Monday, June 27, 2005
In Defense of Malaysia and Singapore
In Defense of Malaysia and Singapore
by Andre Vltchek
All of you probably had a chance to hear or read it somewhere: Malaysia and Singapore are two dictatorships, two systems that violate basic human rights and limit freedom of speech and of the press. Their leaders stay in power for too long and their ruling political parties go unchallenged in every election.
Sounds bad, doesn't it? The only major problem with this (mainly Western) theory is that the great majority of the citizens of two above mentioned countries would strongly disagree.
Wee Gee, an owner of a trendy jazz club in Singapore, has his own theory: "They all come here - Australians, Britons and other Europeans, and they can't stand the place because it destroys their theories about Asia. They like to see underdevelopment because it makes them feel secure and superior. After two days in Singapore, they realize that we have probably the best social system in the world, good city planning, clean, safe streets and excellent public transport. So they think: 'Wow, how did these Chinks and Malays and Indians achieve such a high standard of living? There must be something hiding in the closet. And they start bashing us. Understand, for an average white Australian it is simply psychologically unacceptable that there is an Asian country that is richer than his."
Neighbouring Malaysia hardly escapes devastating criticism either. It is bashed in the Western press from the right and from the left, accused of almost feudal governance by some, of introducing affirmative action for the Malay majority by others, for spending too much money on mega-projects (tallest buildings in the world, new capital city, gigantic international airport, the largest Muslim museum in the world to name just a few) or simply for harshly attacking Western foreign policy and two recent US-led invasions.
Both Singapore and Malaysia are attacked by the Western left for being "too capitalist" and by the right for "not having free, open and transparent economies" (referring to extremely cosy relations between local companies and the government, a model that originally comes from Japan and is known in Malaysia as 'Malaysia Incorporated').
So, what is it really that irks the West about these two countries in Southeast Asia that were nicknamed dragons and tigers and other potent creatures before 1997? Without any doubt, the answer is: their success!
Malaysian GDP per head is only 3,920 dollars a year (The Economist: 'The World in 2002'). That's only slightly higher than in Latin American countries such as Brazil and Peru. The difference is that there is almost no extreme poverty left in 'undemocratic' Malaysia, while one would have a hard time trying not to notice the widespread misery in the above mentioned South American countries that we consider 'free' and 'democratic' (and at least it is probably true in Brazil after the latest elections that brought Lula da Silva to power).
Before the 1997 economic crisis, Malaysia made incredible progress, mainly due to a well-planned economy, an extremely hard working population, and huge investment in social policies and infrastructure. As was the case in Singapore decades earlier, against all the odds Malaysia became a relatively balanced middle class country, transforming itself from a traditional agricultural society into a developed industrial nation. During the crisis, for which international currency speculators were largely to blame, Malaysia lost around forty percent of its wealth overnight, but, unlike neighbouring Indonesia, did not plunge into chaos.
Today, six years after the beginning of the crisis, Malaysia is again a socially balanced, multi-racial country with relatively good medical care, education and infrastructure. Although the Western media constantly reports on its 'hidden racial tensions', it is probably one of the most tolerant multi-racial nations on earth.
Nearby, Singapore managed to completely eradicate poverty more than a decade ago, creating one of the best (if not the best) social systems in the world that provides not only basics like an excellent medical care and education, but also subsidized housing, advanced public transport and world class cultural institutions including museums and concert halls.
Writing bitterly and defensively, an attitude born out of the1997 crisis, Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad snaps at the West: "We have tried to defend ourselves as best as we could, but, for some of us, every move we make to revive our economies has been immediately condemned as a ploy to help members of the ruling parties and their cronies. It is impossible for non-Asian foreign detractors to believe that Asian government leaders can be honest at all. If Asian leaders do anything at all for the good of their countries, it must be because they are corrupt and want to help their cronies and their families. Such prejudiced and stereotyped views will, I fear, persist for a long time to come. The people who espouse such views, it must be remembered, are the descendants of the old white-supremacist colonialists. They cannot get rid of their old bugaboos no matter how far their civilizations have supposedly advanced. We simply cannot expect justice and fair play for Asians and Africans; we have had to ignore all the prejudice and get on with rebuilding our economies." (Mahathir Mohamad:"A New Deal For Asia", Pelanduk, 1999).
It is true that Malaysia and Singapore (as well as other developed Asian countries) are facing continuous and vicious attacks from the West. Malaysia is far from perfect, but in no way can it be called a dictatorship. After the 1997/98 crisis that impoverished millions of Malays while enriching hundreds of foreign speculators, Mahathir declared that the free market system had proved to be a failure and fired his finance minister, Anwar Ibrahim. Mr. Ibrahim was beaten by police, and accused of sodomy and corruption. Almost one year later, he was found guilty and sentenced to six years in prison.
That was enough to trigger an enormous media campaign against Malaysia in general and against its political system in particular. The fate of Anwar Ibrahim attracted more attention from Western analysts and media than did the millions of citizens of Malaysia who became victims of an inhuman, brutal global economic dictatorship and saw the fruits of decades of their hard work being wiped out overnight.
The opinion of foreigners about Malaysia didn't change much even after Ibrahim's wife, Azizah Ismail, formed a new opposition 'National Justice Party' but gained only five of the 193 seats contested in the November 1999 elections.
So why are Malaysia and Singapore the centre of negative attention for people in the West, while there is generally a consensual silence about so many other places on earth where injustice is undisputable? Speaking about 'political cronyism' (the highly popular expression for describing Southeast Asian leaders and business elite) one doesn't have to leave the West itself to find examples that would make almost any Southeast Asian nation look like a model of order and civility by comparison. Italy, for example, with its Fascist and criminal Prime-Minister Silvio Berlusconi who, (just by coincidence?) exercises almost unlimited control over the media.
In the great majority of 'democracies' in the Western Hemisphere, Malaysian economic, social and political standards (not to mention Singaporean standards which are even higher than those in the United States) would be seen as an impossible dream.. One explanation could be that almost all injustices in Latin America are the result of the Western (white) colonial rule. Our policymakers, analysts and servile media do not want to touch and illuminate issues that could remind us how undemocratic was, and still is, our rule over the world. Most of the people in Latin America are still controlled by a white minority, especially in countries where indigenous people form the majority. Those who dare to challenge this state of affairs are either killed, marginalized, ridiculed or driven into exile. Even the Peace Nobel Price Laureate Rigoberta Manchu was forced to leave her native Guatemala after vicious attacks against her (her main fault, it seems, was that she was 'fat, indigenous and a woman') and move to neighbouring Mexico.
The distribution of wealth in our Latin American protectorates is the worst in the world, and coherent social policies are almost nonexistent. Freedom of the press is mainly the preserve of those who can afford to print newspapers and magazines. However, there is almost no serious criticism of Latin American semi-dictatorships by our media.
n comparison to most of the 'third world' countries, Malaysia is a star. To make things even worse and more dangerous for the Western post- and neo-colonialists, it promises hope and shows alternatives. Its social model is applicable more or less everywhere, its proud (but pragmatic, non-extremist) refusal to follow European and North American economic and social models can eventually attract followers from all over the world, undermining Western hegemony of global power. Last year in Lima, I was even told by Raffo Munoz (First Secretary of the Communist Party of Peru) that he "is studying the Malaysian model very carefully and is extremely impressed by its achievements".
Belief in 'Asian Values' (although this expression itself can be a bit dubious, and those very values can sometimes be compared with old Christian fundamentalist values of the past, as Mahathir himself admits) are putting Malaysia and Singapore in the forefront of the movement for Asian (or at least Asia-Pacific) unity and resistance against foreign domination and negative influence.
And let's not forget that the Malaysian government is extremely outspoken when it comes to criticism of the Western invasions and 'world order', our economic and cultural hegemony, our re-emerging habit of disregarding international opinion and our willingness to act openly in (exclusively) our own interests.
It seems obvious that the unpopularity of both Malaysia and Singapore in the West is because almost all the achievements of these two countries were based on domestically grown models and had their roots in local cultures. The main purpose of those models was, and is, an improvement of the lives of Malaysian and Singaporean citizens. Enrichment of our Western companies was something secondary, nonessential. We have never been able or willing to tolerate such an approach! In the past, we destroyed entire countries, killed democratically elected Presidents and supported vicious right-wing dictatorships for much lesser shows of independent thinking.
In many Asian countries there is still a popular belief that the 1997 crises was triggered by the West, in order to prevent the Asian model from truly taking off. Although there is no proof that there was any coordinated, pre-meditated design to ruin the Malaysian, South Korean and Philippine economies after the collapse of the Thai baht (although the pressure of international advisors and organizations on the then still well-performing Malaysian economy to devalue the ringgit only because of the speculation that 'it will not be able to be competitive after a Thai devaluation of the baht' did enormous harm to start with), it was obvious that the world's institutions and most powerful governments did nothing to stop the insane and unjust economic downward spiral of the late nineties.
Today, Malaysia is again a developing country with first world infrastructure and social systems. Its streets are safe, its hospitals clean and its highways as good as those in Germany or France. Its bookstores are well stocked, providing the latest reads from all over the world, except for a few censured titles. There are no homeless people on the streets of Kuala Lumpur, no ghettos for minorities, and no child prostitutes.
There is a death penalty for drug traffickers. For those of us who see the death penalty as something immoral and perverted, this system cannot be viewed as perfect. For those of us who write books, Malaysia is a place that should improve in many ways. For those of us who believe that one of the basic and undeniable human rights is to have his/her religion or to have no religion at all, the constant emphasis on fate may be something deeply annoying and disturbing.
The Singaporean government cravenly supported the US invasion of Iraq, despite public opinion against the war (but was it much different in Spain, Italy or Japan?). Malaysian 'cooperation with the war on terror' leaves plenty of space for criticism, as does its mishandling of illegal immigrants (mainly after 9-11), in Kalimantan (Borneo) and elsewhere.
However, to deny Malaysia and Singapore their greatness just because of those issues would be a mistake. There is no perfect society on this planet. In other societies with less than 4,000 dollars GDP per capita (as in Malaysia), millions of people starve or live in subsistence conditions. They rot in understaffed hospitals with no basic medicine. They live in polluted, overcrowded cities with enormously high crime rates. Malaysian achievements (not to speak about Singapore's) are enormous.
If I had to choose either to live in increasingly orderly Kuala Lumpur or in insanely divided, polluted and poor Lima, I, as a writer, would choose Lima. However, there are not many writers in the world, but there are enormous numbers of people who don't want to go back to colonial and post colonial misery, who want to have their own house and small car, a good, safe school for their children, clean, attractive streets for walking and fast trains to get them from point A to point B. These people with families and children who aim at security and good middle class life wouldn't hesitate one second: they would choose Kuala Lumpur.
We all know that with such a small GDP per capita, countries like Malaysia "shouldn't have all these social privileges". According to our world order, the Malaysians should concentrate on feeding OUR economies, OUR companies, sacrificing their children and their families in the process. The reason our media people and opinion-making gurus hate Malaysia and Singapore is not only because these countries learned how to say "NO" to us, but also because they are putting the interests of their own people first. That's why we can't forgive them, but at the same time can forgive everything to our Latin American colonies and their white elites who are always happy to sacrifice entire nations for their allegiance to their European/Western blood and culture. We can forgive them their many forms of apartheid as well as the swollen bellies of the starving children in Northern Nicaragua and South-western Honduras. We can forgive racial segregation in Peru, Ecuador and Bolivia; former strongholds of great cultures that we managed to destroy! We can forgive Mexican latifundistas and still call Mexico a democracy.
But we can never forgive those who are not willing to sacrifice their own people on the altar of our greed.
Every inch of progress made in Malaysia and Singapore is another nail in the coffin of Western domination and modern day colonialism. Malaysia should reform, it should drop censorship, but it should stay on course. It should never change its principles, its essence - it should always put its people first and we (those who oppose this insane world order and Western dictatorship) should defend its right to do so, instead of bashing it. Malaysia should teach other developing countries world-wide to do the same, to care about the welfare of their own people, to unite in order to defend its culture and principles, to say 'no' to the superpower, even to the entire world order if necessary.
During the Spanish Civil War, Czech anti-Fascists and volunteers used to say: "In Madrid, we are fighting for Prague." This old expression can be now paraphrased: "They are building new Lima and new Abidjan in Kuala Lumpur".
Copyright © 2003 Andre Vltchek and World Confrontation Now
by Andre Vltchek
All of you probably had a chance to hear or read it somewhere: Malaysia and Singapore are two dictatorships, two systems that violate basic human rights and limit freedom of speech and of the press. Their leaders stay in power for too long and their ruling political parties go unchallenged in every election.
Sounds bad, doesn't it? The only major problem with this (mainly Western) theory is that the great majority of the citizens of two above mentioned countries would strongly disagree.
Wee Gee, an owner of a trendy jazz club in Singapore, has his own theory: "They all come here - Australians, Britons and other Europeans, and they can't stand the place because it destroys their theories about Asia. They like to see underdevelopment because it makes them feel secure and superior. After two days in Singapore, they realize that we have probably the best social system in the world, good city planning, clean, safe streets and excellent public transport. So they think: 'Wow, how did these Chinks and Malays and Indians achieve such a high standard of living? There must be something hiding in the closet. And they start bashing us. Understand, for an average white Australian it is simply psychologically unacceptable that there is an Asian country that is richer than his."
Neighbouring Malaysia hardly escapes devastating criticism either. It is bashed in the Western press from the right and from the left, accused of almost feudal governance by some, of introducing affirmative action for the Malay majority by others, for spending too much money on mega-projects (tallest buildings in the world, new capital city, gigantic international airport, the largest Muslim museum in the world to name just a few) or simply for harshly attacking Western foreign policy and two recent US-led invasions.
Both Singapore and Malaysia are attacked by the Western left for being "too capitalist" and by the right for "not having free, open and transparent economies" (referring to extremely cosy relations between local companies and the government, a model that originally comes from Japan and is known in Malaysia as 'Malaysia Incorporated').
So, what is it really that irks the West about these two countries in Southeast Asia that were nicknamed dragons and tigers and other potent creatures before 1997? Without any doubt, the answer is: their success!
Malaysian GDP per head is only 3,920 dollars a year (The Economist: 'The World in 2002'). That's only slightly higher than in Latin American countries such as Brazil and Peru. The difference is that there is almost no extreme poverty left in 'undemocratic' Malaysia, while one would have a hard time trying not to notice the widespread misery in the above mentioned South American countries that we consider 'free' and 'democratic' (and at least it is probably true in Brazil after the latest elections that brought Lula da Silva to power).
Before the 1997 economic crisis, Malaysia made incredible progress, mainly due to a well-planned economy, an extremely hard working population, and huge investment in social policies and infrastructure. As was the case in Singapore decades earlier, against all the odds Malaysia became a relatively balanced middle class country, transforming itself from a traditional agricultural society into a developed industrial nation. During the crisis, for which international currency speculators were largely to blame, Malaysia lost around forty percent of its wealth overnight, but, unlike neighbouring Indonesia, did not plunge into chaos.
Today, six years after the beginning of the crisis, Malaysia is again a socially balanced, multi-racial country with relatively good medical care, education and infrastructure. Although the Western media constantly reports on its 'hidden racial tensions', it is probably one of the most tolerant multi-racial nations on earth.
Nearby, Singapore managed to completely eradicate poverty more than a decade ago, creating one of the best (if not the best) social systems in the world that provides not only basics like an excellent medical care and education, but also subsidized housing, advanced public transport and world class cultural institutions including museums and concert halls.
Writing bitterly and defensively, an attitude born out of the1997 crisis, Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad snaps at the West: "We have tried to defend ourselves as best as we could, but, for some of us, every move we make to revive our economies has been immediately condemned as a ploy to help members of the ruling parties and their cronies. It is impossible for non-Asian foreign detractors to believe that Asian government leaders can be honest at all. If Asian leaders do anything at all for the good of their countries, it must be because they are corrupt and want to help their cronies and their families. Such prejudiced and stereotyped views will, I fear, persist for a long time to come. The people who espouse such views, it must be remembered, are the descendants of the old white-supremacist colonialists. They cannot get rid of their old bugaboos no matter how far their civilizations have supposedly advanced. We simply cannot expect justice and fair play for Asians and Africans; we have had to ignore all the prejudice and get on with rebuilding our economies." (Mahathir Mohamad:"A New Deal For Asia", Pelanduk, 1999).
It is true that Malaysia and Singapore (as well as other developed Asian countries) are facing continuous and vicious attacks from the West. Malaysia is far from perfect, but in no way can it be called a dictatorship. After the 1997/98 crisis that impoverished millions of Malays while enriching hundreds of foreign speculators, Mahathir declared that the free market system had proved to be a failure and fired his finance minister, Anwar Ibrahim. Mr. Ibrahim was beaten by police, and accused of sodomy and corruption. Almost one year later, he was found guilty and sentenced to six years in prison.
That was enough to trigger an enormous media campaign against Malaysia in general and against its political system in particular. The fate of Anwar Ibrahim attracted more attention from Western analysts and media than did the millions of citizens of Malaysia who became victims of an inhuman, brutal global economic dictatorship and saw the fruits of decades of their hard work being wiped out overnight.
The opinion of foreigners about Malaysia didn't change much even after Ibrahim's wife, Azizah Ismail, formed a new opposition 'National Justice Party' but gained only five of the 193 seats contested in the November 1999 elections.
So why are Malaysia and Singapore the centre of negative attention for people in the West, while there is generally a consensual silence about so many other places on earth where injustice is undisputable? Speaking about 'political cronyism' (the highly popular expression for describing Southeast Asian leaders and business elite) one doesn't have to leave the West itself to find examples that would make almost any Southeast Asian nation look like a model of order and civility by comparison. Italy, for example, with its Fascist and criminal Prime-Minister Silvio Berlusconi who, (just by coincidence?) exercises almost unlimited control over the media.
In the great majority of 'democracies' in the Western Hemisphere, Malaysian economic, social and political standards (not to mention Singaporean standards which are even higher than those in the United States) would be seen as an impossible dream.. One explanation could be that almost all injustices in Latin America are the result of the Western (white) colonial rule. Our policymakers, analysts and servile media do not want to touch and illuminate issues that could remind us how undemocratic was, and still is, our rule over the world. Most of the people in Latin America are still controlled by a white minority, especially in countries where indigenous people form the majority. Those who dare to challenge this state of affairs are either killed, marginalized, ridiculed or driven into exile. Even the Peace Nobel Price Laureate Rigoberta Manchu was forced to leave her native Guatemala after vicious attacks against her (her main fault, it seems, was that she was 'fat, indigenous and a woman') and move to neighbouring Mexico.
The distribution of wealth in our Latin American protectorates is the worst in the world, and coherent social policies are almost nonexistent. Freedom of the press is mainly the preserve of those who can afford to print newspapers and magazines. However, there is almost no serious criticism of Latin American semi-dictatorships by our media.
n comparison to most of the 'third world' countries, Malaysia is a star. To make things even worse and more dangerous for the Western post- and neo-colonialists, it promises hope and shows alternatives. Its social model is applicable more or less everywhere, its proud (but pragmatic, non-extremist) refusal to follow European and North American economic and social models can eventually attract followers from all over the world, undermining Western hegemony of global power. Last year in Lima, I was even told by Raffo Munoz (First Secretary of the Communist Party of Peru) that he "is studying the Malaysian model very carefully and is extremely impressed by its achievements".
Belief in 'Asian Values' (although this expression itself can be a bit dubious, and those very values can sometimes be compared with old Christian fundamentalist values of the past, as Mahathir himself admits) are putting Malaysia and Singapore in the forefront of the movement for Asian (or at least Asia-Pacific) unity and resistance against foreign domination and negative influence.
And let's not forget that the Malaysian government is extremely outspoken when it comes to criticism of the Western invasions and 'world order', our economic and cultural hegemony, our re-emerging habit of disregarding international opinion and our willingness to act openly in (exclusively) our own interests.
It seems obvious that the unpopularity of both Malaysia and Singapore in the West is because almost all the achievements of these two countries were based on domestically grown models and had their roots in local cultures. The main purpose of those models was, and is, an improvement of the lives of Malaysian and Singaporean citizens. Enrichment of our Western companies was something secondary, nonessential. We have never been able or willing to tolerate such an approach! In the past, we destroyed entire countries, killed democratically elected Presidents and supported vicious right-wing dictatorships for much lesser shows of independent thinking.
In many Asian countries there is still a popular belief that the 1997 crises was triggered by the West, in order to prevent the Asian model from truly taking off. Although there is no proof that there was any coordinated, pre-meditated design to ruin the Malaysian, South Korean and Philippine economies after the collapse of the Thai baht (although the pressure of international advisors and organizations on the then still well-performing Malaysian economy to devalue the ringgit only because of the speculation that 'it will not be able to be competitive after a Thai devaluation of the baht' did enormous harm to start with), it was obvious that the world's institutions and most powerful governments did nothing to stop the insane and unjust economic downward spiral of the late nineties.
Today, Malaysia is again a developing country with first world infrastructure and social systems. Its streets are safe, its hospitals clean and its highways as good as those in Germany or France. Its bookstores are well stocked, providing the latest reads from all over the world, except for a few censured titles. There are no homeless people on the streets of Kuala Lumpur, no ghettos for minorities, and no child prostitutes.
There is a death penalty for drug traffickers. For those of us who see the death penalty as something immoral and perverted, this system cannot be viewed as perfect. For those of us who write books, Malaysia is a place that should improve in many ways. For those of us who believe that one of the basic and undeniable human rights is to have his/her religion or to have no religion at all, the constant emphasis on fate may be something deeply annoying and disturbing.
The Singaporean government cravenly supported the US invasion of Iraq, despite public opinion against the war (but was it much different in Spain, Italy or Japan?). Malaysian 'cooperation with the war on terror' leaves plenty of space for criticism, as does its mishandling of illegal immigrants (mainly after 9-11), in Kalimantan (Borneo) and elsewhere.
However, to deny Malaysia and Singapore their greatness just because of those issues would be a mistake. There is no perfect society on this planet. In other societies with less than 4,000 dollars GDP per capita (as in Malaysia), millions of people starve or live in subsistence conditions. They rot in understaffed hospitals with no basic medicine. They live in polluted, overcrowded cities with enormously high crime rates. Malaysian achievements (not to speak about Singapore's) are enormous.
If I had to choose either to live in increasingly orderly Kuala Lumpur or in insanely divided, polluted and poor Lima, I, as a writer, would choose Lima. However, there are not many writers in the world, but there are enormous numbers of people who don't want to go back to colonial and post colonial misery, who want to have their own house and small car, a good, safe school for their children, clean, attractive streets for walking and fast trains to get them from point A to point B. These people with families and children who aim at security and good middle class life wouldn't hesitate one second: they would choose Kuala Lumpur.
We all know that with such a small GDP per capita, countries like Malaysia "shouldn't have all these social privileges". According to our world order, the Malaysians should concentrate on feeding OUR economies, OUR companies, sacrificing their children and their families in the process. The reason our media people and opinion-making gurus hate Malaysia and Singapore is not only because these countries learned how to say "NO" to us, but also because they are putting the interests of their own people first. That's why we can't forgive them, but at the same time can forgive everything to our Latin American colonies and their white elites who are always happy to sacrifice entire nations for their allegiance to their European/Western blood and culture. We can forgive them their many forms of apartheid as well as the swollen bellies of the starving children in Northern Nicaragua and South-western Honduras. We can forgive racial segregation in Peru, Ecuador and Bolivia; former strongholds of great cultures that we managed to destroy! We can forgive Mexican latifundistas and still call Mexico a democracy.
But we can never forgive those who are not willing to sacrifice their own people on the altar of our greed.
Every inch of progress made in Malaysia and Singapore is another nail in the coffin of Western domination and modern day colonialism. Malaysia should reform, it should drop censorship, but it should stay on course. It should never change its principles, its essence - it should always put its people first and we (those who oppose this insane world order and Western dictatorship) should defend its right to do so, instead of bashing it. Malaysia should teach other developing countries world-wide to do the same, to care about the welfare of their own people, to unite in order to defend its culture and principles, to say 'no' to the superpower, even to the entire world order if necessary.
During the Spanish Civil War, Czech anti-Fascists and volunteers used to say: "In Madrid, we are fighting for Prague." This old expression can be now paraphrased: "They are building new Lima and new Abidjan in Kuala Lumpur".
Copyright © 2003 Andre Vltchek and World Confrontation Now
BJ 1:38 PM