The Malaysia Solidarity Consultative Committee after a number of meetings, the first one held on August 24, 1961 in Jesselton (now Kota Kinabalu), agreed in principle to form a strong federation with special privileges and autonomy reserved for Sarawak and Sabah.
Then it formed the Inter governmental committee (IGC) to discuss and draft the terms and conditions of the Constitution. Leaders from Sarawak in the committee successfully negotiated the State’s autonomy over Land, Civil Service, Local Government and Immigration. The special autonomy reserved for Sarawak must be entrenched in the Agreement as well as the constitution. Rightly, they were concerned that without the clauses on the autonomy being entrenched in the constitution, they would not be able to convince the people to accept Malaysia.
For this, the present and future generations of Anak Sarawak must remain very grateful to the pre-Independence leaders for their wisdom and foresight in negotiating favorable terms for the State to join the Federation.
A pre-Merdeka reporter, Gabriel Tan in his article “The rocky road to Independence” reported there were plenty of anti-Malaysia demonstrations. Then he was embedded with Cobbold Commission, which was tasked to ascertain the wishes of the people on Malaysia Plan. He also reported rowdy anti-Malaysia demonstrations to welcome the arrival of the UN Assessment team in Kuching on August 16, 1963. The teams met similar demonstrations in Sibu and Miri. The demonstrators produced placards with slogan like: We do not want Malaysia, Malaysia means control by Kuala Lumpur”
Off and on the local people, though generally they are friendly and peaceful, will demonstrate against what they perceive as injustice being muted upon them. For example, they burnt the National Flag during a big demonstration at the airport against to welcome Sarawak soccer term, which they perceived as having been cheated of victory by game referee and umpires in the final of Malaysia Cup against Kedah. Generally, they view with suspicion and distrust political leaders from Malaya who come to Sarawak and make a lot of promises. The local people view them as boastful with lots of hot air.
Powerful surge
Undoubtedly, after implementing the philosophy of confluence of culture in one generation, Sarawak has its own formula to erect new people, who are motivated by creativity, hard word and desire to do better in whatever fields of endeavors. The State is in the stage of development where the people can use the best of their talents in pursuit of progress and advancement. After all, culture represents the most powerful surge upward in the endeavors of men in using the power of creativity and intellect of leaders, in the services of the people, state and country.
Sarawak’s success, thus far, may not be achievable without one big condition, the people’s spirit of accepting realities of times and preparedness to do their utmost in whatever they do. Understandably, a culture that is not based on the achievement of the best may lead the people into stagnation or even deterioration. Hence, there must be continuous struggle for the best by the people in order to move to greater height. In this respect, no one group can say they will lose if they remain in the confluence of efforts to achieve greater things, where opportunities are available, from the concept of confluence and philosophy of the politics of development; unless they opt out from such efforts. Undoubtedly, the implementation of the concept of confluence of culture has helped to chart out a clear path for the people, State and the country towards the year 2020 and beyond. It also helps to pave the way for the State to contribute towards realizing the concept of One Malaysia.
The State decided to promote the concept of confluence of culture since the mid 80s as a way to enhance common efforts to uphold the concept of Anak Sarawak, who must be encouraged to interact with each other in schools, places of work, recreational centres, beaches, playgrounds, sports complexes and other places.
Obviously, the spirit of confluence of culture is the answer to Sarawak’s efforts to unify the people, who comprise of diverse racial and sub-racial origins and religious beliefs, to have a common desire for transformation that can bring better life for them through the process of development.
The main challenge for the people is to strengthen their unity and upgrade their ability to adapt to changes in order to achieve greater progress and enjoy peace and harmony. In other words, they must have common feelings to move forward while, at the same time, grapple with the question of change in the process of development.
As the world pursues greater progress in the fields of economics and technology in particular, the people must have strong desire to preserve their own culture and way of life. For example, a book entitled “Mega trends” says economics, being the most powerful force, must become more global and the people must be given chances to embrace changes in order to enjoy fruits of their achievement.
There are two types of movement, one a movement toward change and the other a movement towards achieving common purpose. They are like numerous river tributaries. Initially, the water may start flowing from the streams in the Ulu in different colors, some being red while others may be clear, milky, murky and other colors. As they flow down the river and reach the mouth they become one color not because the water from one river absorb those from other rivers but they converge to produce a single color. In other words, no water from a single river becomes a dominant factor to absorb or assimilate the water from other following rivers. Therefore, it is very important for us to understand that time is very important in the understanding of the concept of confluence of cultures, which require movements in the same direction by all the local components.
The various ethnic groups in Sarawak equate their differences to colors of water in river tributaries. However, they realize that their strong desire for greater progress and advancement can only be achieved through common and continuous efforts to pursue them together. They also realize that they do not change unless they have the stimulation from some movements in the society; a society without stimulus for change will become stagnant.
Sarawak was assured of development to convince the pre-Independence of leaders to agree to join the new federation. Undoubtedly, development has become a strong motivating factor for the people to work together. It has brought about a total change to the people from a situation of poverty to reasonable prosperity regardless of whether they are Orang Ulu in upper reaches of the river, Ibans and Bidayuhs in the hinterlands, the Malays in coastal areas and Chinese in urban areas.
Before the people talked about how difficult it was to get jobs. Generally, parents were worried whether their children would get jobs or not once they leave schools. All of them had the common aspirations to look forward for better life from one period of development to another. Now all these things have been proven to be worries that are not founded.
Embrace change
Obviously, the government has been making conscientious efforts to unleash the energy and creativity of the people in pursuit of positive changes to their livelihood. There should be no doubt in the minds of the people regardless of their ethnic origins that they have been able to enjoy the benefits from their own efforts in development. The success has been made possible because of the prevailing peace and harmony without eliminating the identity of any particular community. In other words, the people have been able to embrace change without losing our identity.
Obviously, the people have been able to improve themselves, not by cutting out from the little lot that they used to have when the State was very poor, but from the bigger lots that the Government has been able to make and distribute to the people. The State has been able to make bigger cake with the judicious implementation of the New Economic Policy, which clearly states that the people must make bigger cakes and distribute them fairly among the people in consonant with the philosophy of achieving development through confluence rather than domination.
Generally, the people interact quite freely with each other. Initially, they had reservation about the government’s plan to build Dewan Suarah to encourage interactions among the people. They had the view that since the State government had already built community halls, which were not fully utilized by the people in number of places throughout the state, the construction of Dewan Suarah was a waste of money. Admittedly, not many people used the community halls. However, after one generation, Dewan Suarah have increasingly become very popular among the people.
Obviously, Dewan Suarah is being used more and more as avenues to encourage interactions among the people of various ethnic groups. They serve as avenues for the people to hold community and social activities like wedding receptions, meetings, conferences, symposium, seminars and others which provide opportunities for the people to interact among them. Therefore, Dewan Suarah have succeeded to become focal points of inter mixture of activities of people. They have become the motivating factor for the people to have confluence among them. Generally, the government has been implementing policies that encourage interactions among the people in centres of excellence and other avenues.
New discipline
Undoubtedly, the judicious implementation of the New Economic Policy has been able to create more opportunities for the people of all races to involve in commercial and entrepreneurial activities. It provides incentives and freedom for people to work hard to improve their way of life. However, it is necessary for young people, teenagers in particular to be imbibed with new discipline to develop their knowledge and skills in order to improve their performances in economics pursuits.
Perhaps the people should talk more and more on issues related to development like the necessity to increase participation of Bumiputra in commerce and industry and the need for Chinese to upgrade their efficiency in order to keep up with demands of new management. Basically, the people in business must prepare themselves to cope with bigger businesses, which requires them to have a new realization of exploiting bigger market.
Realizing One Malaysia concept
Undeniably, the government has been carrying out numerous programs to help the people to develop their capacity to participate meaningfully in community development through uniformed movements. The people must aim to achieve bigger success in their efforts to improve their livelihood. The State is having a uniformed movement, motivated by the politics of development and the mechanism of the confluence of culture, to enable the people to play active roles towards realizing the concept of One Malaysia.
More and more people are contributing to efforts to promote interactions among the races to discuss various issues relating to culture and generally their way of life. A number of activities like Pesta Kaul of the Melanau community, Pesta Sape Borneo of the Orang Ulu community, Sarawak Regatta, Baram regatta, the newly inaugurated Pesta Birumuh of the Bidayuh community have come up to create interests of the people to enrich their way of life through a confluence of culture, a culture that can accommodate all races.
Understandably, the Government has already taken steps to restructure the education policy, which will introduce more fun, unleash greater curiosity among children to become more creative in their studies; creativity is one big word in cultural development. The new system of education should provide a solid structure in development to motive the people to become more creative in what ever they do. Without an organization, it is impossible to intensify efforts to upgrade creativity among the people to face the ever challenging global world.
Culture, a movement in our life
The total concept of culture is not only dance, song, poetry and others but a movement in life that has the impact on the changing situation or some times creating situation, which is based on the freedom of the people and the encouragement of the society to get them to conceive the best that they can produce from their time. Undoubtedly, it represents the mainstream of cultural change.
The people must appreciate that the components of culture like dances, songs are subject to changes. Even dresses and many other things can change that tend to typify or rather easterlies our symbol of culture. Yet we will not lose the reservoir of the best that our ancestors have been able to create and hand over to us as legacies only to be reinvented to become, perhaps one day, Sarawak’s pride or Sarawak culture. More importantly, it will be able to accommodate all the sub-cultures, create more links and give new verities that help to enrich our culture well beyond those that we have inherited as our legacies.
Generally, our dances, architectural or fashion designs and other elements that constitute our culture have been undergoing changes. Undeniably, all of them have been experiencing changes yet the inspirations behind the inventions and creativities can be traced back to our cultural heritage. In other words, we have lost nothing. Instead, we have got something new that we can call our own. And that is the different between the process of unification and assimilation. Advisably, we must look at the bigger picture in order to understand much more about the transformation of our culture. Ideally, as a philosophy is learnable it should be based on separate experiences over a short period of time, that preceded by time of stagnation in particular.
History also tells us how the Italian culture has changed a great deal from Latino or Roman culture in those days to become what it is today. The Arab culture has changed from those in golden age of Prophet Muhammad 700 years to become what it is today, wealthier. It has absorbed the influences of Iranians and legacies of Indian and Chinese cultures. Our Prophet Muhammad openly said to the followers to seek learning go even as far as China. All those things are being seen today. The Greeks have inherited a lot from Egyptians and absorbed a lot of influence from Persians or the Middle East where Iran and Iraq are today.
Civilization depicts desire to achieve greater things
The whole history of civilization is based on the desire of people, who have been successful to achieve greater things in life not on the desire of people to preserve and stay as they are. Those that adopt the philosophy of remaining as they are may end up in stagnation; they are likely to experience relative deterioration if compared with other civilizations of culture as what has happened in the past. Actually, stagnation or backwardness in any part of the world is attributable to people, who do not want to invite or open themselves to influences or changes taking place in and around them.
The change in the world, which tends to uplift the standard of success and achievement because of the accumulation of knowledge and the endeavors of human being to consolidate their knowledge into technologies and architecture in the efforts to improve all activities of life into literature as the inspiring materials of any civilizations. History tells us that a civilization is really the process of one most powerful people, through the most creative endeavors at their command, to erect new creativity and extend boundaries of their endeavors to new things. Those who want to be left out from these influences become stagnant and those who are stagnant normally end up staying in little corners of the world.
There are many little corners in the world today with some of them in Africa. But they were not like that before. For example, Africa used to be a big empire with great civilization. However, the empire could not be sustained with a small population. Chad and Somalia used to be part of the Islamic trading world, mainly with China, India and Arabia but today they produce pirates. After the fall of Sri Vijaya kingdom, the Central authority also lost control over captains of fleets in various parts of South East Asia, who became pirates. Eventually, the kingdom of Sri Vijaya that stretched as far North as Taiwan and down to New Guinea and probably Africa disintegrated to become colonies of many Western powers.
Now the people have the chance to rise up to ensure that they have the motivating movement to give a second life to the common endeavor to become part of a bigger civilization in a global world. However, they must have the ability to enjoy themselves by having unity, harmony and the cultural environment that is most suited to our times.
benuasains*Photos Source: google.com images
