Redemption from collective guilt?

 

I have not read the book written by the unknown authors about the betrayal of the Malays in Selangor. I hear it's about the how the Malays in Selangor are being consigned to the rubbish heap because now the Selangor government wants to liberalize policies. The undoing of many of the previous policies naturally associated and created by UMNO of course must be rejected. In its place, Khalid Ibrahim and his band of pseudo liberals want to institute level-the playing field ideas of meritocracy, integrity, accountability and transparency in all aspects of life.

Thus, in politics we are entreated to the seductive ideas of bringing back local government elections or perhaps later, who knows one day, as absolution of the collective Malay guilt, support a non Malay as MB of Selangor. Only then, have we slain the dragon. At some other places, we are alerted to the outpouring of pubescent innocence when a great grandchild of Tunku Abdul Rahman lamented why the descendants of her non Malay friend who were here for centuries couldn't be treated as Bumiputera as she. That kind of Nob Hill champagne-laced articulations, we are told, must be encouraged and celebrated. It is after all, in sync with 1 Malaysia.

The second book? The one on Anwar Ibrahim? Oh- that's muck.

A few thousand miles down south, one man who came to the blogging scene late imagined he has brought up new issues. This debate about ketuanan Melayu has been raging for some time but are now given an overtly racist tones by attempting to place it in the same league of the Nazi Party, KKK, and other patently racists organizations and movements. Anwar Ibrahim, it is disingenuously claimed will be doing the Malays a favor because now, they have to advance with their own efforts, cannot expect any free rides, demand free housing etc.

Don't get me wrong- I despise those lazy bums who demand free rides, I despite those who demand equality of results despite the fact that they elected to drop out of school earlier, refused to study, went on drugs, refused to work. I find it abhorrent that those FLCEs insist on the same treatment as in wanting the same results of those who studied harder, work harder, stayed away from drugs. I find it distasteful these same people duped the Malays into believing they can lead the Malays better because they are one of them, because they share and have the same level of limitations. They therefore can speak the language of the below-averages, the dispossessed, the marginalized better.

Malay society cant progress with these dregs as leaders, with this equality of immiseration (Malays are better off if we are equal in misery) ideas. These café latte crowds, smoked salmon socialists think the world will get better when not only wealth is distributed, but also the guilt feeling.

Yes, it's the agenda of redistributing guilt that is being worked here, from two incongruent lines of thinking of equally dissonant voices of Lim Kit Siang and the Malay Uncle Toms. The Malay Uncle Toms are the Malays who feel guilty having to talk about Malay interests and even ashamed if they do. It's not chic and even racist to talk about Malay poverty, its racist to talk about the fear of Malays and so forth.

I am certain and justified in my belief that Messrs Lim Kit Siang and Karpal Singh are not racists. I am even prepared to concede they are motivated by the highest of ideals. But the DAP and others on the same level of thinking have only one agenda. That of raising the feelings of collective Malay guilt. What has Kit Siang done all these years? Only one thing- to keep alive the sense of collective guilt in the Malays. To make us Malays believe that we have the millstone of collective guilt around our necks and that to free ourselves of it, we must yank it off.

Then, to people like Khalid Ibrahim, as an expression of atonement and absolution from this collective guilt which Messrs Lim Kit Siang and Anwar Ibrahim have succeeded to indoctrinate, to end that guilt is to stop talking about Malay things. Hence the book on what khaldai Khalid Ibrahim is grime and racist, the book on Anwar is muck.

Such statements from Lim Kit Siang are too facile.