Considering unity and harmony

IN ANNOUNCING the formation of the Ministry of National Unity on 9 March 2020, the PM said “A solid inter-ethnic unity is a determinant of the continuity and survival of our country”.

Indeed, forging national unity is a tall order for the new unity minister Datuk Halimah Mohamed Sadique, ministry units and staff, as well as the committees and councils placed under the purview of the independent ministry.

Unity is every nation’s dream and the ideal to which it aspires. It is the mission it upholds, the vision it defines and the goal it inspires in the citizenry.

Yet unity seems nebulous, elusive, unreachable and nations sweat blood in efforts to achieve it.

Simply put, unity means oneness or togetherness, that is the state of being united.

Perhaps a less circular way of defining it is to say a nation is united when its peoples move together as one.

Policies and strategies, plans, programmes and activities must therefore be in place to ensure that inter-ethnic and inter-community togetherness is sustainable in the short and long terms.

These should not be mouthed as mere slogans for political expedience but must be imbibed by the rakyat as the national culture.

However, simply understood human groups and societies which comprise individuals are by their very nature diverse and therefore need constant propping up to stand as a whole.

A more sinister interpretation is that because of society’s heterogeneity, unity eludes it.

In essence, unity is not the natural law or state of mankind and has to be worked at for posterity.

The quest for unity and national integration is not a new thing in the development of Malaysia, indeed of any country that seeks political stability regardless of whether it is homogenous or multiethnic.

The global ideals of “peace” and “unity” are conventionally touted in the context of security, stability and diplomacy where they can be threatened by factions and groups from within the country or from outside.

Inheriting the early political framework of the 3-prong Alliance party, Malaya and now Malaysia prides itself in putting multiethnicity and multiculturalism at the forefront of its national psyche.

Understandably, the country aspires to grow its melting pot of diversities to meet the constant socio-cultural, economic and political challenges at home and abroad.

Unity and political stability slogans are also important in reminding the rakyat to maintain good relations with one another in order to entice foreign tourists and investors.

Woe befalls the nation if its peoples are embroiled in interethnic altercation and fighting which have the potential of turning into bloody riots.

The 13 May 1969 inter-ethnic violence is a grim reminder.

Since the establishment of the caretaker National Operations Council (1969-1971), successive governments have incorporated unity matters in their development plans.

The country’s unity or perpaduan negara became the ultimate goal in Malaysia’s successive Five Year Development Plans with specific plans and strategies per say being managed by a designated department or ministry.

Advisory committees and councils have been set up to research inter-ethnic relations and establish indices to gauge the level of unity and national integration; reports and recommendations have been submitted to be implemented at various levels.

One such entity was the National Unity Consultative Council (NUCC) established by the BN government. Its comprehensive Unity Blueprint completed over two years was only made public by the PH government in 2019.

The current PN government is now poised to make its mark on the unity grid.

A wise and expedient strategy for the unity minister would be to interpret the NUCC Unity Blueprint and manifest it in effective community programmes and activities at all levels.

There is no need to waste precious time and resources to come up with a new roadmap.

Perhaps Datuk Halimah Sadiques’s substantive contribution should lie in establishing a unity policy or dasar perpaduan retrospectively, to be articulated in the clearest of terms.

Considering the importance of unity matters to the nation’s prosperity, one wonders why a sound unity policy is not already in place. The answer could lie in semantics and the use of terminology.

I would like to suggest that the simple reason why the unity or perpaduan movement is perceived to be somewhat of a failure in the past, currently and possibly in the future is in the use of the word itself.

Unity will remain an abstraction, the ideal which Malaysia aspires to and works towards.

What must be realized it that it is practically impossible to have absolute unity among the country’s peoples who are demographically, socio-culturally, economically and politically diverse.

Should policy makers and implementers then still cling to the concept of national unity knowing that it is indeed nebulous?

Should they continue to boast of having the best ever strategies and roadmap for achieving unity when the rakyat on the ground know that it does not represent their innermost feelings about or for one another.

If we care to observe Malaysians living their lives in real time or on social media, we will not really see the inter-ethnic mixing, engagement and communication which contribute to the strict definition of unity.

A better word to use on the ground is "harmony" or "harmoni" which aptly describes what Malaysians really aspire to and try to live by in inter-etnic and community engagements.

Harmoni-Mesra should be the new brand name for unity.

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*Datuk Halimah Mohd Said is a member of the Main Committee of Dialog Rakyat.

**The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the position of Astro AWANI.