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©New Straits Times (Used by permission)

IF there is one good thing to have emerged from the late-breaking phenomenon of "freedom of speech and expression" as now practised in this country, it has to be a clearer view of what some Malaysians think of other Malaysians. After three generations of careful media management -- indeed, of careful management of the entire national system so as to keep home truths at home, not riding roughshod over everyone's sensitivities in the public domain -- what has passed for public discourse in recent times would scandalise our founding fathers. The shock would not be so much at the language used and sentiments expressed as at the awful realisation that 51 years of nationhood have not had any discernible effect on the sad old prejudices and race hatred of yore -- except perhaps to legitimise them for the Internet generation.

Well, so be it. The cat's out of the bag; Pandora's Box is open and cannot be resealed -- witness the futile effort to "block" inflammatory weblogs. No one behind this move could possibly think such censorship can be effective with present-day technology, which makes the move more an expression of counter-sentiment than any concrete proscription of sociopaths and rabble-rousers. "Free speech" has reminded us that this is not a country of necessarily happy neighbours. "Free speech" has laid bare how certain Malaysians feel about certain other Malaysians -- and what they feel is not exactly good, kind, informed and benevolent.

As if we didn't know. The hermetically-sealed process of political consensus-seeking practised here since before Merdeka held the fort for half-a-century, on the premise that base communal antipathies would be managed by community leaders among themselves; there would be no hurling of epithets and invective across neighbours' fences. But this is now no more, and we stand before each other stripped of the raiment of civility that had actually defined the success of this nation as a model of multiracial consociation. If this were news, it would be heartbreaking. But it's not; it is merely the way some of us have always been. The distressing racialism of recent times therefore needs to be sensitively managed, as ever. Ironically, the system blamed by some of its most vicious detractors as having caused this "equity of unhappiness" is the only one that has proved itself capable of achieving this impossible dream. So please, let everyone pipe down and work together in keeping this fractious nation from falling apart.

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