Columbia International Affairs Online
CIAO DATE: 2/5/2008
Managing ethnic divisions in the Philippines and Malaysia
December 2006
Cornell University Peace Studies Program
Abstract
Another lesson of history may be lost, a lesson that can teach not only Malaysians but others as well about the conduct of Government, the behaviour of politicians, and the discipline required in a democracy in order to prevent a multi-ethnic, multi-religious, multi-lingual and multicultural country from going up in flames and destroying itself.
Instead we are seeing today an attempt by foreigners … to abet inter-racial and interreligious violence in Malaysia as they do for other countries. They advocate democracy as an end in itself. If the democracy leads to violence and destruction of an otherwise stable and prosperous society, it does not matter. The most important thing is that it is all in the name of democracy.…
Fanatical belief in the system and ideology lead to crimes being committed in their names. Yet the system or ideology is upheld for its own sake. …
It is not the good results which democracy is supposed to bring about that is important. It is democracy and everything done in the name of democracy that is important. And so we see countries becoming anarchic and unable to develop because democracy in many instances undermined the ability of Government to maintain law and order and to develop the country.
Mahathir Mohamad, Prime Minister of Malaysia, 27.7.2000
We are poor because our elites have no sense of nation. They collaborate with whoever rules— the Spaniards, the Japanese, the Americans and in recent times, Marcos. Our elites imbibed the values of the colonizer.
And worst of all, these wealthy Filipinos did not modernize this country—they sent abroad their wealth distilled from the blood and sweat of our poor. …
How do we end this shameless domestic colonialism? The ballot failed; the bullet then? How else but through the cleansing power of revolution. Make no mistake about it—revolution means the transfer of power from the decadent upper classes to the lower classes. Revolution is class war whose objective is justice and freedom. …
Cory Aquino goes around telling the world that she restored democracy in the Philippines. Sure enough, we now have free elections, free speech, free assembly. But these are the empty shells of democratic institutions, because the real essence of democracy does not exist here. True to her oligarchic class … she turned EDSA into a restoration of the old oligarchy.
Francisco Sionil Jose 2004
