BANGLADESH is in the doldrums today. Kenya too.

The reason they are both in the doldrums is basically the same. It is because of their economy.

In Bangladesh, the final manifestation of their economic problem came about when their government decided to reserve 30% of the country’s government jobs to a politically connected group of people while in Kenya, it has to do with tax hikes.

In both cases, the final manifestation likely came about after a long period of economic mismanagement.

It is the accumulation of problems that is the problem. The final manifestation - just like the final straw that broke the camel’s back - was merely the point where the accumulation of the problem became manifest or visible.

We know that Malaysia is not doing well. From a minister’s husband getting government contract to the Human Resources Development Corp’s fiasco to the National Council of Professors being mired in financial scandal to something brewing in SOCSO to our large and growing national debts to boycotts of pro-Zionist businesses to rising cost of living to racial and religious tension - the list of symptoms is long and ever growing.

What we have to combat them all, however, is the propensity of regular people to bear with whatever misfortune like the proverbial camel - for as long as they are able to secure their self-interest and keep trudging forward.

As matter of fact, it is precisely because the people have a propensity to bear with humiliations, injustice and corruption that government and political leaders tend to feel emboldened to screw up regularly given the people will just grumble a little before continuing with their life.

When the pipe bursts

The beliefs and expectations of those in power will indeed hold true but as the Bangladeshi and Kenyan example is proving today, it will hold true only up to a certain point.

At a certain point, people will reach a stage where they will no longer feel that they will be able to maintain their social status, provide for their families, pay for their house and car loans or hope that tomorrow will be better than today,

When this happens, they will start to behave in a manner that the government and leaders cannot anticipate or predict.

That is basically what is happening in Bangladesh and Kenya today. Their government and leaders thought that their people would continue to act predictably as they continued to add straw after straw on the people’s back without realising that a large number of their population had already reached the last straw.

The government and leaders in Bangladesh and Kenya probably did not expect their people to react so drastically when all they did was something that they had done 101 times before but little did they realise that all of their previous actions have pushed too many people to a point that they lost hope in their ability to secure their self-interest.

Will the chaos in Bangladesh and Kenya ever stop? At some point, the unrest in Bangladesh and Kenya is bound to end as the people run out of energy and hit a point where they will have to rest.

Until then, subconsciously, the disaffected and frustrated Kenyans and the Bangladeshis will be doing whatever they can to bring the entire country down so that their inability to secure their self-interest will stop making them feel like they are failures.

Malaysia is no there yet

If the disaffected Kenyans and the Bangladeshi manage to bring their entire nation down during this period of unrest so that their own failures will not stand out prominently against the backdrop of their nation’s failure, citizens of both countries will likely go back to their old way of life and to re-build their lives from the ashes that is left.

If they run out of energy before they are able to bring their entire nation down, however, then even after the unrest is over, they will still be trying to bring their nation down by some other means until they feel that their own failures don’t stand out when seen against the backdrop of their failed nation.

When too many people in a nation are preoccupied in the business of seeing their nation fall instead of seeing themselves succeed so that they can hide their own failures in the grand failure of their nation, that nation will continue to fall for a long time.

Of course, Malaysians today are not in that stage yet. Most of us still believe that we can take care of ourselves, our loved ones and retain our properties even if it is getting harder to do so.

But then again, you can never really tell when a nation will reach the last straw where everything that our government and leaders predicted and foresaw will go out of the window as the various problems that the nation has - each manageable by itself - will begin to reinforce each other and create a self-sustaining chaos that is able to grow by feeding on itself.

Let’s see what impact that the lifting of the subsidies on RON95 which is predicted to happen soon will have on our beloved nation. - July 26, 2024

Nehru Sathiamoorthy is a roving tutor who loves politics, philosophy and psychology.

https://focusmalaysia.my/what-are-the-chances-that-malaysia-will-walk-the-same-path-as-bangladesh-and-kenya/