I first heard about GMMF back in 2010 when I attended a conference aptly called the International Conference on the Global Movement of Moderates. It was promoted by the government as the first, inaugural event of the Global Movement of the Moderates, bringing together the officials of the highest level, namely Prime Minister Najib Razak, Foreign Minister Anifah Aman, former prime minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad as well as some other distinguished guests representing the political elite of Malaysia, Asia-Pacific countries and Muslim clergy.

A foundation was subsequently launched in 2012 with Razali Ismail as the chairman, giving a glimmer of hope as the former had been a distinguished practitioner of diplomacy, whether we agree with him or not.

Here we are in 2018, a full six years later, to see if anything has changed.

Looking at the name of the organisation, the Global Movement of Moderates Foundation, I wonder which part of it is global. I’ve been following it closely since the inaugural ICGMM as I feel that moderation needs to be promoted and encouraged, yet I fail to see the global element let alone its effectiveness in fostering any sort of moderation. There has been a deafening silence on the pockets of extremism that are popping up everywhere in Malaysia. What is the solution? Surely GMM should be seen as the prime mover in such an endeavour to create a moderate society.

If governance and rule of law is a priority, which I saw was part of the seven initiatives, there does not appear to be any board members. If I recall correctly, there used to be a board during the inception back in 2012, consisting of some distinguished people. It’s now 2018, which makes it almost three years since Nasharudin (Mat Isa) helmed the organisation. They have also created a new website which was recently launched by the PM himself where there is even less information on its structure.

Where are the checks and balances? Any credible organisation would have information on their key people. The foundation itself doesn’t appear to produce any content. A quick browse on their website confirms this, and the size of the organisation is unknown. There have been no annual reports since its inception.

What I can gather from the website, though, is that there appears to be a lot of overseas trips which seem to be one-offs, just a collection of photo opportunities for Nasharudin. For an organisation which is a “think tank”, this shows, at best, a lack of substance creating no meaningful difference at all.

I’m curious to know what transpired as a result of all these travels and here I am scratching my head trying to find any research papers by this Global Movement of Moderates, or even position papers, basically anything other than press statements. Perhaps the solution is to literally fly to every country possible to introduce this “Global Movement of Moderates” with the same script. I’m not really sure as I’m not an expert and neither am I paid to do so. If you don’t believe me, have a look at their website – it would be better named the Global Movement of Nasharudin.

Surely if Nasharudin can travel on first-class flights with his entourage halfway across the world, there should be some tangible results of these so-called engagements, and surely a programme would not cost more than his flight ticket alone to Europe or the Americas. Certainly I have not seen any programmes initiated by GMM, only events where they are present or attending. New York, Paris and London are firm favourites, but that must be just a coincidence as it would be blasphemous for a PAS leader to hold such “kafir” nations in high regard. What exactly is an “engagement session” when nothing happens after a photo is taken?

It is worth mentioning that prior to Nasharudin in 2015, there was an East Asia Summit Declaration on the Global Movement of Moderates. Fast forward to today, and there is no mention of it in the declaration. What could possibly have happened between 2015 and 2017 whereby this “Global Movement of Moderates” was conveniently dropped? Could it be due to Nasharudin himself? In fact, the newly launched website confirms this as it shows that post-2015, there have been no milestones. The last milestone was the East Asia Summit.

Ironically, the references to GMM have since been dropped from the East Asia Summit for 2017, which comes as no surprise because there hasn’t been even a single activity worth mentioning in the past year alone where GMM took the lead. It is just a vehicle for Nasharudin to make trips abroad, shake hands and make empty claims.

To add to that, if one were to look into the UN General Assembly vote on Dec 8, an overwhelming majority of nations voted in favour of a resolution on moderation (not to be confused with a resolution on “Global Movement of Moderates” which I suspect is the actual aim). However, the US decision to vote against it was, in the words of the US representative, due to the inability of the GMMF to conduct programmes, as seen in this reference – https://usun.state.gov/remarks/8218.

Now, wow, is it possible that GMM is unable to conduct programmes? With all the resources and staff that they have at their disposal, surely this can’t be the case (now if only they could list down who exactly are these people working in GMM, like who does the research). In fact, they moved to a bigger office during the tenure of the current chairman and CEO, which I suppose is a bigger priority than the organisation structure itself, not to mention the frequent travelling that Nasharudin does on a regular basis.

One only has to Google these exact words, “UN Resolution on Moderation”, to see the desperation of Nasharudin to give the impression that he was instrumental in the negotiations. But anybody with basic knowledge of the inner workings of the UN would know that GMM has no say in anything to do with the UN. It is not even recognised, and the adoption of the resolution is far from historic! If no countries voted against it, I suppose that would be more historic. On the other hand, Algeria’s resolution was adopted by consensus whereby the General Assembly declared May 16 as the “International Day of Living Together in Peace”. This happened on the same day as Malaysia’s resolution.

What we see here is a major case of self-praise, and I suspect, a hugely inflated ego which is not very Islamic in character, by the way. This proverb is apt: “Self-praise is no praise at all”. When you praise yourself, you boast about what you feel you’ve achieved when it only takes a fool to realise how meaningless it is.

So within that span of time, references to this entity GMM have been dropped from the EAS summit and subsequently in the “historic” UN resolution. That’s a failure in Malaysia’s foreign policy – how can the foreign minister stay silent, let alone the prime minister? There was nothing spectacular about this Global Movement of Moderates to begin with and the change in leadership over the years has not made it anymore effective. In fact, its popularity and significance has dropped dramatically since 2015 considering what has transpired.

I recall the magical Langkawi Declaration on the Global Movement of Moderates back in 2015. As of now, only two events have been conducted as a result of it, one in Singapore and the other in Laos. There have been none since. For taxpaying citizens who without a doubt would or at least should be supporting a movement of moderates in principle, there are so many unanswered questions, and calls to the media department have been unanswered. What policies does GMM hope to shape? If there is no national unity at home, how does one expect to go talking about it to other countries? If the government wants to play safe and keep silent, then that’s where GMM should step in – to be a voice of reason.

There is no global element, no movement apart from that of the chairman and his entourage, and definitely no moderation. All we see is excess, so let’s wait and see what GMMF has in store.

I’m looking forward to a moderate Malaysia in 2018. If we leave it to the “kampung mentality” types, our Indonesian brothers will surely catch up if they haven’t already on the global stage. I’d really like to see some credible organisations support this movement on their own terms, rather than be dictated by the “Global Movement of Moderates”.

The latest news I heard was about a GMMF-Unesco collaboration which appeared under the usual local media channels such as Bernama and Astro, yet is strangely missing from the Unesco website itself. How could such an important collaboration not be worth mentioning by Unesco? I find that very suspicious as such collaborations can easily be found in the media section of any reputable website.

Nevertheless, I have faith that with the proper leadership of this organisation, Malaysia can once again be a respected middle nation in the global arena. It doesn’t take a genius to have a force for moderation, and I believe it is in Malaysia’s DNA. But with the pace at which the current leadership works, coupled with the lack of credibility and support, Malaysia is doomed to fail in its current capacity of meeting its target of a Year of Moderation in 2019 as espoused in the UN Resolution adopted last year. That would be a historic embarrassment.

Let’s hope the efforts of Prime Minister Najib Razak to champion Malaysia as a leader of the Global Movement of Moderates will not be derailed.

What we need are people of substance, not mere cheerleaders with political baggage. After all, the audience is global and not rural Malaysia which, coincidentally, happens to be PAS’ strong point. So the stakes are very high, unless this whole setup is just a political charade. There is a famous saying among some people that captures the essence of this article: “Pride cometh before the fall”.

The writer is an FMT reader.

The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of FMT.