A Reformist

I'm called to write this as recent and past events had shown me that the word reformist is often misused by certain quarters to gain political popularity for their own political agenda. The event, the recent one where UMNO's Youth Chief Khairy Jamaludin claimed that he and Prime Minister Najib are reformist which strucked me as a surprise as how can the prestigious tag ''reformist'' bestowed by history to man and women who change the course of civilization, the likes of Lenin, Gandhi,Jefferson, Elanor, Catherine The Great be simply referred to any Tom, Dick or Khairy( or is it Larry?).

First of all, reformist must bring about real change in a society that, the change itself so powerful that it can overcome a political or economical structure lasting for thousand of years, it can inspire people to throw away common beliefs and wisdoms and accept and new way of thinking and behaving, thus rewriting the social and political landscape.

Lenin is an example of a man who achieved this feat. He overturned the thousand years old Tsar regime which before this is an institutional structure of the Russian society, the old established economic structure of peasants who worked for aristocratic landowners or later capital owners for as long as the Russian society existed also didn't escaped his reforms where they were finally freed from the chain that locked them to the aristocrats as the nation strive for a society without class. Calling Lenin a refomist might be an undersatement as the proper tag should be a revolutioner, as some may consider a reformist as tame if compared to revolutioner, but from my thinking, one must be a reformist first then move on to the next level of revolutioner, thus there's a refomist in Lenin before he move up to being a revolutioner that he is. Khairy, who is a smart guy can evaluate whether such feat is comparable to his or Najib's achievement, but my view is that both of their work combined can't match Lenin's feat.

Mahatma Gandhi is another reformist. Before him there's an India, divided along the lines of religion, race, language and so on and then there's the empirial British who colonized them benefiting from this division which they manipulated well by using the divide and rule way of administration. Beside the already prevalent division, there exists a mental barrier inside all Indians at that time that independence is impossible as the British is unbeatable. Despite all that, Gandhi managed to unite the nation, against all odds, introduce a concept of non-violence resistance which is a revolutionary concept used by other great leaders like Marthin Luther King and Nelson Mandela. He managed to discard the commonly held beliefs at that time that the British are unbeatable and India can't gain independence from them which by discarding such beliefs lead to the independence of India movement where although the other nationalists of the time are calling for the picking up of arms and riffles to fight against the colonialist, Gandhi insisted in non-violence resistance thus going against the tide of the time.

Unfortunately for the self described reformist Khairy and his boss, not only they are advocating more of the same, like they are advocating the continuation of the social order that existed during the British colonial period here with policies that divides rather than unite us, but they are doing so by way of force, manipulation, deceit, using sedition to scare the different races and so on, thus automatically tarnishing the word'' reformist'' by describing himself and his boss as one.

Finally, there’s an act of changing the social landscape to a positive one. That, to my thinking is the major aim of a reformist. In both the example given, there's a change in the social landscape, for Russia, it ended the aristocratic grab of the wealth of the nation where all Russians can better enjoy the wealth of the rich country irrespective of class and for India, despite their differences, they all unite as Indians and gained independence, but nothing can compare to the feat that Nelson Mandela achieved when he ended apartheid in South Africa. Years of slavery and colonialism didn't stop the country that he lead to embrace the whites as their own where together they are joining hands to build a better nation for all of them so that the next generation can enjoy the effort of their forefathers irrespective of their race. The dark past are buried as they toiled for a brighter future.

Here in Malaysia, the past still haunts us, just look at the May 13 incidence as a case in point where instead of burying the dark past and working together for a brighter future like the South Africans are doing, we are living in the dark past, denying ourselves a brighter future thus passing the darkness to future generations. Real reformist will not sit down and let this happen, but UMNO which the party that Najib leads and Khairy belongs are ensuring that the dark past is forever with us so that their party will continue to be relevant to Malays who are scared that the siege by the ''others" will lead them in a state of diaspora thus ensuring the continuation of the party's rule of this country.

In conclusion, it's best that Khairy reexamined his statement and make correction to it as by my thinking, there's absolutely no way that he and his boss can be called a reformist, however for Khairy, he is still young and is not too late for him to change his ways and work towards reforming this country so that he can be called a reformist by his countrymen and who knows, maybe by mankind themselves just like the likes of the heroes mentioned above. Only time will tell if that will happen or not.