Who needs to listen, when you can vote

‘A house built on greed cannot long endure.' - Edward Abbey (Postcards from Ed: Dispatches and Salvos from an American Iconoclast)

You are not one of us. Corollary to that, we decide if you are one of us. For the past couple of decades, this has been Umno's mantra. A couple of incidents this past week highlight this proposition.

Like most right thinking Malaysians, I watched with dismay the exchange between law student KS Bavani and that harridan, Sharifah Zohra Jabeen Syed Shah Miskin. If you ever wonder why it is that BN types like Sharifah like to remind "us" to leave if we are unhappy with how this country is run, look no further than the royal commission of inquiry on immigrants in Sabah.

What is slowly being unearthed in this commission is that constitutionally-created Malays and rent-a-voters ensure that Malaysia is well stocked with an electorate where subservience instead of any genuine sense of belonging is of paramount importance. Think of it as the Stepford Citizens.

PKR deputy president Azmin Ali does not have to be too concerned of what role Anwar Ibrahim played in the treason that was inflicted on Malaysians through the Sabah black operations. I was more pissed off when Anwar sent Azmin to head Sabah PKR for a spell. As an opposition supporter, I am very aware that if you rifle through Anwar's political baggage, you will find Umno's dirty linen.

However at this point, nothing the commission reveals would make any difference. As former prime minister and the alleged architect of the mischief in Sabah said, a royal commission will "not do anything at all". These so-called whistleblowers paint a picture of deliberate racial re-engineering but as the old manipulator says, "the border between southern Philippines and then-British North Borneo was not well recognised.

"People used to go back and forth and so these are not foreigners but people who feel they are in a better position in Sabah and so stayed there for a long time," said Dr Mahathir Mohamad.

Of course, nobody cares of the stateless Indians and Chinese who have been here longer than 20 or 30 years, but maybe it is because they do not speak Malay. It would be interesting to see the percentage of these newly-minted Malay/Malaysians that fulfill the criteria set down by the old manipulator.

Blind loyalty

The treachery of Umno runs deep and no amount of digging will provide any closure or rectify present problems, since Umno has demonstrated no commitment to the idea of good governance beyond maintaining the facade that stability means an acquiescence to corruption, that religious and racial preoccupations shall be controlled by a prejudiced state and that gratitude in the face of the malfeasances shall be the only acceptable response.

But I digress.

What Sharifah expected from her audience as Umno does, is that in order for you to be "one of us" the only response is a Pavlovian one. We give you free Galaxy Notes (for instance) and you sublimate whatever human impulse to disagree.

What Bavani did, thanks to her self-described PSM education, was to question the status quo and being a rational person that she seems, she expected a rational response. What she got was the usual Umno polemics questioning her loyalty to a system that demands servitude and gratitude.

Now even though I disagree with some points of PSM's socialist ideology, I think Bavani is a perfect example of a spirited activist working for the betterment of a country and people she obviously cares for. This obviously has a lot to do with what PSM is teaching its young adherents.

However, can pro-establishment partisans claim the same? What kind of education is the regime propagating when the most famous public example of students activism, is the students of Universiti Putra Malaysia engaging in an orgy of hate against the LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) community and conveniently dragging in oppositional figures as proxies for the Umno state's war against Pakatan Rakyat.

Equal time may demand that we listen to Sharifah's side of the story but in my opinion the most important lesson here, is that young people stand up to authority and question the status quo in a rational manner.

This lesson extends beyond questioning Umno but also questioning our preferred political parties. From my interviews with Siput MP Dr D Michael Jeyakumar, a culture of debate is actively cultivated within PSM. Members of PSM are encouraged to voice their opinions but more importantly disagree.

Blind unquestioning self-serving loyalty is the province of Umno-BN but unfortunately, it is something that is making it presence felt in oppositional politics.

Pakatan partisans should vehemently reject this and although solidarity is vitally important especially this near to a history-changing election, opposition supporters should never be cowed by majority voices to conform to a group think that destroyed Umno-BN a long time ago. We should honestly confront contrarian opinion and criticisms.

Irrational decisions

However let us get back to the "we decide if you are one of us" proposition that I opened this piece with. The Federal Court'sdismissal of Jeyakumar's case against the federal government for refusal to disburse funds to opposition members of parliament was disappointing but not unexpected.

Raus Sharif, the president of the Court of Appeal, stated that the court had no jurisdiction over the matter but included, "In appropriate cases the court is duty bound to intervene, especially where the policy or action of the executive is inconsistent with the constitution and the laws, or in any manner of arbitrary, irrational, elements of mala fide and abuse of power."

Readers should be aware that as the High Court has observed that Umno decisions have been "tainted with irrationality" as in the case of Home Minister Hishammuddin Hussein and his declaration that Bersih was an "unlawful" organisation. So maybe one day, the Umno policy of not disbursing funds to opposition MPs would be considered arbitrary, irrational and contain elements of mala fide and abuse of powers.

Of course, these funds come from our taxes and Umno's discretion not to avail them to opposition MPs is merely Umno spitting on our faces when we exercise our democratic rights. As always, there is retribution for not toeing the Umno line.

Moreover, the only people who are hurting (in this particular case) are the residents of Sungai Siput who dared kick a BN lackey out. I asked Jeyakumar (left in photo) how one operates with all the obstacles the federal government put up.

"How do we score our political points? By engaging in the areas where we have a comparative advantage. The PSM is quite adept at organising communities facing eviction pressure from developers and government. We have used this experience to organise more than 25 communities in Sungai Siput to defend their land and/or their houses.

"For the past five years, my budget has come to about RM220,000 per year. About a third of that comes from my parliamentary allowance. The remaining two-third is from friends and relatives who have been very, very generous.

"Our service centre is a one-stop centre for any problems that people might face - from IC (identity card) to BC (birth certificate) applications, Socso (Social Security Organisation) applications, housing loan problems, labour cases, welfare applications, police abuse, etc.

"This I have been running ever since my 1999 debut in Sungai Siput. So definitely, we have developed a lot of experience as to how to handle these problems and I have managed to share this expertise with my full-timers. This is another very concrete form of help that we can give people."

Culture of corruption 

Umno's game playing when it comes to disbursement of funds to opposition members of parliament like most Umno policies has consequences that have a deleterious effect on Malaysian society.

The lack of accountability in the federal administration just breeds further arrogance and contributes to the culture of corruption that Umno could not stem even if it had a sincere interest in doing so, as Jeyakumar says, "But if we do take Putrajaya we have to put constituency funding on a more stable and accountable base. I believe funds should be made available to the MPs to do their job. But it has to be properly accounted for and should be made available to both ruling and opposition MPs equally."

But more importantly, it spreads a culture of corruption to the opposition members of parliament who have to seek funds from other sources to effectively carry out their duties to their constituents. Here is where big/small business collide politics, which is the bane of politics everywhere.

This is an issue that activist/politicians like Jeyakumar are concerned with.

"An MP needs funds to run his service centre and pay his staff. He needs research assistants. If we insist that he raises these funds himself, it opens the door to business influence. Businessmen will provide these funds but they would also expect certain favours. Wouldn't it be better for our role as ‘wakil' rakyat if we could be freed of the need to cultivate businessmen" he says.

"But where do we go from here?" asks Azly Rahman in his piece'Lesson from 'listen, listen, listen' written in prose reminiscent (to me at least) of early cyberpunk pioneers. Jeyakumar has an answer (I just wish there were more politicians like him).

"Boot these bunch of clowns out of office!"

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S THAYAPARAN is Commander (rtd) of the Royal Malaysian Navy.