Malaysian Media and Culture 02

After reading ‘Debunking Myth of the Obedient Rakyat and its Insinuation toward Democracy’ by Nurul Ezzati Aisya Mohd Zaki, I truly agree that Malaysian (rakyat) are holding the myth to be obedient rakyat all the time, especially the elder generation. The few main concepts discussed in the paper are (1) Cultural Value, (2) Social Structural change, (3) Citizenry obligation of compliance, conformity and obedience, and (4) Youthquake.

The general definition of culture is ‘some beliefs, values, lifestyles that shared by a group of people’. In Malaysia, we shared a lot of different cultures, and like what is mentioned in the study, ‘the myth of obedient rakyat’ is definitely one of the shared cultures that everyone doesn’t purposely pay attention to, but knew it when people mentioned about it. Since independent, everyone was taught to obey to the authority to avoid unnecessary trouble, only a small amount of people would like (dare) to express their opinion and critique the authority decisions and mostly they will get themselves into a mess. (As the authority always have some ways to sort out the ‘disobedient rakyat’) Mostly, people will change their attitudes/ hide their real feelings in order to assimilate into a group that adopting similar beliefs/ behaviours.  

In the past, Malaysian can be defined as very obedient rakyat, however, with the rise of Malaysia Youthquake as mentioned in the study, there is the existence of so-called ‘disobedient rakyat’. The Generation Y and millennials are more likely to be part of the ‘disobedient rakyat’, as they never really witnessed/ experienced the ‘power’ of the authority, or as well the power of the authority is decreasing as the rapid growth of the internet is slowly influencing the society. (284 words)

When you think it is necessary to be a disobedient rakyat? Why is disobedience sometimes necessary?

Obedient is always defined as a good moral value in this society as 'Asian Parents' would always teach their kids to be obedient and listen to what the teachers/ adults say. In other words, obedience actually kinda bring a meaning 'submission to rules'. Definitely, obedient brings good value as it helps everyone's behaviour stay predictable, however, disobedience is also very important in life. It would never be balanced if only the authority to speak (Only their words are important) as we always need different perspectives and opinions in life. We need to be a disobedient rakyat especially when the authority is making decisions that are not fair to the rakyat, to protect the rights of the rakyat, to voice out for the rakyat and to let more rakyat knows the importance to not stay quiet. Equity will never come to people if the people themselves didn't even want to fight for their own rights. Therefore, we can see the emergence of the disobedient rakyat brings a great change to a new Malaysia in the GE 14th months ago.