BARISAN NASIONAL AND THE PEOPLE - SOCIETY OF ALIENATION

There is a serious problem in Malaysia, namely, an emotional estrangement between the government and the people.

The main cause of the estrangement as a general resentment by the people of what they perceived as an arrogant, high-handed and authoritarian government style that cared little for their feelings, so that, despite the good life created for them by the government's efficiency and hard work, they felt to express this resentment freely through whatever channels were not available.

To create a strong sense of bonding among all Malaysians, regardless of ethnicity, age or socio-economic background, and a robust, unabashed loyalty towards Malaysia, clearly need the prime minister’s vision that emphasizes the readiness of the government to hear all the grouse ness that has been lying in the hearts and minds of the people.

It was best demonstrated during the Asian economic crisis by the readiness of both government and people to pull together and make sacrifices, no matter how painful, to see the country through that difficult time. Through it all was the exhilarating sensation that for the first time in the government-people relationship, there was the beginning of a real camaraderie, even warmth, which truly befitted the spirit of the nation.

But something is happening now that is threatening to sour the spirit. There seems to be a return of the old disaffection, triggered by the return of an old issue.

Whether cause or symptom, the issue of not listening to the public is once again provoking strong reaction from the people and causing them to raise their voices to a new level of concern, as seen in the letters to the press, newspaper commentaries and articles, public forums, TV phone-in comments and question-and-answer sessions with government representatives, not to mention the ubiquitous coffeeshop talk.

On its part, the government, to justify the hefty price increases is reiterating the old emphasis on the need, so crucial for the very survival of Malaysian.

The need to provide an opportunity to attract the best talent into public service, but also to keep it there, free from the temptation of corruption and fully focused on the task of good, clean, efficient government is by providing the actual detailed statistics of so many billion dollars spent as a result of astute decision.

A decision purportedly made for the good of Malaysians in the long term is seen to benefit the decision-makers, and most substantially too, in the short term. Here is an odd situation where nobility of end is obscured by dubiousness of means, where sincerity of intention is clouded by ambiguity of method.

EVEN the most severe critic of the government cannot accuse it of greed, yet even the most loyal apologist will be hard put to offer a defence. Never has an issue been more caught in a tangle of complicated logic and fractious emotion, or resulted in a wider gap between government thinking and people feeling.

The government and the people seem no longer to be in dialogue; they appear to be talking at rather than to each other. Indeed, there is the eerie sensation of the observer that both sides are merely going through the motions and paces of a practised stance, doing an accustomed, tedious but necessary dance with each other.

The government seems to be saying, a little wearily: ""We will keep explaining our decision, as meticulously and as patiently as we can, for as long as you like, but don't expect us to change it in any way.

And the people seem to be saying with equal weariness: ""We know. But since there is this new climate that allows for freer expression than we have been used to, we might as well make use of it, and have our say, for all it's worth.

In the end, the situation remains the same, caught in a time warp where everything else around is moving on.

What is happening, as demonstrated so vividly in the debate, is the persistence of a government strategy of managing public dissent that had worked well in the past and is clearly assumed to work just as well in the present (and possibly the future). Through this strategy, the government ensures that while people are publicly allowed any extent of disagreement, privately and quietly, their views can be disregarded.

The government, having made a major policy decision, made a cosmetic change by allowing, even encouraging the people to voice their views freely through the permitted channels such as the forum pages of the newspapers and the face-to-face feedback sessions with their members of parliament.

Pre election period was the most crucial period in which the government challenged the people confidently: ""You have voted us in again and again. This is all the proof we need of your absolute trust in us, so please leave us to do a our job.'' And to throw in a little sharpness if the people prove too cantankerous: ""If you don't like what we are doing, you can vote us out in the next elections,'' knowing full well that as long as there is no viable alternative government, this is not likely to happen.

This has been the scenario of the government-people relationship for as long as anyone can remember.

The point I wish to make, with all earnestness, sincerity and humility, is that this stance of the government will no longer work in the new age of a globally exposed, younger, more articulate, impatient and restless generation of Malaysians.

The frustration causing the people henceforth to unfairly blame the government for any manifestation of greed, corruption and disregard of moral responsibility in the behaviour of Malaysians, and the cynicism that inevitably follows disillusionment, causing the people, once again unfairly, to view all future government pronouncements touching on the theme of civic or moral duty, as nothing more than hollow statements.

The prospect is a bleak one. It will be bleakest when all this disaffection translates into a diminished loyalty to the nation, since respect, regard and loyalty are inextricably linked together.

In the end, it will be a much debased kind of loyalty, being really no more than an attraction to the good life which the BN government has given.

Exposed to other, competing attractions of the larger world, it will shift with the competition, moving to new shores when circumstances change and coming back to Malaysia should the circumstances change once more, the only constant in all the flux being self-interest. To these unrooted, mobile, restless Malaysians, Malaysia will gradually cease to be nation and home, and become no more than a convenient way-station, a hotel of transit. Globalisation will increasingly make this opportunistic moving around much easier and more readily justifiable.

With all due respect, it may be pointed out that the government's long accustomed stance of regarding the feelings and perceptions of the people as of little relevance to its processes of decision-making, will have to be reviewed and revised. It worked well in the past, with a less highly-educated, less exposed generation. But even the best-proven, most successful methods will have to be revised to service the expectations of a new era.

Indeed, managing the expectations of a new generation in a relentlessly shifting global order may well prove to be the government's biggest challenge in the future.

It will not be at all easy for a leadership, so long in control, so regularly vindicated in the elections, so lavishly praised by the outside world for its brilliant, sustained economic achievements, to want to make what must be a drastic, if not humbling change, in order to acknowledge the role of perceptions and emotions from the ground, that it has so long distrusted.
Moreover, it seems such presumption, even downright ingratitude on the part of the people, to take up this position towards a government whose only fault seems to be an unremitting sense of reality in guiding the society through a harsh and imperfect world.

But surely, the need to listen to voices raised repeatedly and urgently, even if jarringly, is also part of this sense of reality.

The perceptions of the people, though often clouded by emotion, though often incapable of standing up to the impeccable logic of the government's stern pragmatism, are still a necessary factor in any calculus for a productive government-people relationship, if only because perceptions, if ignored, have a way of translating into stark political eventuality.

We have seen this happen again and again in the region and elsewhere. The most direful eventuality in Malaysia that a growing disaffection could bring about, will never be anything like the street unruliness that inept, corrupt governments deserve.

Instead it will be a slow, invisible, and hence, more insidious process, steadily eroding the structure of trust, respect and regard that has been painstakingly built up in the new dispensation of Malaysians.

mi1