Ah Jib Gor: You are just another Abdullah Badawi

December 3, 2013

Ah Jib Gor: Just Resign

by Dr. M.Bakri Musa
Morgan-Hill, California

Habis lah ‘Jib! (You are finished, Najib!) You are just another Pak Lah! Malaysia cannot afford two consecutive incompetent leaders as it enters the 21st Century. The precious and critical first decade is already lost.

Najib’s latest “Pak Lah moment” came when his Police Chief, Khalid Abu Bakar, threatened to arrest Mariam Mokhtar for sedition over her article, “One Ideology, Two Reactions,” posted on Freemalaysiatoday.com on November 29, 2013. Mariam dared to highlight the highly favorable treatment Aishah Wahab, the woman allegedly held as a slave by her Marxist master in London, received from the Najib Administration versus the visceral contempt it heaped upon Chin Peng, leader of the defunct Malayan Communist Party.

Mariam (right) suggested that the Najib Administration’s generous gesture to Aishah was more on exploiting the favorable publicity surrounding that London slavery case.

“She had better watch out,” the Police Chief warned, “or we will go after her!” The “her” is of course Mariam.  Jantan kampung betul! (a real village bull!), as we say in the village when referring to such petty bullies.

The  Police  Chief should display his manhood where it would really count, as with confronting the Singaporeans spying on Malaysia, those intruders at Lahad Datu, or the alleged treachery with the loss of Pulau Batu Puteh. Those are the real and menacing threats to the nation’s security and stability, not the eloquent writing of a young woman!

IGP Khalid Ashburn

Clearly Najib and his officials are threatened by Mariam’s ideas. Najib is stuck in the time warp of the old feudal ways, unable to grasp the new reality of a porous digital age. He and Khalid should be complimenting Mariam for her ability to write well, and in English, as well as her courage to express her views.

If Najib and Khalid have a better grasp of English, they would have discovered that Mariam’s earlier essay in Malaysiakini.com, “Three Slaves and the Rakyat,” on the same case had more punch. In that piece she noted that while the three London women were imprisoned for three decades, Malaysians have been “metaphorically imprisoned for the most part of 56 years,” adding that the three women were shackled by “invisible handcuffs,” just like Malaysians.

“It is doubtful,” Mariam continues, “if many Malaysians realize the similarities between themselves and those three women.” Now that’s powerful stuff, but Najib and Khalid missed Mariam’s well-chosen metaphor and imagery!

Congratulations Mariam! Your voice is being heard at the highest level, and widely too as judged by the outpouring of comments both articles elicited. Keep writing! I hope the Police Chief and Najib’s other top officials would continue widening their reading repertoire beyond the UMNO newsletters, The New Straits Times and Utusan Melayu.

Mariam is not the first writer to be intimidated by the authorities. She does not need to be reminded of the horrible experiences of Kassim Ahmad, Syed Hussein, Haris Ibrahim, Hishamuddin Rais, and Raja Petra, among others.

I have nothing to offer Mariam except my best wishes, and I wish her that, and much more, as with her continued success in writing. I can, however, pass on the advice from that great Indonesian writer, the late Ananta Prameodya Toer, a man who had endured much from his government.

“Orang boleh pandai setinggi langit,” Pramoedya wrote in Rumah Kaca (The Glasshouse), “tapi selama ia tidak menulis, ia akan hilang di dalam masyarakat dan dari sejarah.” (Your intellect may soar to the sky but if you do not write, you will be lost from society and history).”

Rest assured that when the collective “invisible handcuff” gets unshackled, as ultimately it will, Malaysians owe a huge debt of gratitude to brave individuals like Mariam Mokhtar.

As for that Police Chief, only his family would remember him, or if remembered by others, he would prefer not to be. Look at his many ‘illustrious’ predecessors; one jailed for punching Anwar Ibrahim, another a defendant in a multimillion-dollar lawsuit, and a third rewarded by being Chairman of a casino. That character apparently gambled right!

Najib’s Ultimate Pak Lah Moment

Najib warned the country is on the brink of bankruptcy!

Back to Najib’s other Pak Lah moments, the supposedly pious and humble Pak Lah squandered millions of taxpayers’ funds to renovate Sri Perdana before he deemed it livable. This from a man who only a decade earlier did not even own a house!

Najib however, bested Pak Lah on this front. Najib burned over two million ringgit a year just on electricity. When citizens complained, he haughtily defended his wasteful ways by suggesting that his official guests should not have to dine by candle light! He must have the whole United Nations delegates as his guests, and everyday too!

More likely Najib must have really turned down the thermostat and then had the fireplace roaring to simulate the English ambience of his student days so he could cuddle up to Rosmah.

Najib should remember the advice he received from his Prime Minister father, Tun Abdul Razak when he (Najib) and his brothers were clamoring for a swimming pool at the old Sri Perdana. “What will people say,” Najib quoted his old man as saying in turning down their request.

Malaysia’s Executive Jet

Then there is the ultra-luxury, custom-fitted Airbus jet. Even Queen Elizabeth and Prime Minister Cameron do not have one. Pak Lah was severely criticized for his excessive use of that expensive toy. At least his wife (the first or second) did not get to use it in her personal capacity.

Today we have Mrs. Najib (the second)–Rosmah– jaunting off in it, oblivious of the cost to taxpayers. I do not know which is more reprehensible; Najib requesting the approval from his cabinet for his wife’s use of the jet or the cabinet approving it. This at a time when he warned the country is on the brink of bankruptcy!

Abdullah Badawi burdened Malaysia for over five years; the nation is still paying for his many follies and general incompetence. Many claim that Najib is worse than Pak Lah; that is being petty. When you score is already a miserable F, it does not really matter whether it is also F-minus.

Expect at this week’s UMNO General Assembly for Najib to execute yet another Pak Lah moment – reading his “own” pompous self-congratulatory pantun (poem). Do not expect however, for the delegates to even mention let alone review this critical issue of his glaring incompetence and profligate ways.

Thus it behooves Malaysians to ensure that this burden of Najib’s inept leadership comes to an end soon. Malaysians must force Najib to perform his ultimate Pak Lah moment – resign!

READ :

Three Slaves and the Rakyat by MM: http://www.malaysiakini.com/columns/247523

You better watch out, Santa IGP is coming to town

December 2, 2013

by Mariam Mokhtar@http://www.malaysiakini.com

I am on the waiting-list for membership of the exclusive ‘Sedition Club Uniting Malaysians’, (SCUM) which has several distinguished members like Adam Adli, Haris Ibrahim, Tian Chua, Tamrin Ghafar, Safwan Anang and Zunar. I don’t think many people know the criteria which makes one eligible for membership.

Who would have realised that a well-meaning article ‘One Idealogy, Two Reactions’ about the need to be compassionate to Malaysians, regardless of their political leanings or social background, would have upset the Inspector-General of Police (IGP) Tan Sri Khalid Abu Bakar?

Does Khalid suffer from an inferiority complex or was he under extreme pressure to explain his involvement in the Lahad Datu debacle?

More importantly, he wanted to divert attention from the terrible handling of the Siti Aishah Abdul Wahab story, by the Malaysian government and himself. They probably thought they would capitalise on the story of Aishah’s enslavement.

Initially, the Metropolitan Police in England refused to divulge the identity of the Malaysian woman who had been “freed”, but Khalid jumped the gun and blurted out her name before the English Police were ready to make this public.

Even before Kamar Mahtum and Hishamuddin Rais arrived in London, the IGP was already boasting about the welcome they would give Aishah on her return home. Khalid said she would not be arrested as her “crime” was in the past. Meanwhile, the Women’s Minister talked about providing counselling.

It was like a couple expecting their first child, preparing the nursery to receive the baby, except the ‘baby’ – Aishah – refused to come home.

IGP Khalid Ashburn

As information trickled back to KL, the IGP was probably told that Aishah had not deviated from her ideology. She had not been enslaved, as was previously reported. She had no intention of returning to Malaysia. She was not remorseful, nor did she want to resume ties with the land of her birth. Sources also allege that the reunion between Kamar and Aishah was far from cordial.

If Aishah really wanted to flee from her captors, she would have. Khalid and the government realised, too late, that Aishah had outsmarted them. Aishah did not follow the UMNO Baru script.

The IGP and Najib Abdul Razak probably wanted to give Aishah a heroine’s welcome at KLIA. Then, after a six month religious rehabilitation at one of the indoctrination centres, arrange a photo-shoot of Aishah kissing Najib’s hand, renouncing her previous ideology, giving up her Marxist beliefs, and praising Najib’s government as the saviour of her body and soul.

The penny must have dropped as Kamar and Hisham passed through passport control at Heathrow, on Saturday morning to return home. So, Khalid had to divert attention from the government’s terrible handling of the Aishah story. A distraction had to be found. Me! The rest is history.

A means to intimidate the public?
 
Did Khalid, in a moment of madness, lose his judgment and decide to abuse his position and utilise the publicity machinery of the state, and use me as a means to intimidate the public?

He was foolish to think I would be intimidated. Perhaps, he wanted me to be cowed and cower under the bed, as a certain politician, who was caught in flagrante delicto in Port Dickson, was alleged to have done.

Khalid believes that writers for the alternative media write, merely to get hits. They don’t! One would like to ask the IGP if his men have been given orders to use their weapons, just to score hits, on their victims?

Will Khalid understand that one of the reasons the mainstream media is failing the public is because they are economical with the truth. They manipulate facts and tell lies to mislead and also incite hatred.

If Khalid were to talk to former Utusan journalists, he would learn many painful truths. Those who joined the exodus, in 2007, have alleged that their wages have not been paid. Another journalist alleges that the paper is losing money, because UMNO Baru takes out full page advertisements in Utusan, and then fails to pay the paper.

Utusan loses revenue, and Najib, the President of UMNO Baru knows that the party is bankrupt. So, he urges the government-linked companies (GLCs) to place advertisements in Utusan Malaysia.

My calling is to continue informing the public and stimulate them to ask questions of their parliamentarians and people in positions of responsibility, like the IGP. What are Khalid’s good points?  People have lost faith in the police because of leaders like Khalid.

One would have thought that Khalid would have understood the nuances of my article.  Surely, someone could have explained them to him, before he was allowed to shoot his mouth off.

It was Khalid who incorrectly mentioned race as the reason for the different treatments meted out to Chin Peng and Aishah. Perhaps, he would like to tell us why the dead Malaysian terrorists like Dr Azahari Hussein and Noordin Mat Top, the masterminds of the Jakarta and Bali bombings, were allegedly given the VIP treatment? Not many dead Malaysians would be returned to Malaysia at the taxpayer’s expense, in an RMAF transport.

Khalid warned me via a Bernama report that, “She (Mariam Mokhtar) had better watch out…” Despite his failings, we should praise Khalid for his ‘1Malaysia’ spirit. During his visit to multicultural and predominantly Christian Sabah, he has kicked off the Christmas season with the classic song ‘You’d better watch out’. Most readers may know it by its original title, ‘Santa Claus is coming to town’.

A Malaysian makeover

With apologies to the original songwriters, J Fred Coots and Haven Gillespie, whose song made its debut in 1934, I have given the song a Malaysian makeover, and substituted the words ‘Santa Claus’ with ‘The IGP’.

The older generation may recall Fred Astaire, Dean Martin or Frank Sinatra singing this song. Khalid and younger Malaysians may prefer Miley Cyrus’ catchy rendition on YouTube.

Oh! You better watch out,
You better not cry,
You better not pout,
I’m telling you why:
The IGP  is coming to town!

He’s making a list,
He’s checking it twice,
Gonna find out who’s naughty or nice.
The IGP is coming to town!

He sees you when you’re sleeping,
He knows when you’re awake.
He knows when you’ve been bad or good,
So be good for goodness sake!

So…You better watch out, You better not cry
You better not pout, I’m telling you why.
The IGP is coming to town.

Who knows? The Khalid inspired song, ‘You Better Watch Out’, may prove to be this year’s Christmas hit.

Khalid was wrong to attack and intimidate the rakyat. This harassment should be our catalyst for real, meaningful change. It is Khalid and UMNO Baru who had better watch out! Change is coming to town.

Book Review: ‘To the Letter,’ by Simon Garfield

December 1, 2013

BOOK REVIEW

Kind Regards

‘To the Letter,’ by Simon Garfield

by Carmela Ciuraru (11-29-13)

Once there were letters: handwritten, typewritten, carefully crafted, dashed off, profound or mundane, tinged with expectancy. Correspondence required waiting. “I need you more and more, and the great world grows wider, and dear ones fewer and fewer, every day that you stay away,” Emily Dickinson wrote to her future sister-in-law, Susan Gilbert, in 1852. Were they alive today, would Dickinson and Gilbert merely G-chat?

Simon Garfield (above) might think so. His latest book, “To the Letter,” is a nostalgic and fretful look at the “lost art” of letter writing. “A world without letters would surely be a world without oxygen,” he declares, noting that his book confronts this possibility. It’s tempting to laugh nervously and say, “Why so ominous?” But then again, OMG, maybe he’s got a point. A certain artfulness has surely been lost as emoticons and Snapchats take over as modes of expression.

For the most part, Garfield — a British journalist whose previous books include studies of fonts and mapmaking — steers clear of contrasting the virtues of pen and paper with the sins of email and text messages. But sometimes he can’t help himself. He writes, for instance, that emails are “a poke,” and letters “a caress.” A strange analogy, to be sure, and anyone who has agonized over a lengthy, emotional email to a friend, lover or family member might disagree.

He also claims that the last letter “will appear in our lifetime,” and that we will not notice the passing of this final missive until it’s too late — “like the last hair to whiten, or the last lovemaking.” Such weird rhetorical turns are, thankfully, few and far between.

Garfield’s book is stuffed with marvelous anecdotes, fascinating historical tidbits and excerpts from epistolary masters both ancient (Cicero, Seneca) and modern (Woolf, Hemingway). By the late 19th century, the “letter-writing manual” had itself become a thriving literary genre. Lewis Carroll contributed some prescriptive advice in the booklet “Eight or Nine Wise Words About Letter-Writing”: “If your correspondent makes a severe remark, either ignore it or soften your response; if your friend is friendly, make your reply ever friendlier.”

It’s wonderful to learn about the iPads of ancient Rome — thin wooden writing tablets sliced from alder, birch and oak — and to stumble on this delightful closing phrase of a letter dating to the third century A.D.: “Remember my pigeons.” Or to encounter an exasperated Erasmus, chiding his brother for not having written back: “I believe it would be easier to get blood from a stone than coax a letter out of you!”

The letters of Marcus Aurelius reveal not a would-be Roman emperor but a lovesick youth pining for his teacher. “I am dying so for love of you,” Aurelius writes, to which his tutor replies, “You have made me dazed and thunder­struck by your burning love.”

Throughout, Garfield uncovers start­ling examples of lust (“I think of your breasts more than is good for me,” a British soldier writes to his sweetheart), intimacy and suffering. Some of the most poignant letters expose the private anguish of writers and poets. The correspondence between Leonard Woolf and Vita Sackville-­West, in the aftermath of Virginia Woolf’s suicide, is devastating for what cannot be expressed.

Despite Garfield’s alarmist stance, it seems premature to assume that letters will go the way of the woolly mammoth. After all, the death knell has been sounded since at least the invention of the telephone. In any case, his epistolary ardor proves infectious, as he reminds us of the pleasures of composing letters without password protection or “send” buttons, those secured in dusty bureaus rather than “in the cloud.”

One of the letter’s strongest defenses comes from Katherine Mansfield, who in a tender note to a friend conveys beautifully, and succinctly, what the form at its best can achieve. “This is not a letter,” she writes, “but my arms around you for a brief moment.”

Carmela Ciuraru is the author of “Nom de Plume: A (Secret) History of Pseudonyms.”

A version of this review appears in print on December 1, 2013, on page BR25 of the Sunday Book Review with the headline: Kind Regards.

Overzealous IGP speaks out of turn on Mariam Mokhtar

December 1, 2013

by Terence Netto@http://www.malaysiakini.com

The IGP should know that many writers for the alternative newspapers are conscientious and write to highlight, inform and educate readers. We also seek answers to questions that our UMNO-Baru MPs and BN leaders seek to avoid.Neither I, nor the publication that I write for, seek merely to attract visitors to the website.

It is at least encouraging to learn that the IGP reads newspapers. It is shameful that he has no understanding of the laws of sedition, nor of the role of the government.

-Open Letter to Readers by Mariam Mokhtar @www.malaysiakini.com (December 1, 2013)

COMMENT: PKR Vice President N Surendran described the warning issued by the Inspector General of Police to columnist Mariam Mokhtar on the latter’s supposed inability to distinguish between militant and theoretical communists as “fantastic and shocking” and “ironical” in turn.

The Overzealous IGP

“This must be the first time that a widely read columnist has been singled out by the Inspector General of Police for a warning for having crossed an imaginary line,” asserted the MP for Padang Serai who two weeks ago was suspended from Parliament for six months after an altercation with the Speaker.

He is not Malay

IGP Khalid Abu Bakar issued the warning to Mariam following the appearance of her column ‘One ideology, two reactions’ on a web news portal that highlighted the differing treatments accorded the late Malayan Communist Party leader Chin Peng (above) and Siti Aishah Abdul Wahab, who was inducted into a communist cell in London in the late 1960s and was apparently held in bondage until recently rescued by British Police.

“She (Mariam Mokhtar-right) had better watch out or we will go after her. This (article) is highly seditious,” said Khalid in remarks made on the side of a security conference in Kota Kinabalu yesterday which was officiated by Sabah Chief Minister Musa Aman.

In further remarks, Khalid argued that “Chin Peng was involved in armed struggle, while Siti Aishah purely adopted a leftist ideology. Tell me how many people has she killed?”

Surendran, a lawyer renowned for human rights advocacy, said he found Khalid’s warning “shocking and fantastic because it must be the first time a widely followed writer has been singled out for a warning of possible arrest if she does not curb her pen.”

“For a while I thought Khalid may be mistaking Malaysia for Vladimir Putin’s Russia where probing journalists disappear and some found shot to death,” said the PKR Veep.

Surendran said that the only previous time he knew of a senior scribe being called in for questioning by Police was when Rehman Rashid of the New Straits Times was summoned to Bukit Aman during Operation Lalang for an editorial that expressed dismay at the ISA arrests of just over a hundred politicians and social activists in late October that year,

The episode is described in Rehman’s book A Malaysian Journey (published in 1993), a thought-provoking blend of travelogue and social commentary. “Now Khalid has gone one step further by publicly threatening to arrest a political commentator known for her acerbic opinions,”Surendran said.

‘Dangerous and unacceptable’

MP for Bagan Serai added this practice of Police Chiefs warning off journalists was dangerous and unacceptable. “No free and democratic country should tolerate this,” he said.

“He taxes Mariam for seditious inability to distinguish between militant and theoretical communism which is rather ironic because his cops appear unable to make the distinction between armed criminal suspects and unarmed ones as seen in some shooting cases of recent vintage,” argued Surendran.

The PKR Veep, a vocal critic of custodial and shooting deaths, was referring to the shooting deaths of five criminal suspects in Penang last August in which three guns were found among the five dead.

“Now without compunction Khalid wants to know if the theoretical communism of Siti Aishah has killed anyone. It’s a nice distinction to make and valid, too, but how about similar fine distinctions between armed and unarmed criminal suspects who are caught in the Force’s cross-hairs,” urged Surendran.

Recently, Surendran was fitted out for body armour by Police after he accepted an invitation by Khalid to be embedded with Police teams in raids against criminal suspects.

The deal broke down when the cops asked Surendran to sign an agreement indemnifying them of responsibility should anything happen to him in the course of operations. Surendran maintained he could not be observer and participant at the same time.

Related stories

Dear IGP, I write to inform, not attract readers

Mariam Mokhtar’s pen mightier than IGP’s sword

For the benefit of IGP Khalid Ashburn

Four fallacies of the 2nd Great Depression

November 30, 2013

By Robert Skidelsky

NOT SCIENCE: The truth of many economic propositions depends on people’s expectations

THE period since 2008 has produced a plentiful crop of recycled economic fallacies, mostly falling from the lips of political leaders. Here are my four favourites:

THE Swabian Housewife. “One should simply have asked the Swabian housewife,” said German Chancellor Angela Merkel after the collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008. “She would have told us that you cannot live beyond your means.”

This sensible-sounding logic currently underpins austerity. The problem is that it ignores the effect of the housewife’s thrift on total demand. If all households curbed their expenditures, total consumption would fall, and so, too, would demand for labour. If the housewife’s husband loses his job, the household will be worse off than before.

The general case of this fallacy is the “fallacy of composition”: what makes sense for each household or company individually does not necessarily add up to the good of the whole. The particular case that John Maynard Keynes identified was the “paradox of thrift”: if everyone tries to save more in bad times, aggregate demand will fall, lowering total savings, because of the decrease in consumption and economic growth.

If the government tries to cut its deficit, households and firms will have to tighten their purse strings, resulting in less total spending.

As a result, however much the government cuts its spending, its deficit will barely shrink. And if all countries pursue austerity simultaneously, lower demand for each country’s goods will lead to lower domestic and foreign consumption, leaving all worse off.

THE government cannot spend money it does not have.This fallacy, often repeated by British Prime Minister David Cameron, treats governments as if they faced the same budget constraints as households or companies. But governments are not like households or companies.

They can always get the money they need by issuing bonds.But won’t an increasingly indebted government have to pay ever-higher interest rates, so that debt-service costs eventually consume its entire revenue?

The answer is no: the central bank can print enough extra money to hold down the cost of government debt.

This is what so-called quantitative easing does. With near-zero interest rates, most western governments cannot afford not to borrow. This argument does not hold for a government without its own central bank, in which case it faces exactly the same budget constraint as the oft-cited Swabian housewife. That is why some eurozone member states got into so much trouble until the European Central Bank rescued them.

THE national debt is deferred taxation.According to this oft-repeated fallacy, governments can raise money by issuing bonds, but, because bonds are loans, they will eventually have to be repaid, which can be done only by raising taxes. And, because taxpayers expect this, they will save now to pay their future tax bills. The more the government borrows to pay for its spending today, the more the public saves to pay future taxes, cancelling out any stimulatory effect of the extra borrowing.

The problem with this argument is that governments are rarely faced with having to “pay off” their debts. They might choose to do so, but mostly they just roll them over by issuing new bonds.

The longer the bonds’ maturities, the less frequently governments have to come to the market for new loans. More important, when there are idle resources (for example, when unemployment is much higher than normal), the spending that results from the government’s borrowing brings these resources into use.

The increased government revenue that this generates (plus the decreased spending on the unemployed) pays for the extra borrowing without having to raise taxes.

THE national debt is a burden on future generations. This fallacy is repeated so often that it has entered the collective unconscious.

The argument is that if the current generation spends more than it earns, the next generation will be forced to earn more than it spends to pay for it. But this ignores the fact that holders of the very same debt will be among the supposedly burdened future generations.

Suppose my children have to pay off the debt to you that I incurred. They will be worse off. But you will be better off.

This may be bad for the distribution of wealth and income, because it will enrich the creditor at the expense of the debtor, but there will be no net burden on future generations.

The principle is exactly the same when the holders of the national debt are foreigners (as with Greece), though the political opposition to repayment will be much greater. Economics is luxuriant with fallacies, because it is not a natural science like physics or chemistry. Propositions in economics are rarely absolutely true or false. What is true in some circumstances may be false in others. Above all, the truth of many propositions depends on people’s expectations.

Consider the belief that the more the government borrows, the higher the future tax burden will be.

If people act on this belief by saving every extra pound, dollar, or euro that the government puts in their pockets, the extra government spending will have no effect on economic activity, regardless of how many resources are idle.

The government must then raise taxes and the fallacy becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

So how are we to distinguish between true and false propositions in economics? Perhaps the dividing line should be drawn between propositions that hold only if people expect them to be true and those that are true irrespective of beliefs.

The statement, “If we all saved more in a slump, we would all be better off,” is absolutely false.We would all be worse off. But the statement, “The more the government borrows, the more it has to pay for its borrowing,” is sometimes true and sometimes false.

Or perhaps the dividing line should be between propositions that depend on reasonable behavioural assumptions and those that depend on ludicrous ones.

If people saved every extra penny of borrowed money that the government spent, the spending would have no stimulating effect. True. But such people exist only in economists’ models.– Project Syndicate/www.nst.com.my

Political Polemics: a threat to National Unity

November 30, 2013

by Razali Ismail@http://www.nst.com.my

POLITICAL polemics — the art of using the power of words to maliciously and divisively influence public opinion over contentious issues — functions unlike spirited debates and honest discourse that enhances the public sphere and work towards the negotiation of common understandings.

The former drives vindictive wedges between groups and individuals, and retards any advance towards integration of ideas and acceptance of differences.

From time immemorial, it has been strategically used to the advantage of a few; to enflame emotions and unqualified support that run counter to any sense of logic or rationality.

Recently, we saw the power of polemics that nearly brought the United States to the brink of collapse. We also saw how polemics can be used to sway long-held sense of tolerance to one of intolerance like the banning of the building of minarets in Switzerland.

Political polemics are successful because people are intrinsically insecure. The tendency to prepare for the worse as a survival instinct or “negativity bias” is fully exploited, as it preys upon our emotions and fears.

At home, our multicultural context is fertile ground for polemics. Despite efforts at strengthening national unity, boiling resentment over what has been perceived as increasing marginalisation of interests along ethnic lines fueled political polemics.

Successive waves of disputes over the past decade and recent polemics on democracy, human rights, intra and inter ethnicity, the call for a clean and fair elections and a more equitable distribution of economic wealth have started to shake the harmony and tranquillity that many have worked tirelessly to transform into reality.

Some factions that claimed to champion enshrined privileges and entitled rights can tilt the country towards unwelcome extremes and develop fault lines that cut across religious, cultural, and ethnic boundaries.

However, polemics in and of itself is not totally divisive. It can also play a positive role in resolving differences and conflicts. The key lies in reviewing disruptions as focal points for drawing collective energies together to confront a common enemy or cooperate towards a mutuality of interests. The critical element is winning mainstream acceptability.

This is why political polemics today poses such a difficult conundrum.

On the one hand, judiciously exercised, carefully applied and effectively employed, polemics can be used to transform a minority opinion into a common cause, bring together diverse groups into a united front and animate whole populations into collective action, like what Sukarno did for Indonesia and Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad did for us.

But even with the best of intentions, and especially when lacking the appropriate restraint and prudence, the intrinsic appeal, persuasive muscle and formidable presence of polemics has the potential to bring about strife and ruin just as much or reinforce uncommon ties under shared convictions and beliefs.

While we worked hard to make sure that our nation enjoys a measure of security, stability and prosperity by careful implementation of workable and effective socio-cultural policies to recalibrate structural imbalances and redress systemic inefficiencies, we are aware of the polemics that tend to negate every positive action that we take.

Few countries, especially those with largely homogenous populations, will understand or appreciate the complexities of leading culturally diverse nations like ours and the sacrifices we made to stay on course.

The growing concern is how recent developments will affect the younger generation, especially Bumiputera youths who seem resistant to government efforts and policies related to freedom of expression, freedom of association and affirmative economic action like the New Economic Policy.

Given this polemics of resistance, can we rival other countries in the region that are well on their way in fortifying their own economies to attract foreign investments and ramp up production for competing in both the Asean and wider global economy?

The polarising polemics and acrimonious debates today present themselves more often than not as disruptive forces. Unfounded allegations of corruption in the government, for example, have tainted our image and impaired our ability to inspire confidence among foreign investors.

These challenges are further compounded by the presence of social media that has exponentially magnified the power of polemics. We are no longer afforded the luxury to sensibly mull over their implications, to carefully confirm their veracity, and to reasonably evaluate their arguments.

More has to be done to strengthen the spirit of enterprise and the penchant towards hard work among the younger generation — qualities that have always been there irrespective of their cultural backgrounds — to further hone their technical competencies, harness their inborn potential and encourage them down the path of self-improvement and global competitiveness.

In the face of uncompromising realities of the international marketplace, we cannot allow ourselves the luxury of welfare dependencies that lull us into a false sense of security and complacency.

We must go back to our roots that inform our culture of the values of moderation that have been cultivated over centuries of intermingling and interaction, that continue to guide our relations as the natives of this region.

The most salient elements of these principles may have been articulated by our Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Najib Razak, when he introduced the notion of a Global Movement of Moderates to the General Assembly of the United Nations three years ago.