Days of Irony

I

when it suits you
you chant the suqiu mantra

when it suits you
you revert to being the decades old ultra
the angry voice of the bumiputra

when it suits you
extremist communist long ago retired words
are marched out again to apply to the suqiu

who plead simply nothing else
except that we as a nation decide
to end this most arbitrary divide
this economic apartheid


II

when it suits you
as ultimate beneficiary
you summon the valkyries
of may thirteen nineteen sixty-nine

when it suits you
you raise the communal sword
cause your minions to cry this common chord
threaten violence like a feudal overlord
all these to keep the voters in line

when it suits you
operasi lallang rumours are dispelled
keadilan leaders are instead arrested in the dead of night
for what you call a riot
and not a basic human right


III

when it suits you
you say there are no bailouts of your favoured few
but taxpayers give your cronies
tajuddin ramli and halim saad life anew

when it suits you
you privatise an airline, highways, light rail transits
and cars built for national pride

when it suits you
you have us all the people buy it back
and you have taken us all for an expensive ridiculous ride


IV

these days of irony
are these last days of your tyranny
the nation sees through the lies you keep repeating

these days of irony
are these last days of your tyranny
will your end come in sudden uprising
uncompromising

these days of irony
are these last days of your tyranny
will your end, come in fleeing the people's taunt
as family and friends hastily retreat from the fount


V

these days of irony
are these last days of your tyranny
thousands flock in ritual to the opulence
you call the people's palace in putra jaya

these days of irony
are these last days of your tyranny
all agog and in awe to wish you this hari raya
do they come in homage or to bid you farewell
to an imperial icon we have come to know so well


VI

these days of irony
are these last days of your tyranny
you have just turned three quarters of a century
still desperately aching for a lasting legacy

these days of irony
are these last days of your tyranny
your rivals achieve more for the soul of this country
bullied beaten and imprisoned
than all the material monuments you have envisioned



Paksanno

When Power Corrupts Absolutely

If one had been privy to the abuses of those in power and waited for the day
they would go rather than forment a rebellion, one would be horrified to
learn that their successors would merely carry on with those abuses. The
abuse of power seems to be a tradition inherent in those who held on to
power for too long; the corrupting influences of power a certainty for those
possessing it.

The ruling party we all know too well has held on to power for almost half a
century now; beginnning as an idea to cast off the yoke of colonialism, and
then to uplift the malay race and the country for all its citizens. Ideas
find form in movements and with success they became institutions. Through
the intervening decades, those ideas have dissipated if not disappeared
altogether and the movement has invariably lost its way. What we are left
with now is an empty shell of an institution, holding all the reins of
power, full of hollow rhetoric, devoid of purpose except solely to sustain
itself in power.

If one is revolted by the sexual excesses of those who have been elected
time and time again to the very top echelons of the present leadership; they
are nothing new. Be it khalwat, statutory rape or wanton debauchery, how do
they compare with the plight of non-citizens at the dawn of independence
threatened with denial of citizenship who had to give up their daughters as
sacrificial lambs to satisfy the lusts of those in positions to grant them
that very citizenship? Under their angry breath they had grudgingly cursed
these men of power, but stilled their protest then nonetheless.

When denied power, the institution organises pogroms to terrorise the
population. Exactly 31 years ago to the day this very day in May my wife
heard the rumblings of a commotion where she lived off Jalan Hale in Kampung Baru. She witnessed with her very own eyes large burly malay men wearing black shirts and trousers and red bandanas swing machetes and neatly decapitate a motorcyclist riding along the road. Innocent blood splattered, the motorbike lurched, the body fell and the head rolled to rest some feet away.

Two days later she returned with her family from the sanctuary of the nearby Campbell police station only to witness the looting and burning of their neighbours' houses by men from army trucks and the shooting and killing of the very neighbours who were alerted to come put out the fire. The neighbours were only trying to put out the fire, but they were shot in cold blood by the very looters and the official version was that the people had defied the curfew! The police had already said that if the army came, they, the police, could not protect them.

The slaughter of the innocents is accepted as a neccesary evil by those who
see only the paramount importance of maintaining power. Go deep into the
dark inner psyche of the ruling party and you see its primeval need for
dominance by whatever uncivilised brutality as deemed required. Albert
Schweitzer observed that nature knows no reverence for life. For the
subconscious savage mind in the jungle, the decapitation of the enemy
signified control and possession; dominance. In the Dayak longhouses of Sarawak decapitated heads are preserved and displayed in ceremonies to prove this point. In the thirty years since 1969, the ruling party has sought out the head of every significant rebellion and exercised decapitation; incaceration and destruction of every single instance of disagreement and dissent. Each time a rebellion threatens, reminders of head hunting are readily repeated to effect retreat.

We have seen how brutal the ruling party can be in recent times when tested
in the front line; always in the end going for decapitation to ensure its
dominance. The shocked population is petrified beyond rational thought and
action, numbed into a ready acceptance of whatever explanation the ruling
party dishes out for its decidedly uncivilised behaviour: a 'communist
insurgency" or "islamic extremism" or 'foreign interevention" or simply to
stop "racial riots". The "decapitated head" is displayed everytime new
legislation is passed; and especially whenever elections are held.

When a ruler is not accountable anymore, and has found a way to hold on to
power indefinitely, should we be surprised at the stupidity of special
branch officers who confiscate bibles in malay and the arrogance and cruelty
of police in their shameful treatment of illegal immigrants. Should we be
surprised also when police in carrying out their duties show no respect for
life and property ? As Charlton Heston's character said to the corrupt
police chief character played by Orson Welles: " The work of the police is
only easy in a police state."

Among the instruments of state, the police are perhaps most prone to abuse.
The police exist to maintain law and order in society and to battle those
who challenge it; to serve and to protect. As an institution, they are
flawed by the very men who wear the uniform. With respect to the very many
good men in the force, they are silenced by the hierachy of their
institution, as they bear witness to the corruption that stems from the very
top. If the example of the very top is to behave like common gangsters and
extortionists, in psyche and in reflex they are no different from the scum
of society that they do battle with everyday. Only that they wear their
royal insignias and take their orders or money from the powers that be;
people in institutions bent on preserving their power.

We now wonder whether at the time of the nation's birth there was a promise
that we would be a democratic nation founded on principles of fair play and
justice and that there would be checks and balances against the abuse of
power in the country ? Was there not a promise that ours would be a
participatory society; that we can all be leaders and still keep our heads ?

But the ruling party which closes its general assembly today, the thirteenth
day of May, has become very adept at removing heads: the heads of partners
in their coalition who grow too strong; the heads of those in the press who
dare write the truth; the heads of those in the judiciary who dare make fair
and impartial judgements and the heads of movements and organisations that dare challenge them. For all intents and purposes all dissent, even within
its own ranks, is squashed by "removing the head".

For all the talk, speeches and rantings, little or nothing has changed in
the ruling party. The same corruption and abuse of power permeates with the
usual promises to window-clean and whitewash them out of sight of the common people. Their love of wealth and power is underscored by the swollen cash assets and property of the men they have just elected to high office. The ruling party comes across as a kind of party where corruption pays. The
original idea of fairness and equality has been demeaned and destroyed by
these who are nothing but addicted to power.

Defeat in an election, the only cure for the hallucinatory effects of this
type of addiction is not an avenue for the moment. The ruling party has seen
to that. A rebellion, in one form or another, seems the only inevitable
course left. A rebellion however, as everyone knows, is only justified when
it is victorious. Otherwise its leader risks losing his head.


Paksanno

UMNO - Unfettered Materialism New Oligarchy ?

UMNO, after all these years of Malay nationalism, still retains the Bahasa Inggeris acronym for United Malays National Organisation in common usage, in speeches, posters and newpaper banner headlines of all languages. Perhaps the Bahasa Malaysia acronym is a too unwieldy: perhaps UMNO is now a word so readily used in national life that it is now part of the Malay lexicon. The revelation that Ummi Hafilda, a small-time Wanita UMNO Klang Gate Baru Chief and key witness at the Anwar Ibrahim trial, managed to get an advertising contract from Pemadam and seeking another from KLIA reinforces the image in the public mind that UMNO is indispensible for its members interested in seeking to improve their business fortunes.

UMNO could very well stand for, depending on how far down you are or up in the pecking order; the United Moneyminded Networkers Organisation, or the Ultimate Money Netting Operation, or any of these, depending where you are from the outside looking in: either the Ultimate Mechanism for National Oppulence, Oppression or Opprobrium.. in that order given the nature of recent events affecting the party. Given all that is being said about it looking after the interests of its cronies, it could very well be nothing more than a collective Union of Magnates, Nepotists and Opportunists.

How did a party established to protect the interests of the Malay race and to win Independence from the British colonialists end up more than half a century later with a reputation for its unusually materialistic and notoriously opportunistic members ? Together with the MCA and the MIC, it has ruled the country for all and more of its independent life as a nation. The party established with the high ideals of service to race and country has by all standards served the country well in the first three decades since 1957. How then did it become so self-serving in the last and most recent decade ? How did a party respected for its principles in its early days degenerate into such disrepute ?

The leaders of UMNO champion the Malay race and the definition of its effective membership converges entirely with the definition of the Malay race spelt out in the Malaysian Consitution and underpins the policies of special privileges formulated for their interests and the nation as a whole. The New Economic Policy implemented after the May 13 1969 riots could not have been effectively implemented without a working definition of the Malay race. The definition used singled out the indigenous people speaking the Malay language, practicing Malay customs, culture and Islam; including recent additions by mix marriages and assimilation of other races and groups. The working definition become the operative mechanism for the party to manage its constituency, propagate its leadership strategies and implement its governing modalities. The political power of the country was now premised on the definition of the "bumiputra".

Once a definition has been adopted it became a powerful and effective instrument for its time for the development and progress of the Malay race through beneficent policies of guaranteeing education, health and honourable livelihood. The progress achieved must be lauded for its humanitarian success in eradicating poverty, illiteracy and want within the Malay race. But the Malaysian realpolitik is pre-occupied with the issues of communal competitiveness and acrimony and the working definition of the Malay race becomes useful again in developing and implementing formulas and recipes required for guranteeing communal accomodation and co-existence. Under the umbrella of such policies, the materialistic naivette and innocence of the Malay race could be protected from the overwhelming acquisitiveness, robustness and tenacity of the other communities.

The present Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad had written once about the gene pool of the Malay race; how inbreeding practices reduced the genetic vigour of the community. It is also equally true that superior assimilated genes from outside the community once accepted as falling within the definition of the community can quickly grow to dominate it. Pseudo-malays, for instance, from outside the community but defined as one of the community, accepted and recognised as one of the community, may possess the very acquisitive, robust and tenacious traits that favour them to dominate it. The insulation of the Malay race through the New Economic Policy sought to protect them from the predation of the other communities. Yet the same insulation of the NEP served to provide the infiltrating elements, all to themselves, a fertile virtually unprotected substrate with which to plant themselves and predate and thrive. For the Malay community, there was no protection from the threat of this strain lurking within.

Over at least four decades of bitter internecine intra-party battles for leadership of the party with varying outcomes, in the end by 1987, virtually all of the best and brightest of the new generation were subjugated by a new dominant group and the losers dispatched by their victorious competition to the ignominy of having to form a new but "inferior" party appealing to the same constituency. The electoral fortunes of the new party in the decade that followed were dismal as would be expected; but the now dominant strain in the "superior" UMNO sought to let loose their "alien" acquisitive tendencies, once contained within the party's aspirations to serve the entire community as a whole.

The dominant strain in the "superior" UMNO receded into a kitchen cabinet as opposed to a showcase cabinet; making all the real decisions of who got what, when and how in government. It became a matter of relative ease for the dominant strain to leverage their positions of unrestrained, unchallenged and unchecked power to manipulate the minor bit parties in the ruling coalition, the civil service, the legislature, the judiciary and the other institutions of Malaysian political, social and economic life. Corruption, nepotism and cronyism gradually manifested themselves as realities through the collective policies of bumiputra equity allocations, bumiputra favoured award of contracts and projects, corporatisation and privatisation of Malaysian Government owned infrastructure, functions and assets.These policies represent the final and most aggressive extensions of the New Economic Policy now garbed as the New Development Policy.

This new "superior" UMNO, the backbone of the ruling coalition, as the election slogans would have it, had transformed the sincere if not flawed programmes of the New Economic Policy to eradicate poverty and reduce communal identification of economic functions into nothing less than an all-out revolution that would put into place an oligarchy: defined as government by a small exclusive class. In an oligarchy the cronies fester around the people in positions of power as flies are drawn to a dungheap.

Privatisation was the instrument of choice to transform national ownership into their own private ownership. In this they were assisted by a booming stock market in the early nineties made possible by the free inflow of foreign institutional funds looking for good investments. Together with an unprecedented number of public listings, the attendant allocation of bumiputra shares readily financed by a crony-linked financial insitutions; a massive proportion of corporate equity passed into bumputra hands. The question being into which bumiputra hands ?

The dominant strain in the "superior" UMNO sought to consolidate their hold on power by emerging as an inner circle of oligarchs; a malevolent mafia of power brokers bent on acquiring a vastly disproportionate share of wealth through their proxies: using various permutations of families, friends and fronts. Their efforts were justified as going towards the development of the Bumiputra Entrepreneurial Community, a key objective of the New Development Policy. Instead the dominant strain sought in reality to transcend their political power by arrogating to themselves sufficient economic power to perpetuate their dominance. In effect, bumiputra sub-groups of wealth differentiated by their closeness to the centre of power were being formed: the UMNOputras, Mentriputras, the Anwarputras, Daimputras and Mahathirputras. A policy of broad communal preference was subverted into a policy of specific individual preference.

This subverted policy is best exemplified by the favouring of the Prime Minister's family. Mirzan's foray into the transportation business, the attempt to make him the "czar" of the industry, Mokhzani's positioning in the healthcare business and Mukhriz's
involvement in the fibre-optics business has less to do with their business acumen than their father's strategic positioning of his children in industries that they could control for generations to come. The policy of privatisation provided the means and the
grand master plans such as the Multimedia Super Corridor provided the opportunities. And this was much the same for the other favoured sons in the super bumiputra entrepreneurial community. It is not a pre-requisite to know the business well; a penchant for acquiring business through financial paper transactions and managing businesses like managing assets will do. Technocrats, it seems can always be hired and made to do the hard and dirty work. Ownership is the paramount objective; specifically in the hands of these few.

The National Economic Action Council, now the operative cabinet recently promoted the success of privatisation and its socio-economic achievements; citing the extremely successful North South Highway. Yet all that privatisation has ensured is that state-owned assets and monopolies have passed into a few private hands, created corporations heavily geared and exposed to debt, both domestic and foreign. An all-encompassing system of patronage provides the "trickle down effect" of this wealth into the Malay community of project contractors and sub-contractors, service providers and employees, ensuring their dependency on the inner circle of super bumiputra entrepreneurs. Yet, the high growth of the last decade was merely an artificial boom created through leveraging the financial system making ; making the policy of privatisation look good and projecting the illusion of prosperity among those excluded from the inner circle. That the NEAC chose to use the bogey of "an alternative scenario of tragic ethnic violence" shows how the inner circle persists in disguising their true acqusitive motivations under the cloak of purportedly addressing issues of inter-communal instabilities.

The crux of the issue has really gone past that of communal issues now. Greed is a most powerful motivator and a most infectious one at that. Having promoted values that "to get rich is glorious", to paraphrase a late Asian leader, money politics and corruption has inevitably set in to rot the party at it very core. With their vast wealth, the indulgences of leaders in money, property and the various vices began to escalate. Both power and wealth become powerful drugs, opiates if you must, creating hallucinations and delusions of invincibility and infallibility. As with all tragedies in history, prolonged exposure to power and wealth diminishes one's ability to distinguish the line between moral right and moral wrong. Because of the vast wealth of its leaders, UMNO has become a most corrupted party: its members are motivated by wealth acquisition; to secure contracts, network to be in favour of the powerful and to get rich in all its glory.

With the onset of the Asian Financial Crisis in 1997, the illusion of wealth and prosperity has disappeared like yesterday's dream. During these difficult times, quarrels easily start and fighting breaks out among the oligarchs over the preservation of their wealth. Because their vast wealth is at stake, leaders are blinded to the normal standards of decency that must be upheld. Such open infighting motivated by greed is alien to the Malay race. The epic battle between Hang Tuah and Hang Jebat was fought over ideals and principles of loyalty, justice and brotherhood. Today the fight is over nothing but wealth. When the essence of the Malay race has been subjugated to the paramount interest of wealth, is it not the saddest thing ?

The Malay race has not been known as an overtly acquisitive people. The antecedants of Malay royalty were the pirate chiefs roaming the Malay archipelago long before the arrival of Islam, trading influences and the colonising powers. The successful pirates established dominance, instituted control over their spheres of influence and manifested Sultanates. The Malay trait of acquisition was until then initially expressed as piracy and subsequently as feudal regimes to gain hegemony and subservience of their subjects. Trade as the alternative mode of acquisition was practised by the visiting Arabic and Indian merchants and later by the Chinese brought into the region by the mercantile Europeans. The acquisitive trading skills of all these other communities threatened the yet undeveloped Malay race used to the feudal practice of acquiring wealth through rent rather than trade.

Hence, the argument goes, for the need for the insulation of the race until the headstart of a few centuries can be overcome by the establishment of a true bumiputra entrepreneurial communnity, one that can take on the other communities without assistance from the Government. Yet the policies of privatisation being implemented today are nothing more than a sophisticated "piratisation" or "rentierism" of the feudal era; the acquisition of wealth for its own sake adds only paper wealth and documents of debt to the Malay community and nothing of intrinsic value. The party politics of UMNO today has more to do with the zero-sum politics of wealth acquisition through privatisation rather than one of the positive politics of wealth creation through entrepreneurship.

The present policies in favour of a few in the inner circle work against the emergence of a true bumiputra entrepreneurial community. Promoting dependence on a system of patronage dominated by the inner circle of the dominant strain, an oligarchy, the Malay community will not be incentivised to compete in an open environment that would encourage "creating" and adding to the pool of wealth rather they are merely "taking" from the pool of wealth. Intoxicated with the heady madness of greed the oligarchy has put their own interests ahead that of the Malay community; in the process practically undoing all the real progress that the Malay community had made in the three decades before this last one.

Ummi Hafilda , one of the genre of the Melayu Baru, unabashedly and shamelessly claims to have acted in the interests of the race, party and country in doing what she did to expose the "animal with the human face". The results of her actions one year ago have exposed instead the beast in a political party in power that has placed material gains far above the principles of justice and unselfish commitment to the community and country.

Paksanno