These electoral days...

It was fun watching the Aussie elections. I think my favourite comment, however, came afterwards, when the business community expressed their concern that the Rudd government would keep its electoral promises. The premise being that promises are merely for getting elected, when the election starts, the real business of ruling begins.

After all, Rudd and his friends have got five years before they need to defend themselves at the polls. It's a long time between now and then, and if they break their promises, what can the electorate do? Very, very little. As Howard showed, repeatedly.

In Malaysia, we've refined this process. Rather than having the Government make promises that they won't keep, our politicians, at least publicly, seem to not bother making them. The headline of the manifesto for BN, 'Security, Peace, Prosperity' says it all to me.

Let's take security. Why is security a problem? Or is this a crime issue? Ah, and well, we've seen the BN track record there... After all, has crime or has crime not grown under this, and the last, regime? Have they shown their ability to tackle it? And yet, they want us to elect them on their track record...

Peace? Are we about to be invaded? Are there troops poised on the border? If not, why is peace a problem?Whoops, silly me. We're talking about INTERNAL conflict. One again has to wonder why this hasn't been addressed sufficiently over the last 50 years.

Prosperity. Hm. For who? We've seen, as the manifesto says, 6.3% in 2007. Doesn't mention decreasing income gaps (maybe cos they aren't decreasing), but forgetting that, obviously minor, point, how much of this has been eaten away in inflation? Whoops, I"m obviously getting old. Inflation isn't a problem! The price of ordinary goods may be going up, but inflation isn't. I can't help wondering what the 'basket of goods' used to calculate this inflation index is - the percentage of imported goods, that would help to keep the official inflation rate down, while reflecting the fact that cost of living, for those living on imported goods, isn't rising. While for those who shop in non-air-conditioned markets, prices keep going up.

There are, of course, some specific promises in this 5plus MegaByte document (along with all those memory-heavy pix that mean that on your average Streamyx connection, you're probably still waiting for it to download). Eradication of hardcore poverty, for example... which is easy. You just keep the definitions static, and wait till inflation (or hunger) eradicate poverty. There are figures given about the decrease in hard-core poverty - which look great, until you look more closely. Last time I looked closely, the decreasing percentage of hard-core poor masked a *rise* in the absolute numbers, covered by the increasing size of the population.

So we have promises. What we don't have is:
a. Information. BN can tell us all it has done, but without freedom of information and the power to look into the public archives, we have to rely on them to tell them the truth of their achievements.

b. A free media. We don't have people who can ask the hard questions for us, and then publish them, or better yet broadcast them. Until then, we can't trust figures, either numerical or biological.

c. Freedom to discuss. The ISA sees to that.

d. Freedom to learn. UUCA.

e. Freedom to vote - which follows from the others.

So, again, I wouldn't bother. I hate being the party pooper - but without the first, the last isn't going to happen. ANd given how our electoral system basically guarantees a BN victory - all voting achieves is to strengthen the status quo, to allow BN to say, 'we have a mandate'. Make your vote mean something. Bin it.

A different version...

A slightly different version of my monthly Sun column...

Keeping the slaves in check

A partial review of James C Scott 'Domination and the arts of resistance'

By Sonia Randhawa

Keeping subjugated populations under control is not easy. Imagine being the sole white family, overseeing a couple of hundred black slaves on a West Indies cotton plantation. Sheer force would never be enough to keep control – you could be overpowered at any time by those you 'owned'. A whole panoply of devices, devices that monitor the lives of the slaves at any and every point of time, have to be employed.

Control begins the moment a slave is born. In their own interest, their parents teach them to 'yes massa, no massa', to keep their heads down and only say what their masters want to hear. There are two ways of seeing this. It could be an astute strategy for survival, or it could be internalised inferiority. It could, of course, be both.

James C Scott has explored the way in which subjugated societies deal with subjugation, through contrasting 'hidden' and 'public' transcripts, exploring a range of societies from colonised Burma, to Malay peasants, Black slaves and rural serfs and tenant farmers in Europe. He finds that there are common themes running through methods of both domination and subjugation, for example that people feel humiliation and denigration as keenly as they feel physical assault. And that rulers rely on abjection and apology as much as they do the exercise of violence, in order to retain control.

One of the themes running through his analysis of the dominant classes is the fear of organisation by the subjugated masses. In the eyes of the dominant, there should be no horizontal links between their slaves or serfs. The slaves and serfs should only be linked through their master. This translated into concerns about slaves and serfs coming together, even for authorised festivals and religious services. For example, in the Southern United States, it was illegal for five blacks to come together without a white present. They were forbidden from holding religious services outside officially sanctioned ceremonies and times, and even then all sermons had to be officially sanctioned, with a white pastor present.

This was not, according to Scott, paranoia, it was completely justified. There were, again, various facets to this. First, there was the public display of the ability to organise. If the slaves could organise, it showed intelligence and ability, a public rebuttal to the assumption of ignorance and stupidity.

Second, there was the justified concern that if they started to talk, they would start to organise, and for activities other than praise of God.

This was not just a concern about rebellion, it was also concern about public ridicule, the sharing of information that might make the 'master' seem human, prone to foibles and capable of making mistakes. If they were openly seen as human – whether this was overly cruel, overly kind or just fallible – it could incite rebellion.

I find it amusing the irony that this provokes. In order to disguise their intelligence, while still expressing their resentment, still forming relationships and engaging in the activities that make us all human, the repressed have to use more intelligence, double entendre and sophisticated imagery and wordplay to hide their intentions to the oppressor while making the intentions clear to the oppressed. The most extreme example of this was the development of an entirely female language by women in Hunan, taking to great lengths the almost universal differences between the language of men and women. However, we can still see this today. During the year that the Nepalese king assumed complete power, broadcasters in the mountain kingdom were banned from reading the news. So they sang it instead. They weren't allowed to use the names of political parties, so they talked about symbols representing political parties. They weren't allowed to call for the king's removal for power, so they talked about the need to 'change your socks'!

A key lesson that Scott teaches us in his book is that autocratic power always incites rebellion. The further below the surface that the rebellion has to hide, the more likely it is that it explodes in violence, the more it engenders fear, the more it causes both the dictator and the dictated to be confined into roles and masks.

Note: James C Scott, Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts, Yale University Press, 1990

GerakSikh

GerakSikh is an organisation set up to try and persuade young Sikhs to vote. I still can't work out how this works...

Tan Sri: You should vote!
Young Sikh: Why?
TS: It's important!
YS: Why?
TS: Because it's your chance to have a say in how the country is run.
YS: How does that work?
TS: Well, you cast a vote for the party that you think is best to govern the country...
YS: Hold on, but I don't want them to just govern the country, I want them to listen to my say on how the country should be governed... what if I vote for PArty X and they don't do what I want?
TS: THen you can change your vote in the next election!
YS: So, basically, I give someone the chance to govern this country, in my name, for five years, do what they like, and my only recourse is to NOT vote for them next time round?
TS: Well, yes.

YS: Okay, let's say I agree to this blank slate of power. How do I find out what the party in power has been up to...
TS: You read the papers.
YS: But all the papers are owned by the party in power....
TS: Ah. Yes. Well, you can go online.
YS: But we're told that all bloggers are liars, and how can I trust their information?
TS: Look at the Government websites!
YS: But they don't tell me anything.
TS: Ask your MP
YS: But when Samy Vellu was asked about Tamil schools, he refused to answer, and that was in PArliament!
TS: Well, that's his privilege....
YS: What are my privileges?

The young SIkh's only privilege is to put a little mark on a little slip of paper once every half decade. Sometimes more. In exchange, she gets to give the Government a percentage of her income in tax (but doesn't get to know how the money is spent), she gets to be arrested arbitrarily, is allowed to read censored news in the papers, and be subject to harassment if she starts dating someone from the 'wrong religion'. Ain't she just the luckiest person in the world to be born in a 'democracy'?

I say, boycott the elections. The Opposition may put up a good fight. But the system is so flawed that they need a stupidly huge majority just to cut the BN 2/3 majority. And most people are only given information through BN-controlled media, operating in a climate of fear.

In 1999, I helped to legitimise a BN majority. I voted. If I voted again, it would have the same result. With the guaranteed victory, despite barely scraping a majority of the vote, our PM (not this one, t'other one) went on to trample human rights, media freedom and the judiciary, as he had been doing before. And defending his actions by saying, oh but they voted for me.

I refuse to be a pawn of a system which conspires to make me legitimise the ISA, the PPPA, the Sedition Act. So I'm not voting. It is a political act, a refusal to allow the BN government to use my vote (either way) to say that the system is legitimate, that it must be fair because otherwise people wouldn't bother voting.

Why the gripe?

So last weekend, Dorian and I, with his brother Jimmy and sister-in-law Mickey, went to the St Kilda Festival. Now, I can't say I'm a fan. I think I'm just too old. And unimpressed by queues to toilets that go round the block. The music was good, but it was hot, and there seemed to be just too many drunken people around. Great if you like that kind of thing.

What really bugged me though, was the level of unnecessary rudeness. Maybe this is the Brit in me coming out, but this couple walked straight into me, stepped on my foot, and said 'We're not bloody apologising to YOU'. Which is merely indicative. In the UK festivals I went to, there seemed to be a lot more unnecessary hugs, washing of feet, smiling and general happiness. And giving away of money to nice people like Greenpeace and Oxfam...

My suspicion is that this isn't a UK-Australia difference. Nope, this is the effect of 11 years of neo-conservatism. The festivals I attended in the UK did come just after the Thatcher years, but I think the Howard years were like the Thatcher years on speed. This was no experiment, this was catch-up. And the people are all the more brutalised for it. Individualism, the demise of society, the rights of business (let's all hail Exxon-Mobil for refusing to give into those greedy Venezualans, making the world safe for poverty and want...).... none of this really seems designed to give you what some happy drunken sod in the UK claimed was 'the Glastonbury glow', even if the weather is better.

Or, of course you could just say I'm willing to blame the neo-cons for just about everything. Right down to some bastid standing on my foot and refusing to apologise.

More aches and pains....

While Drusilla and I appear to have reached some sort of truce, possibly aided by the fact that she's getting more exercise, Dorian's physical fortunes have taken a downward turn. He's torn a muscle in his calf. Which of course gives me a good excuse - if I needed one - to be bossy and authoritarian. He he. BUT he has overcome RMIT's administrative hurdles and been offered a place in their architecture school. Yay! He starts some time in March, which means we'll be quite tight money-wise until I get a job, but he'll still be working part-time, so all should be fine.

Politically, I'm bored by both the US and the Malaysian elections. I do support the Toni Kasim campaign, because I think that she is highlighting important issues. This has nothing, of course, to do with the high esteem I have for Toni, oh no, but is purely about the issues - but seeing as they're part of the reason I hold Toni in high esteem... yes, needlessly circular.

I'm spending more time thinking about the issue of land ownership. And genetically engineered mosquitos (coming to a hypermarket near you!). But one or other of these is likely to be the basis of my next Sun column, fingers crossed, so let's see.

My contribution to New Malaysian Essays 1 has been reviewed by Joe Toscano from the Anarchist Media Institute, and the review is generally nice. What's a bit wierd is how he sees so much censorship in my piece. A Malaysian reading it probably wouldn't see any at all. For myself, it means that I am so accustomed to writing within the parameters, even when trying to push them, that I'm no longer aware of it. I'm not sure how to assimilate this information... I shall mull on it for a while longer before deciding!

And I'm still working on the Pisco Project. Expect to hear more about Pisco, pissoirs and pissants soon!

Bells and all

As most of you (three) may have heard, Dorian and I are getting married, with the ceremony on 3 March, but the reception will be on 1 March.

More pertinently, I've got a friend who's helping to raise money for some rebuilding work in Pisco, Peru, following the earthquake there. For more information, visit here. They need money and they need it really quickly!