Recommended Article: The Meanings of Change

This is a time of change. Everybody's been talking about change. Ever since Obama started with his slogan, "Change We Can Believe In", the whole world, including Malaysia, has been talking about change. But change for the sake of change, is dangerous. It is like driving for the sake of driving -- without a clear view of the expected outcome. But by and large leaders are recognised as such because of their ability to lead -- and to voice the desires of the hoi polloi. True leaders represent the ordinary men on the street inasmuch as they represent the upper echelons of their own political machinery. The wonder is that these leaders, who represent both the internal voices of their own parties, manage to reconcile their party's aims with that of the greater public. Perhaps the motivating factor is survival, more than a genuine desire to conform to what society requires. But then, society has never been a homogenous creature. People change their position and opinions throughout time and are receptive to opinions and suggestions offered over time.

In the 2-8 April 2009 edition of Al-Ahram Online, Galal Nassar wrote an opinion piece titled "The Meanings of Change". The caption below the title was "Why such a great fear of democracy? Galal Nassar examines the pathology of apathy." I found the article quite good and would like for my friends and visitors to take a look at it. 

The link to the article is here. It may be worth remembering that he is speaking about change and democracy in Arab politics. Some parts of the article may strike a chord with Malaysians.

On the general fear of change:

It is uncertain whether the public has a clear idea of what change means apart, perhaps, from different faces at the top or, at best, different sectarian, ethnic or social affiliations on the part of the groups holding the reins of power.  ... In part the condition is the consequence of an erosion in the meaning of politics, which has been reduced in the general public's perception to a set of models for government -- socialist, liberal, Islamist or otherwise. These models are immutable, their aims and objectives indisputable, their success contingent upon the ability to attain power of a particular social group, whether owing to its privileged position in the military/security establishment, its alliance with outside forces, or a combination of the two. The average individual is helpless to determine the type of government that ends up controlling his/her future.

On the Arab fear of democracy:

Unfortunately, many see democracy not as .... a new social contract based on equal rights for all, the rule of law, and the peaceful rotation of power. They regard it as an attempt to revive patterns of Western liberal rule that serve only the interests of a new clique that is striving to attain power against the backdrop of a changing international environment.

The article may cause a few to yawn and so we will not discuss its innards in details. The writer's conclusion, which may again strike a few chords:

A people is not merely an amalgamation of persons living in the same geographical vicinity. It is a political relationship between individuals established on the basis of such principles as peaceful coexistence, mutual respect, equality and mutual support. It is a moral, cultural and legal order. Without such a moral framework, ... there can be no sense of mutual trust, no communal bond, no collective will and, hence, no political order in the modern sense. What is left, then, is ... : an authoritarian regime in which a clique of rulers remains in power by virtue of its control over the security agencies and in which the people have no proper understanding of the ethics and exercise of politics ...

In this great nation of ours, however, it must be said that democracy is well and alive. It is just that different quarters may interpret democracy in different ways. Some view democracy through Western eyes while others may view democracy through the lens of history. The way democracy is interpreted by different quarters may mean that the same slogans are shouted but understood differently by different quarters. This wilful misunderstanding may very well have been part of the reason unity is forged despite differing understandings of the same concept. This may well form fodder for another article. As such, I fully recommend the visitor to visit the link to the Al-Ahram article above.