Freedom From Mental Bondage

I have been harboring one uncomfortable thought all this while. Many of my friends are pro PR. But a certain number of them are pro PR in potentia- i.e. they are willing to adopt the posture of anti UMNO, as long as they think UMNO can only lose in theory. But as the groundswell of anti UMNO builds up and they realize that UMNO can actually lose, they crack up.

So while they profess to be anti UMNO, they don’t want to see the demise of UMNO. How do you explain these contradicting sentiments? At heart they still have this fear that if UMNO actually loses out, they will be without protection.

This means they share the same fears as that expressed by a person who sent his/her a comment to my earlier article. Written in Bahasa Melayu, the person asked who will protect the Malays if UMNO is vanquished. We cannot rely on DAP because it is a Chinese based party.

I am surprise at this response. After 55 years, the person who sent the comment like some of my friends hasn’t found the answer and has missed the point. After 55 years, we are NOT meant to look out for protection.

We have looked for the wrong thing! The idealism that we are looking for MUST be the liberation of the Malay mind! We should be asking what we have done to wean the Malays from their dependency. Now, if a government has ruled over the Malays for 55 years and it has failed to liberate the Malay mind and weaned him off, and even if there a single Malay asking for protection after 55 years, this government has failed miserably.

Why this kind of two steps forward, one step backwards? People who profess to want liberation from UMNO slide back from the march of progress, to express lingering fears?

The answer to my mind is because liberating ideas require a liberal order which hasn’t come to fruition yet. It therefore requires an exceedingly courageous attitude to imagine that a liberal order involving a limited government as one of its principal elements is a certainty. Years of being accustomed to living under a nation ruled by UMNO stop people from thinking that it is POSSIBLE to live without UMNO. We have to believe that there is a better life without UMNO.

Liberation from mental bondage requires courageous analyses over emotional excursions. The emotional faculties within a human being is more developed than the cognitive or reasoning faculties. Emotional allegiance is easier to secure, it requires only an appeal to primordial fears. On the other hand, it’s harder and longer to secure allegiance based on cognitive reasoning.

So what we are going to do? We are not going to stop but to continue presenting readers with reason and dialogue.

I have given the short answer to it. I said PAS can easily fill in where UMNO steps out. We have to realize that the world does not end if UMNO is defeated. It is not a case where all the skills required to run a country are only with UMNO.

The PKR states are run on better terms than all the BN states. Revenues are rising. In Kedah, revenue from logging has increased so many folds. It used to be RM 8-10 million, now it’s RM70 million. Cash reserves held by the Selangor government is now over RM 2 billion. It never got to more than RM 1 billion during all previous UMNO lead government. Most important, we don’t see Malays dying in the streets for want of protection.

The question is fundamentally wrong and this is the premise where UMNO got it all wrong. You don’t structure the country on the basis of protection. It is not protection that we want to give to Malays. We want to liberate them, to allow them to prosper not to imprison them in bondage and dependence.

The best protection comes in the form of the rule of law. Not rule by men but rule by law. I hope the person who poses the question gets it.

After 55 years of independence, we know of the principle that differentiates the Malays from the others. Those without protection become those who are better able to adapt and compete. Those who are accorded protection and are unwilling to extend themselves beyond the box remain behind, disadvantaged in many aspects of life.

The question after 55 years should not be whether we can get protection at all. Rather the issue and the question is, are we liberated in mind and spirit?  

Perhaps it’s instructive for us to learn the lessons from the French Revolution which provided us with the mottoLiberté, égalité, fraternité, French for "Liberty, equality, fraternity.

Liberty consists of being able to do anything that does not harm others: thus, the exercise of the natural rights of every man or woman has no bounds other than those that guarantee other members of society the enjoyment of these same rights.

Equality- The law "must be the same for all, whether it protects or punishes. All citizens, being equal in its eyes, shall be equally eligible to all high offices, public positions and employments, according to their ability, and without other distinction than that of their virtues and talents."

Fraternity- Any man aspires to liberty, to equality, but he cannot achieve it without the assistance of other men, without fraternity

Posted by sakmongkol AK47