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By: Anwar Ibrahim, Malaysia's
Prime Minister
MORE THAN 100 YEARS ago, José Rizal, then a medical student in Europe, wrote a
dedication to his country that began thus: "In the history of human suffering is a
cancer so malignant that the least touch awakens such agonizing pains." Alone and
homesick, he tried to conjure memories of the Philippines, but "each time your
beloved image appeared with a similar social cancer." The dedication was for his Noli
Me Tangere, probably the first Southeast Asian novel, which stirred a critical awareness
of the fundamental problems of colonial society. Its setting was the Spanish-ruled
Philippines, but the book could have been about any nation in Asia. Rizal noted that
healing must begin with honest diagnosis. "I will lift part of the veil that conceals
the evil, sacrificing all to the truth, even my own pride, for, as your son, I also suffer
from your defects and weaknesses."
In a closed society, lifting the veil would be taboo. Indeed, Rizal's social diagnosis was
tantamount to subversion. In his time, the closed society was identified with colonialism,
but that was only a cloak which wrapped it for a time. A century since Rizal was executed,
Asia has had five decades of modern nationhood. But the cloak of colonialism has been
replaced by coverings of various fashions and thickness, including dictatorship.
In today's economic turmoil, we must remove the veil hiding our shame. More than ever, we
need a courage of Rizalian proportions to be honest with ourselves. Instead of looking for
scapegoats, we have to admit that our cancers were caused by our own excesses.
The admonishment against washing dirty linens in public hits hard in the equivalent Malay
proverb: "Do not bare your chest, or your ugly sores will show." The diseases we
have contracted since Rizal's time - graft, abuse of power, profligacy and the like - are
hideous. But we should not be like the sick man who will not see the doctor for fear of
confirming his worst fears. Years of self-deception have finally brought on the current
systemic crisis in Southeast Asia. We thought we could survive by taking painkillers and
bandaging our sores.
Only a vibrant, functioning civil society can provide the framework for a continuous war
on excess, be it in the economic, political or social realm. If "political
stability" is to be more than a boast, it must be utilized to widen the practice of
democracy and to enhance the institutions of civil society. And prosperity cannot be
pursued separately from democracy and civil society. Still afflicted by the social cancer
diagnosed by Rizal, we cannot ignore it. His meaning is that the exercise of power must be
guided by morals, and the economy be humanized by tempering growth with equitable
distribution.
The Philippine revolution, the first of its kind in Asia, opened the floodgates of
liberation against Western imperialism. More than physical bondage, it aimed to break the
chains of mental captivity. In Rizal's words: "We must win freedom by deserving it,
by improving the mind and enhancing the dignity of the individual, loving what is just,
good and great, to the point of dying for it. When a people reach these heights . . . the
idols and tyrants fall like a house of cards and freedom shines in the first dawn."
The fathers of the revolution, the Katipuneros, knew the contagious character of their
uprising, "having within its womb the seeds of a disease mortal to colonial
interests." Their intellectual luminary, Apolinario Mabini, enunciated the struggle's
final aim: "to keep alive and resplendent the torch of liberty and civilization in
Oceania, to illuminate the gloomy night in which the vilified and degraded Malay race
finds itself, so that it may be led to emancipation."
Their program for liberation was for all
Asia. Their articulation of the idealistic foundations of an independent nation - of
liberty, human dignity and morality - was unprecedented. These ideals of the Malayan
revolutionaries resonate as powerfully as ever. Though free, Asian nations still suffer
from intellectual dispossession and economic domination. Thus we commemorate the
revolution to celebrate our awareness of its ideals. Our founding fathers did not fight a
foreign power merely to have it replaced by a new tyranny, indigenous or otherwise.
The only justification for national self-government is the restoration of the dignity of
the people. But this ideal will continue to elude us as long as abject poverty, rampant
corruption, oligarchs and encomenderos [vassals favored by rulers] remain. These evils
will not be defeated until we liberate ourselves from mental incarceration. Then we can
recover our own virtues and be, in the words of José Rizal, "once more free, like
the bird that leaves the cage, like the flower that opens to the air."
Anwar Ibrahim, Malaysia's deputy PM and
finance minister, hosted an international conference on José Rizal in 1995.
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