Kam Raslan’s Talking Edge

(Reprinted from The Edge – Options pullout, 22 June 2015 issue)

Dear Kam,
I wanted to do something for the victims of the Nepal earthquake, but then the Rohingya crisis happened, and then the Sabah earthquake happened, but then I got distracted by 1MDB, and then suddenly, Pakatan Rakyat has died. Basically, it’s all too much. Can everything just stop for a while?
Crazy Times

RTM (kids, ask your parents what an RTM is) might still be unable to even admit the existence of Pakatan Rakyat, but the opposition coalition has become very much an established part of the Malaysian landscape, and then suddenly, it is dead. I had become used to PR as being part of the new normal and yet its demise probably became inevitable when Pas decided to be the single-issue hudud party. Any Barisan Nasional celebrations over the death of their arch-enemy should be tempered with the awareness that the general mood for change remains undiminished and so, something will emerge from the ashes of PR. The death of PR should have been a shattering bombshell, and yet the occasion was barely noticed because there is so much else happening in Malaysia.

It’s as if Malaysian politics is being designed to keep an easily bored teenager entertained, but it’s all happening too fast for me. I am old, so I would use post-industrial terms like conveyor-belt or barrage to describe the endless rate of change, but I probably need to find new terms. Malaysian politics has become a scrolling, swiping and screen-tapping audience-participation reality TV show. Something happens and instantly, we cut to Instagram, Facebook or Twitter to see the reaction of regular people, of ourselves. Not so long ago, we had to wait a whole day for the newspaper (kids, ask your parents what newspapers were). Politicians made statements that went unquestioned. How could you question their often idiotic statements? Were you going to write a letter to the newspaper? Sometimes, I think we forget how isolated we all felt in those olden days, isolated in our thoughts that we shared only with a close circle of friends — of course, we might believe this, but not everyone else.

Suddenly, we can all share our role as the stars of this show called Malaysia, a show that instantly creates new subplots with their own heroes and villains. The season finale of this show might be unknown, but (spoiler alert) we are now all authors of its storyline. Or are we? The exhilaration over the democratising newness of the internet can obscure the underlying truth that the battle lines are invariably very ancient.

The recent public spat between a prince and a politician was created by the internet. If I remember rightly, the prince created a storm through a single Facebook post and a very short and wordless video. The politician may have spoken at length to the old media, but the essence of his words was reduced to internet-friendly soundbites. With the speed of the internet, this story could suddenly develop further, or fizzle out and people will shift their attention to the next new thing. But the internet-enabled controversy is awe-inspiring for its sheer minimalism, created with something as small as a mobile phone and not a printing press or by a public speech. It’s as minimal as a pantun and the controversy is as ancient as the pantun. It’s part of the continuing story of the friction between royal houses and the Malay elite, where the rest of us are anonymous onlookers either quietly choosing a side or desperately trying to get out of the way.

This recent controversy also highlights the limit of the internet and the limit of our ability to be authors of the nation’s storyline. There are certain stories that we simply cannot touch. These are the days of a vacuum at the heart of Malaysian politics and the revival of a more visible royalty. Malaysians may have found their voice on the internet when criticising politicians, and it turns out that it was quite easy to shake off that taboo, and yet the internet is virtually silent over royalty. It is the one subject where we dare not speak. As a student of deep history, I’m always looking for ancient storylines that continue trending into our own seemingly modern times, and this recent controversy between the prince and the politician is truly ancient. The royal houses are simply understood to be an eternal part of our landscape with a story surrounded not by known history but by legends. They just are and they have always been, like the jungle: mysterious, magnificent and dangerous. Walter Bagehot, the 19th-century British essayist, said of the powerful mystique of Queen Victoria who reigned over half the world (including here): “We must not let in daylight upon magic.”

Dear Kam,
Malaysian athletes have done really well at the SEA Games. How come they can’t get the same results at the Olympics? I mean, what’s the difference?
Different Strokes

Malaysians have done exceedingly well at the SEA Games and the athlete who has really caught the public’s imagination is gymnast Farah Ann Abdul Hadi, who won two gold, one silver and three bronze medals. This was a great achievement for an athlete who has clearly worked extremely hard to perfect the several difficult disciplines that I would be too scared to even attempt. Her fantastic achievement instantly caught the eye of the Perak mufti who pronounced, “Gymnastics is not meant for Muslim women because they would be showing their aurat and body shape.” Her display of skill, athleticism and grace was dismissed and thrown aside in order to focus on the lewd, which is in the eye of the beholder. Whereas most of us saw an athlete at the peak of her powers, a minority voice decided to debase her dedicated hard work. Her achievement should be an inspiration for young girls to aspire to emulate. Instead, these young girls and their parents have been warned that they will get into trouble and invite condemnation. Unless, presumably, they perform behind closed doors, with nobody watching and in complete darkness. But even then, I think some people will somehow still be able to “see” aurat.

Reprinted with the kind permission of