You Cannot Turn The Clock Back

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These questions often cross my mind: Why is a convicted felon who stole a fortune from our nation’s coffers still regarded as a wronged hero?
Why are 160 Umno division chiefs fighting for him to serve the rest of his sentence in the comfort of his home? Haven’t they heard of equality before the law?
Perhaps they have been blinded by the greed of an imagined Golden Age. What Golden Age?
We will not find any answers in our history books, but parallels and politics can prove useful.
ADSIt began in 1981 when Umno under Dr Mahathir Mohamad promised the party faithful and his people that he would lead them to a new age of wealth and preeminence, which would also catapult them to greatness.
He claimed to be the only one in town with such a blueprint. He had been working on it since his youth. He assured them that all things are possible if they followed him to the ends of the world by first looking East.
And they did. He was like a modern-day Pied Piper of Hamelin.
Umno’s ‘Golden Age’
The revisionist historians were then set the task of spinning a new narrative that history and the hated colonialists had deprived his people of the wealth of this nation. He spoke of wealth like it were some kind of stuff growing out of the soil of the country.
The wrongs of the past will be righted, but the government under his leadership must first create a few handpicked supermen from among them to lead the charge. Men like Tajudin Ramli, Wan Azmi Wan Hamzah, Hakim Saad, Mirzan and Mokhzani Mahathir.  
To this day, the Umno faithful and especially the party elites, see the imagined Golden Age as a grand bargain where everything ended up in their favour.
It was also a super sumptuous kenduri. And one could obtain a place at the table by uttering the magic password “Hidup Umno!” And it was Umno, larger than the nation, that decided who got what and when.
But this imagined Golden Age bears a strange and uncanny resemblance to a period in American history called “The Gilded Age” (1870-1900).
Without a doubt, the US saw momentous changes, moving from an agricultural economy to an industrial one post the bloody Civil War (1861-65).
After the brief Reconstruction Era, the country shifted into high gear, especially in the North, leaving the South to deal with “Gone with the Wind” issues and that iconic ending line, “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn”.
But before long, the US would become an industrial and agricultural powerhouse.
ADSConcentration of wealth
The Gilded Age has left us with many words and phrases we still use today: captains of industry, political machine, railroaded, pools and monopolies, laissez-faire, Tammany Hall, and wildcat strikes, to name a few.
And it saw the rise of men of immense wealth and power who controlled whole industries and who saw the existence and progress of the country as their rightful inheritance, if not their entitlement to be plundered at will in the name of progress and development.
The Vanderbilts controlled the railways, and farmers who were in the way of the new lines were “railroaded” out of their properties. The Carnegies controlled steel, and the Rockefellers, the oil.
The newspapers were largely in the hands of the Hearst family, and the Asters were the leading lights of the hotel business.
JP morgan was the great financier whose every move was watched by the markets. And the rakyat of the US were working flat out in sweatshops, believing all things are possible.
All well and good, but the Gilded Age saw a dramatic concentration of wealth in the hands of the few.
The richest one percent owned 51 percent of the nation’s wealth, and this wealth was translated into political power through influence peddling and outright corruption.
These powerful men, later termed as “robber barons”, influenced government policy to ensure the wealth they had created remained in their hands. The private kenduri was now in full swing! 
And the families of these robber barons were not just enjoying lives of luxury, they were also competing among themselves, building magnificent mansions, filling their wardrobes with fashion from Paris, buying expensive jewels and diamonds and designer handbags and shoes.
Brewing discontent
Does all this ring a bell? Then there were the lavish parties and extravagant house furnishings, exotic dining and landscaped gardens. And the female side of these families led various charities to rake in publicity. 
But all this feasting and conspicuous consumption led to vast social inequalities with widespread poverty and harsh working conditions for many.
Some captains of industry, people like Carnegie, donated their wealth to charity. But most spent their time and resources to eliminate their competition and develop a monopoly using unethical means and influence.
The law, all the way to the Supreme Court, was becoming putty in their hands. But the faults and cracks were beginning to show.
The US Supreme CourtFarmers were forming alliances and labour unions. Anarchism was on the rise, and wildcat strikes were increasingly suppressed with police violence. Minorities were bullied into submission.
The Native Indians rose up in 1890 to defend their land at Wounded Knee, in South Dakota. They were all massacred. Jim Crow laws in the southern states saw the rise in segregation and mindless discrimination of Blacks in the schools, the workplace and restaurants.
At the federal level, the Chinese Exclusion Act was signed into law in 1882, prohibiting the immigration of Chinese labourers for 10 years. This law also placed new restrictions on Chinese individuals already in the US.
The Geary Act of 1892 extended it for another 10 years and was made permanent in 1902. The reason for all this: growing anti-Chinese sentiment, fuelled by economic competition, racial prejudice, and paranoia.
Nothing must come in the way of the vision and ambitions of the modern American.
We return to our shores in the time of Abdul Razak Hussein, Najib Abdul Razak’s father. Umno emerged victorious after the brief but bloody race riots of May 13, 1969.
They consolidated their grip on power. Then came Dr Mahathir and the promised time of all things glorious.
A food brand’s tagline was turned into a national slogan, “Malaysia Boleh!” which led directly to the madness of the highest flagpole, the highest building, the longest bridge and stuff like that. Boleh had descended into mindless hyperbole(h).
The country was now flooded with men in bush jackets peddling sheaves of paper claiming they had connections to a minister or a top civil servant, that they could fix multi-million ringgit projects in exchange for some upfront money.
And these middlemen in bush jackets spoke of things they hardly understood, like “build, operate, and transfer” or “20-year concession with government financing”.
The madness continued for years and years, without anyone realising the whole thing was a scam.
Never again
It was inevitable that the imagined Golden Age initiated by Mahathir, like the Gilded Age, culminated in excesses and injustices that robbed future generations of a fair stake in the progress and prosperity of the country.
In the US, the Gilded Age was followed by the Progressive Era, which made an honest attempt at righting the wrongs of the past.
We are still struggling to chart an honest way out of a past when rubber barons and politicians ruled the roost. Hence, our disappointment with Madani.
Which leaves us with one last question: Why was the period which saw the US emerge as an economic and industrial powerhouse called The Gilded Age and not The Golden Age?
Let us allow ChatGPT to have the last word on this matter: “The term Gilded Age was chosen instead of Golden Age to reflect the era’s underlying corruption and social problems, despite its outward appearance of prosperity and progress”.
Ditto the period in Malaysia from 1981 to 2018. Below the thin veneer of beaten gold leaf, the brick and mortar of our institutions, our arm-twisted judiciary, our self-serving public offices, and our Parliament were all crumbling under the sway of a party that could never accept history for what it is.
We must never again let a madman, a megalomaniac, or Madani turn the clock back. - Mkini
MURALE PILLAI is a former GLC employee. He runs a logistics company.
The views expressed here are those of the author/contributor and do not necessarily represent the views of MMKtT.

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