Of socks and vacuums

GOVERNING is more than just building an economy. Governing is also about building a nation – bringing people together to work towards shared goals. Foreign direct investment, better infrastructure, healthcare, schools, and so on is all good.

But none of these things can be done without a whole of nation approach. And there is no “whole of nation” approach unless there is a nation that thinks of itself as a whole.

This is not something that comes automatically, especially in Malaysia. After some six decades of being dominated by race-based politics, our default mode is division, not unity. This is not something that changes either overnight or automatically.

We have been conditioned over generations to see problems through the lens of a zero sum racial and religious game. We are conditioned to get angry at one another every time there is a “communal issue”, and to act out in the public sphere.

Is this because Malaysians are naturally inclined to hate one another?

I think the absolute opposite is true. When left alone and not incited, Malaysians are predominantly full of love for one another.

So why this incitement? Because it benefits certain politicians.

These politicians believe that by finding ways to make Malay-sians angry at each other, they will get more votes for themselves – sometimes from the general populace, but more often just from within their own political parties.

This is a big reason why Malaysians are still talking about those socks weeks after the incident. But it is not the only reason.

A nation needs direction; it needs leadership; and it needs a story.

The closest example perhaps is Wawasan 2020. I’m no big fan of Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad but Wawasan 2020 was a good example of a nation-building ideology. The idea was that Malaysians needed to work together to reach a fairly specific goal, at a very specific time.

This kind of national aspiration makes Malaysians feel like we are all in the same boat – rowing hard together to build a brighter future not just for us but for our children too, and for our children’s children.

A nation needs this. It needs fresh, dynamic, shared goals. It needs a vision to get excited about, to debate, to focus our attention on. The lack of such a vision creates a vacuum – a vacuum that is all too easily filled by darkness and old narratives.

When Dr Mahathir became prime minister again in 2018, there was no new vision, no new ideology, and no new national narrative.

When months went by without this new narrative, it became all to easy for old narratives to creep back in – the narratives of division and disunity.

In 2018, this narrative took the form of the protests against Icerd (the International Conven-tion on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination). Icerd was only very tangentially related – if at all – to the concept of bumiputra rights. But politicians are first class experts in making mountains out of a molehill, and they succeeded in making it a huge issue that vehemently polarised Malaysians.

In 2024, this narrative seems to take the form of socks.

I believe those socks should never have been on store shelves, and there should be some consequences for those that allowed it to happen. I also believe that the socks appeared as a result of an oversight and not as part of some diabolical conspiracy.

Anyone who’s been to these stores knows that there is an endless supply and variety of products all the time. I highly doubt some high-level person goes and checks through every single product from different suppliers meticulously.

Perhaps now there will be, and perhaps that’s a good thing. Either way, it seems completely illogical, however, that the whole of Malaysia should start fighting with one another over this issue for weeks on end.

That this issue still dominates the headlines tells us one thing: Malaysians haven’t been given something better to talk about.

There’s no inspiring vision for our future, no sense that we are all supposed to be working together towards something.

We have been given instead “Malaysia Madani” – which, especially for the super intelligent that understand it, is all well and good. We must ask, however, whether Malaysia Madani is something that is understood by most Malaysians, and whether it’s succeeding as an inspiring rallying cry.

Is it time to try something new instead?

Unless there is more decisive leadership and a better understanding of national narratives, Malaysia will continue to be led down roads of hate.

If the government wants us to talk about something more healthy, inspiring, and visionary, this would be a great time to lead by example.

Nathaniel Tan now works in corporate communications and misses seeing his old friends more regularly. He can be contacted at [e-mail]. The views expressed here are entirely the writer’s own.