Thinking Aloud

I’m pretty sure that most people will have heard of the infamous incident of a certain son-in-law being, unfortunately, extra candid concerning his sentiments towards the the Chinese community.

Mr. Khairy Jamalludin is either an idiot or being very malicious.  

It was reported that he said that UMNO must stay united (obviously referring to the current spat between his father-in-law and former PM, Tun Dr. Mahathir), otherwise the Chinese community would take advantage of the situations to make demands that would undermine the Malay community. He quoted two examples: one concerning the Siqiu incident and the more recent memorandum submitted by non-malay ministers to the PM.

I have several observations to make.

Firstly, the talk about racial unity and like is rather farce. It is often people like this, highly public figures making this sort of uncalled for statements that show to our children, that it is ok to cast a racial slur against one another. It is unfortunate that this happened in the public light, but much much more of this kind of slurring occurs on a day-to-day basis, in mamak shops and kopitiams. More is true, it happens in homes. This is racism: When a Chinese teaches his father that his children are victims in Malaysia because of bumiputra special rights, and conversely when a Malay father blames his economic state on the predetory Chinese.

Secondly, it is very sad, that Mr. KJ does not see the wrongness of his statement. To be fair, he is under a lot of stress. A slip of a toungue is not uncommon. There is a harsh streak of unfairness here. When the nine cabinet ministers presented their memorandum, a huge uproar was caused. They retracted the memo and life went on. Now retracting a memo is something akin to an apology: A racant of your original position.

Unfortunately here, I have yet to see him apologize. No, all he did was claim he was misunderstood. (So much in common with Noh Omar). And thats what he did, claim he was misunderstood and hide behind his Pemuda Chief. It seems to me that in M’sian society, we have seen this kind of things all to often. Verbal bullies, taunting us making all sort of uncalled for remarks and hurting our feelings finally getting away with it because it is short of libel and just saying, "Oh, I was misunderstood." We have become so dead to this. All we can do is simmer inside. There is no accountability now in the public sphere, people can say what they want and when things churn a little, just say, "I was misunderstood."

Concluding, as they say, friends protect friends. As far as I’m concerned, Mr. KJ has done nothing criminally wrong so to speak. But certainly he has hurt feelings, it seems to me that the consensus within the BN party is that the status quo must stay as it is. Never mind one or two idiots who make stupid statements, let’s just pretend it never happened. " Oh, what if the people don’t vote for us the next time." " No, lar…we always win wan, nevermind-lah."

What is BN? This is not the spirit of give and take. If people can say, UMNO is the backbone of BN, this is not the spirit of give and take, this is bulldozing. This is political blackmail.  This is a true example of one particular political party holding a country hostage just to stay in power. This is an example of freeloaders, lazy politicians who pillion ride on the hard work of their friends who are trying to make M’sia a better country.

Sick, that’s what this is, sick…