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Thinking Allowed
Patriotism, gratitude and loyalty The Cardinal Virtues according to the Barisan Nasional Aliran Monthly 2003:9 Please support our work by buying a copy of our print publication, Aliran Monthly, from your nearest news-stand. Better still take out a subscription now. We also welcome donations.
Of late, newspapers and television news broadcasts have been full of calls by government ministers and officials for greater patriotism in the country. Malaysians, it seems, do not love Malaysia enough. To instil patriotism, our youths will now undergo a three month �national service� course. Quite what this course entails remains to be seen, but it is likely to consist of endless lectures on the proper meaning of patriotism. So what is the proper meaning of patriotism? In Louis de Bernieres� first novel, set in an unnamed civil war-torn Latin American country, there is a character called General Fuerte, commander of the country�s army. General Fuerte knows two types of patriotism: The patriotism of a man who loves his country and thus unflinchingly supports whatever his government does; and the patriotism of a man who loves his country, but also sees its failings, and wants to make it a better place. General Fuerte believes that his country�s problems stem from too many of the first type of patriot, and not enough of the second. It�s not hard to work out which type of patriotism the BN is trying to instil, and which other type might indeed make Malaysia a better place. �My country, right or wrong� was the patriotic cry of colonial England. The massacre of civilians in Amritsar? My country, right or wrong! The handing over to Stalin of Cassock refugees, who were promptly massacred? My country, right or wrong!
Patriotism in this country has a whole different meaning. Today, there are Malaysians who perform genuinely outstanding feats of endurance and perseverance, sailing round the world single-handedly and swimming the English Channel. Are we exhorted to emulate their levels of dedication and self-discipline, their desire to excel in their chosen area? No, we are exhorted to emulate their patriotism. Our universities are charged with winning Nobel prizes and other international accolades. Producing high-quality and innovative research is irrelevant � just get those prizes! This bizarre twisting of patriotism reaches its apogee in the laughable Malaysian Book of Records. Compared with the more rigorously documented Guinness Book of World Records, the oldest person in Malaysia is older than the oldest person in the world, go figure. How patriotic he must be to have lived so long! I myself am considering demonstrating my patriotism by submitting myself in the category �Tallest Person in Malaysia Born in April 1971 with a Name Beginning with G�. Satire aside, we must seriously think about what, exactly, patriotism is supposed to achieve. The tallest building in the world is one thing; would it not be more patriotic if every Malaysian were to strive to make themselves, and their country, a better place? Gratitude In December 2001, Kelantan Menteri Besar Nik Aziz Nik Mat complained that the federal government had delayed disbursement of its annual grant to the state government, causing the state government financial problems. The amount of the federal grant to state governments is stipulated in the Constitution, as is the date of its disbursement. One might thus feel that Nik Aziz had a right to complain. Not so, said umno liaison officer for Kelantan, Mustapha Mohamad. Indeed, short of complaining, �the pas-led government should be thankful for the grant as it had enabled the State administration to fulfil its responsibilities to the rakyat�. (NST, 18/12/2001) Mustapha�s retort seems bizarre in the extreme. The federal government is obliged to distribute this money to Kelantan, yet Mustapha feels that the state government should be grateful, even if it�s late. It�s a bit like a company director expecting his employees to be grateful for getting their wages late. Neither is it just the Kelantan state government that apparently owes its gratitude to the bn. Wearing his other hat as Advisor to the Finance Ministry, Mustapha has also claimed that all Malaysians should be grateful to the government for �benefits received� (NST, 27/10/2000). Mustapha�s comments are not occasional faux pas, nor the raving of a maverick politician. They are symptomatic of an emerging political discourse in the country: The politics of gratitude. The basic principle of democracy is that ultimate sovereignty � that is the right to wield political power � lies with the people. In most democracies, the government thus expresses gratitude to the people for allowing it to govern. Here in Malaysia, however, the reverse is true. Instead, the government exhorts the people to be grateful to it. Mustapha is not the only government figure urging us to greater gratitude towards the government. From municipal council members up to the DPM and the PM himself, the message is clear: We owe what we have to the government, and we should express our gratitude in the most obsequious terms. What, it might be asked, is wrong with gratitude? Gratitude is, of course, a virtue. Many of us are grateful to our parents, to our God, to the person in the street who gives us directions when we are lost. So why should we not be grateful to the government? There is nothing wrong with gratitude for good governance. The problem here is the way in which the BN regime demands gratitude and in doing so tries to inculcate certain attitudes and unquestioning loyalties in the rakyat. To illustrate my point, consider this comment from Noh Omar, parliamentary secretary in the Prime Minister�s Department: �The Opposition is educating the young not to be thankful for the things done for them, claiming that it is the duty of the Government to do so. If this not corrected, then in the future we will have a generation who feels that parents should not be thanked for their deeds as it is their responsibility to raise their children.� (NST, 8 March 2000) This comment, although from a relatively junior member of the government, is notable in that it conveys the essence of the government�s discourse on gratitude. Noh makes it clear that the government does not consider itself as having any �duty� towards the people � such an idea is the scurrilous propaganda of the opposition. Instead, the government considers itself as the �parent� who has to �raise� us, the rakyat. Such a view of themselves is common amongst Third World dictators and this is the essence of the government�s discourse on gratitude. Gratitude means the shirking of the government�s responsibilities towards the rakyat. Development is also apparently down to the benevolence of the government. The fact that billions of ringgit of public money is poured into supporting UMNO politicians� ailing cronies is irrelevant. The fact that disastrous industrialisation programmes such as HICOM and the �e-village� have robbed the country of further billions is irrelevant. The fact that every cent that the government spends has come from our pockets in the form of taxation is irrelevant. Not only should we apparently be grateful to the government for what it does, we should be grateful for what it doesn�t do. According to Dr Fong Chan Ong, �the people should be grateful to the Government for ensuring their freedom of speech and religion and the independence to practise their own cultures and traditions� (NST, 24 May 1997). Fong seems to forget that such freedoms are enshrined in the Constitution � the ultimate law of the land, which legally supersedes any minister or government that might come or go, including Fong and even the BN. Presumably, then, we should be grateful to the government for not contravening the Constitution. Dr Mahathir himself has provided the most torturous epitome of BN reasoning on who owes gratitude for what the government has not done. The opposition, he says, should be grateful to the government because the government has maintained the democratic system that allows them to exist. Drs Fong and Mahathir concur. We should be grateful to the government because it hasn�t robbed us of all our fundamental human rights and because it hasn�t completely destroyed the democratic system that validates its own continued rule. Loyalty And so finally, we turn to the last of the cardinal virtues according to the BN: Loyalty. Academics and political commentators alike have often commented on the �tradition of loyalty� in Malaysia, dating back to the Melaka Sultanate and the �social contract� whereby the Sultan was given unconditional authority and loyalty on condition that he abided by a few simple rules, including not publicly humiliating his officials. (Ring any bells?) As a foundation for demanding unquestioning loyalty today, however, the Melaka tradition is doubly flawed. Firstly, not all Malaysians trace their cultural heritage to the Melaka Sultanate. Even amongst the Malays, there are many who feel greater kinship with the ancient kingdoms of Pattani than Melaka. Secondly, the bottom line is that the Melaka tradition, as epitomised in the Hikayat Hang Tuah, simply does not promote unquestioning loyalty. The beauty of the tale of Hang Tuah and Hang Jebat is its moral ambiguity: Is Hang Tuah really the hero, or is it Hang Jebat? As a source for helping our children think through issues of morality and loyalty, there is surely no better candidate than the Hikayat Hang Tuah. To bastardise it into a simplistic tale of �goodness and loyalty� (Tuah) against �disloyalty� (Jebat) is to destroy the very substance that makes the legend so appealing. Of course, demands for loyalty to the head of state are the norm in monarchies and republics across the world, particularly amongst the armed forces. What is interesting here in Malaysia, however, is the way in which demands for loyalty to the monarch have been transferred into demands for loyalty to the BN government. The transfer of loyalty from the Rulers to the government is well demonstrated if we compare the way loyalty is demanded in the Rukunegara with the treatment of loyalty in Mahathir�s �Vision 2020�. These two documents are comparable in that they both represent general, idealistic frameworks for development (both social and economic), which are supposed to guide the creation and implementation of more specific policy. The Rukunegara, which was devised following the 1969 racial riots, pledges �Loyalty to King and Country: The loyalty that is expected of every citizen is that he must be faithful and bear true allegiance to His Majesty the Yang di-Pertuan Agong� and to the flag. Vision 2020, however, which presents nine �central strategic challenges� for Malaysia, deals with the issue of loyalty as follows: �The first of these challenges is the challenge of establishing a united Malaysian nation� with political loyalty and dedication to the nation.� Somewhere along the line, �loyalty to the King� in the early 1970s has been transformed into �political loyalty� in the 1990s. �Political loyalty� is an ambiguous phrase, but with the King generally considered to be above �politics�, it can only really mean loyalty to the BN government. In the BN regime�s modern reimagining of the Melaka contract, responsibility and political awareness are required of the masses, but this is to be exercised through loyalty and trust in the leaders. An interesting insight into the mechanisms of this reinvented tradition is given in the preface to Hasan Hamzah�s obsequiously loyal biography of �Mahathir: Great Malaysian Hero�: The Malaysian should not ask whether or not �Dr. Mahathir is doing the right thing,�... Those who condemn should first look deep inside of themselves. Are you better?... I�m not saying Dr. Mahathir has �done nothing wrong.� But, as nobody can avoid not making a mistake [sic], I think Dr. Mahathir is �our great leader,� who is working towards a greater Malaysia. Patriotism, gratitude and loyalty for the BN, it seems, all boil down to the same thing. As Mahathir might himself say, paraphrasing his favourite song: My way, right or wrong! G Lim
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What is interesting here in Malaysia, however, is the way in which demands for loyalty to the monarch have been transferred into demands for loyalty to the BN government.
