Embracing the Many Dimensions within which Citizens—and Countries—Function

By Ooi Kee Beng “Picking on the Present” column in The Edge Malaysia, 25-31 January 2025

As geopolitical shifts continue in ways that profoundly affecting East Asia, processes of decolonization in this region—most begun after World War Two, many transmuted by how that war ended, and all captured within the conflicts and standoffs of the last seven decades—are attracting much new attention. This is a very promising development.

These processes all tended to be transfixed at the level of Nationalism, and liberation from colonial empires heralded nation states as the preferred format for socio-economic and socio-political organisation. This being a defensive and desperate line of thought pushed actual policymaking towards prioritising sovereignty and security issues over issues of societal and individual development. Political parties became the gladiators of the post-colonial power arena.

Muffling academics, especially social scientists, and controlling journalism and the mass media, topped the agenda in most postcolonial countries. Thus, we saw how powerful a role the military came to be in most countries. In Malaysia, it was para-military authorities who came to have more say than the military, interestingly.

Notions stemming from nation-statehood became the conceptual compass for societal development. However, the reality of big power geopolitics was not something that disappeared with independence. In fact, these new countries continued to “float” on the geopolitical ocean that the colonial powers had brought forth over a period of a few hundred years. In fact, what and how postcolonial countries came into being depended strongly on how colonialism had taken place, and how it now retreated.

Over time, nation-builders in these new countries grasped the reality that “The National Level” was a thought-restraining reality. While at the geopolitical level, the Cold War and other big power conflicts set the world stage within which these countries developed, most of them found themselves having to deal domestically with insurmountable political schism, and so, a federalist layering of power was often needed, if only formally.

The Federation Malaya grew into Malaysia in 1963, and quickly shrank to exclude Singapore by 1965. Regionally, Southeast Asia’s role in the Cold War was divided between the northern countries and the southern ones. Those in the south soon realised that their security and their national development needed some regional structure and support. Thus, ASEAN was formed by the maritime nations in the south in 1967 to secure for its members some sense of control over their regional environment. Further shifts in geopolitics following the ending of the Cold War in 1991 allowed for ASEAN to raise its sense of regional security to include all ten countries by the turn of the century.

Enough of the National

What this confirms is that political realities today inescapably function at several levels, not only at the national one at which much discourse have taken place and most policies have been formulated.

We have the Geopolitical level, then the Regional Level, then the National level, and then the Sub-national level. If one also considers the Sub-regional and various bilateral or multilateral relationships, it becomes obvious that the wellbeing and survival of a people today is a complicated business, going beyond national consciousness.

And if we consider the dynamics of economic hubs and urban power, or the economic sphere at large and its multi-layered network of cross-country agreements, we see what confines ultra-nationalist thinkers put on themselves and others, and how sheltered they become.

As and when we consider societal development, the focus for effective policymaking shifts again. Here, bottom–up initiatives, if not centre–out activism, tend to be most impactful.

Malaysia’s recent political history is a study in how a postcolonial nation gradually has to face up to this multi-layered reality of modern human interactions and economic behaviour. The initial and persistent discursive fixation with the National level has brought its share of troubles and limited Malaysian influence on the region and the world, not to mention the inadequacies in state-, nation- and society building this has wrought on the country’s progress.

In short, different layers of political consciousness suit different areas of human development. And seeking the right combination and balance appears to me to be the real task of the wise leader.

However inevitable or understandable it has been for new nations to be fixated with National-level thinking in their early decades of existence—this often leading to blind centralisation in policymaking, excessive bureaucratisation in institution-building, and cultural assimilation in societal development—in the end, the existence of the other layers become undeniable.

In the Malaysian case, the country’s governance has come to a point where these earlier tendencies have hit a wall: gone bankrupt, if one wishes to be harsh.

Calls for policymaking and administrative devolution have been raised over recent decades; these grow stronger with every election, simply because the inefficiencies and injustices of the centralising regime have become irrefutable, not to mention the eruption of systemic corruption and incompetence. The East Malaysians, having tolerated the peninsula-centric political economy of the Federation of Malaysia for 60 years, are now screaming loudly: “No more. Enough is enough. Give us back our right to self-determination and self-rule”.

Economies grow through the development of organic ecosystems in response to material realities has over time; since 2008 or thereabouts, this has become obvious to Malaysia’s state governments. The corridor development approach initiated during Abdullah Badawi’s tenure (2003-2009) could have proven to be a good path to take if not for the cronyism involved as well as the latent centralising tendencies in the decision-making processes involved. This ruined its greater national-economy building aspirations from the very beginning.

Fumbling at Dawn, or is it Dusk?

The path that citizens and voters of the country were compelled to take in the end is seen in their changing of state governments since 2008. The last few elections have repeatedly expressed the wish for decentralised power, and for fiscal devolution. Oppositional forces did in many cases take over state-level politics, albeit they often did not quite know what they were fighting against or aspiring to, beyond the slogans they threw about. Their diagnosis was often incomplete, tending to be self-serving, and therefore defensive and excusatory when push came to shove.

Until today, even with Anwar Ibrahim as prime minister, many citizens see themselves doubting the sincerity of the reformasi movement and its advocates. But that’s how human history happens. I would be kinder and say that what I doubt is the depth of reformist insights, and of their diagnosis of the historical and epistemic challenges the country faces today.

Fortunately, geo-economic dynamics on the world stage today, alongside federalist tendencies in domestic politics and eco-system building with regards to economic growth, are forcing the hand of the federal government under Anwar Ibrahim to take on some unravelling of the erroneous ideology of the early decades. Correcting the negative long-term effects of the latter will not be an easy matter either.

Metaphorically, when we wake up after a deep sleep, we tend to fumble in the greyness of the bedroom, looking for the door—or the toilet. On the whole, whether the greyness is the light of dawn or of dusk, that is for us to discover or decide.

We do not live only in a nation, we also survive and function in a family, a neighbourhood, a region—and a planet. And we are not just political animals, we are economic as well, as well as social, psychological and philosophical.

Datuk Dr Ooi Kee Beng is the Executive Director of Penang Institute, and Senior Visiting Fellow at ISEAS — Yusof Ishak Institute. He is the award-winning author of The Reluctant Politician. The Life and Time of Tun Dr Ismail (ISEAS 2007), founder-editor of Penang Monthly and ISEAS Perspective. His latest books include Signals in the Noise (Faction Press 2023) and The Reluctant Nation: Malaysia’s Vain Search for Common Purpose (Gerakbudaya 2024). Homepage: wikibeng.com.