Kam Raslan’s Talking Edge

(Reprinted from The Edge – Options pullout, 1 December 2014 issue)

Dear Kam,
Is it true that Economy Class will be re-named Presidential Class?
Frequent Flyer

The new president of Indonesia recently did a truly terrible thing. He set a very dangerous precedent. He went to Singapore for his son’s graduation, and he flew there on the Indonesian carrier Garuda and in Economy Class. He gave the lame excuse that he should fly Economy Class because his trip was personal and not official. But he had breakfast with Singapore’s PM. It doesn’t matter if the breakfast only lasted an hour, he could easily have called that an official engagement and then thrown in a weekend of golfing. And the only entourage he could muster was his wife and a security detail. Is he trying to make everyone else look bad? Fortunately, he compromised his “everyman” credentials by staying at a 5-star hotel on Orchard Road but unfortunately, he can easily afford that, even on a president’s salary, and even worse, he and his wife did not take the opportunity to go on a shopping binge. Doesn’t he realise the damage he is doing?

Dear Kam,
My father keeps telling me I should do my bit for “nation building”. I have no idea what he’s talking about. Building? I know he doesn’t want me to become an engineer because he’s made it very clear I’m going to get qualified as a doctor before I become a ballet dancer. So, what’s this nation-building stuff?
Dancing Queen

“Nation building” is a phrase I hear less and less these days and the people who do still say it are getting older and older. I think the concept is intimately connected to Malaysia immediately after it gained independence when Malayans were expected to put aside their individual wants and, instead, pull together for the sake of the nation. Pull together but pull behind the government. As the years go by, fewer and fewer Malaysians have any memory of post-Independence politics of struggle and, soon, it will only be grandparents who will be able to remember those days.

The phrase “nation building” suggests newness and construction and the connotations of newness in the phrase is the reason why the phrase has lasted so long but also why it cannot last much longer. If the nation is always in the process of being built, then the job is never completed; indeed, it can never be completed. This means that the original architects must always be required because surely only they understand the blueprints. But if the project is always being built and will never be completed, then we’re all living in the middle of a construction site. And who wants that? The phrase may have worked for the last 50 years but how much longer can it be used? Another 50 years? 100 years? 200 years? Malaysia has only been around for 51 years but presumably, we want to be around for a lot longer. Maybe, it’s time to start using terms that denote national maturity?

Malaysians are notoriously happy to build fancy projects but uninterested in maintenance. Maybe it would be good to concentrate on simple but unglamorous things like looking after the plumbing, painting the exterior and making sure the building has good security. And we also need more ballet dancers.

Dear Kam,
My question is simple — is anything on the Internet even remotely true?
Stunned

Recently, I watched a short video that showed a boy in Gaza pretending to have been shot by an Israeli sniper, and then he got up and rescued his sister. It appeared to confirm Israeli brutality but, also, it was an affirming story about courage and intelligence. But the whole thing was a fake. It was made by a Norwegian film crew in Malta. I’m only thankful that when I watched it, I suspected it was fake, but that’s only because I know something about film production and different types of video quality. A lot of people believed it was true and the video went viral.

Whenever I’m scrolling through the Internet, I find myself in a balance of belief and suspicion. I want to believe everything I read because I’m a trusting sort of person but I’ve been burnt so many times by stories that turn out to be completely untrue that now, I mostly don’t believe a thing I read. It used to be that there were only a handful of newspapers around the world that we could turn to for news, and although we might not trust them completely, we at least understood their bias and could assume that they would do some decent fact-checking. Nowadays, there are thousands of “news” sites and we don’t even know which country they come from. It’s amazing how easily I’ve found I can be fooled by a site that has a proper-sounding name and a proper-looking banner, and yet, I ultimately know nothing about it. How do I know if they have checked their facts? What they care about is getting clicks and eyeballs, so it doesn’t matter to them if the story is true or not, as long as it gets our attention. But that doesn’t mean it’s time to start believing the conspiracy theory stuff. That stuff is just nonsense.

Dear Kam,
What is Y politics?
X Man

There’s a lot of jargon in Malaysian politics these days. Obviously, the jargon and slogans are really effective because otherwise, it would just be a futile attempt to sound kinda businessy. The latest ones I’ve seen are K politics and Y politics. Obviously, I haven’t bothered to find out what these bits of jargon actually mean because, well, I was washing my hair that day. I’m hoping that K politics means bringing Girls’ Generation to KL, or at least half of them, which would still mean 53 cute Korean girls, which must surely fulfil our K-Pop KPI. I think Y politics has something to do with attracting Gen Y voters. So, Y politics means taking lots of selfies because, you know, kids these days take lots of selfies. And our politicians are definitely achieving their selfie KPIs.

Reprinted with the kind permission of