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He’s caught in the past
Allowing him to return would amount to an admission ...
OOI KEE BENG
xtra@mediacorp.com.sg
THE final attempt by the 85-year-old former leader of the Malayan Communist Party (MCP), Chin Peng, to gain the right to return to Malaysia was quashed on April 30 by the Federal Court.
His failure to produce his birth certificate was used as sufficient reason to deny his appeal.
The legal technicalities involved in stopping him from entering the country are interestingly not the most significant theme in this saga. His failure nevertheless injects disturbing elements from the past into contemporary Malaysian consciousness.
Many see no danger in allowing the old man to return from his place of exile in Bangkok to his place of birth in Sitiawan, Perak, where many of his relatives live, but others, including the federal authorities, refuse to forget the violence perpetrated by the MCP during the birth of the nation.
The official stand is taken despite the peace agreement signed between the MCP and government on Dec 2, 1989, stating that party members who were of Malaysian origin should be allowed to settle in the country if they wished to do so.
Chin Peng’s mistake was that he did not take up then Premier Mahathir Mohamed on that offer immediately.
Much of the reluctance to allow him to return stem from challenges that are embodied in Chin Peng’s very existence, to official discourses about the origins of Malaysian independence.
Firstly, communists such as Chin Peng (real name Ong Boon Hua) were practically the only Malayans fighting the Japanese invaders during World War II. They did it with material and logistical support from British defenders who had recently so hastily abandoned their colonies in South-east Asia.
Chin Peng is therefore a reminder of a fractious time when the Japanese were seen as invaders by some but as liberators of Malaya from British control by others.
The portrayal of communists as terrorists was therefore a narrative device that served to depict British colonialists as defenders of decent government, protectors of the public and willing participants in bringing independence to Malaya, in the final days of their empire.
Willing participants in this project where the local population was concerned — once the communists had been dismissed by British commissioner-general in South-east Asia Malcolm McDonald as “alien forces acting under alien instructions” — were solely conservative parties such as the United Malays National Organisation (Umno) and the Malayan Chinese Association (MCA).
Indeed, the forming of the MCA in 1949 was a measure deemed necessary by the British and by Chinese Malayan leaders to draw rural support away from the communists after the former decided on guerilla warfare against their erstwhile brothers-in-arms.
Chin Peng’s continued intrusion into Malaysian consciousness also conjure discomforting images of a time when the fire of nationalism throughout the colonised world was inextricably alloyed with the promise of liberation from the colonial yoke and the building of a paradise based on economic equality and social justice without regard for national borders.
AN ALIEN FORCE
Had the communists of pre-independence Malaya not be perceived as aliens with an agenda countervailing against the nationalism of the conservative parties of the alliance — to whom independence was finally given by the British — then the whole understanding of Malaysian history would have to be revised.
That will not doubt make Malaysia’s history more interesting, but that would also challenge the narrower narratives that we have grown contented with.
Admitting the full mix of passions in the twilight years of British might, and the blend of aspirations found among peoples filled with the vision that they could finally escape colonial control, would allow us today to entertain ideas that are not so strongly nationalistic, ethnocentric or parochial.
A proper study of the post-war period would also reveal a high level of economic duress among urban and rural Malayans. This would go some way towards explaining the officially-assumed political disinterest among most non-Malay Malayans of that time in the process of Merdeka.
The race-based nature of Malaysia’s official history is largely a result of the depiction of the MCP as an alien force that carried little significance in the ideological dynamics of Merdeka.
Through a concentration on the racial nature of major parties, which also avoided the fact that non-conservative parties were not included in negotiations with the British, the conceptual space for race politics was advertently enlarged.
Precisely through the branding of class struggle on the national stage as a sideshow, Merdeka basically became an ethnocentric struggle that has informed Malaysian political thought every since.
Permitting Chin Peng to return would amount to an admission by officialdom that he and his buddies were part of the struggles of the immediate post-war period, and that the left-right political dimension that consumed world politics during that age — which was a major motivation for the British to orchestrate their withdrawal from the region the way they did — was also very much a part of Malaysian political thought. WEEKENDVTRA
The writer is a Fellow at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies.This article is written in remembrance of the late Andrew Symon, withwhom the writer had many discussions about Chin Peng.
OOI KEE BENG
xtra@mediacorp.com.sg
THE final attempt by the 85-year-old former leader of the Malayan Communist Party (MCP), Chin Peng, to gain the right to return to Malaysia was quashed on April 30 by the Federal Court.
His failure to produce his birth certificate was used as sufficient reason to deny his appeal.
The legal technicalities involved in stopping him from entering the country are interestingly not the most significant theme in this saga. His failure nevertheless injects disturbing elements from the past into contemporary Malaysian consciousness.
Many see no danger in allowing the old man to return from his place of exile in Bangkok to his place of birth in Sitiawan, Perak, where many of his relatives live, but others, including the federal authorities, refuse to forget the violence perpetrated by the MCP during the birth of the nation.
The official stand is taken despite the peace agreement signed between the MCP and government on Dec 2, 1989, stating that party members who were of Malaysian origin should be allowed to settle in the country if they wished to do so.
Chin Peng’s mistake was that he did not take up then Premier Mahathir Mohamed on that offer immediately.
Much of the reluctance to allow him to return stem from challenges that are embodied in Chin Peng’s very existence, to official discourses about the origins of Malaysian independence.
Firstly, communists such as Chin Peng (real name Ong Boon Hua) were practically the only Malayans fighting the Japanese invaders during World War II. They did it with material and logistical support from British defenders who had recently so hastily abandoned their colonies in South-east Asia.
Chin Peng is therefore a reminder of a fractious time when the Japanese were seen as invaders by some but as liberators of Malaya from British control by others.
The portrayal of communists as terrorists was therefore a narrative device that served to depict British colonialists as defenders of decent government, protectors of the public and willing participants in bringing independence to Malaya, in the final days of their empire.
Willing participants in this project where the local population was concerned — once the communists had been dismissed by British commissioner-general in South-east Asia Malcolm McDonald as “alien forces acting under alien instructions” — were solely conservative parties such as the United Malays National Organisation (Umno) and the Malayan Chinese Association (MCA).
Indeed, the forming of the MCA in 1949 was a measure deemed necessary by the British and by Chinese Malayan leaders to draw rural support away from the communists after the former decided on guerilla warfare against their erstwhile brothers-in-arms.
Chin Peng’s continued intrusion into Malaysian consciousness also conjure discomforting images of a time when the fire of nationalism throughout the colonised world was inextricably alloyed with the promise of liberation from the colonial yoke and the building of a paradise based on economic equality and social justice without regard for national borders.
AN ALIEN FORCE
Had the communists of pre-independence Malaya not be perceived as aliens with an agenda countervailing against the nationalism of the conservative parties of the alliance — to whom independence was finally given by the British — then the whole understanding of Malaysian history would have to be revised.
That will not doubt make Malaysia’s history more interesting, but that would also challenge the narrower narratives that we have grown contented with.
Admitting the full mix of passions in the twilight years of British might, and the blend of aspirations found among peoples filled with the vision that they could finally escape colonial control, would allow us today to entertain ideas that are not so strongly nationalistic, ethnocentric or parochial.
A proper study of the post-war period would also reveal a high level of economic duress among urban and rural Malayans. This would go some way towards explaining the officially-assumed political disinterest among most non-Malay Malayans of that time in the process of Merdeka.
The race-based nature of Malaysia’s official history is largely a result of the depiction of the MCP as an alien force that carried little significance in the ideological dynamics of Merdeka.
Through a concentration on the racial nature of major parties, which also avoided the fact that non-conservative parties were not included in negotiations with the British, the conceptual space for race politics was advertently enlarged.
Precisely through the branding of class struggle on the national stage as a sideshow, Merdeka basically became an ethnocentric struggle that has informed Malaysian political thought every since.
Permitting Chin Peng to return would amount to an admission by officialdom that he and his buddies were part of the struggles of the immediate post-war period, and that the left-right political dimension that consumed world politics during that age — which was a major motivation for the British to orchestrate their withdrawal from the region the way they did — was also very much a part of Malaysian political thought. WEEKENDVTRA
The writer is a Fellow at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies.This article is written in remembrance of the late Andrew Symon, withwhom the writer had many discussions about Chin Peng.
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