The immorality of the moral high ground

 

The debates surrounding the candidacy of Isa Samad or who UMNO chooses to stand in Bagan Pinang has convinced me of one thing. That, basically Malaysia is a religious society. Private piety is making its presence felt. We want to impose our private value system on social issues- religion, education and of course politics. The obviously glaring example is the assumption of the moral high ground when evaluating Isa Samad. The gapping funny thing is the land on which the moral high ground stands is claimed and taken possession by moral rightwings.

What about TDM? - challenged the moral gatekeepers. Tun Mahathir is beyond classification- he goes to wherever no one has gone before and no one is going to stop him. He is bigger that SS Enterprise. I suppose such privilege is gotten when one is a former PM with 22 years of stewardship. He is in actual fact, a Minister Mentor sans title. He gives his opinion unsolicited and as he pleases. The current PM listens in embarrassing filial piety. Let us just say, his opinions are taken in studied deference and therefore, noted as an important footnote. His scolding is that of a stern father who wishes only good for the son.

Not so, with the people across the divide. To them, this decision by UMNO to field Isa is symptomatic of a morality depraved political being whose salvation lies only in total rejection. That kind of protestations takes us on a different level and shall not be left unchallenged. But those who come with morality admonitions must themselves be pristine and pure too.

We shall return to answer them later. First, let's turn to UMNO.

There has never been any instant in Malaysian political history, has the candidacy of someone for a mere DUN election attracted so disproportionate an attention. That only serves to show how politicized Malaysian society is. Or it shows that in this particular instance the choice of the candidate has so many ramifications. For the PR people, they will take position on the much overrated political contraption known as the moral high ground.

For UMNO, it shows that they have decided to miss a step on its journey towards long term interest and adopt an immediate interest. It realizes it must have a win. Now that Isa Samad has been chosen, UMNO must get its act together. It must act as a unified party. Otherwise all its pontifications about unity are but hollow verbiage.

What it must do now, is to subvert all internal dissension. Quarrels within the family shouldn't be made public. If domestic quarrels are made public by those opposing us, that action can be turned against them. Only the morally depraved will scavenge on the spoils of internal fighting of OTHERS. If our opposition does that, then all their missionary-like zeal preaching on morality is duplicitous. We can expose the immorality of these moral high grounders.

Ignore them. Lest concentrate on UMNO. Let's do the right thing. That is morality. That's the only morality in politics.

Like many others in UMNO (sadly a small number) I too am not overjoyed over this choice. But in the interest of UMNO let us do the right thing and that is to subvert our personal frustrations. Let us not wash dirty linen in public. In that respect, I find the public behavior of Israeli politicians quite instructive.

Sometime in 1981/1982 Shimon Peres was embroiled in a bitter political conflict with Yitzhak Rabin I think. In that year he came over to the UK for a visit or something. I was a student in the UK then. At the airport, an eager British journalist asked him- Mr. Peres, you have been quarrelling with Mr. Rabin on a number of political issues- would you care to give your thoughts on that? Peres in his heavy Polish accent answered- we Israelis may quarrel vehemently with each other, but all of us observed an unspoken rule of never to allow our internal quarrels be made public. It has been many years, but this is one portion of the interview that never left me.

UMNO people must observe the same unspoken rule. Internal quarrels must never be made public lest they be food for the morality scavengers. The common enemy is the PR people. This is no time for UMNO people to finish old scores. Hence all the talks about kito mandikan Isa are ventilated internal bitterness and intrigues. These must be banished completely.

For UMNO, do not think this by election is a shoo-in. you take things for granted; you do so at your own peril. The PR machinery is working super efficiently- with ceramahs every night and attended by swelling crowds. Do not discount the attendance at these rallies. We can always trivialize crowd attendance at opposition rallies as a natural proclivity of Malaysians to lap up to juicy stories about scandals and listening to personal tirades. Mat Sabu is always entertaining with his public excoriations. But that's about it. People forget that Mat Sabu is merely exploiting his coign of vantage as a self appointed moral police and an irritable busy body. It's good to remember Mat Sabu was also vocal in his very public fraying of Anwar Ibrahim once upon a time.

The danger is when UMNO people rationalize by saying- ceramah yang hentam orang sana sini, memang orang suka!. Unless they counter every issue by equally vehement response, the lies repeated will be accepted as truths. The Mat Sabus of PR will be making big lies because they are diligent students of the Hitler doctrine on propaganda- -the broad mass of a nation…will more easily fall victim to a big lie than to a small one.

Take the case about postal voting. Its practice is not a recent phenomenon. But for Bagan Pinang it has been turned into a bitter issue on the internet. We have exposed the specious claims about ballot papers bearing serial numbers. If they thought these markings to be of questionable intent, they should have raised the alarm or forcefully reject them at that particular juncture. By making noises now, they are behaving in the Malay proverbial sense of ` the house is already completed; only now the chisels are making noise'. By their own inaction, they forfeit their rights by their conduct. In which case, they should forever hold their piece instead of piously protesting about ballot papers.

Now let's see whether the PR people especially those from PR are about to violate their moral high ground posturing when the PKR boss himself stated that they won't pick on Isa's tainted past.