Social Contract: Panelists Evenly Split

Panellists evenly split

By SHAILA KOSHY

Sunday June 29, 2008 The STAR

KUALA LUMPUR: The four panellists at the Bar Council's Social Contract Forum yesterday were split on whether a social contract for the formation of Malaysia did indeed exist.

While academic Dr Mavis Puthucheary and political scientist Dr Kua Kia Soong called it a piece of fiction, constitutional lawyer Tommy Thomas and political scientist Dr Farish Noor disagreed.

The panellists: (From left) Dr Farish, Dr Puthucheary, Dr Kua and Thomas.

Dr Puthucheary said the founding fathers of the coalition entered deals which resulted in the 1957 Federal Constitution but argued one could not take the leap from there to a social contract.

She added that the “bargain” was never recorded in any legal contract.

Dr Puthucheary said the term “ketuanan Melayu (Malay dominance)” began increasingly to be used in the 1980s to describe Umno dominance in the Barisan Nasional and that the term social contract was used later to gain political legitimacy for its policies.

She said the notion of ketuanan Melayu, advanced by certain groups in Umno to give credence to their view that it is the only party able to protect Malay interests, had been shattered on March 8.

“Calls simply to uphold the 'social contract' as binding, rather than making a serious effort to understand its evolving meaning and use in Malaysian history and politics, have impeded effective nation-building,” said Dr Puthucheary.

Dr Kua, who agreed with Dr Puthucheary, said communalist politicians introduced the terms social contract and ketuanan Melayu.

Looking at the former from a class perspective, he said the workers' movement was a big threat to colonial interests then and that the Federation of Malaya proposals culminating in the Merdeka Agreement were meant to deflect the working class revolt by introducing racialism in the independence package.

“The subsequent Alliance Formula comprising the Malay aristocratic class and non-Malay capitalist class was designed to deal with their workers' revolt and put in place a neo-colonial solution,” he said.

Speaking on the social contract beyond 2008, Thomas argued that just because one could not define the social contract did not mean it did not exist.

“To me, it exists; it was the quid pro quo bargain reached by the three communities before independence.

“All that was required of the non-Malays was an undivided loyalty to the new nation. In effect, Malaysia would remain a plural society where racial differences were recognised and diversity encouraged.

“My understanding of it is a formula by which race relations are arranged, a charter for the minority and a bill of rights for the majority,” he said, adding that the key social arrangements were found in the Federal Constitution.

Citing several challenges to the existence and contents of the social contract over the years, Thomas suggested that the March 8 election results showed that voters had had enough of Umno's uninterrupted power over the years.

”The decimation of MCA, MIC and Gerakan was because they had failed to stand up to the dominance of Umno and to uphold the social contract,” he said.

Dr Farish said he shared Thomas' belief that the social contract was real and was redeemable, even as it was being constantly challenged, re-interpreted, revised and recontextualised. However, he said the entry of religion into politics had put a strain on the social contract.

Some 200 people, including several Umno supporters, attended the forum at the council's auditorium.

One Umno speaker from the floor who questioned the panellists said he had flown that morning from Kelantan to give his views on Malay concerns.

The question and answer session was a mature and lively one, especially when two others took exception to Dr Farish’s response, delivered in impeccable Kelantan dialect: “It is Umno that thinks if there is no Umno, Malays will die. But we have seen that even without Umno, Malays continue to live.”