The Tyranny of a cornered UMNO

Some fellow Malaysians were on hand to express their anger at the US government recently. As we know, president Trump has ordered the US to bar people from certain Arab countries to enter USA. I was told that around 500 people demonstrated in front of the US embassy in Kuala Lumpur.

I am not going to discuss the merits or demerits of that decision. I note one particular response that was circulated on the internet warning the USA the decision could cause negative effects on the USA; America could find its exports banned from entering into other countries expressing solidarity with the outcast countries. I doubt that would happen.

Level headed people will eventually come to terms with the US decision to ban undesirables from entering USA. Except that, the same decision discriminates against the innocents from these countries and deprives them of the freedom to travel into America. For a country that holds the idea of freedom like a religion and defends the idea with  messianic zeal, this is hard to reconcile. The Americans reconcile this unhappy outcome by regarding the innocent people as collateral casualty I think.

But why do these indignant and greatly offended people want to enter into America in the first place? The answer I think is because these people are trying to escape the tyranny and the backwardness at home.  They want to come to America to make a better life for themselves and their children.

But why are their countries abandoned? Because, again I think, their own countries lacked a most important ingredient for success- the lack of and the restraint on individual freedom.

Back home, the state is invasive, interfering in running the lives of these individuals. It is the attraction of the celebrated idea of freedom in western countries notably America, that attracts these wretched people- free to live out their lives either in a positive way or in morally objectionable ways.

We are all too familiar with Arab people , both men and women, who when about to reach our own country abandon and discard their ‘prohibitive’ dressing to be attired in modern clothing and upon reaching their hotels, the first thing they do, is to consume intoxicating drinks. At night the men will go after women.

I hope the significance of the idea of freedom was not lost on the brave people demonstrating in front of the US Embassy in Malaysia. The protection of the individual against the tyranny of the state is a perpetual struggle. It is never ending.

The greatest danger to our people and to the people deserting their own countries to enter the country of the Great Satan, is the concentration of government power. The concentration of economic and political power in the hands of an elite is a sure recipe for tyranny; while the dispersion of power, distribution of power among competing groups will lead to prosperity and success.

At home, the danger to freedom from a ‘strong’ government seems to be forgotten. For some portion of the Malays for example, the idea of a government with concentrated power is very appealing. A strong government is needed it is said, to enforce and force upon obstinate others, the Malay agenda- and the Malay agenda has been grotesquely reduced to simply, the idea of having a natural right on everything.

Winning political power simply means an inhibited freedom to grab and steal and to bully objecting voices. The idea of a monopoly of state power has mutated into a right to uncontrolled freedom for some to steal and justify the theft as being necessary to further the idea of a Malay agenda.

That is why the idea to federalise Penang is quickly adopted by the UMNO brown shirts –empty headed UMNO apparatchiks quickly supported the idea. UMNO has not gotten over the fact they cannot handle losses. They continue to form institutions and governmental instruments to undermine legitimately elected state governments. They continue to form a government within a government.  They compete with legitimately elected state governments to channel money and projects.

UMNO cannot deny, it is essentially feudal and undemocratic.

In states which BN lost, they form parallel village committee for the advancement and security ( JKKK). Clearly this action undermines legitimately constituted apparatuses set up by state governments that won over BN.

Why are people like Mustapha Mohamed, Noh Omar and Zainal Abidin heads of federal action councils that continue to undermine legitimately elected state governments? Noh Omar undermines the state government of Selangor, Mustapha Mohamad despite appearing as saintly as he could, continue to undermine Kelantan and Zainal Abidin continually wishing he can take over Penang as of right.

It is now very clear that UMNO stands for un-democracy. They want to have absolute power- not to do good, but to enforce their own warped ideas. They want unbridled power to steal and enrich themselves. Umno wants to relocate power into their own hands and in particular in the hands of an elite.

This is a display of arrogance on a grand scale. The UMNO people including the pugilistic Adnan Mansor, are attracted by the so called good a strong government can offer-if only government power is in the hands of ‘good’ people like themselves of course. And the goodest of them all is of course the grand master of kleptocracy known over the world as MO1.