June 13, 2013
| Praba Ganesan is Parti Keadilan Rakyat's Social Media Strategist. He wants to engage with you, and learn from your viewpoints. You can contact him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter @prabaganesan |
JUNE 13 — There is a generation now being asked to take the reins of the country, whether they are in a political party or not. That generation's time is now here, and I fear they are unsurprisingly reluctant. For this group, leading others into the unknown is unnatural.
Counting a generation
Those born between the forced removal of Singapore from the Federation of Malaysia to the moment Dr Mahathir Mohamad became prime minister, this is what I refer to as the Reluctant Generation. Birth dates falling between 1965 and 1981, and I am part of that generation.
They who came to this world soon after when simple territorial and demographic links could not hold the original federation together — and perhaps our first original sin as independent nation — and up to the point when three prime ministers were done and a single-minded man began his rule and whose legacy continues to define today's realities.
Today, they are in the age to lead.
In their mid-thirties at least, they have most of the population being born after them, and an uncertain future for the country ahead of them, they are now expected to pick up the baton of national leadership, in commerce, public service or politics. Their time in leadership will determine the quality of generations to come.
The bonds they share
Tom Brokaw's seminal "The Greatest Generation" always emphasised that often the majority of people from any given generation — and in that instance the Americans who served at home and away during World War Two, and the life of service they had thereafter — are a result of the prevailing conditions and values of the years they grew up in.
The corporals, ace pilots, combat nurses and war supply factory workers were children of the Depression and knew having nothing was not the worst outcome. The worst was not fighting to rise above the nothing. That explained their character.
Our own reluctant generation was being registered as Primary One students in the aftermath of May 13, in the early 1970s. They were not captive audience to the events which manoeuvred the country into a forced trajectory from the 1970s onwards, but they had to experience the decisions, starting at school.
The Malay language was not streamlined as the medium of instruction in stages, it was rushed down throats overnight, to suit the ultra-nationalists' hunger for change immediate and wholesale. Children naturally pick up languages far better than adults and were not severely handicapped.
But the adults, the teachers came from decades of using English to teach biology to history and many were quickly realising they were made redundant through the execution of policy. The textbooks could not keep up with the bursting student population and new schools.
It was not that the printers were in disrepair, but a galling lack of highly-trained people to write on various subject matters for various stages of learning in English. Quality was compromised due to that and a generation paid the price.
The system was dealing with the situation year to year, and some might argue though those specific problems don't persist today, the attitude of planning out education processes in terms of curriculum, grading and teacher training in short spurts remains. And my generation always slaved along with an understanding it is our minders' prerogative to change their minds consistently, and therefore policies, and for us to adjust ourselves adequately to all eventualities. We are used to being guinea pigs of an intemperate nation.
Which does explain how millions of them have gone abroad and have seamlessly fit into various societies — whether they are progressively multicultural or stubbornly homogenous.
And the need to submit to authority did not end in the public schools. By the time they were in university in the early '80s and beyond, the days of Baling protests and student power were memories.
The Universities and University Colleges Act 1974 was firmly in place, with the student affairs department keeping strong watch over the undergraduates and their living space. By the time the last of the Reluctant Generation started attending tertiary education towards the end of the '90s, despite the age of Reformasi in full throttle, major dragnets in campuses were actively diffusing democratic awareness. Ambers of youthful confidence were dying in the dark depths of institutional control.
Mindful too, these are citizens who in the majority did not have computers prevalent in their classrooms throughout their years in the public schools. Most had to spend their university days or even their early working years to catch up with an information age set to isolate them if they resisted.
Even the end of the Cold War, which infused in our peers elsewhere in the world a spirit of enthusiasm for a brave new world, Malaysia neutrality rendered the event less instrumental to us. More so, those were the Mahathir power reconsolidation years (1987-1992), therefore a yearning for hope was absent and in its place a meanness in the air, where might was right was tattooed into the people through Operasi Lalang, newspaper bans and the curtailing of the royalty.
A time for Malaysian leadership
While the majority of Malaysian voters will soon be those below 35, those older than them in their early forties are looked on to as the leaders of the pack for now.
But both the experience of being used as a social experiment, treated to strict national disciplinary enforcements and spending the better part of the millennium to be fully immersed in the information age and become its associate member even if not full member, the urge to get along without fuss looms over the generation.
A sentiment which does not spell boldness. While there are some wilder characters in the mix, by large the group is by choice docile. Which is why the contrast with the next generation, those born through the Mahathir years is considerable, and the affect of the ones to replace us will grow in the next 10 years.
A hungrier majority which may falsely expect those marginally older than them — my generation — to be imaginative at least, or to exceed expectation and to be inspirational at times.
It appears more and more that my generation does share the cynicism of the young, unfortunately it exhibits an equal amount of cynicism for itself.
We are not only rejecting the ideas of the past, but we lacking faith in our own ideas, in our own capacity to lead those before and after us.
This is when I hope I am wrong. That instead, there is enough verve and spirit in my generation to mark its place in this country's history. Therefore, the Reluctant Generation is not termed later also as a Lost Generation.
Time will tell.
* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.
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Menurut bekas ketua pengarang kumpulan akhbar milik Umno New Straits Times itu, di negeri Selangor, rundingan berlaku diantara ketiga-tiga parti itu disebabkan oleh permusuhan terbuka antara Menteri Besar Tan Sri Abdul Khalid Ibrahim dan Mohamed Azmin Ali daripada PKR.