Country Building is Citizen Building

By OOI KEE BENG, The Edge Malaysia Weekly, 27 November 2023

WHAT IS IT exactly that Malaysians have been fighting about since the country gained independence as the Federation of Malaya on Aug 31, 1957?

The segmented nature of the population cannot be denied. We see that undeniably in how no political party has ever ruled the country on its own strength, not even Umno in its heyday. Compromise, consensus, coalitions. Those were the platforms on which viable governments could be formed.

What the emerging country had to deal with— and what it was being configured by — were the legacies of inventive British global colonialism, a harsh regional Japanese conquest, and deep-seated domestic communalism. All these resulted from external forces, including the creation of a plural society on the peninsula; and what this tells us is that the Modern Age had come to the region.

With that, the emergent Malaysia and the rest of the Nusantara now had to be part and parcel of the unfolding global disorder. There is no turning back, whatever that might even mean.

That a new nation state would come into being to inherit the colonies and protectorates the British were leaving behind was an unquestioned path for the future. As it turned out, we ended up with three nation states as inheritors of the British colonies in the Nusantara, not counting Myanmar: Brunei, Malaysia and Singapore. An oil kingdom, a centralised federation, a thriving city-state.

Building something new out of the chaos of the past begins with an inventory. What happened in the past? What lasting damage was done? What potential is offered by the inherited situation — locally, globally and conceptually? More importantly, what overwhelmed us? What hit us, and what can we learn from these external forces?

This might not be clear to Malaysians because of the relatively smooth transition from colonialism to independence, but throughout the post-colonial world of new nations, to what extent one should reject the colonial legacy and to what extent one should embrace it for the future has always been the basic question nation builders have had to ask themselves.

What made the West so powerful? Should we learn from them, or should we reject them in order to further justify our sense of lost pride and of historical victimhood?

What is the point of becoming a nation state among other nation states? Is it for the sake of the state, the pride of some collective? Or is it for the common citizen? And how do the state and the citizen relate to each other? What are the short-term goals, and what are the long-term goals? And to what extent do the short-term goals undermine the long-term ones?

Understanding the novelty of this idea in the Nusantara and accepting the historical inevitability of its application within the global geostrategic context of our times is required if we are to know what the potential and the long-term objectives of a country’s nation-building, state building and national-economy building are to be about.

One can think up many KPIs and many measurements for when nation-building is succeeding, and when it is failing. But if you ask me, in both the short term and long term, one can tell if nation-building policies are rational or not by seeing how they develop the individual, and what opportunities are provided for the individual to contribute further to his or her society.

Nationhood is for the individual

To simplify a difficult problem into a simple yet comprehensible one, building a country is about building the citizen.

What is a citizen? To what extent does the state see itself as the facilitator of the development of its citizens. Are citizens equal in the eyes of the state? The last question is important because inequality before the state cannot but sow disunity among the disadvantaged, but more so among the advantaged.

In summary, notions of citizenship rights, of national rights and of international relevance constitute the global context within which nation-building should be understood. Lacking that, a people and its government remains victims of their geography and of their history.

As is often cited — and with this, I personally strongly agree — “The best revenge is to thrive”. The best revenge is certainly not to hit out at whatever is most immediate in time and space. Shortcuts in thinking and acting define the victim who did not know what hit him. Learning from history and strategising for sustainable success are available only to those who are patient, contemplative and forgiving.

The nation state is the legacy we have inherited. Using it to create a society that is not a reflection of the racism, suppression and greed of past masters, but the opposite of it, is the best revenge.

A nation well-built hoists its citizens to become confident individuals, empowered and educated enough to contribute to the country and to the sustainable development of humanity and its home planet. That dialectic is essential.

Datuk Dr Ooi Kee Beng is the executive director of Penang Institute, and director of its Forum for Leadership and Governance (FLAG@PI) Programme. He is also visiting senior fellow at ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute. His latest book is Signals in the Noise (Singapore: Faction Press, 2023), a compilation of writings from 2018 to 2023. Homepage: wikibeng.com.