The Kuching Declaration: all dressed up and nowhere to go

 

Take one point as an example. To become a great nation we need an efficient and professional civil service, judiciary, police force, etc. And for that to happen we need good people in government. And to see good people in government we need to abolish our discriminatory policies and implement meritocracy. And that would mean certain ‘sacrifices’ would be needed.

THE CORRIDORS OF POWER

Raja Petra Kamarudin

LEST WE FORGET, AND LEST ALL THE PEOPLES OF OUR GREAT NATION OF MALAYSIA FORGET, WE, THE UNDERSIGNED, DO ONCE AGAIN FIRMLY, RESOLUTELY AND UNEQUIVOCALLY PLEDGE AND PROMISE BEFORE THE WHOLE NATION OF MALAYSIA AS OUR WITNESSES, ON THIS HISTORIC DAY THE 16TH OF SEPTEMBER, 2012, IN THE CITY OF KUCHING, AND ON BEHALF OF OUR RESPECTIVE PARTIES AND PAKATAN RAKYAT AS A WHOLE, THAT WHEN WE FORM THE NEXT GOVERNMENT OF MALAYSIA, PAKATAN RAKYAT WILL HONOUR ALL ITS PLEDGES AND PROMISES TO THE PEOPLES OF MALAYSIA.

WE WILL HONOURABLY EXECUTE ALL THE POLICIES SET FORTH IN THE BUKU JINGGA SO THAT MALAYSIA WILL ONCE AGAIN BE A GREAT NATION, HER PEOPLES PROSPEROUS, HER FUTURE SECURE AND PEACEFUL, AND HER NAME CELEBRATED BY ALL THE NATIONS OF THE WORLD.

WE WILL HONOUR THE SPIRIT OF THE MALAYSIA AGREEMENT OF 1963 WHICH OUR FOUNDING FATHERS PUT THEIR HANDS TO, AND AS A SIGN OF OUR DEEP COMMITMENT TO THE PEOPLES OF SARAWAK AND SABAH, CONSISTENT WITH DEMOCRATIC PRINCIPLES AND JUSTICE FOR ALL MALAYSIANS, IN PARTICULAR:

ARTICLE ONE: EQUAL PARTNERS

We will restore the spirit of the Malaysia Agreement and the position of Sarawak and Sabah as equal partners within Malaysia by restoring autonomy to Sarawak and Sabah within the framework of the Federal Constitution.

ARTICLE TWO: FAIR REPRESENTATION

We will increase national integration between Sarawak, Sabah and Peninsular Malaysia through a fair power-sharing arrangement that fully upholds the spirit of the Malaysia Agreement.

ARTICLE THREE: CITIZENSHIP

We will set up a Royal Commission to solve the perennial national problem of illegal immigration and citizenship, particularly in Sarawak and Sabah.

ARTICLE FOUR: RESTORATION OF NATIVE CUSTOMARY RIGHTS OVER LAND

We will endorse the authority already vested in the State Laws of Sarawak and Sabah to set up Land Commissions to investigate, resolve disputes, redress, survey and restore Native Customary Rights over Native Customary Lands.

ARTICLE FIVE: COMPETENT SARAWAK AND SABAH

We will endorse the appointment of Sarawak and Sabah citizens to head Government Departments in their own respective States and by the powers vested in the State Secretaries of both States as well as give first priority to the appointment of Sarawak and Sabah citizens at Federal Government level functioning within Sarawak and Sabah.

ARTICLE SIX: OIL JUSTICE

We will raise the royalties paid on petroleum and hydrocarbon resources to Sarawak and Sabah to 20% from the present 5%.

ARTICLE SEVEN: EQUITABLE DEVELOPMENT

We will bring the level of infrastructure development in Sarawak and Sabah up to par with Peninsular Malaysia.

We, the undersigned, make this declaration as an incontrovertible contract between the Pakatan Rakyat and the peoples of Malaysia, this historic day of 16th September, 2012 on Malaysia Day, so that it may ring out resoundingly from Malaysia’s high forest hills down to the open sea; so that freedom may ever reign; and our peoples live in unity!

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I sat and mulled over The Kuching Declaration over the last two days trying to decipher what we can expect to see once Pakatan Rakyat takes over the Federal Government. I then went through The People’s Declaration of February 2008 that Pakatan Rakyat signed in an official ceremony in the run up to the 12th General Election. My purpose was to see where the two Declarations agree and where they disagree.

Actually there is no contradiction between the two -- only that the sentence structure is different -- plus, while The People’s Declaration goes into details (some complain that there are too much details), The Kuching Declaration merely states an aspiration minus any details.

Clearly The Kuching Declaration is a political statement that does not include a working plan. Hence there should be a more detailed Addendum or Lampiran as to how each Article of the Declaration is going to be implemented.

Let’s take one example: SO THAT MALAYSIA WILL ONCE AGAIN BE A GREAT NATION, HER PEOPLES PROSPEROUS, HER FUTURE SECURE AND PEACEFUL, AND HER NAME CELEBRATED BY ALL THE NATIONS OF THE WORLD.

That was what The Kuching Declaration said.

‘So that Malaysia will once again be a great nation’. We need to be specific as to what period of time Malaysia was supposed to be this great nation that we are talking about and in what way it was great. And how do we measure greatness?

We must remember that greatness is subjective. For example, some people may measure Malaysia’s greatness as being during the time of P. Ramli and Saloma when there was no racial discord and Malay girls/women wore sleeveless/short dresses/skirts and Malay men could openly go to cabarets and drink beer. The ‘old-timers’ would say: those were the good old days -- when Rose Chan performed in BB Park and Chinese or Indian boys could date Malay girls. Malaysia was a great place to live. The Malaysia of today is not that great any more, they would lament.

Others would say that the great days of Malaysia was when Chinese and Indians could rise to become the heads of government departments or head the police force and military services. Today, they lament, you need to be a Malay-Muslim to become the head. The fact that this has resulted in a serious decline in standards and morals proves that an all-Malay administration is not good for the country, they argue.

Hence, to bring Malaysia back to its days of greatness would involve doing away with the New Economic Policy and racial discrimination/quotas in favour of meritocracy that is colour blind. Is Pakatan Rakyat prepared to announce that as its masterplan on how Malaysia will be brought back to greatness?

The devil, as they say, is in the details. Hence we need the details of the real meaning of greatness and how this greatness can be restored to what it used to be.

The rest of the statement (HER PEOPLES PROSPEROUS, HER FUTURE SECURE AND PEACEFUL, AND HER NAME CELEBRATED BY ALL THE NATIONS OF THE WORLD) is also mere rhetoric. The world is getting poorer because nations are printing ‘paper’ 24-7 without any real wealth or gold backing. The world is also becoming a more dangerous place to live with wars and killings being a daily occurrence.  And how do you expect Malaysia to be ‘CELEBRATED BY ALL THE NATIONS OF THE WORLD’ when we come out with guidelines on how to detect schoolchildren who might one day grow up to become gay or obedient wives’ clubs formed to teach wives how to become whores?

We need to first stop being the joker of the world before we can expect to be celebrated by all the nations of the world. Hence for this statement to become part of The Kuching Declaration is itself a joke. The Malaysian mindset is so warped that it is impossible for Malaysia to be celebrated by all the nations of the world. We are actually the laughing stock of the world.

So, if Pakatan Rakyat wants us to take The Kuching Declaration seriously, it has to stop joking, unless that part of the statement was meant as tongue-in-cheek or sarcasm.

If all Pakatan Rakyat wants is a ‘feel good’ statement then The Kuching Declaration would have achieved that purpose. But if what they intended was to lay out the blueprint as to what we can expect under a Pakatan Rakyat federal government then The Kuching Declaration failed miserably because it does not tell us how all that is going to happen.

Let me put it another way. Sex is in the mind. If your mind is not into sex then you can’t even get an erection. So you need to first be in the right frame of mind. Reforming the country, as what The Kuching Declaration is really all about, is also in the mind. So, if we are not in the right frame of mind here, we will also not see anything happen.

Hence, are we prepared to first get into the right frame of mind to ensure that what Pakatan Rakyat is promising us will become a reality?

We can kick out Barisan Nasional. We can vote Pakatan Rakyat in to office. That is no big deal. That can happen if we want it to happen. But can Pakatan Rakyat deliver on its promises if we vote them in to office?

Pakatan Rakyat can never deliver its election promises unless we allow them to do so. Just like Pakatan Rakyat can never take over Putrajaya unless we allow them to, in that same spirit, Pakatan Rakyat cannot deliver its promises unless we allow them to do so.

So I don’t really care what Pakatan Rakyat is promising us. After all, they made many promises in the past and not always did they deliver what they promised. What I want to know is what are we going to allow Pakatan Rakyat to do?

At the end of the day it is about us and not about Pakatan Rakyat. And, this, we fail to see. We are the cause of the problems but we conveniently blame the government for what we are doing or not doing.

Take one point as an example. To become a great nation we need an efficient and professional civil service, judiciary, police force, etc. And for that to happen we need good people in government. And to see good people in government we need to abolish our discriminatory policies and implement meritocracy. And that would mean certain ‘sacrifices’ would be needed.

The question would be: are WE, Malaysians, the voters, prepared to sacrifice? This is not up to Pakatan Rakyat. All they can do is make promises. But whether they can do anything about these promises all depend on us.

Hence, as I said, are we prepared to first get into the right frame of mind to ensure that what Pakatan Rakyat is promising us will become a reality? If we are not, then Pakatan Rakyat is going to fail. There is nothing Pakatan Rakyat can do if we do not allow them to do it. And, currently, Malaysians merely scream about reforms but are not prepared to really reform.

Reforms is not merely about shouting and screaming, which is what we are doing all the time. Reforms is about biting the bullet and daring to change. And that would mean a paradigm shift. But do you even know what the term ‘paradigm shift’ means?

All I can say is be careful with what you wish for. If you are not ready then don’t wish for it. And if you are not ready then Pakatan Rakyat’s Kuching Declaration is going to end up just like The People’s Declaration, all hot air andhabuk in the end.

I suppose that brings to mind the old saying: don’t ask what your country can do for you but what you can do for your country. And that would also include: don’t ask how Pakatan Rakyat is going to reform the country but how far you are prepared to ‘tolerate’ reforms. And note I used ‘tolerate’ because Malaysians would not even tolerate Bibles in Bahasa Malaysia or gay entertainers singing in the country, so I just don’t see how we can talk about reforms.

That, basically, will determine whether The Kuching Declaration is going to be a load of bullshit in the end. We, not Pakatan Rakyat, will determine that.