I swear, I have never seen such a perfect articulation of all that we work against.
I just left a comment on politikus’ Ijok post, in response to an almost laughable attempt to cajoule us into submission using arguments that I thought were too lousy, flimsy and eminently vulnerable to counterattack even for Umno.
I’m bigheaded enough to copy out my response below, but please head on over to sayang’s post to get the full context.
(begins)
Dear Big Dog,
I’m glad I got to meet you before, so I can put a face to this response :)
Actually, you’ve more or less hit the problem on the head: people too often only see what they want to.
Is this true of the opposition though?
Let’s go through your hypothesis: that people only join the opposition to make kacau and be hooligans.
Hooliganism can only survive and berleluasa when there is something to be gained by the hooligan (pay, benefits, contracts some day, etc).
Perhaps someone in your position might like to think that we pay people to be hooligans and cause a ruckus. Please, feel free to present any evidence to that effect.
The truth is, even if we wanted to, we couldn’t afford it. And trust me, we don’t want to.
If PKR is a party of thugs, how do you explain the membership of some of the most refined, successful and educated people in Malaysia?
I know beyond doubt that not all BN people are thugs, but I’ve got plenty of photos to suggest that the thug faction is not exactly the tiniest minority. You speak of first hand experience, and I too, acting just as a photographer, have been threatened by Umno Youth as well and witnessed a few feet from me those same Umno Youth hammering a car, kicking it, accosting people, etc.
Speaking of educated luminaries, the closest thing Umno has is perhaps the Oxford grad / no. 1 hooligan, that I suspect you have little love for either.
(ps- if you don’t mind me asking a personal question, why blog anonymously?)
*
On Anwar: you can bash him till the cows come home, we really don’t mind.
I will believe all of your allegations that a leopard cannot change his spots if and when you ever get the misfortune of spending six years in prison.
Until then, I admit I will keep my own counsel and understanding of how history can shape a man who only needed to shut up and nod to be Prime Minister today.
*
But the most important/interesting thing in your last comment is the sense of defeatism you are trying to propagate.
You are free to submit to the current government.
Trying to get us to do the same however, will prove an exercise in futility. I, for one, am not so stupid as to frontally attempt to make you change your mind about Umno, that too would be futile. But I’m here to defend our views in the court of public opinion.
You wrote: “Life won’t change just because a bunch of you thinks something is wrong with the system. Life’s like that. Really. You go with the flow or you go someplace else. Where ever you are, you live by the life like how its being practiced, NOT you perceived it should be practiced.”
Aha, but that is where you couldn’t be more wrong. I have never seen a more perfect example of that which I work against.
We’ll take you on. And like Gandhi, MLK, etc, who also thought something is wrong with the system, we will not go with the flow, or go some place else. We will not submit to injustice, but work to shape reality until it becomes how the good perceive it should be: where justice and equality prevails.
You can go ahead and laugh and gloat, but we press on, we won’t stop, and we will prevail. Did you see the way the rakyat in V for Vendetta swarmed the soldiers in the final scene?
*
Trying to tell us that “no one cares” is the height of desperate propaganda.
In the interests of making this contest interesting, I would invite you to think up better strategies. You can persist, but I assure you it would be the ideological equivalent of bringing a knife to a gunfight – or to use a less martial example, inviting Abdullah/Najib to a public debate with Anwar.
We care deeply, all of us. Me, politikus, people who sweated day and night in Ijok for absolutely nothing but their ideals, YB Lim, Kak Wan. Every single one of us cares.
Even you do, Big Dog. I know you care about truth and justice. And I know that if you search your feelings long enough, and heed your advice about seeing only what one wants to, you’ll eventually find where goodness lies – just like Anakin.
Every single one of us cares. And we’re not going to stop caring, least of all because our respected opponents tell us to.
We do not submit to apathy; we live in faith in the goodness around us.
We do not run like cowards from challenge; we live in unity against adversary.
We do not live in despair or submit to tyranny; we live in hope and strive for justice.
(ends)
Defeatism? Hmmm… the word seems to be used very frequently lately. Ar well.
keep those candles lit, keep them growing.
Haiyah … some people tak malu kena exposed. Misinformation and blackballing .. and counting on people’s short memories .. hehe
Seems that some would like to think that prior to the Reformasi, there was no Opposition and every thing was hunky-dory. The kaka’s been happening for decades and it just got decidedly worse during Mahathir’s administration. Many of us have been fighting this rot for quite a while and trust me, the EC’s been blind in most of 15 years I’ve been part of this fight.
Do the math, that’s way before Reformasi.
Bob K is right…there is more than ample evidence of the government’s wrongdoing prior to reformasi, and even prior to Mahathir. I recall reading this book by some Malay intellectual about the myth of the Malay hero or something like that…he really lambasted many of our Prime Ministers and how they concocted myths about Malay heroes to puff themselves up while demeaning the rakyat jelata.
Then there’s Rais Yatim’s brilliant PhD thesis about the preeminence of the executive in Malaysia – IIRC it was published two or three years before reformasi. And check out Gordon P. Means’ books as well – Means is a political scientist who has been very involved in both Malaysian and Singaporean politics (look at the Wikipedia article on ultras – it seems Means is the one who gave Lee Kuan Yew the word, because LKY was one of the fellas who reviewed Means’ PhD thesis in political science).
The government has never been particularly good or interested in the welfare of the Malaysian people; it just became really blatant under Mahathir because he took the previous administrations’ stands to the extreme, and now Abdullah is continuing Mahathir’s stand.
This oppression is really nothing new under the sun – Mahathir just sowed the seeds of more blatant corruption and oppression, and now Abdullah is reaping the fruits of Mahathir’s labour.