There is this disgraceful and insulting commentary in the PDI today comparing our national hero, Jose Rizal, to the megalomaniac Mahathir of Malaysia. Within a week, Mahathir has been in the national dailies. On the 12th during our Independence Day, Mahathir criticized our democracy. Today, the birthday of our national hero, a Filipino veteran journalist simply misunderstood Rizal's social critique of colonial Philippines and completely misread Mahathir's racist/culturalist ideas and the political economy of development of Malaysia.
Lest our mainstream observers and media continue to extend blind adulation to the authoritarian, self-indulgent Mahathir, I'd rather post below Randy David's more grounded and reflective essays on Rizal's sociology and 'Indolence of the Filipinos'....
Here's a line in my thesis: " ... Mahathir remains an apologist for his perceived socio-economic and political achievements, putting the blame on a people’s culture without even questioning his own politics and economic policies."
And here's a paragraph from my thesis summing up the achievements of Mahathir's political economy:
"After two decades of neoliberalization, if the project had to be assessed of its progress vis-à-vis the overall NEP-NDP objectives as well as Mahathir’s vision for Malaysia’s capitalist development, the outcome would be frustrating and disappointing for Mahathir and the power bloc behind the project, and more so for the peoples of Malaysia who were unwittingly implicated in this particular accumulation process. Despite modest economic growth achievements for 20 years, interrupted by the crises and recessions in 1985-1986 and 1997-1998, this accumulation regime under the Mahathir government had been replete with missed targets, failures, malpractice, economic inequalities, and social injustice. NEP-NDP ownership restructuring target of 30% for Malays remained elusive (Gomez and Jomo 1997; Khoo 2001, 2006a). Big privatization projects led to renationalization (Jomo and Tan Wooi Syn 2005; Tan 2008). The BCIC and many protected Malay conglomerates failed to emulate the success stories and global competitiveness of the Japanese keiretsu and South Korean chaebols (Rasiah 1995, 1998, 2010; Jomo and Edwards 1998; Jomo 2000, 2001a, 2001b; Gomez 2009). Malaysia Incorporated had been ridden with serious issues of graft, corruption, rent-seeking, nepotism, inefficiency, and incompetence (Gomez and Jomo 1997; Jomo and Gomez 2000; Wain 2009). Both inter-ethnic and intra-ethnic inequalities deepened and widened (Jomo 2004; Khoo 2004; Jomo and Tan Eu Chye 2006). If it is any indication, Mahathir’s frustrations on the nonfulfillment of his ideals of progress and the disappointments on the Malay recipients of decades-long affirmative action have been well conveyed in a memorable speech a year before his retirement: ‘The New Malay Dilemma’, which is about ‘whether [Malays] should or should not do away with the crutches that they have gotten used to, which in fact they have become proud of’, whereas the ‘old dilemma was whether they should distort the picture a little in order to help themselves’ (see Mahathir 2002). Still, Mahathir remains an apologist for his perceived socio-economic and political achievements, putting the blame on a people’s culture without even questioning his own politics and economic policies."Links:
- Randy David's 'Rizal's sociology of colonial society' (19 June 2010)
- Randy David's 'Rizal's "Indolence of the Filipinos"' (29 December 2007)
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