It’s exactly a year today since the 13th general election (GE13). Time for a reality check. We hoped for change and reform when we went out to vote on May 5, 2013. Change didn’t happen then, but are we getting reform?
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The answer to that is a categorical “no”.
The basic reason is, since GE13, things have definitely got worse. Big brother Umno of the ruling Barisan Nasional (BN) is playing the divisive race card even more strongly to hold on to its vote bank. This was most evident in the run-up to the Umno party elections last year when candidates vying for the top posts tried to outdo one another with Malay supremacist rhetoric and actions – the more racist, the better!In fact, Prime Minister Najib Razak started the race ball rolling by unveiling his Bumiputera Economic Empowerment Plan (BEEP) last September, partly to thank the community that had helped BN win the general election and awarded Umno with nine more parliamentary seats than in GE12. The BEEP package would cost taxpayers RM31 billion – ironic when you consider that Najib was at the same time talking about the need for “national reconciliation”.
Meanwhile, his own party, aided by vociferous pro-Umno groups, has been creating tension by either making statements that challenge the position of other races or staging street demonstrations at which they threaten another May 13. Even more insidious, they have developed the perverted concept that criticising the prime minister is criticising the Malays because he is a Malay leader! Similarly, hitting out at the Government is also hitting out at the Malays because the Government is led by Malays.
Even as racism is on the rise, religion is being politicised like nobody’s business. Central to this is the controversy surrounding the use of the word ‘Allah’. Last October, almost four years after the High Court ruled in 2009 that the Catholic weekly The Herald could use it, the Court of Appeal overturned the decision and declared that “the name Allah was not an integral part of the Christian faith and practice”. This incurred the wrath of Christians in Sabah and Sarawak who have been using ‘Allah’ long before the two states joined the Federation of Malaysia in 1963.
The Court of Appeal also said, “Such usage if allowed will inevitably cause confusion within the community.” It shouldn’t, actually, because the use of the word is confined to the churchgoers, and they know they cannot use it to proselytise Muslims because there is a law strongly against that. For The Herald too, it is strictly bound to distribute its publication only to Christians. Therefore, the issue of confusion does not arise.
But “confusion” has lately become a buzzword of government officials. If there’s anything they don’t want the public, especially Malays, to partake of, they ban it on the excuse that it will “confuse” them. Columnist Erna Mahyuni lambasts this ploy eloquently in her article ‘The continued dumbing down of the people’, which appeared in The Malay Mail Online on April 30:
I have lost count of the things our government thinks Malays should be protected from.
Everything is a threat to the Malays and Islam, it seems. Malay-speaking Christians. Feminism. Concerts. Dogs. Pork. The Chinese. Zionists. Atheists. Upin and Ipin. What next? The Teletubbies?
At every chance it gets, our government likes reminding us how easily confused Malays are. This is perhaps the only government in history that gets away with calling its citizens stupid and using it as an excuse to clamp down on freedom of expression and basic human rights.
… We have also declared God is so weak, that His name needs protecting with the power of our legal system.
More than dumbing down the people, the Government is also allowing right-wingers to spread regressive ideas about what Malaysia should be, to influence the thinking of feeble-minded Malaysians. These are ideas proposed by people and groups like former prime minister Mahathir Mohamad, former MP Zulkifli Noordin, Ikatan Muslimin Malaysia (Isma), Perkasa and its president Ibrahim Ali who all clamour for Ketuanan Melayu and often disregard the Constitutional protection accorded to religions other than Islam. The Government even seems to endorse these views, and this is dangerous.
Such tacit endorsement has encouraged people like former judge Mohd Noor Abdullah to express his Talibanesque views last month. He said the huge statue of Lord Murugan outside the Hindu temple in Batu Caves and that of Kuan Yin, Goddess of Mercy, at the Buddhist temple in Air Itam, Penang, should not be built in the open because Islam forbids idolatry and, as such, they were an affront to Islam.
Using the word “confused” in its proper context, we could say that from what he has opined, he is someone who is indeed confused. Idolatry is prohibited only to Muslims. Non-Muslims, on the other hand, are free to worship as they wish, as guaranteed by the Federal Constitution. Just because Muslims cannot build images of their God, it doesn’t mean that non-Muslims cannot do the same for their own gods. And in Malaysia, where there is supposed to be religious tolerance, no one should feel offended by the practices of a religion that is different from their own.
The Government must point this out, but it doesn’t. It is thus not fulfilling its job of conducting proper governance. On the contrary, it seems to welcome statements that upset the order of things as proposed by our founding fathers because the implications of such statements serve its own agenda.
Najib may appear weak for not speaking up against what threatens to upset the stability of our society, but by keeping quiet or speaking up only when he needs to, he may be cleverer than we think. He may actually be reaping advantage.
For instance, over the current controversy surrounding PAS’s intent to table in Parliament its private member’s bill to implement hudud in Kelantan, Najib has shown how wily he is. Instead of coming clean and saying firmly, like he did in 2011, that the Government would staunchly block any attempts to enforce hudud because we need to “take into consideration the environment and the reality”, he now says Umno will listen to PAS’s proposal.
He is obviously using the hudud issue as political leverage now because BN is weak from having lost the popular vote at GE13 and is losing further ground. PAS insiders, including Vice-President Husam Musa, have even reportedly claimed that Umno is the one that is goading PAS to try and implement hudud this time – because Umno wants to break up PAS’s alliance with the other Pakatan Rakyat parties, PKR and the DAP.
I doubt the hudud issue will go far – the private member’s bill as well – but what all this wayang kulit demonstrates is that Umno-BN continues to operate with duplicity.
So, change and reform? No. It’s business as usual. But worse. Although the Internal Security Act (ISA) was repealed in 2012, preventive detention was brought back through amendments to the Prevention of Crime Act in October 2013. Regressive, for sure. Meanwhile, talk goes on about bringing back the ISA. The loudest talker is Mahathir.
Many Opposition politicians and civil society activists have been charged with sedition. The late Karpal Singh was convicted for it, and subsequently the Government filed an appeal to exact heavier punishment on him, including sending him to prison – obviously to clamp down on free speech.
For that same reason, the Government suspended the publishing licence of The Heat because the newsweekly was getting too outspoken. Then the Government refused to grant a licence to Malaysiakini despite the High Court and the Court of Appeal having ruled that publishing a newspaper was a right, not a privilege. This shows that the Government does not respect the courts. It also refused to give a publishing permit to FZ Daily. The reason given by the Home Minister was that too many newspapers might “confuse the people”.
There we go again! Perhaps because the Government pays too much attention on preventing the people from being confused, it fails to address the more important issues. Like corruption, which proceeds like a runaway train. Nothing, for instance, seems to have come out of the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission’s investigations into allegations of Taib Mahmud’s corrupt empire-building. Now he’s even been made Yang diPertua of Sarawak.
Like the wanton wastage of public funds in government departments, as exposed by the Auditor-General every year. Like the cost of living going up and up. Like the mediocrity that festers in the heart of Malaysian officialdom, as demonstrated by the frequent Government flip-flops and bloopers and, above all, by our incompetent handling of the MH370 crisis.
Well, one year after GE13, it looks like the BN government has failed us. Miserably, I might add. Will it continue to do so for the next four years?
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