Kam Raslan’s Talking Edge

(Reprinted from The Edge – Options pullout, 7 May 2012 issue)

Dear Kam,
Is it my imagination or was there a big rally in KL recently?
Fair & Lovely

You can call me old-fashioned, but I tend to think that free and fair elections are kind of an essential part of a democracy. So I was at Bersih 3.0 and I was not alone. Everywhere I looked there were thousands of people. I’m not good at counting crowd numbers (who is?), but 100,000 would seem like a reasonable estimate. I’ve seen a crowd of 30,000 file out of a football match and the crowd in KL was considerably bigger.

Some 20 years ago, a rally for clean elections might have been attended by 20 people, now it’s 100,000. That’s inflation for you. Any portrayal of the event that fails to take into account the huge turnout is deliberately missing the point. Many, many people hate Bersih, wish it had never happened, wish it would all just go away, wish we would all just return to business as usual. But it did happen.

Despite being in the middle of an important contemporary moment, I couldn’t help thinking of something that happened a long time ago and somewhere far, far away. A time and place that might appear to have no connection with our own.

Back in the 1880s, London was a Third World city. There were horrific slums and then there were the posh parts. Britain was called a democracy, but only 25% of the population had the vote. This was the London of Jack the Ripper. Everybody has heard of Jack the Ripper. He was famous, and surely was front-page news back then? I did some research on those times and read a lot of old newspapers, I was surprised to find that there was very little mention of this unknown serial killer who had murdered several East End prostitutes (actually, I didn’t find any mention but I’ve seen some newspaper reports in books so I guess there must have been some mention). Instead, the news was all about a very large rally of the unemployed that took place in the posh West End of London.

The authorities back then did everything they could to make sure the rally did not happen, but about 10,000 unemployed marched out of the slums and into the West End. All available policemen and 400 soldiers were there, but they didn’t have much experience with crowd control, and why should they – that’s not what policing was all about back then. It’s not clear who started it, but it turned into a riot (a real, actual riot). The rich were seen taunting the crowds from their expensive clubs and the poor responded by throwing paving stones through the windows. Three people died.

The newspapers I read showed the outcry in the aftermath of the riot. How had the unemployed been allowed out of their slums, how had they been allowed to damage property in the West End? These people didn’t have the vote, they didn’t have any money and they didn’t own any property. Why should anybody listen to them? Somebody had to take the blame and it was the chief of police, a man called Warren. Warren resigned and was eventually shunted off to a quiet spot in the Empire. He was blamed for allowing the demonstration, not for the failure to catch Jack the Ripper. Detective work was a low priority for the police, maintaining public order was the priority. Where did Warren go in the Empire? He went to Malaya where he was put in charge of the police and armed forces.

We tend to think of Law & Order as a single phrase but it’s actually two parts. There’s law and there’s order. Law can mean one thing and order, well, that can mean something completely different.

I did not stay for the whole day at the Bersih rally. The sun was so intense that I started to get a headache and I went home before the tear gas canisters started flying. What I saw was a good-natured crowd, everybody was relaxed, including the police. What I remember most was seeing a policeman filming the crowd with an iPad and the peculiar sight of a powered paraglider buzzing around overhead. For some reason, the thing I keep remembering was a tiny moment that happened far from the crowd. As I was driving home, I was surprised to see that there were very few cars on the roads. Suddenly I was overtaken by a Bentley and a Ferrari that were racing each other down the highway. This was probably the exact same moment the tear gas canisters started to fly. We live in a strange country.

Dear Kam,
What else do we need to do in the “Look East” policy? Are we there yet?
Chopsticks

Th is question is a blast from the past. We haven’t heard about the Look East policy for a long time. Not quite sure what else there is to say on the subject. There is nothing wrong with looking east as long as we also looking north, south and west at the same time. We should always be looking at good ideas and learning from bad practices from everywhere.

Perhaps there is one thing we have learnt since the Look East policy was first mooted, and that is that nothing lasts forever. Japan is still a huge and important trading nation, brimming with great ideas, but it’s no longer the only country to be either inspired by or trying to work with. Over the last 30 years, our options have increased and we now have new opportunities with new markets. Recently, when global markets were taking a slide, it was barely noticed that the Indonesian economy was upgraded. I was recently told that the Indonesian middle class was as big as the entire population of Malaysia. They will be looking for somewhere to go on holiday, educate their kids, buy a second home or receive medical treatment.

I heard a factoid once (so it might not be true) that the middle class of India is bigger than the entire population of Western Europe. Surely there are opportunities for Malaysians there? Who would have thought that could be possible 30 years ago? The West has been taking a financial beating recently and it’s tempting to dismiss Europe and the US as gone for good. But reports of America’s demise might be premature because the long-term prognosis is surprisingly healthy. It remains a desired destination for immigration, it has a seemingly inexhaustible supply of cheap (illegal) workers from Latin America and it’s still a huge, huge market.

Global markets are constantly changing, some go up and some go down but rarely, if ever, does an economy disappear forever. We are always going to be able to find new opportunities. And if we do, then we might not ever become the biggest, but we can certainly try to be the best.

Reprinted with the kind permission of