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.
