Kam Raslan’s Talking Edge

(Reprinted from The Edge – Options pullout, 6 June 2016 issue)

Dear Kam,
I was complaining to my wife about something in the news and she said I complain too much. Do I? I mean, isn’t there a lot to complain about?
Mr Whiner

Do Malaysians complain too much, or do Malaysians have a lot to complain about? It is a fact that transactions surrounding 1Malaysia Development Bhd (1MDB) are being investigated by the financial authorities of several foreign countries, and this should be shamefully embarrassing. But at home, the whole issue has been cleared by the authorities and presumably people should stop complaining. And now in Parliament, hudud has re-emerged to scare many Malaysians. But many others say that this possible legal change is no different from existing laws and even if it does fundamentally change the nature of Malaysia, all non-Muslims have no right to interfere because it does not affect them. So, presumably everyone should stop complaining. When I was in KLIA recently, I took the last shuttle train between the terminals before the whole system broke down, leaving hundreds of passengers stranded. But it didn’t affect me, so I suppose I shouldn’t complain? I am easily confused and normally I would turn to Twitter for guidance, but unfortunately, some senior policemen have been away in Italy on an important fact-finding mission.

I don’t want to be one of those people who complain for the sake of complaining and I do try to find the positive and not dwell too heavily on the negative. And so, it was a relief to find a story that, for once, portrays Malaysia in a positive light. The story was probably in our local newspapers and I’m sure that somebody still reads those, but I read it on the Guardian’s website. It seems that a massive marine protected area has been established off the coast of Sabah. The one-million-hectare park will hopefully protect coral reefs and mangrove swamps from exploitation and overfishing using the obscene techniques of blasting and poisoning. I hope that new Asian geopolitics will not interfere with anybody’s enjoyment of the marine park because now if you go paddling in that part of the Sabah coastline, you could inadvertently be entering China. Who came up with the bright idea of naming it the South China Sea? It’s just a name; it does not mean it is yours. I just do not understand how China can claim so much sea that is so far away from China. But the good news is that there is going to be a massive new protected marine park and, hopefully, that will actually mean something.

Dear Kam,
I always take my holidays in Europe because, you know, I am Malaysian. But this time, my wife wants to travel to somewhere in Asia and she says that does not mean Australia. Where should we go?
Wondering Wanderer

I have just returned from a quick visit to Hanoi. It was my first time there and I arrived the day after President Barack Obama had departed, so they were ready for me. I was very surprised by Hanoi. I was expecting gloomy and monumental Soviet-style architecture with soulless wide boulevards, but I discovered bustling narrow streets and a very Vietnamese version of café society, a cultural legacy from its French colonial past.

Whenever I go to a major city for the first time, I like to visit a war memorial or war museum, not because I’m looking for facts or the truth, but because I want to see the version of the “truth” that this land wishes to portray to its citizens and to the world. When I visited the huge war memorial in Melbourne, I saw Australian schoolchildren being taken around. Many of these young girls were clearly of Asian descent and the grandchildren of immigrants from Greece and the Balkans, but they were all told that the dead Australian soldiers of the First World War were their heroes and an essential part of their history. This spirit of inclusion (or national indoctrination) is very different from Britain where memorialising of the war dead is exclusionary: it’s only for the descendants of the dead and not for recent immigrants.

The Vietnamese were ceaselessly at war for nearly four decades from the late 1940s. During that time, they (mainly the North Vietnamese) fought and beat France, the US and China under the leadership of Ho Chi Minh and his excellent military leader General Giap. You would think that they would have a lot to feel triumphal about but the Army Museum in Hanoi shows a great deal of restraint and is so confusingly laid out that I could not help feeling it was deliberate so that visitors would not be sure who was fighting who. But it must be a difficult job being the curator of the Vietnam Army Museum because geopolitics, globalisation and the tourist trade keep changing.

In the museum, Ho Chi Minh and General Giap are barely mentioned and the section on the Vietnam War was told mainly through the lenses of the brilliant photojournalists who followed the US Army around. The description of the war was extremely short on details and was told almost from an American perspective, which I thought was surprisingly generous until I noted the number of American visitors. The section on reconciliation and “moving beyond the past” was bigger than the one on the war itself.

In 1979, Vietnam and China fought a war, which the Vietnamese won convincingly. In 2016, there were busloads of tourists from China at the museum and I wanted to see how this war was portrayed. I finally found four photos tucked away in a corner that talked about a conflict on the border. It did not mention or show China. If you did not already know, then you would not have known. Only the section on the war against France was full of details and photos of French prisoners. But who cares about upsetting the French these days?

Younger Malaysians may be surprised to discover that Malaysia did not fight a war for national liberation. The Malaysian school books I have read suggest that there was constant rebellion against our British colonial oppressors. I guess remembering a negotiated independence is just not cool these days. Meanwhile, it is interesting to see how the Vietnamese who have fought actual, horrifically brutal wars now wish to downplay them.

Reprinted with the kind permission of