Modern Brunei: Some Important Issues

Abstract

The impressive statistics notwithstanding, there is a mood of incredulity amongst external observers as to the prospects of modern Brunei. While this incredulity is seldom expressed officially (certainly since the passing of tensions with Malaysia) it nevertheless pervades assessments ? academic and otherwise ? occasionally is expressed in an unattributable officially unofficial quote or the glib, sweeping pages of a media article.1 Yet on reflection, this incredulity which in most instances is born almost of incomprehension is not surprising. For the paradoxes which abound in relation to modern Brunei can hardly be accommodated by the conventional wisdom which infuses the rhetoric of modern public discourse, indeed, the very language of modern diplomacy. In the age of Demos, His Highness, Sultan Sir Muda Hassanal Bolkiah Mu'izzaddin Waddaulah rules. In an age when the tenure of rulers is increasingly transient, the Sultan of Brunei can lay claim to being twenty-ninth in a line of monarchs. What will, in early 1984, be the region's newest state is in fact an ancient kingdom with a verifiably distinguished history. What will be the region's smallest state will also be its wealthiest.2 Is it any wonder then, that in the face of such seeming incongruities we should have incredulity and bewilderment and less fortunately the spawning of facile assessments and assumptions.3 The aim of this paper is to review the prospects of modern Brunei by examining certain issues considered to be central to these prospects, in the hope of rendering some understanding to this somewhat enigmatic subject.4