An Icerd post-mortem: What it meant to whom?

The (plan to accede to the) Icerd is dead.

Over the next three articles, I will try to ascertain what the most important things the still-warm corpse of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (Icerd) can teach us.

I think the most productive question to start with is not: “What is the Icerd?”, but “What is the Icerd to whom?” 

In this, we are reminded of the tale of the blind men and the elephant. 

To progressives, activists, liberals, and many non-bumiputera, the Icerd was (if you’ll allow some exaggeration) some beacon of hope - a biblical pillar of fire perhaps - that was to lead the nation out of its racist dark ages and cement the idea of a truly new Malaysia.

To Umno, PAS, ultra-conservatives and right-wing Malay/Muslim NGOs, it was painted as the devil incarnate to realise all the worst fear-mongering they’ve been fed for decades - that the non-Malays are the new colonialists, who as their new overlords, would destroy everything the Malays hold dear!

That was what they painted it to be, but to them, it was probably more accurately the biggest meal ticket to relevance they have seen since GE14.

To the government? It was a headache.

The facts: A relatively unimportant actuality

For the few objective Malaysians out there, the Icerd is of course none of these things (except possibly that headache).

I have cited Icerd proponent (and Rami Malek competitor) Yu Ren Chung’s article on the Icerd in not one but two of my previous articles, as an excellent summary of what accession to the Icerd would in fact have objectively entailed for practical purposes - which I would in turn summarise as 'nothing much'.

It mostly involves conversations, having more or less ‘face’ in the eyes of a vaguely defined international community, and that sort of things.

Objectively, it was a far cry from what both proponents and opponents may have liked to think it was.

Any political observer worth their salt, however, knows that none of that matters in the least.

In the arena of politics and public discourse, it doesn’t matter what Icerd is, it matters what any given party can convince the people it is.

The era of Trump

At this point, perhaps some people think: oh, then it’s merely a case of being able to convince the masses as to what the Icerd truly is.

Noble and valiant attempts were made. Eloquent appeals to our higher selves, brilliant and technically flawless (I’m guessing) legal arguments, and so on.

Alas, these were essentially only read by people who already believed in the cause.

I have been overwhelmingly preoccupied with reflections on the nature of politics in the era of Donald Trump.

I think there’s an entire book on the subject, so for now suffice it to say: more than ever before, this is an era where we talk past one another, not to one another.

It is also an era of echo chambers, where we tend to surround ourselves only with opinions we already agree with.

I am not a cynic, and thus do not believe that this will be a permanent, sad state of affairs; but I do believe that we sometimes do not appreciate enough the pervasiveness of this phenomenon.

Even those of us who like to consider ourselves progressives can sometimes get a little caught up in our own worlds - concerned more about what we say, and less about how it is actually heard and interpreted by others.

One good thing about politicians

Politicians get a lot of flak - and often times for very good reasons.

It’s always fashionable to pick on them and let’s not kid ourselves, they often deserve it.

I have always appreciated this about politicians, however. Theirs is one of the relatively few professions that rely almost entirely on public approval and understanding public sentiment.

There are many of us - activists, social commentators, and so on - who talk a lot about public sentiment, who claim loudly to understand it, and to represent the feelings and views of the masses.

The truth is, few of us truly do, and even fewer of us depend on such an understanding for a living.

Nobody cares if you or I get public sentiment wrong. If a politician gets it wrong, or fall victim too deeply into the echo chamber phenomenon, they lose their job.

In this regard, I would go so far as to say that politicians often (obviously not always) have a much better read of public sentiment than the average Joe.

Sometimes, I am even somewhat comfortable using statements and decisions by politicians as a way of reading and interpreting what public sentiment actually is.

Christmas for conservatives

Let’s do a quick recap for the record.

This Icerd business probably (I really can’t say for a fact) began at the initiative of Foreign Minister Saifuddin Abdullah - an upstanding Malay progressive, beloved of Malaysian liberals everywhere.

Saifuddin has long expressed support at the idea of Malaysia ratifying or acceding to a number of international conventions or treaties, as a way of catapulting ourselves into the 21st century and being able to hold our heads high in the international community.

It is a noble goal, and I am generally all for it.

The Icerd, being all about race, of course raised a few red flags among some conservatives.

Without missing a beat, the articles that technically could have assuaged such fears and neutralised all those red flags with elegant, articulate arguments popped up like mushrooms.

None of the conservatives read any of the articles of course, they were all too busy thanking Santa Claus for the early Christmas (not literally of course, because that stuff is for the infidels), and laughing all the way to the syariah-compliant bank - because here was something they could sell as a bogeyman to the masses.

For these guys, it didn’t matter what the Icerd was factually and objectively about. If it looked like a duck and walked like a duck, then by God, (halal) roast duck was on the menu.

Desperate attempts to remain relevant

The duck of course, sold like hot curry puffs.

Think about it - when was the last time you saw PAS president Abdul Hadi Awang featuring regularly in the news as much as he has been this past week? (Hadi by the way, has in a facepalm moment, brought the Freemasons back into the conversation.) 

Or Umno president Ahmad Zahid Hamidi in news reports that didn’t have the words “corruption”, “taking leave” or “MACC” in it?

The whole thing has been a lifesaver and a gold mine for individuals and groups who had been thrashing in the water, struggling to find some sort of direction and stay relevant in today’s Malaysia.

One might say that the old DNAs of Umno and PAS need issues like Icerd in the way the Joker needs the Dark Knight or vice versa.

Further proof of this came more recently, when PAS information chief Nasrudin Hassan boldly proclaimed that the government could be trying to implement the Icerd via some hidden means.

It’s a little bit pathetic how transparent this rather desperate clawing at relevance is. However, it does seem that entities like Umno and PAS feel that they are simply not viable today without some bogeyman.

Cost-benefit analysis

Ultimately, the logical decision for the powers that be was to shut the whole Icerd thing down.

Once in a while, a decision is taken purely on principle. Most of the time, especially when the stakes aren’t as high, a decision is taken mostly on cost-benefit analysis.

It appeared that all said and done, the political cons outweighed the political pros.

In dealing with the backlash, we can see politicians doing their thing, talking acrobatically, offering vague non-answers while neither confirming and denying and so on. It’s not people at their best, but I suppose to be fair, it’s not people at their worst either.

Ultimately, it’s not only about what politicians decide and do, but what the rest of us decide and do as well.

That we will cover in Part 3, after Part 2 discusses whether we should fear the Dec 8 rally.

---

NATHANIEL TAN enjoyed Madama Butterfly over the weekend. - Mkini

✍ Sumber Pautan : ☕ Malaysians Must Know the TRUTH

Kredit kepada pemilik laman asal dan sekira berminat untuk meneruskan bacaan sila klik link atau copy paste ke web server : https://ift.tt/2SiSAYr

(✿◠‿◠)✌ Mukah Pages : Pautan Viral Media Sensasi Tanpa Henti. Memuat-naik beraneka jenis artikel menarik setiap detik tanpa henti dari pelbagai sumber. Selamat membaca dan jangan lupa untuk 👍 Like & 💕 Share di media sosial anda!