The Malaysian Insider :: Opinion
The Malaysian Insider :: Opinion |
| Posted: 28 Nov 2012 03:46 PM PST NOV 29 — "The country is under threat! ... The liberals are three steps away from burning your freedoms away... There will be violence if Pakatan wins... There'll be violence if Pakatan loses... There'll be violence if we don't speak out against violence... Avert violence, vote Umno, or else!" Sociologists of the future will undoubtedly mine the speeches of Umno leaders for research into varied research areas like dysfunctional personalities, Fascism, Freudian-based political insecurities, media conditioning, subverting historical data to fit illogical constructs and, my favourite, state-designed destruction of multiculturalism. But till they do — which may not be long — or Hollywood releases a movie on how hate has kept a party in power for half a century, the rest of us have to settle for the peccadilloes emerging from the confines of the PWTC labyrinth for the next few days, the hate-carnival commonly referred to as the Umno general assembly. Dr M set the tone with "What would Pakatan do if they lost?" three days ago, and Umno women's chief gave the other side of the coin, "What would Pakatan do if they won?" yesterday. Both outcomes mean violence, so they say. Which then through a process of elimination leaves us only with one possible situation in which there is no violence; when there is no Pakatan. Umno is telling the Malaysian people that the only time they can foresee no violence is when no one stands in their way anymore. My niece is a smart girl, and she turns four tomorrow, and if I explain to her what Umno wants is for Pakatan to vanish; she'd consider it a short while, lower her voice which she does whenever she is about disapprove and say, "Not good." Not good indeed, if democracy to the party leading the country for 50 years means no other party gets to replace them. Umno is moving closer and closer to saying to the Malaysian public that the right to choose your own government is over-rated and when less is heard from the people, the easier it is for them to get on with the job of governing. That familiar left jab I've said it before, I don't have an appetite for violence. It's crude and nothing good ever comes from partaking in it. But I remember my childhood friend, who I just had drinks with over the weekend in Borneo where he lives now. A year younger, his dad asked me to look after him when he entered my secondary school — not many boys from my neighbourhood attend my school. Ah Meng was also the only Chinese in my neighbourhood football team. Every match we'd go to, he'd be a marked man. For in this nation racism is so ingrained and encouraged from young that many try to hurt him in challenges because they probably worked out that none of his team-mates would stand up for him. I'd stand up for him. Many of us did. Because there is no such thing as standing aside and letting your mate get mauled because of how he looked. Even children know that, from my niece near the Swiss Alps to a bunch of sweaty kids in cheap jerseys chasing a ball on awful fields on Saturday mornings. Demons This year will not see a general election. The drama the prime minister generates is just about keeping the whole country on edge so that everyone is worn down. Mr Prime Minister, you might not want to test the patience of your people indefinitely just to show that you and your people have always been in power. While the PM's closing speech for the assembly this year will be filled with vitriol beyond comprehension and loud thundering applauses within the giant hall, he might remind himself every dictator — as he races to an airfield to flee — is perplexed by how those who have apparently loved him so much have turned on him. A government that runs a police and military, a stacked-up paramilitary unit (RELA) and a subservient judiciary is scared of shadows; that the millions of Malaysians with Astro units and expensive hire-purchase automobile debts will somehow mount a violent uprising — just because. Matey, switch off the telly, take some paracetamol pills, wash your feet and go to bed. Leave a light on, in case the boogieman shows up. Because you are hallucinating. We won't back down The only thing the people of Malaysia have done in the past five years and now with greater alacrity is to stand up for what they believe. There are no pitchforks, just placards. A nation long silenced is speaking out. There will be a general election in 2013, and life will go on after it. It's just that the people of Malaysia will not camp inside their nuclear bunkers for the next five years till the 14th general election. The people have showed up, and they are going to keep showing up because surprise, surprise this is the new world order. But seriously, Umno has to spare itself long-term embarrassment, everything said now is going to public records. Why not come to terms with one key pillar of any democracy, that every party can lose power? It is the flagrant obtuseness of Umno leaders which is forcing all of us into the ridiculous, and a world watches stunned at some of the worst theatrics in the game of politics in living history. I'll help the Umno leadership understand where the country actually stands right now — the rakyat will not be dictated to anymore, irrespective of how the general election pans out. They won't punch you Umno, they will just hold their ground. They won't back down. You can punch if you want, Umno. The truth is, the people are stronger than Umno thought they were. And Umno is weaker than it thinks it is. I've picked my spot in the line, though I do have the butterflies in my stomach. But just as I have all my life, despite my own lack of courage, I never let my mates down. I won't do any punching, I'll just stand my ground. I won't back down. All of us will. Of course in time we will know how many will make up the "us." But please, enjoy your speeches for now. * The views expressed here are the personal opinion of the columnist. |
| Save your children from themselves Posted: 28 Nov 2012 03:36 PM PST NOV 29 — Do you remember when you were 13 years old? I'm sure you do, because everyone in primary school looked forward to it. I did. That's when you finally get to wear secondary school clothes. Boys switched from navy blue trousers to green pants. Girls changed colours from dark blue to torquoise. The colours signified that you're a little older now. You're no longer a kid, even if you're not quite a teenager yet, not unlike a certain song by a certain former pop princess. Leaving "childhood" and entering "adolescence", we also felt like we were wiser. We felt that we could now think for ourselves, that we could come to well-informed decisions and opinions of our own. We were past puberty and we discovered the concept of "love" as we understood it then. Raging hormones do wonders for making us feel all grown up. This is what it feels like to be an adult, we thought. And then we started to question things around us. We started to pass judgment. We started to express our thoughts and opinions strongly. We started to argue passionately when people disagreed with us. All this we did, because we felt we knew enough by then to do so. We also began to find out who we were, and we revelled in discovering things we identified with like our favourite music groups and hobbies and sports. But then we reached the end of adolescence, and by our early 20s we look back at our teenage years and wonder at our naivety and stupidity and ignorance. We wonder why we so easily believed rubbish repeated to us by ignorant adults, just because it sounded like it made perfect sense. We wished we were more aware of how lacking our knowledge and experience were back then. By our early 20s, we learn to question deeper, not just what we heard but what we felt and thought we knew, too. As the famous saying goes, wisdom is, and starts with, the humility to accept the fact that you don't have all the right answers, and the courage to learn to ask the right questions. The word "wisdom" there is interchangeable with "maturity". And we realise that the "maturity" in our teenage years was far from what we thought it was. With that realisation comes many regrets and embarrassing memories we'll be happy to forget forever. We blush when we recall some of the things we said and did and argued over. Back then they seemed logical and sensible, but in hindsight we see how stupid and immature we were. I'm sure you remember all of this, because it's a stage we all go through. (Unless you're one of those people who never really grew up, in which case let me say you're welcome.) Everytime it crosses my mind, I'm thankful that I was past that stage when Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and the like became as widespread as we see today. What makes me thankful for the absence of social media in my teenage years is all the embarrassing things I would've done on it. Remember the funny observations and witty truths we were proud to say back then? Today they make us look silly and lame. Remember the things we felt were impossibly important and merit the utmost attention? With adult perspective today, those things are trivial. But they're not silly, lame or trivial to the teenagers we were back then. We believed earnestly, because there are things that only the passage of time can help us understand. And imagine if the teenagers we were back then had access to the Internet, where we could have (and would have) made our statements for the whole world to see. Instead of a handful of friends occasionally reminding us of our embarrassing outbursts during lunch meet-ups, we have everyone on our Facebook friends list (and everyone they know) know about them, even those we lose touch with after a few years. Today we increasingly see kids and teenagers on these social networking media. And they're loud. They're learning to speak up and have a stand, like we were at their age. They express their thoughts and opinions on anything and everything. This is not necessarily bad, since some of them use these platforms as creative outlets for their poetry and writings and stuff. But some are expressing exactly the thoughts we are thankful to forget today. And once something is out on the Internet, it's there forever. In 2010, the US Library of Congress announced that it was acquiring the entire archive of Twitter messages from March 2006 onwards. There are many other resources on the Internet that keep records too. Unless you've been careful about your privacy, you'll be surprised at what you find when you Google yourself. Unlike us, teenagers today can easily have their embarrassing moments immortalised for posterity. For the unfortunate girl who ranted about renouncing her Malaysian nationality last weekend over the ungracious reception to some K-Pop singers, in 10 years there will still be archives of the incident somewhere on the Internet with her picture. When her prospective employers search hard enough on her background as most employers do today, they'll come across it, and then what happens to her? All it took was one mistake, one moment of impulse on the Internet. Even adults are susceptible to missteps on the Internet. We increasingly hear of job applications turned down due to unflattering discoveries about the applicant on social networking sites. What chance would teenagers with raging hormones driving their mouse clicks and statuses and tweets have? It's up to parents to provide some defence for their children from themselves on the Internet. Educate them on the dangers. Show them what pitfalls await, and stop them from doing things on Facebook or Twitter or YouTube that they'll regret later. They won't understand and they won't appreciate it. To them you're being parents, jealous of their freedom and technological know-how, even if you know better. But some day, they'll thank you for it. * The views expressed here are the personal opinion of the columnist. |
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