“Should/Supposed to” vs. “Is/Are”: A More Productive Way to Discuss Politics
If you are to bet your hard-earned money on a team in a football match, which team do you pick: your favourite team that you’ve supported forever (let’s say, Newcastle), or the one that you know to be more likely to win (say Manchester City)?
I have two friends, one’s a filmmaker and the other’s a political pundit. Both I find admirable, because they hold very strong and principled ideals in their respective fields, and refuse to contemplate ideas that lead to inferior outcomes. The filmmaker has very strong opinions about movies, and can always be counted on to offer well-reasoned analysis after a trip to the cinema. When he discusses his own work, he holds himself up to those same standards — which is partly why he takes years to write just one script, and a decade into his career still doesn’t really have any film or TV series to show for (yet), despite his considerable talents. The pundit, meanwhile, is developing a new vision of how a functional, healthy politics could look like — but with scant access to listening ears among the political establishment — let alone any access to government, or the mechanisms of political change — there is virtually zero prospect that any parts of his ideas will be implemented in order to bring about a better country for us all.
You might read that and think, that’s a sad state of affairs — parables to the aphorisms that ‘saying and doing are two very different things’, or ‘ideas without execution are worthless’. But here’s the point: both friends are at least clear-eyed about the ideals they’re striving for, but also acknowledge the harsh, crippling reality that besets them.
They know when they are using “should/supposed to” statements, and when they are using “is/are” statements.
Let’s talk about electoral issues. Most will agree with this statement: MPs and ADUNs who don’t perform, or betray the rakyat’s trust, or display bad character should not be voted back in.
But they regularly are.
Remember how some people were outraged when Kinabatangan MP Bung Moktar shouted “fuck you” in Parlimen, or when Pasir Salak MP Tajuddin Abdul Rahman insulted the MP of Jelutong by casually joking that the vibhuti on the Indian MP’s head came from Chin Peng’s ash?
This behaviour is not new to these men. In 2007, Bung Moktar famously insulted the DAP MP Fong Po Kuan by mocking her period during a parliamentary debate about leakage in the august building. Prior to GE14, Tajuddin made fun of Teresa Kok’s surname being similar to “cock”, and has repeatedly threatened M. Kulasegaran. (Yes, for some reason, Tajuddin has a thing for attacking DAP.)
Their defenders may say that vulgarity can be tolerated among our politicians as long as they do work for the rakyat. (It’s the same argument as the Republican Party’s defense of President Trump.) But neither men in their time in Parlimen have appeared to contribute anything to the progress of the country. With Bung, it’s obvious in so many occasions — most obviously in the aftermath of the Sabah snap elections last year, when GRS component parties were fighting for the Chief Minister post — that for him it’s just about power (and thereby, money). With Tajuddin, that smirk that decorates his face every time he insults MPs in and out of Parlimen suggests that he enjoys baiting the Opposition. The two men’s shenanigans have always been widely reported in newspapers, so Malaysians cannot claim ignorance about their behaviour.
Yet, Bung Moktar has won his seat repeatedly in the last five elections, Tajuddin Abdul Rahman in the last three.
In conclusion: the fact is, Malaysian voters do not vote out bad politicians.
Similarly, when we look at the most current case of MP malfeasance, the lily-livered defection of Julau MP Larry Sng from PKR, we could say that he should lose his seat come GE15. But will he? Explainer tweets from the journalist Norman Goh suggests he might not.
Let’s take another electoral issue: malapportionment.
To clarify: gerrymandering is when boundary lines are moved across constituency maps to favour one political party over the other; malapportionment (i.e. “bad distribution”) refers to the disparity in voter numbers between different constituencies. (In an ideal situation, all constituencies should have roughly the same number of voters.)
During GE14, the largest constituency is Bangi, Selangor with 178,790 voters, while the smallest is Igan, Sarawak with 19,592 voters. That is a ratio of more than 9-to-1 in terms of the size of the largest constituency compared to the smallest. Put it in another way, each voter in Igan is worth more than 9 times that of a Bangi voter. (Technical point: in this article, I am defining the ratio of disparity as the number of electorates of the largest constituency, divided by the smallest.)
Comparing it with other democracies, the ratio in the UK was 5-to-1; in the Caribbean nation of Jamaica it was 2.2-to-1. Even in Canada, with a much larger variation in population size compared to geographical region size (its largest federal constituency, Nunavut, is 5.7 times the size of the whole of Malaysia in terms of square kilometres), the disparity ratio was 8.4-to-1, still lower than Malaysia.
So it is fair to say that the way Malaysian constituencies have been malapportioned is patently unfair. The maximum disparity of constituency sizes should not be this large.
But it is.
What are you going to do about it?
Things don’t happen just because they should.
So many Malaysians like to bring up how things are supposed to be like, and then just leave it at that, not acknowledging the reality of the situation that negates the ‘supposed to’ scenario they mentioned. By reality, I mean the convolutions behind the scenes, the hidden constraints preventing obvious solutions, the asymmetric advantage of evil over good.
And that’s why it’s been a pet peeve of mine whenever I see such statements as:
“Syed Saddiq should have defended his outed gay press officer instead of letting him resign.”
“Mujahid Yusof Rawa should have given voice to complete legitimisation of transgender rights, instead of coming out with the statement that meeting Nisha Ayub doesn’t mean endorsing the LGBT community.”
“The Pakatan Harapan government should have stuck to its guns and maintain ratification of ICERD and Rome Statute instead of bowing to the street protests organised by UMNO-PAS.”
“PH should have fulfilled all its manifesto goals quickly and exactly as they have promised.”
These and many other culture wars that the liberal progressive sections of the country expected the PH government to defend simply because it is morally right ignores the great cost to PH and its Ministers’ political capital that each one of these will incur. You have to adopt an economic mindset about political capital: it is a scarce resource, which means that you have to be mindful of opportunity costs when spending it. There is an inherent trade-off in everything a government does.
As the government, PH cannot afford to ignore large swathes of the country whom people like me disagree with. We think they’re wrong, they think we’re wrong too. But you and I have the luxury that the PH government does not: we can sit around and complain and argue, with little consequences. For PH, there were more important and urgent priorities related to economic and institutional restoration — never forget that the long-term debt incurred by the 1MDB fiasco was a heavy millstone that the country’s coffers will have to carry; that the financial hole from PTPTN non-payment by Malaysian graduates was almost as large as the 1MDB hole; that the education system needed reform, which will take years to implement; that the civil service was in shock over the change of government and some elements within it were resistance to changes by the new government. I believe, for PH to fight these culture wars then, it would inflame the sense of grievance and bitterness that the conservative half of the country feels (which the then Opposition was happy to pour oil into).
Put yourself in the shoes of former Education Minister Dr Maszlee Malik, in dealing with the strong feelings surrounding the surprisingly convoluted issue of whether khat should be mandatory in schools. What do you do when you are faced with numerous sentiments from both sides such as the following?
As for Syed Saddiq, I don’t know what his personal stance is towards LGBT rights, but the fact is, we know the conservative Malay opposition towards it is strong, and he was a member of the Malay nationalist party PPBM back then. To express support, just days into the PH administration, would be to colour the rest of his Ministership with this one (ultimately forgettable) incident. Give Muar students laptop: “Saddiq is anti-Islam”. Championed #Undi18: “Saddiq is anti-Islam”. (If you think it’s hyperbole that Ministers can be hobbled by one insignificant controversy, this was exactly what happened with Dr Maszlee and “black shoes”.) He will become as toxic as DAP’s Lim Guan Eng. And if you think that’s fine, “at least he’s doing the morally right thing”, just think of all the things Lim Guan Eng is not able to do as a DAP politician.
This is why I often contend that we Malaysians have been unfair on Pakatan Harapan ministers. I say this not to excuse any number of mistakes they have committed while in power for 22 months. Let me be clear, flaws are flaws, and we all have the right to criticise the government, and PH had often acknowledged that right. But too often it is comments such as the above that helped to pile on anger at PH in a disproportionate manner — failing to acknowledge the great and important distinction that at least PH was sincerely finding ways to do right by the rakyat, whereas BN and PN do not care. Too easy was the unreasoned lamentation “Pakatan is no different from BN” spat out.
This is unhealthy. Because then Malaysians will never be satisfied with any government, even an excellent one, because no government can be immune from the knotty constraints and backdoor convolutions that prevent them from executing ideal policies under ideal timelines. This perpetual dissatisfaction is what leads us to say “all politicians/party are equally bad” (which is patently untrue in Malaysia), and that makes us despair and, on a whim, give up on politics and politicians. It might discourage some people from voting — “vote for what, if the outcome is the same?”
We trigger our disillusionment with politics and politicians the same way toddlers throw toys away when the toy isn’t behaving the way they want the toy to behave. But over time, toddlers grow up into older kids, and in calmer moments, they might begin to realise that they have to take the toy as it is, understand it, and then figure out how to make the toy do what they want the toy to do.
Instead, if we don’t grow up (throw tantrum), and declare all politics to be unchangingly dirty (throwing the toy away), the result is bad politicians who care only about power and money will win.* Then bad politicians rule over us and continue to screw us over. Do you see now, how our suffering under bad governments is self-inflicted? We did this to ourselves.
* In a future article I will be discussing this asymmetry: why it is easier for bad politicians and harder for good politicians to ascend to power and hold it.
In order to grow up, we Malaysians need to learn that the arrow of progress is found between idealism and reality.
First of all, we need to recognise, when we dialogue with each other, whether we or the other person is talking from a “supposed to” standpoint, or telling things as they “are”. This distinction is important, not because we are trying to win an argument in order to soothe our ego, but because then the conversation can turn into a useful, dynamic, insightful back-and-forth about what the problems are, what is the direction we should take, and what solutions can help with that.
Secondly, we must take care that we aren’t stubbornly staying in one or the other extreme. Many Malaysians are very obstinate about this on social media: they’re either stuck in “supposed to” land, where any deviation from principles leads them to invoke cancel culture (I once argued with a friend who thinks that nothing Syed Saddiq has done in the last three years is worth anything, simply because he didn’t defend Numan Afifi in May 2018); or else they’re stuck in “is/are” land and turn into an incurable cynic, where politics is always corrupt and nothing will ever change for the better.
To further illustrate the point: someone who operates purely in the domain of reality and completely out of the domain of ideals, is Jho Low at the start of his racketeering career. He succeeded phenomenally because he is very clear-eyed about his personal flaws (awkward personality) and his abilities (he’s what Malcolm Gladwell would call a ‘connector’), about how the corporate and political world are intertwined, and how he can benefit from all of this. He has no ideals except his own self-interest. He cares not for what TIA and later 1MDB stated in its mission statement, that is, to be a successful sovereign wealth fund to generate benefits for the Malaysian people. All reality, no idealism, made Jho Low a spectacularly bad person.
The other extreme — all idealism, no sense of reality — is perhaps best encapsulated by the keyboard warrior. They write that things should be this way, and people should only do things this way, not acknowledging the constraints or long-term consequences, because they themselves don’t have to grapple with the problem with their own hands and get stung and attacked over it. They don’t lose their career or their wealth over it. Keyboard warriors meant well. Keyboard warriors also helped to sink the Pakatan Harapan government.
Let me give you a vision of an ideal politics. To quote the US Democratic politician Pete Buttigieg:
And now, let me remind you of the reality we’re in. No, not just that we’re languishing under a backdoor government filled with nincompoops for Ministers. Perikatan Nasional is merely symptom. Our predicament is that the system needs to be reformed, but our society is too complex, with divisions cutting every which way — race times language times religion times socioeconomic status times generational divide, which equals not “three races, and Others”, but 100 different ways to be Malaysian, some more numerous in number than others but none more legitimate than others — and yet at the same time most Malaysians think there is a limited way to be Malaysian (three races, and Others), and anything else is heresy or outlier. And this complicated, convoluted complexity is what our politicians need to grapple with.
So both layers need to change: our politicians, and us the rakyat. We the rakyat need to be accept the unhappy reality that other kinds of Malaysian-ness (even the insist-in-smoking-in-restaurant, child-marrying kind) co-exist among us, and know where to prioritise what we will allow in the meantime, and what we will not allow to languish any further (corruption, urban and rural poverty, lack of rural infrastructure, etc). And we need to elect better politicians and fill the Parlimen with them, and then give them space to help us navigate our way out of this quagmire. (Give them space, not surrender, not turn apathetic.)
The ideal of politics points the direction and gives us hope. The reality of politics tempers our expectation and orients us towards thinking about workable solutions. Back and forth, back and forth our minds go, until we are able to understand the centre of this seeming paradox.
What are you going to do?
