MGG Pillai Commentary View

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The will of the people

POLITICIANS THE WORLD OVER are firm on the idea of democracy as an ideal, but not the messy elections that could give them nasty surprises. It does not matter where they are from: the United States, the United Kingdom, Iraq, Iran, the Soviet Union, Malaysia, Singapore, Zimbabwe, India. They spout the same slogans and political beliefs. twist the law and language to their advantage, and sulk when the result is not what they bargained for.

It is a rare country where this belief in free elections and democracy is believed, and unquestionably accepted, and honoured. This becomes more difficult in this age of globalisation, which allows, indeed accepts as an article of faith, that the world must be made in the image of the Hollywood village, in which cultural traditions and beliefs must be jettisoned if it stands in the way. This idea of democracy is now tailored to fit into this Hollywood village, a cultural colonisation the likes of which the world has not seen.

Once this idea of democracy was allowed to mature and develop within the cultural values of the society. What you got was an imperfect system to the idea but one which people believed in. That is not possible now, for the framework of that democracy is now challenged by the shrill voice of the global television networks looking for deviations of the norm as they see it, and criticising it often so whatever the result, it is not accepted.

When you look at it closely, the presidential elections in Zimbabwe and the United States, which returned President Robert Mugabe and President Bush to office, were flawed. Both should not have been elected. But in the globalisation remake, President Bush is elected without question, but not President Mugabe. Washington which insists on elections as a panacea for systemic failures takes the view that if the people vote, all will be well. All it has to show for its belief is a litany of failed states that cannot survive except with Western handouts in which the greater danger is the systemic destruction of its cultural values.

Islam is the enemy

It is made the worse in this ubiquitous war on terror, in which Islam is the enemy. It is not, we are told relentlessly in the globalised television that we are all addicted to. Islam is not the enemy. Nor are Muslims. But you understand, there are good Muslims and bad Muslims. The Muslims do not accept this definition, that it is the Judae Christian principles imposed on them selectively and by Orientalists who insist the world should only accept Islam and Muslims within their narrow definitions. What this tells you is that if a Muslim challenges the might of Judae Christian civilisation, as Osama bin Laden did, then it is Islam that must be blamed. If a Muslim cuts off the head of an American, it is proof yet again of islam's backwardness; if a Judae Christian soldier leads an naked Iraqi prisoner on a leash or gets several to perform unnatural acts, it is the individual soldier who must be responsible, not the civilisation he or she comes from.

All this does is to add to the confusion of a state which is forced to adhere to alien civilisational principles. The state is forced to sideline its civilisational and cultural principles for this alien idea. It cannot of course but the aim is to confuse. And in this confusion, they are made to change to a life in which they do not know where it would lead them to. This is only possible if the state is caught in this maelstrom of a global television culture in which these doubts and principles are washed away with the mindless chatter and music that passes for 24-hour television these days.

It conditions a society to order itself to the shows and programmes it cannot afford to miss. This subliminal message is strengthened with regular items of news from the civilisational apogee to the distant armies. To change the values of communities, those values must be made moot. That is made possible with global television.

Malaysia is caught in this maelstrom. The television addicts grow by the day. What passes for intelligent debate in Malaysia is to discuss the goings on of the soap operas, or the rights and wrongs of the kind of music that appears on it. All else is secondary. When general election approaches, and the ruling party finds the ground unhappy at the open display of sex or skimpy dresses, it threatens to censor the programmes or take action to suggest that the programmes would be cleaned up so as not to offend the prevailing native cultural overview.

The simple fact is: they cannot. Any attempt to censor the programmes will cause an urban counterclash that could, in electoral terms, be more damaging. The shibboleths in the weaponry of globalisation are brought out as truths: no censorship, freedom in all aspects of life and without restraint, the right of individuals to do what they want, the sidelining of government from their lives, and other ill-thought out philosophical principles. But at this point, the battle is lost. The government realises it cannot turn the clock back. It has allowed itself to be marginalised in this globalisation debate, and is reduced to ensure that their role is to pull all stops and destroy local industries so the globalised corporations can benefit.

The government finding its control ebbing away behaves dictatorially to prove it is in charge. The first step to an elected dictatorship is cast. The less control it has over its people, the harsher the rule and even more difficult for the people to exercise their vote. Rules and laws are passed to make it difficult for the Opposition to win. The Opposition is demonised. In Malaysia, it is handmaiden to Osama bin Laden. The truth does not matter. The public perception, buttressed by global television which insists Bin Laden is behind it all, quickly laps it up.

Can one fight this trend? Yes. But it is not easy. Television is an idiot box. It does not require any effort to sit in front of it and watch the endless litany of third rate programmes. One does not have to think. One does not have to exercise the mind. And when all are agreed that the ideal society is in California, there is no dispute. The Osama bin Ladens of this world skewer that. If PAS is, in the considered view of those who need to demonise it, linked to Bin Laden, then it deserves its fate and worse. But for this view to succeed, the country must be linked to this global chain. When it does not, problems arise.

Bill Gates versus water

Iraq is in a mess today because it was a tightly controlled society, like all Arab societies, in which the Judae Christian world view did not have a chance. When the United States invaded Iraq, it was a recipe for disaster, as it proves. One of the first acts of the new American administration is to ensure it had the global television channels, dressed up in this code of no censorship. And so in Afghanistan. In Pakistan. President Musharraf could promise Washington to deliver his Islamic extemists on a silver platter. But that is all he could. The country is not linked to global television for that inevitable softening process.

In India, the government embraced this globalisation so completely that it ignored the countryside. Bill Gates was more important under the Vajpayee government than clean drinking water for the masses. Enron was allowed to take over power distribution in Mumbai, the consequences of high costs and more people forced out of the loop ignored. Enron collapsed, but it was reported in India as an opportunity lost than of a rapacious globalised corporation out to improve its balance sheet than the services they contracted to provide.

This disadvantaged voter, ignored and marginalised, with no access to global television, worked within its cultural limits, and did the best it could: it threw the rascals out. The breast beating in the capitals did not address what caused this upset, only what this means to India as a digit in this globalisation empire. The stock market collapsed in fear of what the new government, with its belief in the common man, would do, and how the globalised corporations in India could survive in this government. What made that possible is that globalised television is the opiate of the urban masses, not the rural heartland, where even if it afford it, could not because electricity had yet to come to the village. It is in this view more important to ensure the air conditioners in the metropolis run efficiently than the rural farmer be given sufficient electricity to make his life more palatable.

If India was wired to the globalisation network, and not just in its main towns and cities, the results could well have been different. In one sense, the will of the people will be heard more firmly in those countries outside the pale of globalisation. And in those globalised countries where the people can stand it no longer at being hewers of wood and carriers of water without the right to either.

[This is my Chiaroscuro column for this week and appeared in malaysiakini (www.malaysiakini.com) today, 20 May 2004]

M.G.G. Pillai
pillai@streamyx.com