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New Malaysia pivots with ‘waddling gait’

Jasmine Low

I lift the ‘waddling gait’ from the best “Train to Busan” film review written IMHO by Maggie Lee, writer, film critic, film festival organiser and films made in Asia advocate. I find this phrase such a tickle, and Maggie Lee, an ingenue.

Malaysia’s political scene has more dips and highs than a high-budget Hollywood film. It has gore, romance, slapstick, joys and tribulations of the people as well as hope and despair. All the ingredients that would make a blockbuster.

I offer you a 15-minute overview, a quick fly-by on Malaysia’s politics from an outsider’s perspective, looking in with allowance for some tongue-in-cheek.

The premise

Let’s start with this. Imagine we’re co-pilots, sitting beside one another in a micro-drone with a first person’s view or as they say, FPV-view. It’s the year of Malaysia’s 14th General Elections (GE14), where villages and highways were strewn in a sea of navy-blue flags of the national stronghold known then as Barisan Nasional (National Front) and on a lesser scale, red banners sporting the ever-promising eye of hope for Pakatan Harapan (Alliance of Hope). Najib Razak, who was Malaysia’s 13th Prime Minister was in his second term and called for elections in April 2018. Never in hubris would he have imagined how time would unfurl.

Two friends and I, one whom I shed a tear for, for I will never meet her again, drove up the North-South expressway from the capital to Penang in May 2018. In Barisan blue, countless instant billboards like the ones below were put up, inviting voters to mark ‘X’ and a promise, “Together with Barisan Basional, make our nation great,” whereas this cheeky red board I snapped below, has former Prime Minister and contender, Tun Mahathir’s Pakatan Harapan prompt, “Our nation is great without you,”.

“After this, there is no turning back.
You take the blue pill—the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe.
You take the red pill—you stay in Wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes.
Remember: all I’m offering is the truth”
Morpheus – The Matrix

May 2018 #GE14
Photo: Jasmine H. Low – All rights reserved.

A big debt

Let’s take a look at what Greek politician and former Minister of Finance Varoufakis tells The Guardian in an interview, “Nobody believes the systemic media in Greece, and they’re all bankrupt,”.

Yanis Varoufakis, an Economics lecturer at the University of Sydney in the 1990s, taught my cohort about John Maynard Keyne’s Economics. To hear his voice of disobedience was a resonate relief if not painful, “I wake up, and dream at night, of debt [relief]. It’s like being a prisoner of war. You have to try to escape. Our country is a debtors’ prison.” His words rang true of the state of Malaysia’s predicament too. Pre-Covid, Malaysia’s coffers were already short, its citizens paying at arms’ length, and nobody knew what they were up for in the bleak horizon. Covid-hit, June 2022 figures show the Malaysian government debt accounted for 59.3% of its GDP, a whopping MYR880 billion (projected to hit 64.9% according to The Star).

To put it in a regional perspective, data from CEIC Data shows the Malaysian Government debt accounted for 63.8 % of its Nominal GDP in Sep 2023, Singapore’s Government debt was 171.1 % of its Nominal GDP in Jun 2023, Thailand’s Government debt accounted for 54.9 % of its Nominal GDP in Sep 2023 and Indonesia’s Government debt accounted for 38.1 % of the country’s Nominal GDP in Sep 2023.

The Promise

Martin Scorsese’s The Wolf of Wall Street, which was funded by a company whose directors include the stepson of an incarcerated statesmen in Malaysia, ironically weaves a true story of Jordan Belfort’s rise and fall in living the high life as a stockbroker steeped in crime, corruption involving the federal government in the United States. My curious mind asks, why would someone so well-connected, educated in the London School of Economics with obviously great connections, invest in a film that eventually mirrors real-life? Like stepdad, Najib, hubris was his call card, but the film entrepreneur still weighs in on Amazon’s film database – IMDb with credits tracing back to 2011.

There was a time in the northern state of Penang when Korean celebrity PSY came-a-dancing Gangnam Style with Barisan Nasional’s Najib and crew in red, not their usual hue, but for a Chinese voter appeal cue. Broker this deal he did, an elusive Penangite who affected news strewn across family chat groups begging the million Ringgit question – how much was PSY paid for that Penang gig?! I remember it well. I was there with relatives sitting in a coffeeshop enjoying a bowl of steamy Teochew bone broth. The kind that’s served with delicately hand-pressed fish balls amidst broiled chicken and duck slivers, shallots fried and fresh and flat rice noodles. Little would we have known that on the other side of town, another steamy Teochew, now a fugitive wanted by the American Department of Justice (DOJ) would be teeny bopping with South Korean entertainer, PSY. In fact, he proudly arranged it for ~ US$2m.

Fast forward to the time the general elections GE15 had just concluded in November 2021. We were at the tail-end of the Covid-19 pandemic and I missed the opportunity to exercise my voting rights because I had already pre-booked my flight. Malaysia had no Prime Minister instated when mum and I flew home onboard a Malaysia Airlines. No Chicken Satay anywhere on the MAS menu, so we had rice with chicken. It was as symbolic as our family’s life choices the past 30 years. For 30 years, I have been straddling two countries spread apart by sea and Indonesia’s tens of thousands of islands. From my isle seat, I sensed a sense of urgency from PM potential Anwar, as he had already spent two decades in prison, then out, and speaking across the world at renowned universities from Singapore to Germany, USA to the UK. A former finance minister of Malaysia during Mahathir’s reign, he was the Reformasi poster boy before Fahmi Reza the graphic design satirist turned his soon-to-be-appointed cabinet into an IKEA-themed map.

KabinetMael by Fahmi Reza
byu/yongen96 inmalaysia

Back on motherland, I was a hungry wolf and made a pit stop. I gulped a cup of RM5.50 (US$1.20) Masala tea with fresh cow milk at Bala’s but slowly savoured a RM10 (US$2.20) mutton appam while watching the analog clock on my digital phone. I’ve not watched time on my hands since my Casio broke, perhaps that’s why my BFFs love gifting me with watches on Christmas.

A couple of months in with Malaysia’s tenth Prime Minister (PMX) installed and his hundred days done, the entire nation and dust yet unsettled in a new reset.

The Madani Reset

No Salary, no luxury car

PM Anwar announced he won’t be drawing an annual salary, nor will he require a set of new wheels. He said every Ringgit counts, giving up the Mercedes s600 worth up to MYR1.8 million for a full-spec version, opting to arrive for meetings in a Toyota Camry. That set the tone, it was going to be a mindful reset in the horizon.

Foreign Investment Commitments

English news daily, The Star reports, “The Malaysian delegation led by Anwar made an official visit to China from March 29 to April 1, 2023. The visit saw Malaysia securing MYR170 billion (US$36.51b) worth of investment commitments from China. Anwar also met Chinese President Xi Jinping and witnessed the signing of 19 MOUs with his counterpart Li Qiang”.

Making headlines from debt ratios to a relief of heavy sentencing

This new PMX has made waves not just on the financial front for a country crippled by a national debt including liabilities of up to MYR1.5 trillion (US$350 billion). In January 2023, 80 per cent of the country’s gross domestic product (GDP) was set aside to pay down debts and I thought millennials were having debt issues!

A day after the announcement, Malaysia again made talk at the United Nations with a legal reform to archaic laws that called for the death penalty punishment for “capital crimes like murder, drug trafficking, treason, acts of terrorism, waging war against the Yang di-Pertuan Agong, and rape resulting in death or rape of a child. Executions were carried out by hanging and firing squad” (Reference source: Wikipedia).

In short, the death penalty is, in our common experience, an atavistic relic from the past that should be shed in the 21st century.

VOLKER TÜRK, HIGH COMMISSIONER FOR HUMAN RIGHTS

Learn more about Malaysia Madani: Link to the Official Prime Minister’s Office website

I think of this manifesto, as if I, am a Prime Minister taking helm of a nation and I think of the Rukun Negara (the country’s constitution) that has been in place since independence from the Crown in 1957. Printed on all school exercise books, having at one’s fingertips wasn’t enough to have it instilled as values. Work values, love values, citizenry values are what those five foundational values imbue in the DNA of being Malaysian. It’s not just about our common love for nasi lemak and teh tarik. Notice how I’m not italicising Malay words? That’s decolonialising the language and intertwining values. Throw in another six rukuns to the mix and watch how new Malaysians will be primed to catchup as one of the most formidable developing economies in Asia Pacific, home to two-thirds of the world’s population.

In my own words, allow me to interpret the six additional contitutions under Anwar’s Madani plan: 

Dwell a little on that Arabic term, Ihsan, the building block for Madani, which forms a new brand for a Truly Asia Malaysia. The definition of Ihsan is derived from the Hadith of Gabriel in which Muhammad states, “[Ihsan is] to worship God as though you see Him, and if you cannot see Him, then indeed He sees you”.

Anwar’s tour has had him travel across cities around the world to university campuses of Malaysia to the bane of his opposition, citing his travels have so far superseded those of other Prime Ministers. In this address in the state of Negri Sembilan, PMX points out that in 2023, the poverty figure must be well-noted and addressed amongst the Malays without disregarding impoverished communities from all races including Chinese, Indian, Orang Asli and those from remote interiors of Sabah and Sarawak. He called for all ministries to strive to fix the issue of poverty rather than focus on mega projects. Touché.

In June this year, Al-Jazeera 101 East’s Chan Tau Chau went face-to-face with Prime Minister Anwar to give the world an update on Malaysia’s politics (interview). Now a leader of the country whose leaders had once demonished him behind bars, PMX shares that it’s a “dirty game”. That word doesn’t exist but to me, it aptly describes what happened.

Everything, everywhere all at once

Circling back to Malaysia’s Oscars obsession, Michelle Yeoh’s Best Actress win did not only make her mama proud, a whole nation was rooting for her to clinch Hollywood’s highest accolade. Tinseltown is set to welcome yet another Malaysian fantasy horror film “Tiger Stripes” for Best Foreign Film nomination. Written and directed by the unassuming Amanda Nell Eu of Ghost Grrrl Productions, local screen censorship of her film recently made news even in trade magazines, as the director stood by her film and shared that the censored film screened in her homeland was not the film she made. The film is a stellar example of one made and supported by an epitome of a “village” having been co-produced by Ghost Grrrl Productions cofounder Foo Fei Ling, Patrick Mao Huang (Flash Forward Entertainment, Taiwan), Fran Borgia (Akanga Film Asia, Singapore), Juliette Lepoutre & Pierre Menahem (Still Moving, France), Jonas Weydemann (Weydemann Bros, Germany), Ellen Havenith (PRPL, Netherlands) and Yulia Evina Bhara (Kawan-Kawan, Indonesia). There were several other Malaysian films that hit the international circuit these past 3-years, making it one of the most exciting years in film for the Malaysian film industry. A crowdfunded film snuck into the year on Dec 21, 2023 and sought to YouTube for its global release. ‘Pendatang’, the film produced by Amir Muhammad’s Kuman Pictures and also a sneer usually used to call immigrants in Malaysia, has received 648,041 views and 2,300 comments.

I started this article almost a year ago now onboard a flight enroute Kuala Lumpur. At the time Malaysia was at the edge of its seat, with no Prime Minister yet appointed. If a gait can tell tales, a lag in leg movement as in the one of a certain Western world President’s would quickly take up headline space. If there were a joke made of one’s waddle, then politicians who usurped power took a wide sidestep in what was known as Langkah Sheraton to displace a government voted in by Malaysians. Nobody could have predicted that tactical chess-mate manœuvre, nor could anyone predict a fantasy film about the coming-of-age of a girl going through puberty (with some scenes censored in its home country) or a film about its immigrants could lift Malaysia back on the radar as a veritable, global international brand of a nation, far richer in culture and ethics than ever imagined. What’s the next change? This is no film; it is real life. New Malaysia is advancing like a new Netflix series, and I await the next episode with bated breath.

Happy new year!

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