The infrastructure of institutions*
There are some good things about our country which we do not acknowledge either because are too obvious or because it is politically incorrect to do so. One of these is the role played by British institutions in our country.
The Federation of Malaya and later Malaysia did not emerge from the colonial era through violent struggle. Our independence was negotiated, and the Constitution which grounds our existence was built out of consensus. We took an evolutionary rather than a revolutionary path. This is not to deny or downplay the political struggle leading up to independence.
In the last three decades, however, as the political discourse in this country has taken a more ethno-nationalist and authoritarian tone, there has been an associated tendency to paint present-day Malaysia as a violent rupture with the past. Nationalism glorifies the fight and undervalues the much harder, rarer accomplishment of coming to an understanding, forging a consensus, building a nation. This is a common and understandable tendency in the way postcolonial nations talk about their past, but it has obscured an aspect of our history which distinguishes us among the states and was an important source of our early success as a nation.
This aspect is that in coming to independence in an orderly and negotiated settlement, we retained intact the best of what we already had and did not have to start from some imagined Ground Zero or mythologized past.
The best of what we already had, come 1957 and 1963, were a set of viable modern institutions practices and skills: the Westminster model of Parliamentary democracy, civil law grounded in a Constitution, a capable and independent civil service, including an excellent teaching service, armed forces and police, good schools, sophisticated trade practices and markets, financial markets, and modern methods of management such as those applied in our plantation sector. We were already a functioning country integrated into global markets. The challenges of development and nation-building were serious, but we faced them with an independent judiciary, a professional civil service and a well-defined set of relationships between a Federal Government and our individually sovereign states. Indeed we were able to face these challenges because these institutions functioned well.
Institutionally, we had a good start as a nation. Why is it important to recall this?
For one it makes sense of the feeling among many Malaysians and international friends who have observed Malaysia over a longer period that Malaysia has seen better days. There is a feeling of wasted promise, of having lost our way, or declined beyond the point of no return.
This feeling is too sharp, and too pervasive to be put down to the nostalgia of always finding “the good old days best.” The illusion of nostalgia doesn’t explain why we are losing our best and brightest. Those who can stay away and settle overseas do so, with the encouragement of their parents. Their parents tell them to remain where they are, there is nothing for them here. The illusion of nostalgia does not explain why parents fight to send their children to private and international schools rather than the national schools they themselves went to. The very same politicians who recite nationalist slogans about our national schools and turn the curriculum into an ideological hammer send their own children to international schools here or in Australia and Britain. They know better than anyone else the shape our schools are in. It is no illusion that people do not have the faith in our judiciary and police that they once had.
Malaysians are losing faith in their future despite the evidence of material progress around us, despite being a relatively successful country. We have lots of infrastructure. Lots of malls and highways. Especially toll highways. It is not for want of physical infrastructure, dubious as some of it is, that we feel we languish. It is a sense that we are losing the institutional infrastructure of civilized society.
That infrastructure, whether indigenous or acquired, was already in place at independence. Having secured our political independence through a consultative and deliberative process, we were well placed to build upon this foundation. We had a complex system of laws, conventions and practices but crucially we had the people capable of understanding and administering such a system. We had a civil service and a political class trained and socialized into the practices of the Westminster system of parliamentary democracy. Core principles of accountability, check and balance and independence were lodged in the habits, thought patterns and behaviour of our civil servants and judges.
If Malaysians feel a sense of loss, tell their children not to come home from overseas, or are making plans to emigrate, it is not because they do not love this country or are ungrateful for tarred roads and bridges. It is because they feel the erosion of the institutional infrastructure of our society. Institutional intangibles such as the rule of law, accountability and transparency are the basis of a people’s confidence in their society.
We have gone through a period of forgetting about the importance of our core institutions. It is time to remember again. Many of these are British institutions. Cultural progress is a story of borrowing, adaptation and learning. The vitality of this part of the world, that for all recorded history has been the maritime crossroads of East and South Asia and the Middle East, is based on material and cultural exchange, borrowing and adaptation. It would be cultural and economic suicide for us to pretend otherwise.
It is time we shed the crude nationalism which refuses to acknowledge things “not invented here”. This country had a great start in life because we had inherited a system of laws, rights and conventions that had been refined over more than seven hundred years. We inherited a civil service that for all its woes continues to keep the ship of state afloat despite the sometimes irresponsible actions of politicians. We inherited the English language, and with that a strong set of links to the English speaking world. The eminence of tonight’s assembly testifies to the great value of our educational ties to Britain.
We acknowledge and celebrate our ties to British education and British institutions not out of sentimentality but out of an understanding that these are foundational influences that have had much to do with stability and competitiveness as a nation. British educational, administrative, legal and cultural institutions continue to be of vital importance to us as Malaysians. We need to affirm these links without political blinkers, understand their cultural, political and economic importance to us, and build on them. One result of such a change of attitude should be a rethinking of our attitude to the English language. By now it is also a Malaysian language. It would be sheer hypocrisy to deny its value and centrality to us as Malaysians. Do we continue to deny in political rhetoric what we practice in reality, or do we grasp the situation and come up with better policies for the teaching and adoption of the language?
Rather than indulge in grand schemes of cultural “import substitution” we should appreciate the extent of these influences and links and explore ways to develop them further.
We should acknowledge that by the time of Independence we already had a string of excellent schools in major towns across the country. These include Penang Free School, The Royal Military College, The Malay College, St John’s Institution, Victoria Institution, Muar High School and my alma mater Anderson High School. These schools nurtured a generation of multiracial leaders who were completely at home with each other despite coming from different backgrounds. This comfort with each other was the basis of their ability to work with one another. We have let these schools become mediocre, at great cost to the quality of our leadership and in a way that imperils our unity. It is time to restore them to their former eminence.
The world has not stayed still. We should look at matters such as Parliamentary reform and the reform of the civil service with an eye to what is going on in Britain as it faces the challenges of European integration and its transformation into an increasingly multicultural society. At both the institutional and people to people level, we should connect with Britain as it is today, a fast changing society facing many of the same problems we do, rather than recycle stale colonial era stereotypes.
Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah
*Speech delivered at British Graduates Association 22nd Anniversary Dinner
Nov 1, 2009, Berjaya Times Square Hotel, Kuala Lumpur
Greetings Tengku Li, I only wish such a beautifully composed message on such an important and fundamental truth that affects the future well-being of the people and country will be picked up by as many Malaysians as possible, especially those in position that can wield power for positive change. My fear is that false pride and false nationalism will prevent such changes from happening. With Best Wishes, Nosta to stand for nostalgia for the good old times.
nosta83
November 2, 2009 at 2:04 pm
Oh yes. I am one of them who have told my children to NOT return to this “parish governed” country and become a second class citizen and be at the mercy of the corrupted police, UMNO and Judiciary.
A country without a trustworthy police force and Judiciary does not inspire confidence.
Even MCA and UMNO leaders send their children overseas for education.
perakborn
November 2, 2009 at 2:28 pm
Well, Tengku, you have the good fortune to have been the product of a specific era when the more positive aspects of British rule were still extant, especially within the civil service and judiciary. Tun Razak, Ghazali Shafie and Mahathir were the Young Turks of Malay nationalism who deliberately distanced themselves from the colonial legacy. In so doing the baby appears to have been thrown out with the bathwater. No doubt there are more skeletons in the British cupboard than we could imagine in our youthful days, but at least the culture of basic decency and the highly developed British sense of irony have made it possible for intellectual liberty to flourish despite all the sneaky built-in controls. It’s become habitual for us to mark the swift decline of ethical governance in Malaysia with Mahathir’s rise to power.
Whatever good qualities the man may have possessed were effectively negated from 1986 onwards when the scale of corruption and cronyism began to wildly escalate – and when he opted to crucify his erstwhile deputy with, of all things, the ludicrous sodomy accusation, that’s when the whole country tilted into its present moral limbo.
Antares
Antares
November 3, 2009 at 9:05 pm
I am reminded, Tengku, of Singapore’s decision to keep its British institutions and indeed its statues of Raffles. The argument was that they also helped to allay the fears of foreign investors that Singapore might turn into a foreigner-unfriendly sinkhole.
I am quite certain that the real arguments are more like yours. Thanks for yet another insightful read!
sinisterdexterity
November 3, 2009 at 10:45 pm
Dear YM Tengku,
A very insightful and timely speech for the benefits of our nation’s so-called leaders. Sadly, the powers-that-be are too corrupt n power crazy to be concerned with the continuous destruction of all our governmental institutions n our Judiciary. Malaysians at large feel the wasted promise of a bygone era. The sense of “what would have been” lingers deeply in my heart.
May Tengku’s will to affect positive change to our nation from within UMNO continues to burn brightly for many more years to come. I sincerely wish Tengku the best of health.
P/S: I wish to spread yr noble words above via my blog themalaysiandream.wordpress.com. I trust YM Tengku would have no objection. Thanks.
Ron CK Sim
November 6, 2009 at 9:43 am
Dear Tengku,
Your speech is superb and it differentiates you from the rotten leaders we have today. We had a Tengku who got independence for us without a drop of blood. He cared for the people and the country. We will always be thankful to him.
Over fifty years ago we got our independence but unfortunately we do not feel being independent anymore because the system that was in place have since collapsed. It is the doings of our own leaders and not outsiders.
Corruption has moved into every institution in the country that it appears almost impossible to overcome it. It is like a cancer just growing because there is no serious effort to eradicate it. In any country where its judiciary is corrupted or manipulated by the political masters, that country is gone. We are in that situation.
The public has no more confidence in the judiciary. The Lingam video clip is a testimony of the standard of our judiciary. The biggest set back is that the findings of the Royal Commission of Inquiry is useless as the Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department Datuk Seri Nazri Aziz and even the PM says there is no case. So the Lingam case closed. What a great joke.
None of our leaders in power are capable of putting things back in the right place. We need another Tengku to correct the incorrect. Like many others I too am of the view that the country needs your leadership for real changes to take place.
Our present leaders put up a big show talking about changes in UMNO but after the recent UMNO Assembly, nothing actually changed. The so-called changes are actually modification of the old ones like putting a new coat of paint on an old building. It was all done to fool UMNO members. Our leaders can still control the voters. The purpose is simple. Tengku Razaleigh must not be allowed to contest for the UMNO Presidency. It goes to show that from Tun Mahathir to Pak Lah and to Datuk Seri Najib, all made sure you are keopt at bay. Tengku, its time for you to change platform and prove to them that you are the real leader our beloved and beautiful country needs.
pinkpanther7
November 6, 2009 at 7:26 pm
Dr Mahathir is the culprit for the current sad state of affairs in Malaysia !
During his 22 years of premiership, he had systematically dismantled the institutions which were set up to safeguard against abuse of power, corruption and ensure the rule of law, democracy and independence of the judiciary .
fair2
November 7, 2009 at 10:04 am
There is no way you – a one-man army – can change UMNO. There is only ONE way and that is for you to align yourself with the Opposition in the next general elections…… that is, if you don’t want Malaysia to be turned into a pariah state by UMNO.
You are in a cesspool called UMNO. Get out of it.
perakborn
November 7, 2009 at 4:27 pm
Another excellent article pulling at the heart strings of your average daily Malaysian living below the poverty line of RM3,000.00 per month, having lost his job. Hoping, praying and ocassionally cussing for a change. For what else is there to do as he is unable to send his kids to preffered places of learning. Perhaps in his own subliminal way he is playing his part in a bigger way… the way this article has…
tengkurh4pm
November 11, 2009 at 12:53 am
Salam. YBM TR
Thank you very much for your inspiring speech at UPSI, Tanjong Malim today. I’m very proud to be one of the audience and feel honored to be able to post the last question during the Q&A session. I hope you’ll upload your speech full-text in this blog to be shared and read by others.
Again, thank you very much. Wassalam.
nazre72
November 11, 2009 at 5:06 pm
Guess what I have in mind,
Honestly, It is you who should be the PM.
malloucius
November 13, 2009 at 2:17 pm
My dearest YBM Tengku,
I really hope that you are willing to lead the “Kaukus Khas Parlimen (berhubung isu petroleum (Kelantan))”. Salam.
rosetulip
November 19, 2009 at 9:53 pm
A brave speech in an atmosphere of concocted nationalism we live in the last 3 decades or more. These are sentiments shared by many who had lived through the 50s and 60s, in Sarawak, as much as in Peninsular.
For national perspective, I have to add to Kuli’s list of schools: St. Joseph’s (my alma mater) and St.Thomas’ of Kuching, Sacred Heart of Sibu, St. Anthony’s of Saraikei, etc. Add to that Batu Lintang Teachers’ Training College of Kuching, the premier institute of British Borneo, producing quality teachers for the 3 Borneo states.
The essential instrument to bring back values now forsaken, is the English language, not just as the language of commerce, science and technology, but the finer cultural and moral values on which any material civilisation should be butressed. This need not be at the expense of other multi-cultural influences, be they of our archepelago, Middle Eastern, East Asian, South Asian, even Australasian.
Mark. When fine governmental institutions are subverted by power and greed, social values and institutions are threatened, freedom suppressed, justice compromised, economy jeopardised and the livelihood and dignity of the multitudes imperiled.
Sarawak should regain the English language as a parallel or second official language, if the Malaysia Agreement is dutifully complied with by KL.
Kuching.
francisngu
November 30, 2009 at 10:25 am