BACKBENCHER
Rod P. Kapunan
6/16-17/2012
Mahathir Mohammad who served as Malaysia's prime minister for 22 years stands as a maverick leader to the Western-oriented ideology called liberal democracy. He incurred the ire of the West for bluntly telling the world that their version of freedom has become their very instrument to retard democracy that often destroys the indigenous democratic values of the people. In short, Mahathir is telling us that too much freedom is incompatible to progress, just as no amount of progress is possible without it.
That was the gist of the speech he delivered on the occasion of his conferment as honorary professor by the country's premier and oldest university, the University of Santo Tomas. As usual, the controversial straight-to-the-point critic of freewheeling democracy hits the nail on the head of many who continue to look at the Western democratic model as their panacea to solving the problems of corruption and economic backwardness in their society. Mahathir said that real democracy is not all about freedom. Half of that imposes the innate responsibilities that go hand-in-hand in the exercise of freedom.
It is from this standpoint that Mahathir concludes that unbridled freedom often leads to anarchy with those who are wily enough to anticipate the outcome, taking advantage of the situation to commit graft and to abuse to the hilt their power, thus destroying the essence of democracy which they are supposed to institutionalize. It is in this context that Mahathir rejects the American brand of liberal democracy and calls it a failure for accordingly within that system is a built-in mechanism that tends to weaken, erode, and even destroy the native system of an orderly society.
Such values that antedate the Western system are often discredited as hindrance to the advancement of modern freedom that is seldom understood. Traditional moral values that for have long served as foundations for harmony and order in their societies are recklessly substituted by novel freedom which is an artificial creation of modernity. Worse, those clamoring for unrestrained freedom often invoke it as sort of indivisible right, unmindful that freedom has never been an absolute proposition. Put differently, the boundary of one's freedom ends where the boundary of one's responsibility begins. To cross beyond that penumbral political demarcation is to violate on the rights of others.
The problem however is that the liberal democratic orientation of freedom, which is often equated as synonymous to democracy, is in our tendency to value freedom instead of protecting our rights. Such is the case because we have sanctified freedom as immutable. We never even bother to look back that in our unrestrained exercise of freedom, we have only managed to push our country to the precipice of chaos. Despite our overtly gratuitous accommodation of too much freedom, coupled by an idiotic interpretation of democracy, we continue to slide backward when supposedly it was the West that advanced to us these formulas that could propel us to progress and prosperity.
We refuse to correlate the economic success of Malaysia and many of our more economically successful neighbors in Asia to their adoption of a responsible system of democracy —that the greater part of freedom is responsibility. For that, we in effect vandalized the Western system imposed on us. This is apparent by the absence of civic consciousness among our people. In fact, civic consciousness as a form of responsibility is nobler because its aim is to achieve a higher level of progress.
Freedom, for whatever one would say of it, is always selfish and individualistic. As Mahathir rightly noted, our observance of absolute freedom is to propagate anarchy in our society. It is on this score why the theoreticians of Western liberal democracy purposely obviate the truth – that to achieve the higher goals of collective progress and prosperity would equally demand from our people their collective sacrifice and discipline. Rather, any attempt to adopt that system is instantly denounced as authoritarianism, and any leader who might set the tone to impose discipline is branded as a dictator. The West continues to proscribe this approach despite the fact that untrammeled freedom has led to the moral decadence in our society.
Mahathir and many other leaders like President Marcos have their reservations about the ideology that has netted nothing positive to our people. Many suspect that the imposition by the West of the liberal democratic system is a subtle form of subversion because countries adopting it sooner found themselves economically at the bottom of the pit, mired in graft and corruption, deep in debt, and often traumatized by violent civil disorder. The net result is the institutionalization of a very weak central government that is pliant to foreign dictation and exploitation, yet made grateful for the assistance and protection extended to it.
Thus, as the West continues to orchestrate that brand of licentious freedom, our people descend to the bareness of instinctively acting like dogs. As the cycle of failure continues, it is the West that takes out from us the advantage of anarchy, while leaving to us the disadvantage of having to engage in what we might say "political cannibalism" at its worst.
That was the gist of the speech he delivered on the occasion of his conferment as honorary professor by the country's premier and oldest university, the University of Santo Tomas. As usual, the controversial straight-to-the-point critic of freewheeling democracy hits the nail on the head of many who continue to look at the Western democratic model as their panacea to solving the problems of corruption and economic backwardness in their society. Mahathir said that real democracy is not all about freedom. Half of that imposes the innate responsibilities that go hand-in-hand in the exercise of freedom.
It is from this standpoint that Mahathir concludes that unbridled freedom often leads to anarchy with those who are wily enough to anticipate the outcome, taking advantage of the situation to commit graft and to abuse to the hilt their power, thus destroying the essence of democracy which they are supposed to institutionalize. It is in this context that Mahathir rejects the American brand of liberal democracy and calls it a failure for accordingly within that system is a built-in mechanism that tends to weaken, erode, and even destroy the native system of an orderly society.
Such values that antedate the Western system are often discredited as hindrance to the advancement of modern freedom that is seldom understood. Traditional moral values that for have long served as foundations for harmony and order in their societies are recklessly substituted by novel freedom which is an artificial creation of modernity. Worse, those clamoring for unrestrained freedom often invoke it as sort of indivisible right, unmindful that freedom has never been an absolute proposition. Put differently, the boundary of one's freedom ends where the boundary of one's responsibility begins. To cross beyond that penumbral political demarcation is to violate on the rights of others.
The problem however is that the liberal democratic orientation of freedom, which is often equated as synonymous to democracy, is in our tendency to value freedom instead of protecting our rights. Such is the case because we have sanctified freedom as immutable. We never even bother to look back that in our unrestrained exercise of freedom, we have only managed to push our country to the precipice of chaos. Despite our overtly gratuitous accommodation of too much freedom, coupled by an idiotic interpretation of democracy, we continue to slide backward when supposedly it was the West that advanced to us these formulas that could propel us to progress and prosperity.
We refuse to correlate the economic success of Malaysia and many of our more economically successful neighbors in Asia to their adoption of a responsible system of democracy —that the greater part of freedom is responsibility. For that, we in effect vandalized the Western system imposed on us. This is apparent by the absence of civic consciousness among our people. In fact, civic consciousness as a form of responsibility is nobler because its aim is to achieve a higher level of progress.
Freedom, for whatever one would say of it, is always selfish and individualistic. As Mahathir rightly noted, our observance of absolute freedom is to propagate anarchy in our society. It is on this score why the theoreticians of Western liberal democracy purposely obviate the truth – that to achieve the higher goals of collective progress and prosperity would equally demand from our people their collective sacrifice and discipline. Rather, any attempt to adopt that system is instantly denounced as authoritarianism, and any leader who might set the tone to impose discipline is branded as a dictator. The West continues to proscribe this approach despite the fact that untrammeled freedom has led to the moral decadence in our society.
Mahathir and many other leaders like President Marcos have their reservations about the ideology that has netted nothing positive to our people. Many suspect that the imposition by the West of the liberal democratic system is a subtle form of subversion because countries adopting it sooner found themselves economically at the bottom of the pit, mired in graft and corruption, deep in debt, and often traumatized by violent civil disorder. The net result is the institutionalization of a very weak central government that is pliant to foreign dictation and exploitation, yet made grateful for the assistance and protection extended to it.
Thus, as the West continues to orchestrate that brand of licentious freedom, our people descend to the bareness of instinctively acting like dogs. As the cycle of failure continues, it is the West that takes out from us the advantage of anarchy, while leaving to us the disadvantage of having to engage in what we might say "political cannibalism" at its worst.
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