Stop the Buku Jingga lie

Hindraf chairman P Waythamoorthy pens his political thoughts while on his 11th day of hunger strike.

COMMENT

By P Waythamoorthy

Today is the 11th day of my hunger viratham (hunger strike). I continue to feel weaker with each passing day.

The variety of visitors is broadening. Among the visitors yesterday were several politicians. I would like to thank all the politicians who visited me to show their concerns for my condition during my viratham.

However what I would also like to tell all my politician friends is that the time spent in coming all the way to the temple in Rawang to visit me probably is better spent in lobbying within their respective political parties to get their bosses to endorse the Hindrag Blueprint.

This is the best way for them to show concern. The condition for my going off the hunger strike is very clear:

• The Malaysian government led by Najib Tun Razak must endorse Hindraf’s 5-Year Blueprint in a binding manner to commit to a plan of implementation of all the six proposals in the blueprint as long as they remain the government,

or

• The government-in-waiting of the Pakatan Rakyat led by Anwar Ibrahim must endorse the blueprint in a binding manner and commit to its implementation, should they be forming the next federal government.

My request to my politician friends is to help us to realize the blueprint.

Today I would like to lay out some of my thoughts on Pakatan’s Buku Jingga and Hindraf’s Blueprint.

It is a lie to say that the Buku Jingga covers Hindraf blueprint proposals.

Xavier’s photo opportunity visit

I would like to make mention of an incident with one PKR politician Dr Xavier Jeyakumar who visited me yesterday.

When asked by one of the other visiting wellwisher as to why Pakatan was reluctant to sign the blueprint, he replied with a question of his own: “Why should we sign your blueprint when it is all in our Buku Jingga?”

The wellwisher then requested Xavier to show where exactly the Buku Jingga covered the Hindraf blueprint proposals. She got silence for the answer.

We were left wondering if Xavier had made that long trip just to convince me to drop our demands for the blueprint endorsement because Pakatan had it all covered.

Isn’t it making a mockery of my basic purpose for the hunger strike, which Xavier made an occasion of, to visit?

He being a professional politician just came for the photo opportunity, that is all. If he really felt as he answered, then there clearly was no other purpose for his visit.

In any case, I would like to make it very clear that the Buku Jingga consists of the Common Policy Platform of the parties representing the Chinese interests and a section of the Malays and the Pakatan Agenda which covers eight broad areas and a 100 day action plan.

In all these, what you get other than broad statements of intent are some targets. There is no serious discussion in the Buku Jingga about the plans for realising any of these.

Another great lie

The Buku Jingga broad statements and goals just cannot cover the specific proposals of Hindraf’s blueprint. It is apples and oranges.

Pakatan politicians have to stop lumping together what is logically incompatible. It is a lie. There is no way any Pakatan politician can answer the lady yesterday to show where the blueprint proposals are covered in the Buku Jingga. They are not!

The NEP had the stated goal of poverty eradication and economic restructuring so as to eliminate the identification of ethnicity with economic function. The NEP policy document much like the Buku Jingga stated their intentions in these kinds of broad statements, but then we all know how much of a lie the NEP had become.

It became a vehicle for hijacking the national resource – sapu bersih. In fact NEP was initiated in 1970, just the time the massive displacement of the Indian plantation workers began.

Instead of eradicating poverty for the Indian plantation workers, they were pushed deeper into a poverty trap by the development plans arising from the NEP. RM1.1 trillion were spent in the 10 development plans in the name of NEP.

How much of that went to eradicating poverty among the displaced estate workers?

Similarly when the Felda program was started sometime in 1956, Tun Abdul Razk said Felda would provide land to the landless and jobs to the jobless.

We all now know that it did not mean what it said. There was no land for the landless non-Malays and there were no jobs for the jobless non-Malays.

And now, saying the Buku Jingga will do this or that based on broad statements and broad goals has significant potential to turn into another great lie.

All one can say is that we really do not know what it will finally pan out as, if you do not state exactly what your programs of action are.

Stop lying Xavier

In preparing the blueprint, we had considered all these possibilities for distortion and that is why we developed it as a set of very concrete proposals – not only in terms of the specific interventions but also in terms of the realisation mechanism by way of the Minority Affairs Ministry.

Therefore we are effectively talking apples and oranges. No matter how hard you search for apples in a heap of oranges, you are not going to get any apples. Xavier, so stop the lying.

Broad statements of principle or broad goals become affectively a cover for non delivery.

The Buku Jingga broad statements and goals just do not cover the blueprint proposals and Pakatan politicians have to stop repeating this lie.

P Waythamoorthy is the Hindraf chairperson. He has been on his hunger strike since March 10.