The Malaysian Malaise Excerpt # 5: On My Commentaries

 The Malaysian Malaise:  Corrupt Leadership, Failing Institutions, And Intolerant Islamism

M. Bakri Musa © 2023

 

Excerpt #5:  On My Commentaries

This collection of essays covers the period from January 2020 to December 2022. That was also the era of the Covid-19 pandemic. Also included here are the transcripts of my four video conferences in 2021.

 

I began writing about contemporary Malaysian affairs during my first summer holidays in Canada back in 1964. Freed from the pressure of studies, I had time to reflect and write about my native land, stimulated by my fresh novel experience of studying and living in a more developed country.

 

            My first essay was on education, reflecting on my undergraduate experience, in particular how much more productive I was in my studying and how intellectually exhilarating was my freshman year. I attributed the first to the fact that the whole country was cool, conducive to intellectual pursuits. In hot humid Malaysia I had difficulty concentrating in the stifling heat. Air-conditioned rooms then were a scarce commodity. 

 

I must be on to something for decades later in an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Singapore’s Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew attributed the success of his city-state to air-conditioning. It enables those in the stifling tropics to compete with their counterparts in the temperate zone.

 

Six centuries earlier Ibn Khaldun wrote in his Muqaddimah (An Introduction . . . [To the Study of Civilization]) that human societies thrived only in the mid-latitude zones, as in the Mediterranean, which happens to be where Ibn Khaldun was born (Tunis). Khaldun was of the pre-Columbus era; thus he knew nothing of the Aztec and Khymer civilizations, both spawned in the tropics. 

 

            My intellectually exhilarating freshman year was forced upon me. I initially argued with my faculty adviser about having to take the humanities, in particular English Literature. My fear was that those courses would lower my grades, thus jeopardizing my acceptance into medical school, a common anxiety among would-be medical students. I could not be more wrong!

 

            At the end of that first summer, I wrote an article and mailed it to one Dr. Mahathir, then a backbencher Member of Parliament from Kubang Pasu, Kedah, in his capacity as Chairman of the Higher Education Commission. I urged him to set up a university in cool Cameron Highlands and to introduce American-style liberal education so others back in Malaysia could benefit from and experience what I had. 

 

Bless the man, he did reply. However, he did not comment on the merit of my ideas. Instead, perhaps concerned about my future, he suggested that I focus on my studies so I could return as a physician and be of greater use to Malaysia. He must had seen too many Malays sent abroad getting distracted and flunking out.

 

            The second summer I worked in a dairy farm operated by a co-operative entity. That prompted me to write the Chairman of MARA (the Malay acronym for the agency tasked with developing rural Malays) with copies to some big wigs in UMNO, the party purportedly championing Malay causes, describing the cooperative movement (of which Canada was a leader) as well as other government-sponsored entities to help rural farmers. Unlike Mahathir earlier, that head of MARA and those other characters did not even bother to reply.

 

            My non-academic writing took a hiatus for the next two decades, consumed during the first with medical school and preparing to be a surgeon; the second, establishing my professional career.

 

Then in the late 1980s, seeing so many government-sponsored students here in America attending third-rate universities and flunking out, that prompted me to write an extended commentary on how to better prepare these students for top-quality institutions. I sent that piece to both the Chairman of MARA and the Public Services Commission, the two main agencies that sponsored those students. 

 

After waiting for a response (none came of course), I submitted it to the New Straits Times. My gratitude to its then Editor-in-Chief Kadir Jassin for publishing that series and also my other subsequent essays. He was also kind enough to have a review of my first book, The Malay Dilemma Revisited:  Race Dynamics In Modern Malaysia(1999). Later, the newer The Sun Daily also carried many of my commentaries.

 

            The late 1990s saw the emergence of the Internet, and with that, on-line media outlets. Stephen Gans of Malaysiakini.com was kind enough to give me a column, “Seeing It My Way.” I also have my own blog (bakrimusa.blogspot.com) to serve both as an outlet as well as a repository for my commentaries. I am also indebted to Raja Petra Kamarudin and his wildly popular and controversial Malaysia Today website (mt.m2day.org), and the Honorable Member of Parliament Lim Kit Siang for carrying many of my essays on his blog. Raja Petra’s portal had gone through many iterations to keep ahead of Malaysian censors. I thank the publishers of “The Malaysian Insight” and “Free Malaysia Today” for publishing some of my commentaries.

 

            Later in 2013 through the efforts of Umar Zain and his colleagues at Suaris website (now defunct) I started writing in Malay. Writing and thinking out the whole exercise in Malay produces a far different result both in tone as well as meaning than merely translating into Malay my existing essays. However, as the Internet penetration among Malays was not high, I did not receive much feedback from readers to make the effort worthwhile. Besides, no Malay publications would accept my submissions.

 

            Back to my original proposal of a university in Cameron Highlands, when Mahathir became Prime Minister, this self-styled champion of Islam and Malay causes, instead approved the building of a casino there, the largest in the region!

 

            I have been blessed to have had such rich and unique experiences and I thank Allah for that. As per the teachings of my faith, a way to express that syukor (gratitude) is to share them. Writing is my way of doing that. 

 

            The triple blights of Malaysia today are corrupt, ineffective leadership; unbridled, oppressive Islamism; and deteriorating education system. Most of my essays are subsumed under the first two topics. I have only two on education, as I had earlier published two books exclusively on that topic:  An Education System Worthy of Malaysia (2003) and The Rot In Malaysian Education (2020).

 

Next:  Excerpt #6 (Last and Final):  Added Elements