30 Dec 2008

Rehman Rashid

ONE wishes to see the chrysalis emerging, but right now all that's visible is the shredding of the cocoon.

Perhaps something new and wondrous will step forth and take wing from the torn remnants of the incubatory past; perhaps a phoenix will rise from the ashes of the old order. So far, there's only been the tearing of the shroud.

But perhaps it's tremendous enough that the remnants of the 20th century should finally be swept aside. The post-Second World War order had grown as old and tired as the imperialism that preceded it. The world wanted change and sought out its agents, testing many, discarding most, settling on their chosen ones - Barack Obama, Muntazer al-Zaidi, Raja Petra - to channel their qi into ripping apart the stifling old blanket of history.

This was the year of the last hoo-rah of the Last War Hero, now a snowy-haired septuagenarian with a heart that prevailed over failure, defeat and torture. John McCain was himself a farewell, still defending and protecting his tribe as he ushered them away into history, gently protesting, "no, no ma'am, he's not an Arab". As with the departures of Lehman Brothers and Woolworths' department stores, it didn't seem so much the humiliation of obsolete business models as their inevitable exit after long lifetimes of honourable service. For John McCain and Merrill Lynch alike, their time, quite simply, was up. For this was the year a black man with an Arab middle name was elected to the White House, and the global economy tilted on its axis. When the driving force is for "change", pure and elemental, all that is certain is that the status quo is unacceptable.

After half a century of restructuring civilisation and driving global industrialisation and the democracy enabling it, Western capitalism peaked when household debt ended up backed by zero savings, rendering meaningless the very concept of wealth. The price of a barrel of oil spiked to historic highs approaching US$150 a barrel in mid-year, then plunged to 1975 levels by December, a wild bungee-jump bespeaking a suspension of reason that effectively disqualified it as a global economic indicator, devolving that responsibility entirely onto the financial sector.

Which lacked the wherewithal to bear that burden, thanks to decades of easy credit to consumers encouraged to live beyond their means on loan sharks' dreams, and so had to turn to governments. Which had to act in ways that drove the last nails into the coffins of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. In their 60th year of existence, the Bretton Woods institutions were essentially disassembled for reconstruction in a new world order far different from the post-war shambles they were mandated to manage by dint of the Allied victory in 1945.

As ever, that order would be determined by the three-way interplay of resources, production and consumption. Now production had shifted from the West to Asia, and resource bases from Asia to Africa. With the Western consumer basically broke, this shift was costing trillions and catalysing sociopolitical agitation in dozens of countries. Including this one. Malaysia's general election in March 2008 delivered a message identical to that of May 1969: the electorate saw fit to reiterate that this nation was, as it had been at birth, equally apportioned between Indigene and Immigrant, and neither could be deemed overlord. Four decades ago, that message had led to blood in the streets. This time it didn't, and pre-eminent among the many reasons for this was the existence now of what did not exist then - an alternative political vehicle for the centrist Malay. Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim's Parti Keadilan Rakyat became the monsoon drain and retention pond for the overspill of Malay dissent he himself played such a role in rousing.

This was the most significant party-political development in this country since independence, and Malaysia's democratic, electoral and parliamentary processes experienced a spurt of accelerated evolution so jolting, screws were shaken loose and it seemed the ship of state might fall apart. The Barisan Nasional, cast in the wholly unpractised role of government in retreat, struggled to regain its bearings and acquire a new vocabulary of inter-communal compassion, accommodation and compromise - feeble as such efforts seemed amid minority communities more vocal, self-referential and uncompromising than they had been for 40 years.

But BN's retreat to a simple majority of Parliament was not a total defeat, and Pakatan Rakyat's advance to governance was not complete. In this no-win situation, it's proving difficult for PR partner Pas to continue biding its time, sitting on its hands and biting its tongue. United with PKR and DAP purely for the purpose of ousting BN, Pas is unlikely to continue the alliance once that objective is achieved. Or even before - the Kuala Terengganu parliamentary by-election on Jan 17 may reveal Pas' eagerness to break away from the pack and run the final stretch alone, unencumbered by its adamantly secularist partners of electoral convenience.

In a strange twist, therefore, what seems to be emerging from the ripped cocoon of our own national myth is not new and promising but atavistic and primitive -- the old divides and distinctions of yore, not gestated and metamorphosed but grotesquely mummified. What some hail as a "new dawn" or an "awakening" for Malaysia seems alarmingly like the rising of the zombies in Night of the Living Dead. Still, the die is cast, the chips are down and the wheel's in spin. This has been the year of the great gamble. Watching these games play out will be the foremost pastime of 2009.

Some are surer bets than others, of course. Tiger Woods returns to competitive golf, having made 2008 an excellent year for everyone else in the game, especially Rocco Mediate. Lance Armstrong, having sired another child just to stick it to his rivals, will return to the Tour de France (which gets under way on the Fourth of July, just to stick it to them further).

And Datuk Seri Najib Razak will become Malaysia's sixth prime minister.

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