Asserting our homegrown values
Learning from the country’s history of governance and narrative of democracy to fulfil promises made to the rakyat.
ONE impediment to advancing democracy across Asia is the erroneous, but unfortunately, widespread notion that “Asian values” are somehow opposed to democratic principles. Elections, human rights and freedom of speech are deemed to be “Western concepts” that should be modified to our Asian context.
Naturally, political authoritarians employ this argument because it is politically useful – when combined with the identity politics of race or religion, it allows them to argue that “we” are under threat by these “foreign” ideas and thus “we” must band together to resist “them”.
Yet, our own history proves that our governance is not inherently authoritarian.
The 1303 Terengganu Inscription Stone – apart from proving that Islam was already then being practised – also established that the King has a duty to “decide on the right knowledge in accordance with the decrees of the Supreme God”.
Failure to abide by the law, even by the ruling class, results in punishment from God Himself i.e. even the King is subject to a higher authority.
In the 15th and 16th century Malay annals, there is a story that demonstrates the concept of a social contract – and not one between races as is often touted today.
When King Sangsapurba wanted to marry the daughter of a chief, Demang Lebar Daun, the latter sets a condition that he will abide by the king’s rules but only if they are fair. In return, the king requires that the chief not commit treason against him.
“If your descendants break your agreements, mine will do the same,” says the chief, thus establishing a contract between king and subject.
The 1656 text of the UndangUndang Melaka is remarkable in its legal, economic and philosophical concepts that were yet to be expounded in Enlightenment Europe.
It declares itself the supreme law of the land and establishes the rule of law.
It describes principal office bearers of state – the bendahara, temenggung and syahbandar – that denotes a constitutional separation of powers.
Several articles point to the importance of property rights and the existence of a capitalist economy.
Article 11 establishes that a thief can be lawfully killed on a second offence.
Article 20 declares that land can be ‘dead’ or ‘living’, and suggests that dead land may be acquired by working on it, harking to the labour theory of property that John Locke would have recognised. Article 29 describes punishments for deviating from standardised weights and measures (a basic requirement of transparent transactions).
Article 30 governs the legitimacy of transactions between two parties, establishing that for a sale to be valid, the parties must be adults of sound mind who explicitly agree to buy and sell at an agreed price – all concepts crucial to contract law today.
It goes on to regulate the use of proxies, punishes misrepresentation, establishes a statutory return policy and forbids barter, for this was a money economy.
Thus, this Malay state undertook responsibilities to protect the individual rights of its members, and not merely to uphold the prestige of the group, which forms the battlecry for so many conservatives today.
Similarly, up north, the 1650 Laws of Kedah also describe the responsibilities of defined officeholders and the use of certain weights and measures.
Later on, down south, the Kangchu system in Johor decentralised the functions of government to administrators whose responsibilities were regulated by contracts with the Sultan.
Next door in Negri Sembilan, the resilient socio-political system of ancient origin called Adat Perpatih so impressed a senior British administrator who wrote that if any European imagined that constitutional government is alien to the Asian mind, then he should study the system in Negri Sembilan, for it is a “genuine Malay creation and owes nothing to alien influence. Its faults are those common to all democracies. The Yang di-Pertuan Besar is a constitutional ruler.”
The eighth Yang di-Pertuan Besar became the first monarch of a new promising Asian democracy in 1957, and today we are still striving to fulfil that promise.
While some important reforms have taken place since last year’s general election (in particular the strengthening of Parliament), there have already been hesitations, reversals and contradictions among the new government.
While it is the job of politicians to conceptualise a future for our country and seek the people’s permission to make that a reality, we can find in our history the seeds of the rule of law, of constitutionalism, of a social contract not between races but between state and citizen, of an economy based on transparent contracts, of decentralisation and federation.
Truly, we can see the folly of referring to these concepts as “Western” – for we have our own homegrown narrative of democracy.
Adapted from Tunku Zain Al-’Abidin’s speech at the Asia Democracy Research Network conference on 3 April. Tunku Zain is the founding president of Ideas. The views expressed here are entirely the writer’s own.