Saving Malaysia

UMNO supporters have no answers to the message we offer Malaysian readers. Our message is clear and unequivocal. In order to save this country, we must kick out corrupt UMNO/BN.

A specter is indeed haunting our country — the specter of Malaysians reclaiming lost rights. All the powers of the corrupt government have entered into an unholy alliance to exorcise this specter: Religious bigots and Feudalists, UMNO and its business cronies, Malay supremacist and their secret spies and Trojan horses.

UMNO is marshaling all the reactionary forces in this country to put down the majority. Religious bigots represented by the morbid Hasan Alis, Zulkifli Nordins and the racial bigots represented by the Ibrahim Alis. UMNO has also included the Malay Royal Houses into their imagined siege.

Their running dogs are now resorting to (1) attacks on the person (ad hominem) and (2) patronizing comments. Ask my detractors what I did during my short stint as ADUN- of course the answers will be nothing. If so, there is nothing to be worried about with my presence and participation in the next GE. Most of the time, they will come back with patronizing and child-like responses-. Yes what you say is true, but this and but that…….AND better the devil we know that the angel we don’t.

That is ok and fine with me. Post GE 13, I am going to propose to the new government a new Projek Untuk Rakyat. Building new wings at the Sungai Buloh Prison. One wing for ladies and another for the men. Next year, the UMNO General Assembly is going to be held in Sungai Buloh. Some of my friends will tender for the supply of designer uniforms while others will tender for the supply of food and beverages.  We will serenade the in-house delegates with Elvis’s Jail House Rock and Johnny Cash’s Folsom Prison Blues.

This country was tugging along on the road of democracy and was doing fine. It was a slow process as Malaysians underwent a period of growing pains. We have just begun to learn the dynamics of democracy. Suffrage meant people acquire rights to self-determination. Malays freed themselves from being defined and determined by their feudal masters. Participatory democracy meant, they can define their being and determine their future instead of having their lives run by dictates and central command of a society structured on feudalism- a paramount master and his cabal at the top, enslaving the rest.

The coming of the British to Malaya for instance was regarded by Zaaba, one of the leading Malay thinkers of the 20^th century, as bringing light illuminating their dark history of tyrannical rule by feudal masters.

Malays especially have only begun to learn that it’s no longer mandatory to do anything based on the instinctive drives of a feudal system. Was it a bad thing that Malays began freeing themselves from the master-servant structured society? Some leading members of the Malay society were actually saying that the tyranny and injustice carried out by Feudal rulers before the British came were even more destructive to Malay society. The ideas of modern rule and eventually the ideals of democracy were to produce far-reaching changes to the Malay mind.

Now, as UMNO begins to lose its monopoly on political legitimacy and its hitherto unchallenged position as spokesman of the Malay race, there are calls by reactionary forces and their proponents asking the Malays to depend once again on the feudal forces as a means of salvation. That is utterly wrong.

 The salvation of the Malays lies not in the hands of others but in their own. They determine their own future by choosing the right leadership driven by shared values. The values of the majority are diametrically opposed to the values of the neo-feudal. The core value of the feudal class is simply to enslave others and make whole societies as dependents living out life at the pleasure of the feudal class.

Such a proposal is untenable given the natural progress of people towards participatory democracy. The driving force of progress is no longer the traditional feudal component of Malay society. This is no longer the age of command society where your wish becomes a command to me. Everything must be decided to a set of rules.

We are moving away from a central command society to a modern one embracing democracy. We could have matured into a better society when the route was suddenly and rudely interrupted by the emergence of Mahathir Mohamed. From then onwards, it wasn’t tugging along but thugging along.  The thugs and the brownshirts have taken over.  From then on, we entered a new stage, where the structures I spoke of in the previous article were set in.

At this stage, it was the general demand for quick and determined government action that became the dominating element. The democratic process is slow in allowing for the desired results. Then, it is the man or the party who seems strong and resolute enough to get things done in a jiffy who exercises the greatest appeal. Mahathir furnished society with the qualities it demanded. People especially Malays sought somebody with overwhelming support and acquired this belief and confidence  that if Mahathir alone was given absolute powers, he can achieve what Malays want. Malays began their journey depending on the strong man to achieve the hoped-for results.

UMNO then began to be organized along totalitarian lines. Society is structured on the scriptures of totalitarianism.  Mahathir began with good intentions for he was admittedly a good man. Then power corrupts the man as the saying absolute power corrupts absolutely is eventually played out.

The specter that is coming back is the specter of Mahathir and his ilk bulldozing over us.  We alone shall decide how our society should be structured. It’s a choice between the Central Command Society and participatory democracy. All right thinking Malaysians must reject and oppose this neo-feudalism.