Reasonable Malay and the Reasonable Malaysians. Free ourselves from UMNO Bondage!

The reasonable Malay.

If we were to go into legal history, there were so many sources being attributed as the origins of the phrase the man on the Clapham Omnibus. Omnibus is an archaic term which simply means public transportation. That was why I mentioned Bas Srijaya, LRT etc. when I was a student, the bus company operating from Pudu and Jalan Silang near Bangunan Cahaya Suria was the Toon Foong Omnibus( not sure about the spelling).

It’s a legal fiction or a hypothetical person selected to represent the standard by which a man would act or behave. The legal fiction was used by the courts in English law where it is necessary to decide whether a party has acted in the way that a reasonable person should. Should a reasonable man condone the corruption perpetrated and patronized by UMNO? Only an imbecile would. The man on the Clapham omnibus is a reasonably educated and intelligent but non-specialist person, against whom the conduct of the defendant can be measured. If one departs from this standard, then he is not reasonable.

The opinion of the reasonable man , then translates into the opinion of the Public which is the opinion of the bald-headed man at the back of the omnibus- this phrase was used by the English writer and public opinion shaper Walter Bagehot to describe the normal man of London.

For those who travel abroad, they may make comparisons. In Australia, the man on the Clapham omnibus has his equivalent in New South Wales and Victoria as the man on the Bondi tram and "the man on the Bourke Street tram". In Hong Kong, the equivalent expression is "the man on the Shaukiwan Tram.

In Malaysia, a more practical and direct meaning to the term has been thought out by some very sensible readers of my Blog. I must thank them in advance. One meaning of the term was provided by the commentator who goes by the penname of OneMalaysian.

By “reasonable” Malay you must surely mean a reasoning Malay, a rational Malay, a thinking Malay. Yes, I think a large section of Malays are reasonable. Why would they be otherwise? When they think things through, they would realize that if Pakatan Rakyat wins, the majority of the MPs would be Malay simply because there are more Malay seats than non-Malay seats. It would be a new coalition of clean and high-minded Malays in charge compared to this current corrupt, inept bunch.

The reasonable Malay will realize that the institution of Malay monarchy is still well and alive. The Malay Rulers are protected by the constitution. And Malay customs would continue to flourish. If the Malay rulers are in power, so would Islam, the official religion as provided in the Constitution. And Malays would continue to speak Malay or any other additional language they so choose.

None of these rights and privileges will be taken away by the new Malay-led government. Why would they want to do that? What is there to gain?

The reasonable Malay can see that the new coalition – Pakatan Rakyat – does mean to bring about a better future for the Malays and for all Malaysians. There will be no cronyism. There will be no corruption, at least at the top. Wealth will be better distributed. Rural development will finally get some serious help. And the poor – 40% of all Malaysians, but mostly Malay – will at last get helped.

I am sure more and more Malays will come to realize all this. I just hope there are enough reasonable Malays to make this happen. GE 13 hinges on how reasonable they are.

And here are some thoughts from the redoubtable Walla.

Our reasonable Malays are the heart of this country. Without them, the road to chauvinism and injustice would have been shortened, what more with UMNO tolls vigorously erected along the way.

An astute observer noted that right now two-thirds of our Malay voters are poised to vote for Pakatan in the coming GE13. This means they will vote for even DAP so long as doing so delivers a Pakatan win. In the coming days, that two-thirds is going to increase dramatically because many of the retired UMNO old-hands are themselves abandoning UMNO to join PAS and by their doing so, they are creating shining examples by their action that they have the awakening courage to walk away from the lies and hypocrisy of UMNO towards a new resurgence of national conscience.

This tsunamic shift in allegiance cannot be stopped because our reasonable Malays no longer trust or believe in UMNO. They might have believed in the old UMNO but not this one. They have gone beyond the calculative handouts and soporific but hoaxing coaxes.

  And what is today's UMNO whose DNA was corrupted by that M-the-M? Everyday a new worm wriggles out from the woodwork.

You know they depressed the angle of their tear gas cannons by 30 percent. Instead of shooting up, they lowered their aims to shoot down and right into the Bersih 3 rally marchers. That's how our brave Malay engineer lost an eye. That's how thousands were bullied that day. Why is UMNO's Hishamuddin holding back the release of his videos? Why is UMNO's Haniff of ISA infamy heading the panel when he had already sinisterly labeled the marchers without fact before the event had even taken place?

  People who marched that day saw plain-clothed blues with names but no serial numbers on their tags. A video caught one who had breached the barricade; during the CSL-LGE debate he was with the other SB officers. Was all of this because one senior PDRM officer, ambitious and of the same mould as M-the-M, had before the event said the marchers will be 'smashed'? Anything you didn't like about that event - look at the agent provocateurs and heavy-handedness of UMNO the bully.

 Someone did a calculation of the area of Jalan Tun Perak and based on the jam-packed area of each marcher, came to 100,000 for that stretch alone. At least two times that were on the other stretches. Thus, 250,000 is not a small or unreasonable number that depicts the real presence of our reasonable Malays and non-Malays of this country who have had enough of UMNO. It is certainly bigger than the 'tens of thousands' that was used as a phrase by one MSM to describe the turnout at an UMNO event, and that after the MSM was exposed as bluffing on past numbers by none other than the great Sakmongkolians in this blog. Right? The MSM of UMNO have met their match right here.