The code of the political warrior

Like many, I listened to the speeches made by Dr Mahathir and Tan Sri Muhyidin Yassin. 

Mahathir was more direct- he asked the people to remove Najib as PM. Najib’s leadership is destroying the country.

Muhyidin was more circumspect. But the message was clear. Disguised as a request for Najib to take a break so as to show the PM isn’t interfering in investigations, what Muhyidin inferred was that Najib is guilty of terrible wrongdoings. The only option opened to Najib is to leave permanently.

There you have it- Najib was asked to leave because he can longer lead. Najib has to leave for the sake of UMNO. In actual fact, Najib ought to leave for the sake of the country. Everyone is affected.

What is happening to the country now? It has succumbed to self-induced political rigor mortis. The muscles of democracy are paralysed. The rule of law and the institutions supporting them are undermined.

Throughout the world, people who say they support democracy, have used undemocratic means to secure it. The Americans did that in an extreme way- bombing out Iraq to promote democracy. In Malaysia, Najib has used an arsenal of legislative acts to smother freedom in Malaysia, undermine the rule of law and unleash the tyranny of majority rule.

When the character of Nathan Algren was asked by the Japanese emperor ‘tell me how the last samurai- katsumoto died, Captain Nathan Algren answered, I will tell you he lived.

Katsumoto lived by living out the Bushido code. It is also the way of the warrior.  He leads a disciplined life, dedicated to observing traditions, merciful to enemies (Algren), followers and the people, led exemplary life. He provided both secular and moral leadership.

Since no one now can even suggest PM Najib to leave office, we will tell the people how he lives from the time he became PM. We don’t ask him to leave, we let the people decide. Does he live out the life of a warrior, a stature that he claims and craves?

He lives by first making pompous promises which he cannot carry out. When he said, the era of government knows best is over, which essentially means the era of big government, he has lied to us ever since. Since he became PM, a number of repressive laws were passed, POTA, SOSMA, POCA, Sedition Act and now the Security Council Act 2015.

These are legal instruments legitimising the invasiveness and meddlesomeness of big government. These are also instruments securing power of the incumbent government since the laws are also used on political opponents.

Currently he is asking the people to ignore dissenting voices because he wants to take Malaysians to a greater place.

You know this is always the response of people who preaches one thing but practises another. The claim taking to a greater place is easy to make- it requires a pat in the back and merely an emotional articulation.

How do you do that? By concentrating all powers in you and using the legitimate forces of coercion to browbeat the public into submission and pliancy?

On the other hand, to convince yourself that people, on their own accord, through voluntary cooperation with one another can themselves bring about conditions for a better future requires reasoning and rigorous thinking. That is difficult to do by those who appeal only to emotions and whose intellectual faculties are less developed than their emotional faculties. 

It is difficult for Najib and UMNO to know that we can shape our destiny and future without a government that has gone bad. 

People like Najib and similar thinking people are easily convinced if only good persons like them are given absolute and unfettered discretion, they will do good. Again, such a belief requires self-praise and mere emotional suggestion. To believe that others can do a better job without grabbing absolute powers and working on the basis of voluntary cooperation instead of by being energised by draconian laws, would require rigorous mental thought process and reasoning. 

And since the emotional faculties are more developed that the intellectual, the emotional claims gain embrace.

The PM claims he has the blood of a bugis warrior. This is only a recent claim, he was not at all conscious of this lineage all these years in Pekan. Pekan has long been settled by Bugis traders and men with martial prowess a long time ago. Warriors don’t go around bullying and terrorising people.

The fist principle by which a warriors lives, is rectitude and justice. The term rectitude encapsulates the values of morality, principle, honour, virtue, decency, justice, equity, integrity, goodness, honesty, correctness, righteousness, probity, incorruptibility, scrupulousness. They are opposite of corruption, dishonesty, immorality, dishonour, baseness, scandalousness. Rectitude also signifies correctness, justice, accuracy, precision, verity, rightness, soundness, exactness.

The people, in judging PM Najib on these points need only to pick one.