COMMENT When that new coinage ‘Third Force’ was first bandied about in Malaysian political discourse late last year, listeners were wondering where it was they first heard the phrase.

Well, it had semblance to the ‘Third World’ of Cold War discourse, but it was not easy to tie ‘force’ to ‘world’ because the first one had a kind of frisson - something welling up from within and ready to break with the force of an angry wave - while the other phrase connoted passivity, a state of being pretty much imposed and not easily alterable.

After that initial bit of grope, the connection of ‘Third Force’ to something of more recent vogue became evident.

Ah, yes, the reason the ‘Third Force’ had a compelling ring was its evocation of the ‘Third Wave’ of futuristic writer Alvin Toffler’s minting.

In 1980, Toffler said that humankind was in the third wave of its social evolution, on from the agrarian first wave and the industrial second wave. Toffler presciently held that the third wave would be information driven. Spot on.

Now, the ‘Third Force’ of Malaysian application has a resonance deeper than its etymological resemblance to something from Toffler.

This is that it fits well with the Hegelian concept of how change is brought about in history. The renowned historian of ideas said every age is animated by an idea (thesis) which engenders its opposite (anti-thesis).

In the struggle for supremacy between the two, a new idea (synthesis) will arise, incorporating finer elements of its contending antecedents, to form a novel and potent mix.

Ditto, the ‘Third Force’ in Malaysian politics is seen as the outcome of the struggle between the race-based notions of socio-economic development propounded by Umno-BN and the egalitarian concepts - or at least, the pretense to it - of the PKR-led opposition coalition.

The Third Force is reckoned to be the coming together of the disgruntled natives of Sabah and Sarawak, Hindraf, discontented other minorities like Orang Asli, joined by PKR dissidents, to compose a brave new bloc of political representation, more honest than the supposed humbugs of PKR.

The Sabah lesson

Hegel’s theory of ideational struggle and progressive refinement fits well with this scheme - in the reckoning of the more zealous among ‘Third Force’ proponents - of how this moment in the new politics of Malaysia is evolving.

zaid azmin pkr party election 220910 It fits well until you encounter an episode such as occurred to the camp of one of the lead contenders in the now-lame competition to become PKR No 2.

Enabling sums to cover transportation and subsistence costs were funneled to a contact in Sabah in the week preceding the date of the vote in PKR divisions in the state.

But only a portion of the sums required and pledged reached the intended vote-brokers who then promptly took the cash on standby offer by agents of the other side. The eventual count went in favour of the candidate whose agents delivered on the sums that covered the costs of getting out the vote.

What happened to some of the cash meant to ensure that the vote went the other way?

Well, a runner had a weakness for the slot machines of Sandakan.

In sum, politics is not the arena for the super-rational templates of organisation which PKR dissidents angrily denounce supremo Anwar Ibrahim for disdaining or being tardy to implement.

These critics, based on the Sandakan vignette, are newly awakened to an old reality: The drive for political rationality and efficiency is constantly undermined by cussed human nature.  

In their zeal for the Third Force of woolly idealism, they are likely to learn more about the why and how of human behaviour, enough to be surprised not that an organisation like PKR works so poorly. It is rather that it works at all.

 

TERENCE NETTO has been a journalist for close on four decades. He likes the occupation because it puts him in contact with the eminent without being under the necessity to admire them.