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THE morning after the Permatang Pauh by-election, I banged off an SMS to Parti Keadilan Rakyat secretary-general Datuk Salehuddin Hashim. It is my privilege not to divulge the content of that message, though you might surmise the gist of it from his reply, which I have his permission to reveal: "Great political changes do not come from zero-sum equations."
No, really rotten ones do. From anyone else, that would have seemed just glib. (Since when has great political change been wrought without winners and losers? Who writes history?) But Salehuddin is one of the smartest and most successful men I've ever known.
And I've known him a long time. Full disclosure: I'm proud to say he was my senior at Malay College in the late 1960s. He was a terrific orator, inspiring my career as a school debater.
We've worked productively together in the latter days too, collaborating on our alumni association's annual dinner concerts in the mid-1990s. Ah, salad days, gentlemen: Old Boy Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim in the deputy premiership and gunning for the top; Old Boys in the palaces and the judiciary, civil service, armed forces, police, central bank and Petronas; Old Boys helming the new corporations of Malaysia Inc, turning the gushing fountains of megaprojected money into highways, airports, telcos, independent power producers and great expectations... salad? Kobe steak, lads. In Kobe.
I think it was in 1995 when the guests of honour at the Malay College Old Boys Association Annual Dinner were four kings and the second table alone was worth a collective RM20 billion.
And all would enjoy the highly esteemed MCOBA Dinner Concert, produced and directed by Salehuddin Hashim, written by Rehman Rashid and Raja Petra Kamaruddin.
Yes, that Raja Petra.
He was a handful even then, our Pet, churning out voluminous scripts of wicked satirical humour overnight. I was there for an editorial touch on the rudder, though; just to keep things this side of salacious -- you had to remember who was at the high table -- and the rest we set to music, singing and dancing.
RPK has never stopped writing since then, though his chorus line has changed. And Salehuddin is sec-gen of PKR and, I suspect, a principal architect of the meticulous organisation and slick management of the party's Permatang Pauh campaign.
So pay attention to this man. His life and ideas are beginning to come on the record; Google him for the details. But for now consider what he said to me the morning after the Permatang Pauh by-election: "Great political changes do not come from zero-sum equations."
And look at us now. Me here, Pet there, and Saleh -- well, is that the "middle ground" he espies before him? That would be ironic, for the elimination of zero-sum equations was precisely what was sought in the system practised by Malaysia v.1 for 50 years, as summed up in the 3C politics of consultation, compromise and consensus.
For the Malaysia v.2 touted by Saleh and Anwar to espouse the same ideal flies in the face of the storming confrontationalism involved in effecting this great political change; this bandying of base accusations that has turned democracy in this country into some awful primal conflict between Good and Evil.
The pillorying of the licensed media for "one-sidedness" is now irrelevant. As our vilifiers prove, one-sidedness is now equal and opposite on all sides of every political divide, and the media consumer today has full and free access to it all in just one place (their Internet browsers) -- but not from just one source.
That's a good thing; it provides a full and wide view of the battle raging among us.
Eliminating zero-sum equations from this view, however, evokes for me the Bhagavad Gita's discourse between Arjuna and Krishna on the field of Kurukshetra before the battle between the Pandavas and the Kauravas: "I see before me my cousins, uncles and brothers...".
The Gita tells us the outcome is irrelevant; in the war to end all wars, victory and defeat are equally meaningless before the ultimate surrender.
In the internecine conflicts of we lesser mortals, though, avoiding a zero-sum equation would seem to require either that no one is left standing at the end of the battle, or that the battle never ends. - nst
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