TO CHANGE OR TO BE CHANGED

The nation is split in two. There are those who believe change is a possibility and must be supported at any cost, setting aside cynicism. So they go on marches, light candles, join fasts, and come out into the open against corruption and venality, knowing that in a society like ours there is always a price to be paid for dissent.

On the other hand, you have those basking in the eternal sunshine of the status quo. They are the privileged ones who back current power equations for they fear that change could subvert their cosy, comfortable world of give and take. They see the Hope brigade as a bunch of political upstarts anxious to break the queue. For them, men like Anna Hazare are dangerous. If he can emerge from nowhere, with no money, no patronage, no political party to back him, and yet win the support of millions of people, how will the status quo survive? What also disturbs them is that those who have set aside cynicism to raise the banner of hope are also spurning the typical political alignments of the past. They can’t be labelled any more.

So who are these new enemies of the State? No, they are not secret armies of the saffron Right. All attempts to prove that Anna Hazare has clandestine links with the RSS and the BJP have been laughed away. Nor can they be labelled, like Binayak Sen, as the ugly face of the radical Left. From a dangerous Naxalite, Sen has now cheerfully morphed into a new middle class hero after the Supreme Court sternly ticked off the State Government and set him free on bail. So who are these new Andolan junkies and what do they want to do? Stop all development? Subvert democracy? Derail our Parliamentary process? Hijack the political agenda? Or are they just dangerous blackmailers trying to sell us nonsensical ideas about social justice?

The argument of the cynics is simple. Where in the world has a nation progressed without corruption? Is the US graft-free? In fact, it has institutionalised graft and made lobbying on Capitol Hill a respectable profession. Is China graft-free? Go try and do business there. You will figure. Is Russia graft-free? Brazil? South Africa? If the other BRICS nations are not graft-free, why are we so anxious to sacrifice our scorching growth rate, our economic well being for such ridiculous and obsolete ideas that Anna Hazare stands for? You seriously expect a khadi clad, topiwallah, 72 year old Gandhian who has suddenly emerged from political obscurity to lead India into the 21st century? Whatever happened to our dream of building the new temples of modern India that Pandit Nehru dreamt of. What about more SEZs, more factories, better jobs, higher wages, the new lifestyle we dreamt of? Why should India’s progress be waylaid by these bandits questioning our short cut to wealth?

There is an entire constituency out there, led by those who benefit from being in power or close to it, who have suddenly emerged as the great defenders of the faith.  They are the cynical backbone of the power elite, who want the status quo to continue. It gives them a sense of comfort to know that things will not change in a nation where every year dollar billionaires keep growing as fast as millions slide below the poverty line. There are more people buying cars in India today than anywhere else. There are more people buying second homes. There are more tall towers coming up in our cities to taunt the homeless. Swiss banks hold more hot money from this subcontinent than from anywhere else. We even have a Chief Economic Adviser who has put up a paper on the Finance Ministry website proposing that paying bribes be made legal. Suddenly, out of nowhere, a ragtag bunch of civil society activists have emerged to question the morality of the economic model that promises us a 9.8% GDP growth.

How can all this progress be sacrificed on the altar of some stupid, old fashioned notions of morality? Can khadi take over from teflon? Will the Gandhi topi come back to mock a generation that has grown up on twitter and facebook? Are we going to sacrifice all our achievements for the sake of few crackpots chanting Vande Mataram at Jantar Mantar? For those who love the status quo, it’s a clear No.

What impresses me, however, is that the main propagandists for change are the young. I see it wherever I go. Never was it more obvious than at Hazare’s fast. The people queueing up behind the new heroes of our time are mostly young. The generation that drives the new social media have campaigned with greater fervour and far less cynicism than traditional media. They are the ones most excited by the promise of change. It’s now up to each one of us to decide on which side we are.  With the good guys struggling to bring in change? Or with the bad guys resisting it?

by Dr.Ooi Kee Beng

The results of the Sarawak state elections last weekend were extraordinary in the sense that one cannot strictly say that they were expected. Nor can one claim that they were unexpected.

This in truth reflects how uncertain things seemed during the 10 days of campaigning. Wishful thinking mixed freely with insider information, and strategic statements pretended to be pronouncements of fact. For example, Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak, after taking over the campaigning, surprisingly stated that the two-thirds majority was under threat after his invitation to Sarawak’s Chief Minister Taib Mahmud to declare that he would soon resign was rejected.

The final results were that the ruling Barisan Nasional (BN) has retained power with their two-thirds majority intact; Mr Taib, Chief Minister since 1981, stayed rooted to his seat despite a strong international campaign alleging rampant abuses of power by his government; and rural support for the government remained steady despite the abject poverty in some areas.

At a superficial level, the status quo remains. However, a closer look reveals a strengthening of trends that have become increasingly obvious after the general election three years ago. For starters, where campaigning is concerned, the Opposition retains the initiative, having the oh-so-easy advantage of pointing the finger at bad governance on the part of BN parties. This has made it difficult for BN campaigners to draw or excite crowds. Distributing goodies and goodie bags of various shapes and size became the alternative — and effective — tactic instead.

Second, urban sympathies continue shifting away from the BN. This strongly suggests that the swelling population of young and educated city-dwellers will continue to gain in importance as the constituency of the future. This spells big trouble for dominant parties such as Mr Najib’s UMNO and Mr Taib’s PBB, and making inroads into this area will remain a great challenge for them.

As of now, we have a strange situation where both Kuala Lumpur, the main city in West Malaysia, and Kuching, the main city in East Malaysia, are practically fully represented by the Opposition, with the exception of one seat in Kuala Lumpur. This trend is evident in many other urban centres as well.

Weakening Coalition Model

Third, we are witnessing a steady weakening of the BN Model itself. With the trouncing of the once Chinese-supported SUPP by the DAP on April 16, one must not only draw a comparison with how the latter wiped out the rulingParti Gerakan Rakyat in Penang in 2008, but also recognise that there is a trend here that stretches further.

Three years ago, the BN suffered weighty retreats through not only the Gerakan’s losses, but also through those suffered by the People’s Progressive Party (PPP), the Malaysian Indian Congress (MIC) and even the Malaysian Chinese Association (MCA). These are all parties whose mission within the BN is to secure the non-Malay vote.

This they failed to do, which calls into question the coalition’s ability to represent the country’s diverse population under the dominance of UMNO. Serious efforts at renewal have not been forthcoming either.

The SUPP is the latest BN member to pay for being a subservient party for too long within the BN power structure.

Four, the practice of malapportionment in electoral representation had undoubtedly been a useful tool for the BN in retaining power.However, common sense tells us that a weighing scale cannot be continually engineered to BN’s advantage forever. Beyond a certain point, this misrepresentation seeks out a new expression for itself.

In Sarawak, the BN won 77.5 per cent of the contested seats last weekend. However, the popular vote cast in its favour was only 55 per cent. That gives us a mismatch of 50 per cent! Just looking at these figures, we see that a readjustment in representation was long overdue. An immediate effect of the Sarawak election result is to discourage Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak from calling a snap general election — due only in 2013 but widely speculated to take place within a year.

His coalition lost vital ground that he cannot possibly regain anytime soon without first making serious structural changes to the BN model of governance.

Getting a new mandate that he can call his own essentially means winning back the two-third parliamentary majority his coalition lost in 2008. Now, if support for the Opposition in Sarawak is kept at the present level, a general election now would mean a loss of at least three parliamentary seats for the BN.

All else being equal, what Sarawak tells Mr Najib is that calling a general election any time soon would not be worth his trouble.