The unsettled struggles towards understanding Malaysian politics

Sometimes Malaysian politics can be fun and exhilirating, like
the Star Wars Saga, we have heroes and villains. And also
wookies that woo with ridiculous facts.

I could vividly remember in 1985, the first time politic was openly discussed amongst the boys at my school. We were all standard five. I have a friend who was fanatically being pro towards Islamic party. He told us that those who didnt support PAS are not going to heaven, and not a true muslim. I was quite aback with his remark as I was raised in a so called an UMNO based family. Prior to his remark, I have never thought about politics of heaven or hell. Though my parents were not so fanatic about being in UMNO and seldom talk about politics,  I have never heard them talking about bad things towards the opposition party or any other leaders. At least not excessively until you can determine the fate  of someone after death.  I always knew that my parents supported the Barisan Nasional candidates. The standard goodies like umbrella , T-Shirt with the "Dacing" (weighing scale) logo indirectly vindicated their political faith. I asked my mother why she did not support PAS as we are all muslims. Eventhough I was 11 years old, my mother took the efffort to explain why we should support the government or the ruling party instead. My father was indeed a government servant. By that time, I supposed a big majority of the government servants had undivided support towards the ruling party.There were no internet based social network during my time back in the 80's. The national TV and Radio stations were the only mean to convey messages or gain information. And of course local newspapers like the Utusan Malaysia, Berita Harian , News Straits Time. All these were actually in favour of the ruling governments. The inefficiencies were seldom announced or published on TV. With these facts, I concluded why the oppositions followers struggled and served more sentimental value to their hardcore followers. They had to go deep into the kampungs to deliver their ideas, make use of religious centers or whatever mean to influence people. Even "Kedai Kopi" talk could be the unofficial parliment debate.

I remember one of the years following my parents during the election day. There were more BN flags and posters in Sungai Petani, compared to the opposition parties. During those time, I don't even know what DAP was. With the overwhelming publicity from the ruling party, my conscious mind as a kid  told me that BN was too strong and just a minority supported the opposition. So the anxiety about who to rule the nation was not at a great height. I still remember the Memali incident where a group of so called religious extremist were killed during the battle with the police, FRU and  army. The name Ibrahim Libya was so famous after the incident. For people like us who lived in a semi-urban area , we heard people talking about this. I remember seeing the news on TV and also in the newspaper the following day. In deed, Memali is not far away from where we live. Probably about 1.5 hours drive if I am not mistaken. That incident was somehow described as the religious extremist who provoked the authority to react. During that time, the Prime Minister was Dr Mahathir, but I was told that the decision to react was made by his Deputy, Tun Musa Hitam, as Tun Mahathir was out of the country. Since then, the religous extremist was also associated with PAS, whom some members in some areas portrayed some similar kind of religiously extreme in nature. I remembered that in one of the elections back in the 80's, vandalism were made towards the government properties and even to the vehicles owned by the BN supporters. To strenghtened the fact, there was an Ustaz , a PAS leader that lived near to our house, whom I remember,  drove a Volvo, had made sarcastic remarks during his speech to the UMNO supporters, particularly to those who lived in our area. Those who supported UMNO and BN were regarded as "Ahli Neraka" ( members of the hell). I remember that during the 80's, fun fairs were common. So this Ustaz used to say that those parents who allowed their children to enter fun fairs are PIGs. My parents were so angry about his remark. It was like the Angry Birds who had their eggs stolen by those PIGS.

With all the evidences and series of issues that I myself saw, heard and experienced , the dogma of the PAS agenda had always been negatives and depriving to me. And I do believe the vice versa of those who heard bad things about UMNO and the BN, would have inculcated the same mental picture. I have sometime asked myself why people are so fanatics about these political parties. Honestly, eventhough I was raised in an UMNO family, I did give myself a neutral judgement or reserve some space about both the ruling and the oppositions parties. What is right should be supported and what is wrong should be avoided and condemned. After leaving the secondary school, I entered the college or Matriculation Program in Universiti Utara Malaysia. Well, for the first time, I had the chance to mix with students from all over the countries, including Sabah and Sarawak. I started to feel the political sentiments had once again been brought up and openly discussed. Ironically, most of my friends were the oppositions supporters, particularly those from Kelantan and Terengganu. As I said earlier, I always remain neutral eventhough my conscious mind still with the UMNO and towards the Malays and the Barisan Nasional, whom for me, made more sense to consider the multi-racial of this country. I have never been taught to be a racist by my parents. I had many non-malays friends and in deed some of them were my best friend in school and during university. So, obvioulsy , I didnt see that believing or suporting UMNO turned me into being a racist person. I dont believe UMNO is an extrene racial party that was trying to outcast other races. Same as any other races , they also have their own political party to look into the welfare of their races. To a certain expect,  the racial based party gain the access to design how certain races to react, accept and tolerate with the social contracts established long before. For me and for some of us , that is a human nature. Why? Because each race has its own value, culture, lifestyles, beliefs and certain traits that have been embedded since the day he was born. This mixed of elements can never be equalized no matter how we tried. That's given a given fact by the Almighty God. There are pros and cons in each race and everyone should respect that. And to have the respect, a strong body encompassing these people must remain in tact. The tolerence should be made based on the subsets of values , give and takes.  

Proton is one of the thing that appear to me as a 12 years Old boy
when I tried to describe Malaysia to a foreign back in the 80's

I strongly against any racial discrimination. Even human to animal discrimation. I have had experience myself though just a small drop of it. In 1986, I had the chance to visit the United States of America for my sister convocation. I was 12 years old, and I was brought into a scene of  racial discrimination. It was in California. Even though I wasn't fluent in English, I could see the racial sentiment that an English lady had againts me while I was entering an ice-skating center. I still remember that she yelled at one of the guard that allowed an Asian boy loittering around the place. I think she probably regards me as a Vietnamese or Chinese. I dont think she knew anything about Malay. I kept this to myself , but deep inside, I felt hurt as an Asian person that has been treated with no respect , even I was only 12 years old. But on contrary, I also met a wondeful Mat Salleh (white man) during the same trip. His name is Mr Calvin A Thompson. I met him at San Fransisco Airport while my parents, sister and I were in transit to Miami, Florida. He sat next to me and asked me to sit on his boxy type luggage. He drew a caricature of me playing my favourite game, soccer. During the flight, he sat beside me and asked me many things, being a common semi-urban typical Malay, I had problem speaking English though I could read and understand English pretty well. But knowing the fact that I was not on a TV show, and definitely not going to meet him again, I pushed myself to speak all the broken english as long as he could understand. Mr Thompson was keen to hear all my stories, about me being the school prefect, play soccer for the school and my BMX team. I tried to explain to him where Malaysia is located but he hardly could make a guess. He had really no idea where Malaysia is. I tried to explain by telling him we had the third longest bridge in the world, in regards to the Penang Bridge. He still had no clue. I told him that we had our own national car , Proton Saga. He still bewildered with all those information and he promised to find all those information. Months after that, he started to send me letters with the articles of Proton Saga and the Penang Bridge he got from one of the magazines in the US. We kept in touch until he really came to Malaysia in 1994. I took the honour to drive him across the Penang Bridge and he had a wonderful stay in Penang Rasa Sayang Hotel. This person had somehow erased my racial sentiments that I had with the lady at the ice-skating center in California.  I still keep in touch with him until now, 2011. I just received a note from him couple of days ago.

Back to my university time , I could see the oppositions supporters friends would spend their time bombarding the government. In certain perspectives, I admired their spirit , of being so inspired with what they believed were the truth. I have no hatred towards them. In fact I had never challenged them in a way to hurt their feelings or sour our relationship. I was in the learning institutional and my objective was pretty clear, to complete my studies, not to jump into any political movements. I guess this was one of the negative traits possesed amongt the young UMNO supporters within the students.Being so complacent about the situation because the government had always had their two thirds majority in the elections. So I just listened to whatever stories about condemning the governments and I learned through that. I had never blocked my mind not to accept their ideologies. I have learned to be an open minded person. Some of their claims were actually true for certain numbers of cases or causes . For example, some corruptions incidents that happened in the government , the complacency of some government employees that took their own sweet time to finish their jobs etc. On contrary, I saw more positive things that the government had injected to help the people of Malaysia, so I reserved my complaints until the time I really had experienced my self of those lacks of service quality mindset amongst the government servant. In fact, I dont have many friends that really supported the government policies , so the political topics were not the priorities in my daily discussions. The pro Islamic party student movement had been seen pretty strong during my time , especially towards the final year of my degree programs. We had our internal elections and most of the candidates that won the seats were obviously somehow religiously character background and supported PAS. Ironically, most of them were also from the East Coasts. It could be truly notice through their attire and beards. For my batch, this could be the start of the new begining of the Islamic generations who combined intellectual and spiritual. If these people became a leader and lead Malaysia one day, I hope that they too can balanced up the needs of economic development and the spiritual needs. But then, I only see some of them make crtitics in Facebook, as usual , what government  are doing are always bad to them.

I have to agree that UMNO lacks of inspirational leaders. Other than Tun Dr Mahathir , the party did not really portray or produced leaders that inspired people. Back in 1995, during my semester break, I did some part time job. I was in the third year of the degree programs, I was working at the Archeological site at Kg Sungai Mas. The job was to supervise two or three  kampung boys to find the artifacts of the Great Chandi .  I work along with some government officers appointed to the project. They were well educated in the archeology but to  my surprise, they were also anti-government at the most. They talked about the corruptions and the inefficiency of the governments. As usual, I listened to them with intellectual reception to learn and gained more input, but still in my conscious mind, I always knew what I stood for. The slanders, complaints and the "Government always wrong " stories kept on from day to day. And only after sometime, when I figured out that back those during the conversations took place, they happened during the working hours. And they were also government servants indeed. So, looks who's talking. I was a student and contract workers, and of course, I didnt categorize myself of being part of them. I made a lot of friends with people of different polical opinions and I have to admit that the new generations of the PAS supporters (some of them) do make sense and portray some intellectual in their thinking process compared to the old generations who spoke about pigs and kafir  terms more oftenly. These generation X and probably Y have a broader view than only talking about implementing Hudud Laws. Probably they were aligned to see things differently and able to compromise some of the policies of the government. Having to meet this people had made me changed my perspective towards PAS as a whole. For example, in the recent time, for the first time, I saw the UMNO Youth Leader(Khairy Jamaluddin)  and the PAS Youth Leader (Nasrudin) , together with  Dr Mohd Asri Zainal Abidin had changed the way political discussions or forum being made and debated. Intellectual discussions were made without having emotional reactions and the supporters from both parties had shown a more matured behaviour. I do not know what had happened before and after the event but I sincerely hope that it was a genuine forum, for the benefits of the Malaysian Muslims. Probably I was too naive before not to involve in this national politics that I didnt notice good people from both side of the parties. Previously, the most noticeable typical of PAS leaders and PAS followers behaviours or characteristic was the aggression use while doing public speakings. Probably they wanted to stress out some important points, but to me, that was not reflecting a positve influence. As a leader , or future leader of the country, one should not be seen as out of control in terms of one emotions. This will serve as a minus points in one own leadership. Unless we are in the war zone or about to go for a battle. You may behave like Hitler. Again, I may be naive on this but I just share what I really feel and see. Unlike UMNO leaders, I seldom see them reacted unprofessionally. The best example would be Tun Dr Mahathir, a person whom appear to be cool and pleasants. Though some say he is very cunning. In my opinion,  sarcastic remarks and tearing down people dignity in public would serve best for a low level of people who had no proper training in diplomacy and liberalism. And sooner or later, these people would apply the same dogmatic in their daily life within the community. But again, as I mentioned early in this passage, the internet plays an important role in todays politic. Not seeing doesn't mean not happening. But evidently, as I experienced my self, for many times, some Khatib during Khutbah Jumaat use aggresion method inside the mosques and instill hatred towards the other fellow Muslims whom having different ideology, particularly the ruling government.

Tun Dr Mahathir - Malaysian CEO of Development
and 3rd World Country Spokeperson

Couple of years ago, my father had asked me to join UMNO as an official member. To tell the truth, I have no interest in politics during those time. I agreed to join because my father was a secretary of that division. During the first so called small division UMNO meeting that took in my brother's office,  I volunteered to be the stenographer since I was pretty fast in typing using computer. And I am still considered a fast typer today by some of my friends. Being so naive about what UMNO is all about, I spontaneously posted a questions to the leader that was chairing the meeting , a friend of my father. I told him that since some of us are still new in UMNO, we would like to hear some inspirational stories and the true spirits and values dogmatized by UMNO. Honestly, I only know about UMNO through the history text book and with a minimal reading, I was pretty naive. I got flambergasted as he told me to read the UMNO manual instead of asking him. For a young person like me, I was looking forward to hearing an inspirational story so that it could at least revive my knowledge of those information I seldomly acquired. Reading in text books or listening to the speech on TV were just not the same as hearing a live telecast and in person explanation. Ironically, I asked my father the same thing after that. And still I didnt get much of the jist that I was expecting. I look around the room and realize that I was the only one whom interested to know about the UMNO legacy. The rest of the members in the room were actually business people or projects dependants whom main objectives were to gain access to higher level politician and the carrots they will offer. Whether it is true or not, that was my personal feeling.  Since then, I just remain as an ordinary member who only attended a once per year meeting. I felt no value of my existence in the small UMNO group. Unlike the PAS or recently the PAKATAN team, they have embedded in most if not every, of their members to be the ambassador of the party. Their words are mostly inspirational and sincere. Their genuinity and sincererity could obviously be seen through their eyes. Though some still portray aggresions or frustations.  I have to admit that the most inspired leaders as of today must be Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim (DSAI). I love to see the way he put his words and delivered it to the people around him. The intonation and the body language were compellingly outstanding. Not forgetting the diliberate jokes in most of his speeches. He has the charisma that even Tun Dr Mahathir do not have, which is to charm people with the beautiful phrases, logics and factuals. No wonder he raised and moved up the ladder so quickly while he was in UMNO and gained a big support that almost topple down Tun Dr Mahathir during his premiership. The first time I saw DSAI on TV and papers, probably in the 80's , I happened to tell my brother that I envisage this person will one day become Prime Minister to succeed Dr Mahathir. My brother objected my view saying that the Chinese would not support him as he was portraying arbitrary Islamic influence being from ABIM.

DSAI - One of the best Public Speaker/Influencer
in the Malay World History

While I was 15 years old, my English Teacher who is a Chinese told us how he was impressed by the English of DSAI and Dr Mahathir. Until today, both of them are still the De Facto of their own political group. I wish I could fly back to the future and see what actually happened in the 1998 crisis that led to the detention of  DSAI. Should DSAI maintained a good relationship with Tun, today's political climate would be very much different. Eventhough I admit that I am quite naive in politics and some of the facts of life, I could sense some great Conspiracy Theory during the rise of DSAI, ever since the first day he officially joined UMNO, back in 1982. The plan to stop him from holding the premiership of the country were probably deliberately planned year after year. You'll never know who were actually behind the games . With abundance of information today in the internet and social network , lots of data could have been implausibly provided by bias sources. I have never imagined the political issues like the sodomy cases can be a front page of today. Generally for Malaysian, the act of sodomization is even hardly discussed. Something most of the parents will have hard time to explain to their kids if asked.  Again, the spirits and dedication shown by the oppositions as self ambassador truly amaze me. Something that UMNO should be looking into seriously and learn immediately. Facebooks, Twiiters, Myspace, Youtube  have been use widely by individuals whom I believe has no monetory gain but more towards self satisfaction and inspirational in nature. Malaysia, in deed, in terms of ratio, is among the highest Facebook users with nearly 12 million accounts. It probably mean that every three persons whom you met, one has Facebook account.

Quite a number of my facebook friends openly criticised the government, publish out articles to reflect the bad things about UMNO and stuff like that. This is the example of the self ambassadorship proclaimed by them. Even our talented Nasi Lemak 2.0 director has been actively self ambassador for his political team. He has good talent (after seeing some of his work of art) but it has been used unethically, though he gained much attention after that. How frustrated are you with the government, the religious sentiments should not be taken for granted , the National Anthem (though been claimed as "Mamula Moon") should be respected at all might. I would also condemn Malays who do not respect these values towards other Malays, I have friends like that, but they are not famous or as talented as Namewee.

I have to agree that most of BN/UMNO leaders today are either confuse about their identity or rather still think they are in the comfort zone. In other word, they lost the spark of delivering ideas especially in public speaking or open forums. On the other hand, the independence people like Zulkifli Noordin has been in the arise due to his self confident character, consistency in his struggle and most importantly brave enough to voice out things openly. I would also point out that some religious backgroung figure like Dr Mohd Asri Zainal Abidin has also been viewed as the moderate individual that brings balance to the force of secular and islamic view. These people has the conscience and understanding that people of today are different. In the 80s, government can publish something on newspaper and would expect more than 75% would believe that. In todays environment, the yougsters talk about Malaysia Kini , TV PAS and TV Selangor that counter the governments. Only and only recently UMNO came out with some communication team to balace up these alternatives media, but I can say that UMNO has lost a great premium of being the first to conquer the social network.

The Late Kurt Cobain (1967-1994)  - the influencer of Gen X.

The Generation X and Y are very much different. They evolve almost everyday, they learn new things, and they too can react. They can be easily influence with the rules of fact and evidences. The repetitive reception of these information will form a cloud of beliefs. On contrary, some UMNO leaders are still portraying the superiority or even the supremacy. Having to live thinking that you are superior than others without having the right resources and talents is insane. Something has to done to correct all the bad perceptions of cronysm, corruptions and stuffs like that. These must be genuine else it will only serve as jokes and millions will be wasted for each of these programs. On the other hand, having to promote that only "akhira" or the life after death is important and development is the root of all evil is naive. Without an economically strong government or group, religous schools, books and fund for helping the needies may not be available. Without money, we could not prepare ourselves with good weapons/machinery to protect ourselves from others. Without good economy and knowledgeable people leading this country, this nation will not gain respect and our voice may not be heard at all in the global stage. And similarly, without having a good faith of life after death, heaven and hell, the people will not have the sense of direction to do good deeds. Ultimately the akhira means forever that for a muslim, this should be the priority. But in this world, in order to take care of our religions, we need world knowledges, hardworking people, influence and economic stability. It is time to put a stop to all these squabbles that bring no end.

Sham Kamikaze - The new wave of Islamic Aura
in modern Malaysia, trying to influence Gen X and
Gen Y - i suppose.

The two must be balanced up and compliments each other. How much balance is balance? One should meditate and answer that in his own conscious mind. One should not stop learning and exploring. The history books were written for mankind to learn, dig your history and start to learn from mistakes. Time is not in favour of complacency attitude. Run Forest , Run...