Between right and might

Whatever rationalisations Najib starts cooking up to defend the actions of the police during the Bersih 2.0 rally, little is going to help him gain the people’s trust.

COMMENT

July 9, 2011 is reluctantly tattooed in the memory of Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak. And for obvious reasons.

But more disturbingly, the date will haunt him as it signifies that the tide is turning against the Barisan Nasional (BN) government as shown by the 50,000 supporters of the “Walk for Democracy”.

For the rakyat of this country, after witnessing the happenings of last Saturday, they unanimously reached a conclusion – that their leader is is one who has no guts to walk the talk.

July 9 was the day when an election watchdog, Bersih 2.0, decided to “Walk for Democracy” as its way of pressing for reforms to the electoral system. It wants the polls to be conducted in a free and fair manner.

The walk or rally was meant to end with a memorandum detailing the eight demands being delivered to the Yang di-Pertuan Agong Tuanku Mizan Zainal Abidin. But on July 9 the memorandum never made it to the King’s hands.

And who made sure that never happened? It was none other than Najib who went on parroting his meaningless catch-phrase “people first, performance now” post-2009.

July 9 bears proof that the “people first” claim was never a truth and likewise the “performance now” too turned out to be a fallacy.

Instead, July 9 turned into a showdown between the right which stands for Bersih 2.0 and might which represented Najib and his men.

Whatever rationalisations Najib starts cooking up to defend the actions of the police during the Bersih 2.0 rally, little is going to help him gain the people’s trust.

The heavy-handed persecution carried out against the faces behind the Bersih 2.0 coalition has left the rakyat feeling nauseous. They are utterly disgusted at a leader who has failed in handling a simple request from an award-winning lawyer to engage in a “Walk for Democracy” with the rakyat before handing over the memorandum to the King.

Instead, the Bersih 2.0 rally riled Najib up, inflating his paranoia of losing that plush seat in Putrajaya, the nation’s administrative capital.

Sore loser, Najib

The massive support given by the people to the “Walk for Democracy” made Najib very angry. His blood is up as seen from the remarks he made post-July 9 of wanting to teach Bersih 2.0 a lesson.

If there is a worry, it is this that henceforth all actions taken by the Najib camp against Bersih 2.0 leaders will border on revenge. Truly unfortunate that with power and authority at his disposal, Najib is forgetting that he is no gift to the rakyat of Malaysia. He has feet of clay and all that power that Putrajaya accords him is “temporary”.

Like their boss, the police too declined to be held accountable for the violence that broke out during the July 9 rally.

But then what does the Inspector-General of Police Ismail Omar have to say to a remark made by national laureate and a supporter of the “Walk for Democracy”, A Samad Said, who witnessed the random firing of tear gas by the police?

“I saw them (the police) randomly firing tear gas at the crowd,” Samad had said.

The 76-year-old poet-activist was determined to lend all the support he could to the Bersih 2.0 rally that even after losing his shoes during a tussle at Kuala Lumpur Sentral, this senior citizen, whose eyes were bloodshot due to the tear gas and chemical-laced water, continued walking, barefoot. Dare they refute what he revealed?

What about the rally supporter who collapsed at the KLCC while running away from the tear gas fired by the police at the Bersih 2.0 supporters there. Baharuddin Ahmad, 59, was rushed to the Kuala Lumpur Hospital where he was pronounced dead.

The police as always washed their hands of this casualty.

Intead, they quickly blamed Baharuddin’s excess weight and three blocked arteries for his demise.

A husband and father is dead and the police took the easy way out by blaming Baharuddin’s lifestyle as the cause of his death. Hello, who is Ismail trying to con here? The rakyat knows better.

Najib, BN learn from July 9

The Bersih 2.0 rally is certainly a lesson in progress for Najib and party. The events of July 9 have blunted the edge of the BN administration, which stubbornly defies all claims of corruption and manipulation practised during the polls.

What remains now is to wait and watch what Najib and his Umnoputeras would do from the bashing that came from the people’s support of Bersih 2.0.

As the Malay saying goes, “Sepandai-pandai tupai melompat, akhirnya jatuh ke tanah juga” (No matter how smart the squirrel is to jump, he will still fall to the ground).

The brutality shown by the police on July 9 confirmed the people’s worst fears – that the cops are only too glad to be trigger-happy and have no issues embracing violence to get the people to “do as I say”.

As of now, Umno bigwigs are afraid of their periuk nasi or rice bowl and amusingly are all singing the same tune of verbally bashing Bersih 2.0 and its chairperson S Ambiga.

What Najib and Umno dare not accept is that the July 9 “Walk for Democracy” was not devised by the opposition, more precisely Anwar Ibrahim. It simply was a walk to uphold democracy, which the BN government found detrimental to its survival.

When Information, Communications and Culture Minister Rais Yatim declared that the Bersih 2.0 rally was a ploy to overthrow the government, he was simply shooting empty darts by talking gibberish.

Again, BN and Umno are affecting ignorance by claiming the rally was politically motivated. It was not.

Awakening of the rakyat

The rally was a “walk” by the rakyat to exercise their fundamental and democratic rights, which for a long time have been repressed by the BN government under the guise of various draconian laws.

Najib outlawed Bersih 2.0 and all else related to this coalition, including the colour yellow, which was a symbolic feature in the Bersih 2.0 rally vis-à-vis the T-shirts.

Supporters of the rally were barred from wearing the Bersih 2.0 T-shirt, a yellow-colour outfit that lists down the eight demands of the coalition.

Yet, Umno, synonymous with malpractices and double standard, could not care less when Umno Youth under its “Patriot” guise was giving out free “Patriot” T-shirts during the rally. What was really going on here?

Also, all claims of the rally shooing away tourists from the city and the country had no basis, not until the police turned hysterical and started raiding hotels to look for “subversive elements”, which of course were no where to be found, for none exist.

What the Bersih 2.0 rally brought to light is the fear of the BN government and Umno, of the awakening of the rakyat who will without fear or favour go on to demand what is rightfully theirs.

Malaysia is home to all its 28 million children. The question, however, is, of that number, how many of them will go to any extent to protect their motherland from being devoured by the greedy hands?