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Part 2: Creating a new manifesto for Malaysia

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Image by Tres, Creative Commons
By ARIVIND ABRAHAM

Social Policy

I’m talking education, health, quality of life, these bread and butter issues. Yes, the NEP is at the heart of this, and it is one tough nut to crack.

Again, what if we could all build a manifesto in which we can outline what we can do better than BN. Perhaps cutting edge universal health care is a possibility? A shift away from preferences being given on a race quota basis to one that is means tested. Malay, Chinese or Indian, if you’re poor you get help.

We need some of our brightest Malay minds to ease the community through this transition, to ask of them why is it only the elite Malays get to go overseas to study, get to end up in the corridors of power, the best schools, the best of health care, etc. The Malays in Pahang, Johor, Terengganu need to see that dismantling the NEP in favour of a means tested system will actually level the playing field for them as well as others.

We need to talk about the ever growing issue of the concentration of wealth being within the same percentile of the population. The rich in Malaysia are getting richer and the poor poorer as the gap between poor and middle class widens.

Again there is so much that can be listed here and I am not a smart enough man to comprehensively discuss them all. But we need to talk policy, and talk about it more than BN ever does. BN only ever deals with policy on a surface level, rolling out pathetic schemes and drives in the hopes of distracting the people from the real issues at hand.

Economics

I know nothing about this subject per say, but I feel again it is a section that we could work to compile a direction and policy for. Someway of proving that we can talk sound economic policy for the nation, that does not rely on falsely optimistic deals and exaggerated claims.

If it means telling the country the dire truth, so be it, but at least let us build on the truth.

That is the start. At least I think it is where we can start building a manifesto from.

What about racial politics you say?

We don’t need it. Yet.

This is how BN operates. It talks politics from a racial slant. How we separate ourselves, and establish ourselves as a force to be reckoned with it to be a multiracial collective that talks policy first and foremost. Bread and butter issues that the people need to me made aware of so that they can be emancipated from the shackles that BN has on them.

We need liberal Malays who have a thorough understanding of Islam and the grassroots. Some people claim that this combination is the so called “messiah” of Malaysian politics that we thought we had found in Anwar and to some lesser extent Khairy.

But we haven’t. We need the greatest minds of all races to prepare themselves to be able to shoot down BN from every possible angle whilst feeding the rakyat the information and knowledge that BN so conveniently keeps away from them so as to lull them into a pacified state of “agreement”.

It’s BN that’s reinforced the “tidak apa” attitude that is so famously Malaysian.

Like I said in the beginning, I am only one guy, who was never really smart or enough of an intellectual to dissect the political future that Malaysians need to chart. I am hoping that this can grow into a living, breathing document to which people can contribute their policy ideas which we can compile into a cohesive and undeniably workable manifesto.

Allowing people to read this and work from it and build it and then to upload their various “amendments” which can then be formulated slowly and surely into the definitive article.

Perhaps the challenge could be that we all come together over the next few months to build a definitive manifesto that challenges BN’s legitimacy and announces the arrival of a new option that Malaysian could have if given the chance.

I am not talking about people merely leaving comments at the bottom of this like some ordinary post. I am talking about an active project that we can all work on for the next few months, and come up with a document that is truly historic in nature,

To the diaspora this is where you can come in. I am one of you. Yes, I chose to leave Malaysia and reside elsewhere and to make a life here. I will be honest that if you asked me to come back and live in Malaysia now, I would say no.

Some Malaysians call us traitors, cowards and gutless. But Malaysians are stuck in a situation where the safeguards that should be there to allow them to get rid of corrupted officials is corrupt in itself.

The diaspora contains some of the great minds we need on this manifesto. They are also in a position to not just work on this document, but to also lobby the countries they are in to exert pressure on Malaysia, and to make the world aware of the sinister and insidious destruction that is taking place in every facet of Malaysian society.

It’s time we get serious about making this change. When we were teens, we talked about things changing when we got to where we are now. We can choose to carry on as we do now, bitching, trying to solve one off issues, only ever moaning about the NEP, taking to the streets with no idea of how to tackle everything BN throws at us.

We can merely talk shop, or become a force to be reckoned with. But that will only happen if we map out our goals and shape the debate.

That my friends would truly be worthy of the nation.

To read Part 1, click here.

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ARIVIND ABRAHAM is a special projects manager for theCICAK.

Arivind Abraham is a writer and director who is based in London. He released his debut feature S’kali in 2006 and is shooting two movies back to back in KL this summer.