The symbolism behind the Hang Tuah-Hang Jebat conflict remains deeply etched in the Malay psyche, finding expression in public discourse in times of upheavals where injustice of the rulers over the ruled is the central question.

In the early 1990s an act of indiscretion on the part of a sultan when he slapped a hockey coach sparked a nationwide outrage, leading to a constitutional amendment in 1993 that removed rulers immunity in their private capacity. This brought home the point that absolute monarchy has no place in a modern society.

If the prime minister then had acted on the rakyat 's behalf against arbitrary acts of injustice by rulers, in the current political crisis, he is instead the target of a string of accusations from the unjust treatment of his ex-deputy, the weakening of democratic institutions, repressive rule to mismanagement of the economy through corruption, cronyism and lack of accountability.

In the 1960s when P Ramlee made the movie on that enduring story of loyalty, kinship and betrayal, Hang Tuah was still considered as a Malay hero and Hang Jebat a villain, penderhaka (traitor).

The victors' writing of history ensures that the vanquished are painted in the worst possible light. However, in that same era, the Malays' view on the issue was beginning to change (thanks to Kassim Ahmad), that Hang Jebat, who stood up against injustice was the real hero.

Today, there are hardly any young Malays who would take the old stand. Hang Tuah is simply no longer fashionable, except to the ultra-nationalists. His immortal words " Tak akan Melayu hilang di dunia " (if he truly said that) has served as a rallying cry to unite the Malays in the face of grave challenge that threaten their collective existence. The Malay Action Front used this, aided with provocative posters and banners to catch the attention of Malays to their recent rally.

Since my teenage years, whenever someone repeated Hang Tuah's famous phrase, I often questioned the depth of his wisdom. Sounding insipid as it does, I wonder if in fact I have been missing its deeper meaning. Otherwise, why would generation after generation of Malays resurrect this axiom whenever they felt that the race is faced with some kind of an external threat? But, try as I might, I could only grasp its literal sense, which means nothing much.

Disappear in what sense?

I presume he meant the Malays' physical existence that will not disappear from the face of this earth, since during his time the threshold to go to war to settle disputes was rather low. But there can't be many nations that became wiped out either from war, genocidal persecution or natural calamities. And the Malacca sultanate was at its height of regional power at that time, making such remarks rather redundant.

Could he have been concerned about the loss of Malay cultural identity? Hang Tuah probably understood that a living culture continually absorbs elements from others through cultural interaction, sometimes drastically, as it was only some decades earlier that the Melaka Malays undertook a profound cultural transformation when they embraced Islam en masse following the manner of Parameswara.

To state that the Malays will not disappear from this earth is hardly an inspiration, a small consolation perhaps. Surely we do not want to merely exist, but to do so with purpose and grace, especially when we live in a multiracial society?

Given our numerical superiority, the position of the constitutional monarchs, the provisions in the constitution to uplift the Malays and bridge the gap, the status of Islam and our hold on the country's leadership, the Malays should have been able to live with dignity, and with magnanimity and friendship towards others, instead of constantly imagining threats to its survival like a minority in a hostile environment.

Affirmative action

But there must be some truth for these concerns to be articulated not only by the political opposition but also some ex-leaders in Umno that for the majority of Malays, our level of existence is just so-so, even miserable for a significant segment.

Many wonder whether we are equipped to face the challenges of the globalising world. Much as the MAF meeting at Putra World Trade Centre resonated with such undertones, they obviously lacked originality in the eyes of many.

Certainly, we have witnessed a remarkable social mobility and the existence of a sizeable middle class among the Malays as a result of affirmative action programme of 1970s and 1980s, but the fact has not been lost that the majority of Malays are languishing at the sidelines, passively watching the breathtaking pace of development in the centre, until recently strong in the belief that they need the protection and patronage of a party which purportedly champions their cause. On the other hand, the Malay political and economic elite wallow in the stupor of unimagined new wealth.

What started out as a policy to reduce economic disparity between the Malays and the other races become an obsession with wealth generation and reorientation of the Malay worldview and finally mutated into the monstrosity that Umno is viewed today by the very people it has professed to champion. Is it because the party leadership has stressed material production and consumption whilst merely paying lip service to things that really matter like championing justice and liberty, instilling the love of knowledge and nurturing an independent intellectual culture?

I remember well one of Lat's drawings, in a parody of the government's exhortation of how the Malays should emulate the Chinese to achieve material success. The piece depicted a group of Malays standing outside the fence of a heliport, watching a group of Chinese gamblers merrily disembarking from a helicopter with fistful wads of notes after a night at Genting Berhad, Malaysia's gambling haven.

Andante to

allegro non troppo

Part of the Look East policy must have been to persuade our work force to be very hard working and obedient to their employers, which apparently were the ingredients of success of the South Koreans and Japanese. This in itself was a clever idea in re-orienting the work ethics of the Malays and instilling discipline among the work force but the obsession with which this was carried out left one wondering whether we needed to go that far to achieve its objective.

I remember entertaining some foreign visitors at a well-known Malay restaurant in the early 1990s and was quite appalled by the traditional cultural dancers in their loud and gaudy costumes and their prancing about on the stage. I thought that was a complete aberration to the graceful Malay dances that I had known from childhood.

I commented this to a colleague who had been regularly part of the PM's entourage on official foreign visits. I was surprised when he told me that this was a deliberate effort by the government to make the Malays more enterprising and discard their passivity.

I then surmised that it might have been the same reason for changing the tempo of our national anthem Negaraku from the graceful andante to allegro non troppo . That such a symbol of nationhood could be tampered at a whim for a rather base reason was disconcerting.

But this certainly fitted into the whole scheme, where, on the most solemn of occasion in our national calendar, the entire cabinet dressed like floor supervisors in a Japanese factory during the Merdeka day parade.

Greed is good

This single-minded obsession with productivity, entrepreneurship and wealth-creation among the Malays reached a new level in the early 1990s. Everyone remembers the terms ' Melayu baru ' and ' Melayu korporat ', the new class of Malay millionaires nurtured by the leadership. We reserved our judgment then as we were told that the ' Melayu baru ' millionaires were supposed to pull up their small-timer brethren and that the new wealth will trickle down to benefit the rest.

But it must be hard to remain true to such altruistic goals when one is flushed with unaccustomed wealth. They could not hide it because during those heady days of years of continuous near double-digit growth, greed was sanitised and made respectable, following Gordon Gekko's maxim "greed is good", the fictitious character in the movie Wall Street .

They could not resist the temptation towards ostentatious display and one could see amusing traces of Donald and Ivana Trump mirrored in the lifestyles. They were paraded as heroes of the race, conferred the highest titles on rulers' birthdays and given more respect than university professors.

We now know that all that wealth greed was part of a sleazy political culture nurtured by the political elite - the incestuous relationship between business and politics, a privitisation policy that quickly mutated into a scramble for state assets to be divided among cronies and siblings, money politics, reassertion of Malay feudal traits of patronage and sycophancy

Two years too late

Are the Malays back to square one, circa 1970? That seemed to be what the jaded Umno leaders were saying two weeks ago at PWTC. And is the answer more of the same? Increase the Malay's ownership of the national wealth to 30 percent since this has probably shrunk to 15 percent after the crisis, suggested an Umno veteran who was formerly a deputy prime minister (to be fair, he was among those who stressed on national unity).

Although the Umno president received a lot of flak for the Malays' present predicament after 30 years of affirmative action, scant regard was paid to the real problems that beset the nation in general and the Malays in particular, chiefly abuses of the New Economic Policy, arrogance of power, corruption, emasculation by and subservience of democratic institutions to the executive and economic mismanagement.

But then again, if the real reason for former deputy prime minister Anwar Ibrahim's dismissal, humiliation, sham trial and incarceration was his attempt to clean up the sleaze and corruption among the political and business elite in the wake of the financial crisis as a significant section of the Malaysian public believe, was not that same Umno veteran the one who went on a road show with Anwar's accuser, together with another Melaka politician (who was also supposed to be at the meeting) in support of the prime minister's action? And did not that colourful Kelantan politician also went on a speaking tour for the same reason, often ending up verbally abusing the jeering crowd who disbelieved his version of the Anwar affair?

Valid as some of their points were, they were hardly original, and at any rate, two years too late. The Malays outside Umno have left them far behind.

Thank you, Tuah, but we would rather have Jebat.