I write this with a heavy heart after hearing the news that 2 ladies – a reporter Ms Tan and MP Teresa Kok were arrested under the draconian ISA. These 2 news came following the not too surprising arrest of RPK, the icon of the new Malaysia.

What have the 2 ladies done that deserve ISA?

The reporter was merely doing her job of reporting what Ahmad Ismail said, while the actual instigator was only slapped with a suspension from party politics. THIS is blatant injustice.

What about Teresa Kok ? What has she done that is deemed a security threat?

I suppose many of us are now thinking that it is all part of a ploy to scare the opposition and the majority of Malaysians. Some of us may believe it may be a ploy to incite their supporters to rally a protest march. In that case, it becomes fodder for BN to declare a State of Emergency and play their end game.

Will there be other arrests ala Ops Lalang? Is this how the current regime wants to retain power? THIS is blatant injustice.

My prayers are with RPK, Ms Tan and Teresa :-

May God give you the strength, the will and patience to endure hardship for your calling, our nation and for democracy and truth. May God grant your family the grace to endure along with you. You are not alone – God will be at your side. 

If we are not rouse from our slumber by this foul stench of injustice, I have this Franciscan prayer for us all:

“May God bless you with discomfort at easy answers, half truths, and superficial relationships, so that you may live deep within your heart.

May God bless you with anger at injustice, oppression, and exploitation of people, so that you may work for justice, freedom and peace.

May God bless you with tears to shed for those who suffer from pain, rejection, starvation, and war, so that you may reach out your hand to comfort them and to turn their pain in to joy.

And may God bless you with enough foolishness to believe that you can make a difference in this world, so that you can do what others claim cannot be done.”

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The current news sensation is the ruckus and rants about somebody’s (who is a nobody!) racist remarks. Some is calling it a ruse to raise the temperature of the racists among us.

The Chinese press, Gerakan and even the English press are all caught up in this ruse and being played into the hand of a racists who are baiting the rest of us to react.

Some even believe it is the same machinations and incitement that lead to Operasi Lalang 20 years ago that led to the gaging of the chinese malaysians.

Out of all the commentaries (and even public reactions) i have been reading on this, I found this article most insightful of the current state of affairs.

(sorry i have not had the time to blog much, as I do work full time and is a father who actually spend time with my little child and at present a full time housekeeper!)

The real significance of Ahmad Ismail

By Nat Tan 

Does Ahmad Ismail represent a huge swath of Malaysian society, or is he a lone ranger? Examining this question may yield important answers about the current state of Umno in Malaysia.

After yesterday’s incident which included infantile supporters ripping up a photograph of Dr Koh Tsu Koon, we can expect some further shows of support for Ahmad by a number of individuals and groups.

It is worth recalling the NEP protest in Penang and Selangor soon after March 8, as well as the UiTM protests more recently. These gatherings, numbering usually in the low four figures or so, should have us questioning just how deep and wide the fears of Malay Malaysians currently run.

Concerns about uprisings were indeed widespread in early March, where many feared the period when Umno-led ultra-nationalists would have had the most reason and impetus to display extreme displeasure with the election results.

That cloud passed without a storm, a fact which left a distinct impression amongst Malaysians that we had come a long, long way in our 50 years of existence as a nation.

Legitimate Malay concerns

The passing of this storm should not be taken to mean, however, that widely felt legitimate concerns amidst the Malay middle ground do not exist.

In an era where globalisation swallows cultures whole, and amidst a backdrop where Islam appears constantly under siege, it is undeniably understandable to fear the loss of one’s identity.

Luckily for Malaysia, the current willingness to take a chance on a new government goes hand in hand with a lack of appetite for destructive behaviour on a mass scale.

Malaysians have proudly shown that they love their families and their neighbours too much to visit violence on one another in solidarity with a party that has done more than anyone else to frustrate its own stated aims.

We now face the possibility of another major political shift, and are once again faced with the same questions of whether a major uprising of discontent is in the books.

My feeling is that if it didn’t happen in March, it will not happen in the event of a change of federal government. A number of observations inform this view.

Umno no longer trusted by Malays

Firstly, we must not underestimate the power of a simple truth: that Malays have been betrayed not by any ‘kaum pendatang’, but by Umno itself.

The last few decades have seen damage done by Umno to itself and to the Malay community that can only be described as irreparable – a term not used lightly.

With the centrality of image to politics, the typical mansion-dwelling, Mercedes-riding Umno leader who built his or her fortune on the back of poor Malays is an enduring liability, as is its role in creating an increasingly dangerous and widening gap between the Malay poor and the Malay rich. Pakatan Rakyat’s constant reinforcement of this image has certainly hurt as well.

Umno’s stewardship has by its own admittance failed to realise the goals of policies such as the NEP aimed at raising the standard of living in the Malay community. With a raised ‘keris’ in one hand, the other hand is stealing everything of worth from Malays and Malaysians. Fortunately, Malaysians can now see in the cold light of day what been done time and time again by those hidden hands.

As a party, Umno has clearly degenerated from a service-oriented institution to a patronage based one. While this may have been vaguely, if immorally, sustainable with a totalitarian ideologue at the helm during good times, it is certainly not surviving inept leadership and even more severe levels of graft. Ahmad’s defiance is also clearly symptomatic of the dangerous power vacuum left behind in the leadership crisis currently affecting Umno and BN.

In short, with ever dwindling public support – especially in urban areas – Umno is indeed a sinking ship. Take away the myth of invincibility, as was done in March, and very little of substance remains.

Last ditch efforts by Umnoputras

This is not to say that the Umno hardliners are without any support whatsoever. Yes, there is a section of society – from all ethnic groups – who are simple, hateful racists. I don’t think they number greatly though; the group we should watch is far more sophisticated and dangerous.

We must remember that many, many people got rich via Umno connections – connections that soon stand to lose essentially all their worth (except perhaps if you live, say, in Johor).

In other words, there is a massive amount at stake.

The priority of those who stand to lose so much is, obviously, to retain power at all costs. For Umno, means of doing or so are limited by at least two impossibilities: moving towards true integrity, and moving out of a race-centric framework. The former would defeat the entire purpose and the latter, the raison d’etre of race-based parties.

In Umno, this means that as far as strategies go, they are back to square one: defending Malay supremacy against the ‘evil machinations’ of non-Malays.

I think it is wisest to view this desperation coldly. Rather than rush to defend the dignity and rights of non-Malays, which is all well and good, we should be thinking about how to manage any potential impact the rhetoric of Umno leaders like Ahmad Ismail may have.

Fortunately, it is unlikely to achieve much mileage or gain traction on its own merits, for the simple reason articulated above: people no longer trust Umno leaders – not even to defend Malay dignity.

That said, we should both expect and not be surprised by some level of support, recalling again that many individuals and their dependents (who provide bodies and numbers when called upon) rely on Umno not for the dignity or prestige of their ethnic group, but for the size of their wallets.

We should also not take this threat for granted, but manage it wisely.

Best way to defend Malay rights

Fluster, bluster, sound and fury will amount to very little. At the end of the day, the best defender of non-Malay rights is a Malay, and the best defender of Malay rights is a non-Malay.

It is thus the duty of myself and many reading to reinforce the notion as publicly and as often as possible that the central tenets of Malay economic well-being, culture, religion and way of life will always be held sacrosanct in this land and never, ever sacrificed to posterity or allowed to assimilate excessively and fade away.

The rest, I leave to my Malay brothers and sisters.

The clock ticks for Malaysia; race-based politics has been the biggest structural impediment to true Malaysian harmony by far, and the time has come to leave it far behind in the dust of history.

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I am reproducing this piece by Azly Rahman (written for Malaysiakini) for it is an excellent diagnosis of our nation as we approach Merdeka.

“Our Nation, Malaysia is dedicated to: Achieving a greater unity for all her people; maintaining a democratic way of life; creating a just society in which the wealth of the nation shall be equitably distributed; ensuring a liberal approach to her rich and diverse cultural tradition, and building a progressive society which shall be oriented to modern science and technology.

We, the people of Malaysia, pledge our united efforts to attain these ends, guided by these principles:
• Belief in God
• Loyalty to King and Country
• Upholding the Constitution
• Sovereignty of the Law, and
• Good Behaviour and Morality”

- From the Rukunegara, circa 1970

The words above constructed and proclaimed in 1970, after the bloody riots of May 13, 1969, contain internal contradictions if we are to analyse them today.

As we approach Aug 31, our independence or Merdeka Day, we read the following stories:
- an irate prime minister mulling action against a blogger for flying the Malaysian flag upside-down in cyberspace;
- a by-election campaign in Pematang Pauh in Penang, that shows up the ugliness of smear campaigns focusing on race, religion, and personal issues instead of presenting solutions to national crises;
- an aborted Bar Council forum on conversion to Islam, disrupted by groups claiming to represent the survival and dignity of Malaysian Muslims;
- an angry Vice-Chancellor of an all-bumiputera university threatening to sue the chief minister of Selangor for the latter’s suggestion that Universiti Teknologi MARA be opened to non-bumiputera;
- a teacher in Selangor reprimanded and transferred for hurling racial slurs at her Malaysian school-children of Indian origin;
- the continuing and intensified work of the prime minster’s propaganda outfit, Biro Tata Negara, in ensuring that the ideology of Ketuanan Melayu remains funneled into the minds of Malay students, educators, and civil servants;
- the continuing refusal of the Ministry of Higher Education to grant freedom to students to gain concepts and skills of political consciousness by its refusal to radically revise the University and University Colleges Act;
- an increasingly cacophonic and toxic relationship between the Executive, Judiciary, and Legislative as a consequence of the 22-year rule of the previous Prime Minister, Dr Mahathir Mohamad;
- a hyper-modernised country trapped in the excesses of nationalism and globalisation at a time when the global food and energy crisis is taking a toll on the economic and political lives of nations.

After 51 years, what do we have?

These are among the snapshot items of Malaysia circa 51 years of Merdeka or independence. The composite image of divide and conquer left by the British colonials continue to be artistically refined into subdivisions of divide and conquer, aided by the propaganda machine of the ruling class.

What can now be seen in Malaysia are images of the little brown brothers becoming the new colonisers and transforming themselves into ‘emperors in new clothes’.

If the words of the1970 proclamation are to be our benchmarks of Merdeka, we must ask these questions:

crowd of people on the streets- How have we fostered unity amongst the nation when our government promotes racism thorough racialised policies and by virtue that our politics survive on the institutionalisation of racism?

- How have we maintained a democratic way of life, when our educational, political, and economic institutions do not promote democracy in fear that democratic and multicultural voices of conscience are going to dismantle race-based ideologies?

- How are we to create a just society in which the wealth of the nation is equitably distributed, when the New Economic Policy itself is designed based on the premise that only one race needs to be helped and forever helped, whereas at the onset of Independence, poverty existed amongst Malaysians of all races?

- How are we to promote a liberal approach to diverse culture and tradition when our education system is run by politicians who are championing Ketuanan Melayu alone and ensuring that Malay hegemony rules at all levels and spheres of education, from pre-school to graduate levels?

- How are we to build a progressive society based on science and technology when our understanding of the role of science and society do not clearly reflect our fullest understanding of the issues of scientific knowledge, industrialisation, and dependency?

A failed Malaysia? Across the board, the country is in distress. Education in shambles, polarised, and politicised. The economy is in constant dangerous flux. The judiciary is in deep crisis of confidence. Public safety is of major concern due to declining public confidence in the police, and politics remain ever divided along racial and religious lines.

This is the Malaysian depiction of Dorian Gray, one that shows the image of a “vibrant nation of progress and harmony, racial tolerance and a robust economy” but behind that is actually a deformed Malaysia, a mere continuation of the past’s feudal and colonial entity.

Broken promises

The colonised have become the colonisers. The state has become a totalitarian entity using the ideological state apparatuses to silence the voices of progressive change. The nationalists have nationalised the wealth of the nation for themselves and perhaps siphoning the nation’s wealth internationally.

This is the picture of the broken promise made by those who fought for independence; the vices of the early radical and truly nationalistic Malays, Chinese, Indians, Ibans, Kadazans, Sikhs, etc, of the early Merdeka movement.

How then must Malaysians celebrate their 51st Merdeka? By flying the Jalur Gemilang upside down? Or to do better than this – by putting justice in place, by engineering a multicultural jihad against all forms of excesses of abuse of power and to de-toxify the nation entirely, and then next – begin Year Zero of our cultural revolution by using a gentle enterprise called peaceful education?

Education is the solution. I believe we need a radical overhaul of everything, philosophically speaking. We have the structures in place but we would need to replace the human beings running the system.

We have deeply racialised human beings running neutral machines. We have ethnocentric leaders running humane systems. We have allowed imperfection and evolving fascism to run our system.

We have placed capitalists of culture behind our wheels of industrial progress; people who have the dinosaur brain of ketuanan this or that.

We have created these monsters and have unleashed them to run our educational, political, economic, and cultural systems. We have Frankenstein-ised our Merdeka.

We need to re-educate ourselves by reinventing the human beings we can entrust to run our machines. We must abolish the present system and create a new one; just as how we created our new cities – Putrajaya and Cyberjaya – the symbols of our oriental despotism and Asian capitalistic decadence.

We must be aware that class in the broadest and most comprehensive sense of the word is what we are dealing with and through class and cultural analyses, we can arrive at a different path to a new Merdeka.

This Merdeka, the rakyat, armed with wisdom of a new era, must now speak softly but carry a big stick. Our struggle for Merdeka has only just begun.

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