Democratic Circus?

I could tell when I went to the running track yesterday evening that something big was going down in Saratok - a marquee had been erected and a little wooden walkway from the track to the car park.  Sure enough, this morning five helicopters descended on the track, greeted by a motorcade and police motorbike escort to whisk the Prime Minister of Malaysia, Najib Razak to a political rally in the centre of town.  With him was the local Barisan Nasional candidate and Abdul Taib Mahmud, the First Chief Minister of Sarawak.  

I decided to follow the commotion and cycle into Saratok with my camera.  There's a general election here on 5th May and I'm increasingly curious about what will happen.  Barisan Nasional (BN or the National Front) has been in power here since Malaysia became independent in the early sixties.  It's a complex coalition of political parties representing the main ethnic groups in Malaysia, (Malay, Chinese, Indian and indigenous tribes) and one of its aims is to keep Malaysia essentially Malay and muslim in character (Malays are about 50% of the population), whilst protecting the interests of the other ethnic groups.  But its grip on power is slipping, in the last general election BN's majority shrank considerably and there are now people seriously suggesting that an opposition coalition, led by the PKR or People's Justice Party could win the next election.

What makes all this so interesting for an outsider is the byzantine nature of Malaysian politics and the fact that being in government here gives you access to enormous wealth and massive levels of patronage.  Anwar Ibrahim the leader of the PKR was at one time a Deputy Prime Minister in the BN government and has been imprisoned for corruption and sodomy (yes, sodomy) a charge of which he was acquitted in 2012.  One of BN's trump election cards has always been national unity and the fear that if it loses power there will be an explosion of ethnic violence, as happened in the late 1960s.  I have absolutely no idea whether the PKR, who are campaigning on an anti-corruption platform, have any chance of winning the election, but locally lots of people have been telling us that they will vote for them.  Also since the announcement of the election I have noticed more and more opposition party flags being raised in Saratok and some of the outlying tribal longhouses.  Before the election was announced one tended only to see the BN flag (white scales of justice on a blue background).

What was clear from going to the BN rally is that they are campaigning hard.  As one would expect the PM is a pretty good speaker who can rally the faithful.  The event also seemed to me to be an expression of state power not just a party rally.  Maybe it's just me, but it felt like the police and the other uniforms around weren't so much independent as a part of the process.  I think I need to go to a PKR rally to see if there is a difference in the attitude of the para-militaries.

As an outsider the situation seems really unpredictable.  Do the PKR stand any chance?  If they did get a majority would BN go quietly?  Giving up government here also means letting go of a lot of wealth and power.  Would they do this without a fight?  And how deep do the ethnic tensions here really run? Sometimes this place feels like a powder keg, but it is also growing economically, so maybe people have enough to lose to make ethnic violence unlikely.  I suspect BN will win by hook or by crook and that things will drift on as they are now.  But nothing would actually surprise me and it's been a long time since I could say that about a British general election.

Lahad Datu

On 9th of March I wrote about the "invasion" of Lahad Datu in East Sabah by a group of armed Filipinos.  Things seem to have gone fairly quiet since then.  The death toll now stands at around 70 and a couple of hundred people have been arrested for helping the "invaders".  There is still some kind of security cordon around the area where the Filipinos landed and a big military presence, including naval patrols.  The British Council withdrew their staff from East Sabah in March and they are not going back.

In the welter of claims and counter claims by the various parties involved I guess we may never know the full truth of what actually went down.  I suspect the biggest losers in all this are the local people of East Sabah and the nearby islands, which are part of the Philippines.  They have been used to dropping in to see one another by small boat for family weddings and the like, without the bother of going through border controls and presenting passports.  That I would guess is a thing of the past.

For an outsider like me some of the rumours and even news reports from the regional press have been truly bizarre.  These include that the US was behind the invasion, because they are "jealous" of Malaysia's economic growth and that the leader of the opposition was involved for his own nefarious political purposes.  The text below is from the New Straits Times (a major Malaysian newspaper) of 21st March.

According to sources in the security forces, some of the terrorists who were shot dead, wore amulets and had tattoos of Koranic verses on their bodies:   

"They might be immune to bullets but not all the time. In fact, a mortar explosion can kill them even if their skins were impenetrable," he said.  "Strangely, the bodies of practitioners of mysticism are quick to decompose and covered with maggots within an hour.  The corpse of a normal person will only be covered with maggots if left exposed for more than two to three days."

You live somewhere for a few months and you start to feel you are beginning to understand the culture, then you realise you are just scratching the surface.  Underneath the veneer of modernity this is an ancient land with a culture and values whose roots go way deeper than Islam or Christianity.

Application not successful

I applied for a job a few weeks ago, to run the British Humanist Association's network of funeral, wedding and baby naming celebrants.  They gave me a telephone interview last week, but I didn't get it.  It's the kind of job I'd love to have done and would have solved at one stroke the problem of what I do next and I was very disappointed.  It doesn't matter how old you get, it doesn't dull the pain of rejection.

I know I've no right to complain, some people have to deal with this everyday.  I take my hat off to them, I don't know how they do it.  It's why I've always had the greatest respect for professional actors.  Not the lucky few who manage to get regular work, but the dedicated majority who hang in there doing a few weeks here and there, whilst filling shelves or working in a bar to keep some money coming in.  The best of them don't do this out of any real desire to be famous, although most of them wouldn't of course say "no" to this.  They do it because acting is what they do and the occasional high of being in a tight ensemble working to the common goal of moving an audience in some way is enough.  I couldn't do that.  I tried, briefly in the early nineties and I found it crushing.  Although I have to admit that playing in the Sondheim musical "Sweeney Todd" at Edinburgh in 1991 was one of the most intense and satisfying experiences I've ever had.

So, what next?  A question I've been asking myself most of my adult life.  I guess I'll just have to keep throwing myself at that lighted candle, because when I no longer feel like doing this, it will be time to curl up and die.