I am angry. More than with anything or anybody else, I am angry with my self. I have for so long been warning everyone that unchecked Federalism and unchallenged UMNO/BN dominance will inevitably lead to a Police State. Few took it seriously. I did not press the panic button hard enough or become militant about it. And that's is my failure.
Now that a Police State has happened upon us, we like Pilate, wring our hands and moan and groan.
Who won on 9th July 2011 is not just relevant, it is of paramount importance. For when history is written and re-written in the years to come, Malaysians and the whole World shall know that many others and I today stood in the presence of GREATNESS which might not quite suffer or pale in comparison if placed alongside that of Mandela, King and Ghandhi.
Super-heroine
Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it's Super Ambiga!
Daughter, woman, lady, wife, mother, lawyer, human, humane exemplary LEADER and God's child - Ambiga Sreenivasan.
She has burst upon us like a flaming comet from the Kuiper Belt, possibly heralding the birth of a bright new era in Malaysian politics.
She has arrived in a year when they just released a movie of one of my favourite childhood comic book heroes, The Green Lantern. You almost expect her like Hal Jordan/Green Lantern to whip out her Yellow Bersih 2.0 T-shirt and chant:
“In brightest day, in blackest night, No evil shall escape my sight.
Let those who worship evil’s might, Beware my power… Yellow T-shirt’s light!“
It does sound a bit corny, I admit. But Ambiga has an Indian ancestry too, and perhaps:
"Long nights ago, a tryst was made with destiny, and now the time comes when we shall redeem our pledge, not wholly or in full measure, but substantially."
Today I marched with thousand who came not only from all over Kuala Lumpur, Selangor and its suburbs and boondocks but also from Trengganu, Kelantan, Penang, Perak, Melaka, Negeri Sembilan and Johor. There were boys and girls, mothers and fathers and even grandfathers and grandmothers. Some even bravely brought their infant children along to bear witness to the historic occasion. There were mainly Malays and many Indians , Chinese and many Others.
Shock waves
The atmosphere was electric.
Not just the educated, the lawyers and activists and the comfortable or rich and well-connected were there. The baker, the butcher and the candlestick maker had trudged there too. There was even a man with leg in plaster cast hobbling about on crutches and Irene Fernandez in a wheelchair! One other major Ambiga supporter was there as well, keeping a low profile. We shall grant her her the anonymity she desired. All were seething with incandescent rage, all united by three main issues:
1. THE PRIME MINISTER LIED TO BERSIH AND THE NATION AND HE'S STILL IN OFFICE.
2. The police can dictate to our citizens what colour T-shirt they can wear? By what provision in OUR Constitution and Law do they presume to do that? How do they arrogate to themselves such powers and who approved it? What next? A fiat on bras, panties and underwear?
3. Our election system and rules need a major overhaul.
Simmering not far off was the fact that the King of Malaysia had been insulted by Ibrahim Ali questioning his actions in meeting Ambiga and hammering out a compromise and that PM Najib had not been sincere in offering a Stadium venue for Bersih 2.0's march while his cousin, Home Minister Hishamuddin Hussein threw in a technical 'pasang kaki' (leg trip) objection and refused to withdraw Bersih's gazetted outlaw status.
Faced with such blatant duplicity from the PM, Home Minister and The IGP and sledgehammer to fly tactics, the people decided enough was enough and decided to march, come hell or high water!
This was a watershed peoples' march. On the day, there were no issues of race, religion or class. Although Prime Minister Najib Razak and frog Perkasa demagogue Ibrahim Ali had both demonised Ambiga and overplayed the race and religious (anti-Islam) card in the weeks preceding the historic Bersih 2.0 March of 9th July 2011, the people understood the real issues at hand.
No more trust
Have no doubt. At the start of today, the distance between the Malaysia Government and its people was at its furthest it has ever been. Not even in 1969 was the nation more divided. At the end of the day, that distance had widened even more!
We no longer trust Prime Minister Najib, his Cabinet, his Government or his administration.
Make no mistake. What the authorities cruelly and unfairly meted out to our fellow citizens today was totally at the behest of Prime Minister Najib, Deputy PM Muhydin and Home Minister Hishamuddin Hussein (long dubbed Kerismudin). It is a degree of reprehensible high handedness that represents a new low in Malaysian rule by law and rule by fear regime.
They turned on water cannons and fired tear gas where none was called for at all. The crowd was excited and boisterous, but not vicious. Yet they were victimised and assaulted. But everyone refused to be cowed by cowardly intimidation tactics.
No Malaysian citizen buys this collective Cabinet cop out that the Inspector General of Police is to be blamed for it all.
How has our Government transformed itself from a people's government to a Stalinist one?
Malevolence
Such malevolent changes never occur overnight. We have to go back to the 1980's to trace its roots.
Every ten years or so the world moves forward by ditching an anachronism. Malaysia has tended to respond to these global changes in perverse contrarian fashion. It has bucked the trend as though confounding behaviour is always a positive virtue.
The Berlin Wall fell in November 1989 foreshadowing the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union and the near annihilation of Communism.
In 1987, Dr. Mahathir anticipated the collapse of the old world order and the Iron Curtain with eerie and uncanny prescience by embarking on Ops Lallang. 106 politicians, most of them from the Opposition, were arrested and jailed without trial under the Internal Security Act (ISA). To mask what was clearly an attempt to stifle opposition to Dr.M's policies, he also had arrested some UMNO MP's - including a then anonymous unknown Ibrahim Ali - all of whom were released shortly thereafter. Lim Kit Siang and Karpal Singh of DAP were served with 2 year detention orders!
Dr.M capped this command performance by sacking Chief Justice Salleh Abbas in 1988 and then said the King had initiated it!
Earlier this year, the then IGP, Hanif Omar, categorically "confirmed" that it was he who sanctioned the 1987 ISA arrests and not Dr.M!
Not surprising then that in the run up to Bersih2.0, PM Najib, DPM Muhyddin and Hishamuddin Hussein re-affirmed the universal law among Parliamentary democracies that elected leaders, MP's and Cabinet members of Government were all subordinates of their respective Inspector Generals of Police!
Has there ever been a more gutless cop out or malodorous BS in the history of the world?
Gutlessness
Early this year the world bore witness to the the 'Arab Spring Uprising.' PM Najib was among the first to advise President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt:
“In a democratic system, we must prioritise the people and that is why any solution in Egypt must be based on demands and wants of the people to determine the future of their government.”
Whoa, was he, as is always claimed by Malaysian politicians, misquoted by Zionists, the USA, IMF, World Bank and Singapore intent on interfering in the internal affairs of Malaysia? Naah, it's only 100% true. So, sauce for the goose...sauce for the gander? Naah, not a chance, not in 1Malaysia, 2 Systems.
In his May 2011 speech at Oxford University, PM Najib went one better with:
“Our choice is clear. Come together in action for a future of justice, freedom, hope, compassion and goodwill for our children or it will be replaced by a future of injustice, tyranny, hopelessness, cruelty and hate."
The spindoctoring apparatus never stops. They never say what they mean or mean what they say.
The IGP today claimed only 6,000 protesters took part. But the math doesn't compute - the police arrested nearly a whopping 1,500 or 25% of them? The crowd was actually somewhere in the region of 50,000-100,000 at its peak.
So, to borrow (with due apologies) from Churchill :
Ambiga and her Bersih 2.0 cohorts of 9th July 2011 led us in our finest hour. Never in the history of Malaysian conflict have so many owed so much to so few.
So, Prime Minister Najib, do the decent thing. Do what's right and noble. Redeem yourself. Go see the King tomorrow. Submit your resignation letter to him and call for fresh elections immediately.
You are not fit to lead and govern Malaysia 1 day longer than that!
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