Sajakkini

Sim Kwang Yang

Is PAS going through another exercise of reinventing itself, now that a new crop of young leaders has come to the fore?

As a political phenomenon, PAS is an amazing force to be reckoned with. They can have a peaceful democratic party election in bringing about the changing of some of the guards, without the usual acrimonious blood-letting that plagues other political parties in a similar situation.

In their half-century of tumultuous existence, they have also displayed great resilience to the vagaries of their changing fortune, surviving their ups and downs through periodic self-renewal and redefinition of their political direction. One cannot say that of many opposition parties in Malaysia. (more…)

Sim Kwang Yang

The small band of mud-caked near-naked young boys were tearing through the lalang and the undergrowth from the direction of the river bank, shrieking and laughing as they stumbled over one another towards the foot of the staircase of this lone kampong house.

I was alarmed by their state of unusual excitement, and moved to the doorway to investigate. Gasping for breathe, they fought among themselves for the chance to report their discovery, “Uncle, a crocodile! At the river bank!” Arms were flung apart at various lengths to indicate the size of the feared reptile.

This was a matter of grave concern indeed for the Iban communities living along the placid Stutong Rive meandering around the outskirt of Kuching City. The dozen or so adults sitting in the room behind me immediately exploded into an animate discussion. (more…)

Sim Kwang Yang

The new Pope, before he was elected Pope, warned the world against the “tyranny of relativism”.

It must have been a very unpopular remark, especially in the European and North American worlds, as well as those parts of the rest of the world that have been invaded by the notions of modernity - or as is so often claimed, the notions of post-modernity.

We all know the drill. The relativist credo is that there is no absolute Truth, with a capital T. There are only small relative truths. Truths are relative to the individuals who hold them, and to the spatial-temporal-historical-cultural circumstances under which such truths are uttered and acted upon. (more…)

Sim Kwang Yang

Now that parliamentarians are going to be given a 10% increase in their remuneration, the role of our elected representatives has suddenly become media focus.

As one letter writer to malaysiakini puts it, he wants to get his money’s worth. He is a taxpayer who pays for the increase in MP allowance. As a towkay, whenever employees ask for a raise, he wants to know the justification for such a demand. For a start, he wants the parliamentary proceedings to be televised live, so at least the voters will know what goes on inside that august chamber sitting a stone’s throw away from Kuala Lumpur city centre.

This view of our legislators is a common one among Malaysians.

Perhaps, living and working in our capitalist market economy for so long has conditioned many citizens to consider every human relationship as that of a commercial exchange, including that between legislators and the electorate at large. (more…)

Sim Kwang Yang

From the fringe of our national consciousness, a news report on malaysiakini informs us that the natives of Sarawak are getting together in Miri on Labour Day, to discuss the 120 or so court cases they have brought against the government of Sarawak, in defense of their customary rights land.

There have been sporadic reports in the past on the same issue, without attracting much attention from the general readership. This current report will probably suffer the same fate of neglect.

To the ruling parties and their coteries of satellite media organizations, the matter of land rights for the natives of Sarawak and Sabah is bad news for their vision of good governance.

To them, the long-standing protests of the indigenous peoples of Sarawak against encroachment of their customary land by “development projects” is an unpleasant thorn-in-the-side of their official grand vision of macro-economic development. The vocal cord of this large chunk of our Malaysian population has been severed and silenced in our national narrative. (more…)

Sim Kwang Yang

So now, it’s official. The government will take action against malaysiakini for their April Fool’s prank because they “tell lies”, according to the ominous announcement by one junior minister in Parliament recently.

By now my friends involved in this Internet publication should be running desperately for cover. The reporter and the editor responsible for this allegedly heinous crime should now be packing their toothbrushes, and saying goodbye to their loved ones, anticipating an uncertain period of incarceration under any one of our many laws tailored for the purpose of fixing irreverent journalists. Meanwhile, subscribers to malaysiakini shiver in their boots; will their identity be uncovered in this witch-hunt of a dragnet?

Of course, the scene at the new malaysiakini office will be one of hysteria and chaos, as their skeleton staff members race against time to pack away their precious computers and servers. Another raid, another confiscation by the you-know-who, and they can kiss their costly equipment goodbye.

The whole affair sounds like a page taken out of a typical novel by Franz Kafka. (Some budding writer in Malaysia should really write a novel of the absurd with malaysiakini people as their anti-hero.) On the other hand, another writer with the mental bend of a Dostoevsky may give the story a darker nihilistic tone on the inevitability and inaneness of evil working in the world. There would be great confusion about where the evil lies. (more…)

Sim Kwang Yang

If a mother-tongue is the language one learns first from one’s mother in infancy, then my mother tongue is Teochew, a Chinese dialect that has its home in about 12 districts in the Southern Chinese province of Kwang Tung.

Teochew is a colourful language, especially when it comes to cursing and swearing. My late father could, when he was irritated by someone, deliver an eloquent torrent of obscenities at the object of contempt in his native tongue.

Fortunately, Teochew is also a refined dialect. I have watched old timers reading ancient poetry or play scripts aloud in sing-song Teochew. The dialogue and the lyrics in the famous Teochew opera are fit for any emperor’s royal court. Reading the Chinese script in my mother tongue is one skill that has eluded me all my life.

In Malaysia, in the early days, the Teochew speaking Chinese were mostly operators of sundry shops and traders in primary commodities. That seemed to be what they did best in Southeast Asia, notably in Thailand and Vietnam, where they dominate the Chinese migrant community. (more…)

Sim Kwang Yang

The debate on the issue of language vis-a-vis our nation’s education policy continues. That could be a good sign; it does indicate that some people are beginning to examine critically some of the most entrenched ideas on the fundamental principles of our social contract.

One consensus that seems to have emerged from this discussion on malaysiakini is that the quality of education offered by our Malaysian national school system is deeply flawed.

Of course Chinese and Indian parents send their children to vernacular schools for other more deeply rooted motives, and not merely because the vernacular schools offer better education. ( I myself have some reservations about the quality of education in the Chinese schools as well, but that is beside the point.) Nevertheless, the philosophy behind formal education within the ambit of officialdom has doubtless outlived its relevance and usefulness, and ought to be overhauled inside out and upside down. We need an education reform now like a man on the desert needs water. (more…)

Sim Kwang Yang

As seasonal as the occasional outbreak of dengue fever that plagues our haze-infested land, the issue of Chinese education has once again stirred up heated debate on nation-building and ethnic relation.

It started innocently enough. Waking up from a political slumber, the MCA made a proposal for more Chinese primary schools to be built in cities and towns under the 9th Malaysian Plan. It is a practical and legitimate problem, one that has troubled Chinese parents and educators for decades. The population in our urban centres has increased many times, and yet the new Chinese primary schools built after independence have been too few and too far between.

All it takes is a nod from the Barisan Nasional government, of which the MCA is a senior partner. It would probably not involve any substantial allocation in public spending, since the generosity of the usually frugal Chinese people is legendary, when it comes to giving donation towards the construction of Chinese schools of all sorts. They regard their financial support for Chinese education as their second taxation in life. (more…)