Let’s be free again

Yes everything in this country seems to be the same but everything has changed and these changes trouble many of us.

There are times when I think that nothing has changed in Malaysia. All around me are our people living their lives in their own way. They are unencumbered by the things that make us different from each other – race and religion.

If I am hungry I go where my craving tells me to go. Today it may be chicken rice. Tomorrow satay in Kajang. By the end of the week either nasi kandar in Bangsar, kepala ikan in Kampung Pandan or maybe even nasi dagang at Kampung Baru.

I know where to go for the food that I want – to places I have grown accustomed to with friends who will insist that paying for what we all eat together is their privilege, not mine!

When I need to fill up for petrol I do confess that I would prefer Petronas but only because I feel that the possibility of the petrol being adulterated is less because quality control is tight.

I pass through Kampung Baru and Dato’ Keramat with not a thought about the Malayness of the place. Nor does it worry me when I am in Jinjang or Brickfields at any time of the day or night. This is my country and I go where I please.

I am comfortable with the mix of people, culture and heady hedonism that a multicultural population bestows upon us. Even now half a world away I know that nothing is boring in Malaysia. You cannot ignore the dynamics that colour our lives and we are the better for it.

And yet even as I know that nothing has changed, I know that everything has.

A growing divide

Today when we go through Dato’ Keramat, we cannot help but remember the tragedy of the Highland Towers and the many landslides and resulting in deaths that still plague that area right up to Zooview.

When in Brickfields, KL Sentral overshadows everything else and we wonder who had profited hideously from its construction.

As we drive through Jalan Kuching into Jinjang and then out through the Kepong MRR2 Highway, we think about the repeated cracks in the highway and the flood mitigation projects in Kepong and wonder why there were so many problems with these projects.

Today the police are more repressive, more brutal, more demanding of bribes, more interested in their own affairs than ours. From the top echelons of the Royal Malaysian Police to the policeman walking the streets, more questions are being asked of their integrity than of their ability to protect the people from criminals and the enforcement of law and order.

There are more of you talking and writing in Malay better than the Malays and yet we know that there is a growing divide between us all.

Everywhere we see the young going about with the business of getting an education in colleges and in universities. These are the future of our nation and yet they are all Malays. The non-Malays get their education elsewhere at their own expense.

The NST, Utusan Melayu, The Star, the Malay Mail, TV1, 2 and 3 are all still there but their contents only spout political propaganda and mindless entertainment that we no longer allow to permeate our numb minds.

Yet day in and day, they still spew out these mindless drivel to the point of insanity. Our insanity.

Divide and rule

In every facet of our life – from the cradle to the grave and even beyond it – we are constantly being invaded, managed and harassed by strident racial and religious pronouncements that this government find necessary in pursuance of its political agenda to divide and rule our people.

The most galling of all must surely be the snatching of corpses from their loved ones in the name of Islam.

Today we have political leaders whom we hold in contempt for their arrogance. We are disgusted with the others for their corrupt ways.

Some we wish were long gone for the manner in which they have conducted themselves – insensitive to our concerns and without regard for civility, decency or the boundaries that civilised men and women are bounded by.

They are leaders who are proud of their stupidity. There are many today. Even if this truth goes unacknowledged by them we know that the time for change is nigh.

Yes everything seems to be the same but everything has changed and these changes trouble many of us.

The curse of arrogance and hubris that power bestows has given our leaders a skewered sense of their own self-importance. We need to take back what we have lost. We need to take back control of our lives.

You only have power over people so long as you don’t take everything away from them. But when you’ve robbed a man of everything, he’s no longer in your power – he’s free again. – Alexander Solzhenitsyn (1918-?) Russian novelist, dramatist and historian.

CT Ali is a reformist who believes in Pakatan Rakyat’s ideologies. He is a FMT columnist.