Singapore Sling with a Malaysian twist

Singapore Sling with a Malaysian twist

Commentary by Shannon Teoh

AUG 9 — A couple of years back, a Singaporean forwarded this joke via email to me: it was about a Malaysian telling a Singaporean how they didn't eat bread crusts but turned them into croissants to sell to Singapore.

The same with jam, Malaysians ate fresh fruit and turned the seeds and peel into jam and sold it to Singapore. The Singaporean retorted that they recycled used condoms and sold them as chewing gum to Malaysia, hence the ban on the product on their shores.

The humourous merits of the joke itself are unimportant but rather the context in which it was sent. A bit of poking fun at your neighbour is not in itself a bad thing, but when your "nationalistic pride" is defined by being anti-Malaysia, then that's not just sad, but downright delusional.

The great Singaporean delusion, that Malaysia is the bogeyman, is the implied undercurrent behind a Singapore Straits Times commentary titled "Malaysian Malaysia, a National Day story" published today.

On what should be the most important date in the island-republic's calendar – their National Day – their national paper somehow manages to spin an entire article about the country they separated from 43 years ago.

In it, the writer points out similarities between Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew's slogan, Malaysian Malaysia, from four decades ago and the Reformasi battlecry that Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim's supporters chant in terms of addressing a common issue: social injustice.

"Perhaps it can be said that seismic changes are taking place in Malaysia because there has been no political renewal and special-interest groups are entrenched? Perhaps the race-based system which both Lee and Anwar challenged, under which this group preserves its interests, is no longer tenable in the age of the Internet. Perhaps, too, many Malays who support Anwar now realise that Malaysian Malaysia (or Reformasi) is what the country needs to lift the masses out of poverty, not an astronaut or istanas. If so, then perhaps Lee was right after all," the article reads.

Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps... you're forgetting about the first Umno president, Datuk Onn Jaafar who in the years leading up to independence from the British colonisers (let's not forget, of both our countries), tried to persuade Umno to become a party for Malayans rather than just Malays.

To even suggest "that the seeds of Malaysian Malaysia, planted four decades ago and dormant so long, have suddenly taken root and germinated as Reformasi" is at best, revisionism.

The parallels and the pretext of the piece are unfortunately both disingenuous.

The intro reads:
"As the Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim saga unfolds before our eyes, reflecting a similar episode 10 years ago, it is strange that Singaporeans do not experience a sense of deja vu, not of the first episode but of Aug 9, 1965... While the absence of deja vu may be attributed to the passage of time of more than 40 years, anyone who reads Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew's memoir, a bestseller in Singapore, cannot fail to notice the parallels between Lee's battle against Umno and Anwar's challenge against the same juggernaut."

It is ironic that after this little bout of promotional prose for Lee's book, the Singapore Straits Times in the same piece decries the demonisation of Anwar by state-controlled media.

In any case, sure, Umno supporters had waved banners of "Arrest Lee" in the 60s but beyond that, comparisons are tenuous at best. Never mind the events of 40 years ago, does the author remember that Anwar was actually arrested 10 years ago, and again last month?

There are tangible differences between a threat and the execution of one.

This should not be lost on former Singaporean premier, who during and after his time as the governing People's Action Party's chief, saw numerous political opponents spending time behind bars.

These events, in fact, "unfolded before your eyes", whereas Singaporeans are not eye-witnesses to the current fortunes of Anwar.

We will not know if and until the opposition figurehead comes into power, if he will indeed deliver on a promise of a reformed social (read: racial) landscape.

But in the case of Lee, we know that Singapore is no closer to being a "Malaysian Malaysia" than the country it left, but a monochromatic "Chinese Malaysia", whose merits are excellent but have deviated from the supposed slogan he adopted 40 years ago.

I say monochromatic because the person who had forwarded the forementioned joke had sent it to Malaysians as well, obviously unable to comprehend why anyone, including Malaysians, would find her idea of national pride somewhat strange.

The situation persists in that country where despite Malay being its national language, it is safe to assume that no one will understand you if you speak in Malay, allowing you to gossip in front of people's faces.

Indeed, another safe presumption is that a majority of Singaporeans do not understand their national anthem which is sung in Malay except through translations found in textbooks or whatnot.

While it maintains that literacy in English is a tool by which it ensures unity among its populace, the government's statistics department reveals that from 1990 to 2000, the percentage of people speaking English at home increased from 18.8 to 23% whilst for Mandarin it has jumped from 23.7 to 35%.

But if indeed, Anwar succeeds in his aims and puts in place the reforms in education and economy that he has promised, creating Lee's vision of a Malaysian Malaysia, will Singapore then consider unification?

Quite unlikely.

Lee's original vision is a noble goal and in trying to achieve it, one may form ideological affinities and aversions. However, that Singapore has clearly created a national identity of first and foremost being anti-Malaysian to be observed and celebrated every Aug 9 means that it cannot suddenly merge with Malaysia.

Not because we are its antithesis, but because they then lose their identity. If not to hold at bay the ever looming threat of Malaysia, what is it that Singaporeans hold as the mission of their existence? The banning of chewing gum?

kzso - tiny littel dots in south east asia who has inferior complex problems