THE Malaysian culture of ‘saving face’, or preserving one’s honour, stands in the way of liberalisation as it causes society to fear discussing or accepting taboo subjects, researchers and panelists at a forum said today.

Dr Asma Abdullah of the G25 group of influential former senior civil servants said a society that has a “shame-driven culture” like Malaysia will ultimately never move beyond conservatism.

“Because our society is collectivistic and hierarchical, we are also a shame-driven culture or ‘takut malu’,” she said at the Liberalism In Malaysia 2017 forum in Kuala Lumpur today.

The forum saw four panelists commenting on the results of Merdeka Centre’s recent public opinion survey on liberalism in politics, social and economy in Malaysia.

Dr Asma said this culture made it impossible for Malaysians to voice out their thoughts and ideas which contravened the majority’s views.

“So I can say my views on paper but I cannot declare it publicly because I’m afraid that I’ll be labelled as a fanatic,” she said of the fear most Malaysians have.

“In this context, how do you champion liberalism? Because you will always not be able to express fully what are your views if your boss doesn’t agree with your views.

“Being too open will have consequences, because the rest of the society is not like that,” she said.

Wong Chin Huat from the Penang Institute said Malaysians must first accept that “liberalism is important not for individual harmony, but for collective harmony”.

He said he believed that the majority of Malaysians were not conservative, but just lacked the space to discuss previously taboo issues such as sexuality and other forms of individual freedom.

“The majority is actually not conservative, but how can we create a minority that does not need to be scared bringing these things up when in the public,” he posed to those attending the forum.

He said Numan Afifi’s resignation as press officer to the youth and sports minister was a classic example of how the issue of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transvestite (LGBT) community is normally dealt with in a conservative society.

“Take example of Numan; he will not ‘homosexualise’ the minister of the whole ministry because he is there to do his job and not be an activist.

“But because of our society and system of politics is too ‘winner takes all’, then we are always too scared that we will open the floodgates, and then everyone will be the same too,” he said.

Shahrul Aman from Bersih 2.0 said that certain segments of society needed to get rid of their culture of being regulated if they wanted to create a more inclusive society.

“Some support for a regulatory culture; some races or ethnicities have been accustomed to this,” he said.

“Like the New Economic Policy or Islam as being regulated, like the Friday sermons that are controlled… and subsidies, all these are (part of the) regulatory culture.”

He said this same culture hindered the progress of liberalism, as people with different views from the norm would always be unaccepted.

The Merdeka Centre survey was conducted on 1,206 voters aged 21 and above interviewed via telephone across Malaysia from November 26 to December 4, 2017.

The survey had 11 questions which assessed the Malaysian perception and understanding of liberalism without comparing it with the universal definition of liberalism. – July 28, 2018.