Student activists want to reclaim the ‘third force’

They are from different families, faiths and ethnic groups but share a common belief – that Malaysian students need to reclaim their role as a third force in civil society.

This is what binds the current crop of Universiti Malaya student leaders together and what made them stand their ground when it came to the controversial talk with opposition leader Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim earlier this week.

Unlike their predecessors in the past two decades, they are not driven to become proxies or recruitment agents for political parties.

Neither are they interested in just campaigning for "youth" issues.

They are also sick of being treated like schoolchildren by university administrators when the university is a place where they are supposed to mature as adults.

The students behind the October 27 talk told The Malaysian Insider that the talk was not about supporting Anwar or Pakatan Rakyat (PR).

They wanted to revive a culture of student activism based on the belief that they, too, can influence the debate on issues like inflation, government wastage and the urban poor.

And as seen in the events that night, they are prepared to face the consequences to reclaim that right.

National issues are student issues

Universiti Malaya’s student union in the 1960s and 1970s was what historians called the golden age of the movement.

Datuk Abdul Rahman Embong of Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia said UM was where scholars, politicians and thinkers of all stripes came to exchange ideas on what was called the “great economic debate”.

The student union itself was aggressive in protesting against injustice such as when it held a rally against the visit of foreign dignitaries from Thailand in 1971 and the United States in 1973.

In 1974, thousands of students were rounded up after a protest in Kuala Lumpur against hunger and poverty in Baling.

That all stopped when the Universities and University Colleges Act was amended in 1979 to make it an offence for students to get involved in political activities.

When the ban was lifted in March 2012, said UM Student Representatives’ Council (MPPUM) vice-president Syahruldeen Ahmad Rosli, it reopened the door for students to get involved in issues beyond their campus.

In reality, said Syahruldeen, these issues were not external or foreign to the experience of being a student either.

For instance, the march against PTPTN or National Higher Education Fund loans in Dataran Merdeka in April 2013 was a campaign for affordable higher education.

The 2014 New Year’s protest in Dataran Merdeka against inflation and the goods and services tax (GST) was also in the same spirit since students are among those who would be hard hit by price hikes.

Many UM students joined in and helped organised those events although the leaders and participants were from all over the country.

“We want to transform the student movement so that once again we focus on the basic needs of the rakyat. On food and living expenses, on poverty,” said Syahruldeen, 27, who is currently completing a master’s in Islamic finance.

The best among us

Almost all of the 43 members in the UM students' council are from low-middle class to middle-class families, said its president, Fahmi Zainol.

The council is also very diverse. He said about 55% were Bumiputeras while the rest are non-Bumiputeras.

“It’s reflective of our plural society. We have Sabahans, Sarawakians, students from Penang, Kelantan, Terengganu and Selangor.

“Even in the top 10 posts, we are quite diverse. My deputy and one vice-president are Chinese as well as some of the other officers,” said Fahmi.

“All are senior students with grade point averages above 3.0. They are the best students.”

Another thing that they have in common is that they became politically conscious after the 2008 electoral tsunami, when the country started having a credible two-party system.

“We are citizens first as well as students,” said UM council deputy president Lee Jin Yang, a final-year mechanical engineering student.

“We can’t escape this responsibility and the university is supposed to be the place where we learn how to take care of society,” said Lee.

This is the context in which he, Fahmi, Syahruldeen and the council’s leaders organised the Anwar talk.

Not to show the PKR de facto leader support ahead of his Federal Court hearings on sodomy but to create an opportunity for UM students to be exposed to different ideas.

The aim of the talk was to also allow students to question Anwar on PR policies, said Syahruldeen.

“It was not a partisan event. In fact, we came out with directives that no party logos would be permitted during the event,” he said.

Turning followers into leaders

The ultimate aim, said Syahruldeen, was to create a national movement of students that would be non-partisan but critical and engaged in issues of the day.

During the late 1980s and 1990s when the student movement was de-fanged by AUKU, student groups were recruiting grounds for the political parties, he said.

“If you look at the last five to six years, many of the student leaders came out of universities but decided to remain independent. They did not join political parties,” said Syahruldeen.

A non-partisan approach was necessary since Pakatan Rakyat also gets embroiled in its internal feuds to the point where it forget about the bread-and-butter issues of the day, he said.

Fahmi admits that the challenges are stiff and consequences great.

UM is investigating students involved in the Anwar talk. There is a possibility that they could be expelled.

“I don’t want to be blamed by the future generation for not doing anything to bring about better change in this country,” said Fahmi when asked whether he is prepared to be punished by the university.

But a bigger challenge, said Syahruldeen, was getting students themselves to become interested in current affairs.

“When they clamped down on students, the government told them ‘don’t bother yourselves with politics, just concentrate on studying’. This has created a whole generation that fears getting involved.”

That is essentially what was wrong with universities and the graduates they produced, said Prof Zaharom Nain of Nottingham University Malaysia.

“Malaysian employers have already said it. Our graduates have poor communication skills and cannot think critically. Universities are supposed to expand the mind and not create people who want to be led by the nose,” said said Zaharom, who is professor of Media and Communication Studies.

He said how the students handled the Anwar talk and the rise of a more assertive student movement could help correct this slide from intellectual vibrancy to mediocrity.

“Universities have been good at creating followers and not leaders. But the nation needs leaders.” – November 1, 2014.