’Im not a person politically inclined. I’m not passionate about
anything political but I know enough about their deceits. Politicians are
conniving scumbags. I don’t read the
newspapers, just to save me the embarrasment of reading our so called
“politicians” spew words so infantile and relentless mission to deceive us for
their own personal gain…or wealth to be
precise. They’re the taskforce of
lying imbeciles appointed by money and corruption and not the Rakyat. If you’ve
got a gun to yr head and forced to choose between “The Sodomite” and Rosmah…errrr I mean Najib for PM, Najib would
seem like the lesser of 2 evils but do
we really have a choice? Given the choice to me, I would want Dr. M to rule
forever. Verbal, incredibly clever, a man with vision…ecetera..ecetera..ecetera.. Pak Lah was the biggest pussy ever
appointed by Dr. M. A pussy who lasted only ONE term. I dunno lah, it’s just that I’m tired of the
govt’s phony displays of holiness and our politicians tainted chant of “Kami
Prihatin”. Their “Perihatiness” doesn’t hold water..(air pun kena catu how lah?
Pun intented). Much is left to be desired…we need our PM”s endorsement even
when we nak pegi jamban, so to speak.
An elderly OKU couple I know does not get a
cent of help, (although they were called for an interview several times this
year alone). What was worse was that they were talked down by the officers at
the Lembaga Zakat (Banting branch) and this happened in front of my very eyes,
whilst their able bodied Indonesian neighbour who own 10acres of palm oil
plantation gets his bantuan kebajikan from Lembaga Zakat of RM 250.00 EVERY
SINGLE MONTH! The OKU couple gets a measly RM10 from some Pakatan Rakyat dude
during some so called “Kami Perihatin” berbuka puasa dinner in Sentul. Macam ni
kah mau pancing undi? Politicians are
not your parents. They are your servants. You don’t need a government slogan
coined by a foreign PR agency to wrap your project in. You just go ahead and do
it. The country is tired of being ignored and talked down to by swaggering
mediocrities.
That’s my humble opinion.
Face it, Malaysia has always been a divided nation. This speech
by TRH is certainly an eye opener. It shows how deep rooted corruption is at
all levels of the government and other bodies in society too. Why of course!!!!
Malaysia Semua Boleh kan??? In this speech, he embodied my sentiments
perfectly.
Here’s the speech by TRH recently :
“Thank you for inviting me to speak with you. I am truly
honoured. I have played some small role in the life of this nation, but having
been on the wrong side of one or two political fights with the powers that be,
I am not as close to the young people of this country as I would hope to be.
History, and the 8 o’clock news, are written by the victors. In
recent years the government’s monopoly of the media has been destroyed by the
technology revolution.
You could say I was also a member of the UKEC. Well I was,
except that belonged to the predecessor of the UKEC by more than fifty years,
The Malayan Students Union of the UK and Eire. I led this organisation in
1958/59. I was then a student of Queen’s University at Belfast, in a rather
cooler climate than Kota Bharu’s.
Your invitation to participate in the MSLS was prefaced by an
essay which calls for an intellectually informed activism. I congratulate you
on this. The Youth of today, you note, “will chart the future of Malaysia.” You
say you “no longer want to be ignored and leave the future of our Malaysia at
the hands of the current generation.” You “want to grab the bull by the
horns... and have a say in where we go as a society and as a nation.”I feel the
same, actually. A lot of Malaysians feel the same. You are right. The present
generation in power has let Malaysia down.
But also you cite two things as testimony of the importance of
youth and of student activism to this country, the election results of 2008 and
“the Prime Minister’s acknowledgement of the role of youth in the development
of the country.”
So perhaps you are a little way yet from thinking for
yourselves. The first step in “grabbing the bull by the horns” is not to
required the endorsement of the Prime Minister, or any Minister, for your
activism.
When I was a student our newly formed country was already a
leader in the postcolonial world. We were sought out as a leader in the
Afro-Asian Conference which inaugurated the Non-Aligned Movement and the G-77.
The Afro-Asian movement was led by such luminaries as Zhou En-lai, Nehru, Kwame
Nkrumah, Soekarno. Malaysians were seen as moderate leaders capable of
mediating between these more radical leaders and the West. We were known for
our moderation, good sense and reliability.
We were a leader in the Islamic world as ourselves and as we
were, without our leaders having to put up false displays of piety. His memory
has been scrubbed out quite systematically from our national consciousness, so
you might not know this or much else about him, but it was Tengku Abdul Rahman
who established our leadership in the Islamic world by coming up with the idea
of the OIC and making it happen.
Under his leadership Malaysia led the way in taking up the
anti-apartheid cause in the Commonwealth and in the United Nations, resulting
in South Africa’s expulsion from these bodies.
Here was a man at ease with himself, made it a policy goal that
Malaysia be “a happy country”. He loved sport and encouraged sporting
achievement among Malaysians. He was owner of many a fine race horse.
He called a press conference and had a beer with his stewards
when his horse won at the Melbourne Cup. He had nothing to hide because his
great integrity in service was clear to all. Now we have religious and moral
hypocrites who cheat, lie and steal in office but never have a drink, who
propagate an ideologically shackled education system for all Malaysians while
they send their own kids to elite academies in the West.
Speaking of football. You’re too young to have experienced the
Merdeka Cup, which Tunku started. We had a respectable side in the sixties and
seventies. Teams from across Asia would come to play in Kuala Lumpur. Teams
such as South Korea and Japan, whom we defeated routinely. We were one of the
better sides in Asia. We won the Bronze medal at the Asian games in 1974 and
qualified for the Moscow Olympics in 1980. Today our FIFA ranking is 157 out of
203 countries. That puts us in the lowest quartile, below Maldives (149), the
smallest country in Asia, with just 400,000 people living about 1.5 metres
above sea level who have to worry that their country may soon be swallowed up
by climate change. Here in ASEAN we are behind Indonesia, Thailand, Singapore,
whom we used to dominate, and our one spot above basketball-playing
Philippines.
The captain of our illustrious 1970’s side was Soh Chin Aun.
Arumugam, Isa Bakar, Santokh Singh, James Wong and Mokhtar Dahari were heroes
whose names rolled off the tongues of our schoolchildren as they copied them on
the school field. It wasn’t about being the best in the world, but about being
passionate and united and devoted to the game.
It was the same in Badminton, except at one time we were the
best in the world. I remember Wong Peng Soon, the first Asian to win the
All-England Championship, and then just dominated it throughout the 1950. Back
home every kid who played badminton in every little kampong wanted to call
himself Wong Peng Soon. There was no tinge of anybody identifying themselves
exclusively as Chinese, Malays, Indian. Peng Soon was a Malaysian hero. Just
like each of our football heroes. Now we do not have an iota of that feeling.
Where has it all gone?
I don’t think it’s mere nostalgia that that makes us think there
was a time when the sun shone more brightly upon Malaysia. I bring up sport
because it has been a mirror of our more general performance as nation. When we
were at ease with who we were and didn’t need slogans to do our best together,
we did well. When race and money entered our game, we declined. The same
applies to our political and economic life.
Soon after independence we were already a highly successful
developing country. We had begun the infrastructure building and
diversification of our economy that would be the foundation for further growth.
We carried out an import-substitution programme that stimulated local
productive capacity. From there we started an infrastructure buildup which
enabled a diversification of the economy leading to rapid industrialisation. We
carried out effective programmes to raise rural income and help with landless
with programmes such as FELDA. Our achievements in achieving growth with equity
were recognised around the world. We were ahead of Our peer group in economic
development were South Korea, Hong Kong, Singapore and Taiwan, and we led the
pack. I remember we used to send technical consultants to advise the South
Koreans.
By the lates nineties, however, we had fallen far behind this
group and were competing with Thailand and Indonesia. Today, according to the
latest World Investment Report, FDI into Malaysia is at about a twenty year
low. We are entering the peer group of Cambodia, Myanmar and the Philippines as
an investment destination. Thailand, despite a month long siege of the capital,
attracted more FDI than we did last year. Indonesia and Vietnam far outperform
us, not as a statistical blip but consistently. Soon we shall have difficulty
keeping up with The Philippines. This, I believe, is called relegation. If we
take into account FDI outflow, the picture is even more interesting. Last year
we received US$1.38 billion (RM4.40 billion) in investments but US$ 8.04
billion flowed out. We are the only country in Southeast Asia which has
suffered nett FDI outflow. I am not against outward investment. It can be a
good thing for the country. But an imbalance on this scale indicates capital
flight, not mere investment overseas.
Without a doubt, Malaysia is slipping. Billions have been looted
from this country, and billions more are being siphoned out as our entire
political structure crumbles. Yet we are gathered here in comfort, in a country
that still seems to ‘work.’ Most of the time. This is due less to good
management than to the extraordinary wealth of this country. You were born into
a country of immense resources both natural and cultural and social. We have
been wearing down this advantage with mismanagement and corruption. With lies,
tall tales and theft. We have a political class unwilling or unable to address
the central issue of the day because they have grown fat and comfortable with a
system built on lies and theft. It is easy to fall into the lull caused by the
combination of whatever wealth has not been plundered and removed and political
class that lives in a bubble of sycophancy.
I urge you not to fall into that complacency. It is time to wake
up. That waking up can begin here, right here, at this conference. Not tomorrow
or the day after but today. So let me, as I have the honour of opening this
conference, suggest the following:
Overcome the urge to have our hopes for the future endorsed by
the Prime Minister. He will have retired, and I’ll be long gone when your
future arrives. The shape of your future is being determined now.
Resist the temptation to say “in line with” when we do
something. Your projects, believe it or not, don’t have to be in line with any
government campaign for them to be meaningful. You don’t need to polish
anyone’s apple. Just get on with what you plan to do.
Do not put a lid on certain issues as “sensitive” because
someone said they are. Or it is against the Social Contract. Or it is
“politicisation”. You don’t need to have your conversation delimited by the
hyper-sensitive among us. Sensitivity is often a club people use to hit each
other with. Reasoned discussion of contentious issues builds understanding and
trust. Test this idea.
It’s not “uber-liberal” to ask for an end to having politics,
economic policy, education policy and everything and the kitchen sink
determined by race. It’s called growing up. Go look up “liberal” in a
dictionary.
Please resist the temptation to say Salam 1 Malaysia, or Salam
Vision 2020 or Salam Malaysia Boleh, or anything like that. Not even when you
are reading the news. It’s embarrassing. I think it’s OK to say plain old salam
the way the Holy Prophet did, wishing peace unto all humanity. You say you want
to “promote intellectual discourse.” I take that to mean you want to have
reasonable, thought-through and critical discussions, and slogans are the enemy
of thought. Banish them.
Don’t let the politicians you have invited here talk down to
you. Don’t let them tell you how bright and “exuberant” you are, that you are
the future of the nation, etc. If you close your eyes and flow with their
flattery you have safely joined the caravan, a caravan taking the nation down a
sink hole. If they tell you the future is in your hands kindly request that
they hand that future over first. Ask them how come the youngest member of our
cabinet is 45 and is full of discredited hacks? Our Merdeka cabinet had an
average age below thirty. You’re not the first generation to be bright. Mine
wasn’t too stupid. But you could be the first generation of students and young
graduates in fifty years to push this nation through a major transformation.
And it is a transformation we need desperately.
You will be told that much is expected of you, much has been
given to you, and so forth. This is all true. Actually much has also been
stolen from you. Over the last twenty five years, much of the immense wealth
generated by our productive people and our vast resources has been looted. This
was supposed to have been your patrimony. The uncomplicated sense of belonging
fully, wholeheartedly, unreservedly, to this country, in all it diversity, that
has been taken from you...
Our sense of ourselves as Malaysians, a free and united people,
has been replaced by a tale of racial strife and resentment that continues to
haunt us. The thing is, this tale is false.
The most precious thing you have been deprived of has been your
history. Someone of my generation finds it hard to describe what must seem like
a completely different country to you now. Malaysia was not born in strife but
in unity. Our independence was achieved through a demonstration of unity by the
people in supporting a multiracial government led by Tengku Abdul Rahman. That
show of unity, demonstrated first through the municipal elections of 1952 and
then through the Alliance’s landslide victory in the elections of 1955, showed
that the people of Malaya were united in wanting their freedom.
We surprised the British, who thought we could not do this.
Today we are no longer as united as we were then. We are also
less free. I don’t think this is a coincidence. It takes free people to have
the psychological strength to overcome the confines of a racialised worldview.
It takes free people to overcome those politicians bent on hanging on to power
gained by racialising every feature of our life including our football teams.
Hence while you are at this conference, let me argue, that as an
absolute minimum, we should call for the repeal of unjust and much abused Acts
which are reversals of freedoms that we won at Merdeka.
I ask you in joining me in calling for the repeal of the ISA and
the OSA. These draconian laws have been used, more often than not, as political
tools rather than instruments of national security. They create a climate of
fear. These days there is a trend among right wing nationalist groups to
identify the ISA with the defence of Malay rights. This is a self-inflicted
insult on Malay rights. As if our Constitutional protections needed draconian
laws to enforce them. I wish they were as zealous in defending our right not to
be robbed by a corrupt ruling elite. We don’t seem to be applying the law of
the land there, let alone the ISA.
I ask you to join me in calling for the repeal of the Printing
and Publications Act, and above all, the Universities and Colleges Act. I don’t
see how you can pursue your student activism with such freedom and support in
the UK and Eire while forgetting that your brethren at home are deprived of
their basic rights of association and expression by the UCA. The UCA has done
immense harm in dumbing down our universities.
We must have freedom as guaranteed under our Constitution...
Freedom to assemble, associate, speak, write, move. This is basic. Even on
matters of race and even on religious matters we should be able to speak
freely, and we shall educate each other.
It is time to realise the dream of Dato’ Onn and the spirit of
the Alliance, of Tunku Abdul Rahman. That dream was one of unity and a single
Malaysian people. They went as far as they could with it in their time. Instead
of taking on the torch we have reversed course. The next step for us as a
country is to move beyond the infancy of race-based parties to a non-racial
party system. Our race-based party system is the key political reason why we
are a sick country, declining before our own eyes, with money fleeing and
people telling their children not to come home after their studies.
So let us try to take 1 Malaysia seriously. Millions have been
spent putting up billboards and adding the term to every conceivable thing. We
even have cuti-cuti 1 Malaysia. Can’t take a normal holiday anymore.
This is all fine. Now let us see if it means anything. Let us
see the Government of the day lead by example. 1 Malaysia is empty because it
is propagated by a Government that promotes the racially-based party system
that is the chief cause of our inability to grow up in our race relations. Our
inability to grow up in our race relations is the chief reason why investors,
and we ourselves, no longer have confidence in our economy. The reasons why we
are behind Maldives in football, and behind the Philippines in FDI, are linked.
So let us take 1 Malaysia seriously, and convert Barisan
Nasional into a party open to all citizens. Let it be a multiracial party open
to direct membership. PR will be forced to do the same or be left behind the
times. Then we shall have the vehicles for a two party, non-race-based system.
If Umno, MIC or MCA are afraid of losing supporters, let them
get their members to join this new multiracial party. PR should do the same.
Nobody need feel left out. Umno members can join en masse. The Hainanese
Kopitiam Association can join whichever party they want, or both parties en
masse if they like. We can maintain our cherished civil associations, however
we choose to associate. But we drop all communalism when we compete for the
ballot. When our candidates stand for Elections, let them ever after stand only
as Malaysians, better or worse.
-- The world is a dangerous place not because of people who do
evil, but because of good people who look on and do nothing about it. -- Albert
Einstein
