It's Not Just Great Leaders Who Change History
The history of great nations as well as the turning points of lesser nations have often been portrayed as events driven by great, gifted leaders:
Lincoln in the America of the 1860s. Gandhi in the India of the 1940s or Deng Xiaoping in the China of the 1980s.
But what it takes for a nation to turn from an era of hopeless despair and decline into an era of optimism and renewal is more than just the emergence of a leader.
It takes a community of wise, persevering men and women who would have engaged in deep spiritual struggle for the nation's destiny over several years. Nothing occurs by chance.
Yet, it is more the rule than the exception that a nation that has fallen into corruption and decline usually gets worse over time, becoming a basket case for the world to look at with both pity and loathing.
An Adopted Nation By Chance
So, I was quite bemused when an old journalist friend Professor Harish Mehta who manages an Asian strategic journal, asked me to write about this small South East Asian country of mine which, incidentally is not my country of birth though I am a citizen.
The country is Malaysia, once tagged as an Asian tiger economy in the early 1990s but has since then, gone through a never-ending cycle of fortune and misfortune.
I wont go into the details but these cycles that I speak of are economic, political and psychological in nature.
A Simple Yet Baffling Paradox
The paradox of this nation is quite simple yet baffling to outsiders.
On the one hand, Malaysia is, by and large, a multi-ethnic nation comprising about 67% Malay bumiputeras (ie Malays and indigenous natives), 25% Chinese and 7% Indians who have lived peacefully with each other for the most part of the country’s six decades as a sovereign nation apart from an ugly race riot in 1969.
This ethnic mix of Asians and the peaceful co-existence of the country is unique in many ways. You might call it the axiomatic vision of God for Malaysia.
On the other hand, the country’s ethnic communities have been divided by race-based political parties thanks to the self-seeking ambitions of politicians who exploit the mindsets of its respective communities.
(Here we are referring to maverick politicians such as the former two-time Prime Minister Tun Dr Mahathir who fostered not only a certain race-based mindset but a generation of crony capitalists).
Why is this a baffling paradox? Because the ideal and the reality are not only at odds.
There are internal contradictions within the ideal and the reality on their own.
One such example is the contradiction of being religious (i.e. a lover of all fellow human beings) while feeling morally justified in treating certain people groups with unfair economic prerogatives (in terms of public sector jobs, scholarships and government contracts).
At times, critics attribute Malaysia's root problems to half baked intellects and mediocre men of good intentions but flawed methods.
By and large, the common antagonist is usually the old fox himself, a moniker for Tun Dr Mahathir.
But I prefer to describe Malaysia's problems as one of being double-minded. Like a split Jekyll and Hyde personality that has become unrecognisably one person.
Many psychological problems stem from man's inability or refusal to see and understand who they really are.
Instead, the human psyche is either focused on the past (where they come from; family and roots) or the future (aspirations and hopes).
In fact, one can categorise nations as either backward-looking or forward-looking.
A nation will tend to be backward-looking when it is led by backward-looking leaders who glorifies past victories, past glories, often in the context of race, religion or partisan politics.
My key point is that, in order to be a forward-looking nation, we need to stop the rush to plan ahead or restore a past glory but rather, to see who we are, first of all.
The failure to understand your true identity, your true national nature will only lead to failures in future endeavours.
Hedgehog or Fox?
Is your nation a fox who is good at many things or a hedgehog who only specialises in one competitive advantage? Unfortunately, Malaysia is a hedgehog that has made some failed attempts at being a fox.
What are the people good at? Living peacefully with pragmatic respect for each other's ability to work efficiently and practise our faiths freely.
Since the 1970s, that is an unspoken formulae that underlined the relative economic success of Malaysia despite political and institutional obstacles.
From 1970-1990s, Malaysia succeeded in transforming its economy from a low income to a middle income nation by becoming a prominent manufacturing exporter of electronics products.
But in the 2000s decade, we saw a slow erosion in our economic competitiveness in the wake of more efficient nations, namely China (mass production of cheap electronic goods), Singapore (brain drain) and lately Vietnam (mid-level manufacturing).
And in terms of political stability and policy clarity, Indonesia is also gaining the upper hand over Malaysia.
Faced with so many emerging regional and global economic competitors, it is no surprise that Malaysia has fallen into the middle income trap.
It is at this stage of the impasse that the hedgehog tries to learn fox tricks, which are mainly making many plans with little confidence or faith in following through.
This state of affairs was encapsulated by several key policy failures, essentially the flip flop policies that hampered the promotion of English as a medium of instruction.
Other causes include the misallocation of resources into real estate development, white elephant projects and the 1MDB sovereign fund scandal.
Complicating Malaysia's economic reform agenda is the fact that the Malay-centric parties such as UMNO hardened themselves into more intense identity politics and race rhetoric to strengthen their rural vote base after the Opposition parties gained ground in 2008 & 2013 before eventually taking over on May 2018.
Hedgehog Learning Fox Tricks
So going back to the animal analogy, a politically exhausted hedgehog can only learn a few fox tricks in order to compete with the surrounding fox nations.
Instead of trying to learn the methods of the multi-talented fox, Malaysia has to look internally at its own people and sharpen their strengths, which is essentially, a highly capable, globally competitive workforce that can work, learn and solve problems together.
In other words, learn to see and plan like a fox whilst remaining true to one's nature of a hedgehog. The great rush towards economic growth and reaching high income nation status (US$12,500 or $15,000 GDP per capita) should not be the priority.
Besides, speeding up economic growth of up to 5% per annum will invariably worsen income inequalities, providing fodder for race-oriented politicians.
Instead, the priority should be to repair communal ethnic relations and transform the political landscape and atmosphere (which has disintegrated in the past year into the current political impasse after a backdoor coalition called Perikatan Nasional replaced a democratically elected government in March 2020).
More Than Elections
After imposing a national emergency to contain the pandemic, the current government with a wafer thin majority in Parliament is expected to hold a General Election later this year once the emergency is lifted (latest by 1st August).
But the seemingly gargantuan solution to Malaysia's 'structural' problems involves more than just voting in a competent government.
The nation needs a large pool of leaders and common citizens on the ground who are ready to undo the shackle of race-based policies and create a new national vision of hope and rejuvenation.
A blessing in disguise from the pandemic recession (which has hit many small and medium sized businesses across all ethnic communities) is that it is somehow stirring up an urgent need for political unity, bipartisan co-operation and reform.
(There is no way an economy like Malaysia's can thrive without the mutual purchasing power of each community).
But as I said earlier, it takes more than the election of a few good leaders to change the history of a nation.
It takes an entire generation of common people to avoid those three psychological flaws mentioned earlier, namely; double-mindedness, giving excuses and intellectual indifference.
Like many developing nations struggling to recover from the pandemic recession, Malaysia's window for reform may still be open, notwithstanding the current geopolitical dynamic of the U.S.-China tensions in the region.
Genuine change starts with facing up to its unique identity and acknowledging its destiny in the new global economic landscape.
