I'm actually thankful that my exams was during the state elections, for if they weren't i'd have a lot to write about. At any rate, the results are out and the call is shocking (to the government) : 9 opposition wins!
I would however, like to comment on the lovely local media. Based on an entirely unscientific study, i took a look in the Borneo Post May 15 pages to mark out stories for both the opposition and the government. This is what i found:
- Coalition articles: 32
- DAP: 2
- Keadilan: 0
- EC vs MAFREL (frankly hilarious, this one): 1
- Neutral: 1
Of course, pundits supporting the Libra badge may argue that since the main chunk of the government is BN, then shouldn't more stories be on the BN? Hmm. Let's see how ironic that form of reasoning is.
Together we fall'We do not need the opposition because the BN elected representatives themselves can criticise the government. In fact, in the Dewan Rakyat, for example, the BN elected representatives are more outspoken than the opposition members," he (Najib) said.(Taken from May 20 front page, Borneo Post 'GIVE BN BIG MANDATE')
Indeed. Yes, i'm sure all the assemblymen love their people. Hell, since they are all so outspoken have perfect disregard for their own interests, we mind as well not have elections! Wait! That's not logical! Why have a parliament if there are no elections?? Freeze! Ahah! Light beams upon us! Let's have the CM signed in as a Sultan, the rest of the ministers as Hang Tuahs and demote the people to plebs and peons!
Lovely.
The irony of the whole propaganda is that it drives people away from what the government tells them. The more the CM's picture is splayed, the more urban, educated people wince. It just doesn't make sense, especially when the quotes written are all so childish and seemingly uneducated.
'Don't make baseless claims. The opposition keeps on saying government are corrupted, ... how can development occur if there is corruption?(Dr George Chan)
... China is a socialist government ... it cares for its people.'
A few pages later, in the World section, a fully featured article tells all about how cancer is rising in Chinese rural towns due to uncontrolled contamination of water. And to even students like me the holes in Chan's reasoning are so blatant i wonder how he became a doctor. No corruption! Indeed! Read this and think! Corruption comes about because of development, not the other way around!
I am sure Dr Chan is a great, respectable man - but the way the SUPP controlled Borneo Post writes about him makes him sound like a stupid, bereaving kid. If were the editor i'd not quote the daft slips-of-tongue; instead use the ones that are intelligent and appealing to a thinking population. Kuchingites no longer live on trees - we want a government that treats us as such!
If local newspapers hadn't been so lacking it would've been harder for opposition fuelled rumours to go around. My whole family had a good time laughing about Alfred Yap going to a temple to have his fortune read, adn every single fate stick he pulled out told him he would lose. The fact that the English dailies created a vacuum on Opposition news made us not know which was real and which were rumours. It was a total backlash for the coalition - and garnering support from educated urban folk has to be more subtle and more transparent than telling us tranvestites greeted Anwar as he arrived in Kuching.
Rural people who need development would support BN anyway - so toning down pictures of a white haired man and giving equal credence to the Opposition won't hurt polling results in the kampung at all.
The two interviews that made the made the most impact on me was TIME magazine's December 2005 interview with Lee Kuan Yew and Off The Edge's interview with Kua Kia Soong.
THE MAKING OF SINGAPORE
TIME: But you would concede that Singapore now needs more contention and turmoil?
LEE: Surely, surely. Ideally we should have Team A, Team B, equally balanced, so that we can have a swap and the system will run. We have not been able to do this in Singapore because our population is only 4 million, and the people at the top, with proven track records—not just in ability, but in character, determination, commitment—will not be more than 2,000. You can put their biodata in athumbdrive.
We also have a different culture, a different way of doing things. The individual is not the building block. It's the family, the extended family, the clan and the state. The five crucial relationships are: you and the prince or the ruler, you and your wife, you and your children, you and your parents, you and your friends. If those relationships are right, everything will work out well in society.
Singapore, or at least its leaders, understand the intricacies of the democratic system. Here in Malaysia we yell for one party parliaments. But let us remember Singapore is far more developed than Malaysia. Something closer to home:
EK: Your detention in 1987 was due principally to your activities in the Chinese education movement. How do you think Chinese education has developed since 1987, especially given the fact that as government schools confront crises, Chinese schools continue to produce the best results?
Nothing much has changed really. In 1987, we had already begun regressing when compared to the period following Independence. The number of Chinese schools has not increased, though we are getting more and more non-Chinese in Chinese schools. There were 1350 primary schools at Independence with a Chinese population of 2.5 million; today, we have five million or more Chinese and the number of schools has dropped to 1,284. And these 1,284 now have 80,000 students from around the country.But that has never been an issue among the Chinese community because we welcome non-Chinese students. For that matter, you never hear about racism in Chinese schools – and I would be among the first to point out if there is racism in a Chinese school. [That said], SRJK Damansara has been closed for almost three years now. That school belongs to the community. Why shouldn’t you open that school for that community? In PJ, JB and Wangsa Maju, the Chinese population is growing consistently and [the authorities] won’t allow a Chinese school to be built there.
EK: Why do you think the issue of Chinese schools continues to be contentious, especially since they are producing the best results in the country. Why aren’t our politicians learning from this?
Because Umno is dead set on its Bumiputera policy – the whole ideology upon which this Umno-putera class has come to power, they can’t let go of. You see it at every Umno General Assembly. It is said that vernacular schools are an impediment to national integration but the worst examples of this are the political parties themselves, the mono-ethnic parties. How can you justify this? I couldn’t. If you ask any of the Chinese educationist leaders like Lim Fong Seng and others who joined the opposition front in 1990 whether they could justify mono-ethnic parties like the MCA, they couldn’t. But having your Mother Tongue education system is different. That is a Human Right.
EK: The question of national integration continues to be a challenging one especially in a complex cultural fabric like ours?
I don’t know why people refuse to see it because I think the fundamental question about integration in this country is that root discrimination that is in the economicand education policy. If you get rid of discrimination, I’m sure you’ll solve a lot of problems. Then for Umno, its ideological base will be taken away. That will solve a lot of problems in this country. I’m positive about that. You cannot justify discrimination in that way. I also have said, from the 80s, that we should have a race relations act, with a race relations commission not just to ensure equality but also to outlaw hate crimes and hate speeches that we see and hear often enough. If you get rid of all that, and get rid of mono-ethnic political parties then I think we are well on our way to becoming a society “at peace with itself”.
Hmm, i thought, intresting stuff. Whether or not UMNO's Bumi policy causes them more harm than good is still up to the world and the harsh realities of life to answer, but even our former PM (Mahathir) has admitted the fallacy of such a policy. If my memory serves me correctly his exact words were: " ... but then again without us (the government) they (the Bumis) would have died."
I went downstairs and opened up the Borneo Post, May 15, page 2.
Show your gratitude to BN through votes: Minos
Kuching: The Bidayuhs must vote for the Barisan Nasional not only to return the mandate to the coalition for the next five years but also as a show of gratitude for the development that it has brought them.
Yes. I see. I really do. Feelign sickened, i reopened my F4 moral textbook to check the cabaran-cabaran Wawasan 2020. There it was, at no 3:
'Mewujudkan dan membangunkan masyarakat demokratik yang matang.'It's a catch-22: The coalition is a development machine, but the ISA lends it a degree of power so total it creates corruption. To check that we need the opposition - but they are not development focused at all. Perhaps, however, the best example of the quagmire is this snippet from Kua Kia Soong's interview:
EK: Your experience in formal politics (with the DAP) was not a positive one (as recounted in your book Inside the DAP). Many people are disillusioned with the political process because they find that alternatives are really not an alternative at all. In an authoritarian climate, the process simply mutates and each political party appears as a reflection of the other…
I think it’s a problem with the kind of liberal democracy we have both here and in the West, the humbug-ism that gives rise to a lot of cynicism. I am as disillusioned with the system as anyone…
To 'mewujudkan dan membangunkan masyarakat demokrasi yang matang' we'll need more critical thinkers, and they have to be created through Malaysian means and Malaysian education. Admittedly both of the men mentioned above have their faults - Lee believes intelligence is genetic and may appear chauvinistic, while Kua is too socialist (or Marxist, whichever way you look at it) for my liking. And both were English educated, which goes to show the modern day Malaysian eduaction system has yet to churn out an equal measure of democratic maturity.
Perhaps if the boys and girls of my generation, me included, grow up to have that degree of insight, Malaysia and Sarawak in particular would prosper in the political and social sense. But while that seems like a candy coated dream in a system Greek philosophers named ochlocracy, i remind myself: We got a looong way to go - and to what end?
Politics is a very dirty game.
