schools from a young age. One would expect that he would be the last person to play this game, and indeed at the beginning he courted those who believed that he would eventually advocate a removal of crutches from the Malay mentality. Now, he argues silently to his liberal friends, this is how the reality of how the game is played, this is what the Malay grassroots like to hear. He whispers how recent polls have proven him right.

But this is only because he and his peers continue to take a condescending tone to the Malay crowd, thinking that the politics of the “lowest common denominator” is what they really want. Yet I’ve seen how when we take a different argument to the simple Malay kampung folk, and argue about it from the point of common sense fairness and decency, they would readily agree. In the Malay heartland, a politician asked 30,000 of them: “Do you think it’s fair that a 10A1 Chinese son of a rubber tapper to be excluded from the choice of his choice in a local university, whereas a 7As Malay son of a Datuk gets in?”, they all shook their heads in disapproval at the injustice of a policy implemented in their name.

I believe that when we look at the NEP on the 50th anniversary of Merdeka, we need to remember the following pertinent points. First, the NEP was not part of the Social Contract that led to our independence, but was an extension of it enacted more then a decade onwards. Second, the NEP emerged in a time when the zeitgeist was big government and protected markets; now we have to deal with a globalised world of small government and liberalised markets. Third, the NEP was necessary, but temporary. This is crucial: many Malaysians (not just Malays) believed the necessity of the NEP when it was formulated; but are now wary, in the words of one bright Malay professional, “that the goalposts are being moved again and again.” Fourth, and the most important point is that the NEP was created when a Malay middle class was almost non-existent, when the commanding heights of the economy was entirely out of Malay hands. If we continue to believe that Malays need affirmative action as a birthright due to race, not socio-economic conditions; then we’re condemning the Malays to be genetically inferior. Even Tun Dr. Mahathir, who articulated this view in the Malay Dilemma, subsequently withdrew it. I believe this thesis, as attractive as it is, is unproven whether from a scientific, or Islamic perspective.

Yet it is important to note that those who want it reformed or replaced must understand the fear of the Malays who have been fed that they’re eternally dependant on it for their survival. They too must reach out and prove to these masses that if they want the public sector to be more inclusive to them, the private sector must be more inclusive to the Malays. If they want talent and merit to be appreciated, it must be balanced with compassion to those at the bottom of the social ladder. They must not give up, stop to care or just pack their bags and leave; but continue to contribute to the struggle to make Malaysia better for those who do not have that choice of leaving the country. Both its staunch critics and fervent defenders must understand the context of its birth; the compromises that was necessary and now, the consequence of continuing the policy into the future.

Otherwise, I fear what and where Malaysia would be if we continue to slide into this racial zero sum game when we celebrate our centenary on 31 August 2057: when I will be (God willing) 75 just like my father today.