Mengupas hujah

Now, using what many of you will now say is my warped logic (and you say so only because you cannot find any argument to counter this argument), if the NEP should be abolished because, as you say, it is being abused by those people in high places to benefit themselves, should not other things be banned as well for that very same reason?

NO HOLDS BARRED

Raja Petra Kamarudin

I am sure, as a Malaysian citizen who should be able to speak the national language, Bahasa Malaysia, you know what ‘mengupas hujah’ means. If you don’t then you really do not deserve Malaysian citizenship. I mean, even here in the UK, before you are given British citizenship, you need to first pass your English test. And if you can’t speak English then you do not get British citizenship.

Anyway, I would like to kupas some of your hujah that you have bandied about the last few weeks. One of thesehujah, of course, is regarding the New Economic Policy (NEP) where you have concluded that the NEP is being abused by certain people in power and hence should be abolished.

Actually, that is not something new. I and other members of the Malay Chamber of Commerce have said the same thing 30 years ago back in the mid-1980s. Some of you who are younger than 30 were not born yet at that time while you who are in your 40s were still in primary school in the 1980s and, as the Malays would say,belum sunat lagi.

So perish the thought if you feel clever about coming out with that statement. You are not the inventor of that statement and neither are you the first to utter it. It is an old and expired statement that we used to throw into Umno’s face and is now as basi as the word Umnoputera, which I can proudly claim to have been the inventor of during a seminar around the same time, the mid-1980s, that I wrote about a couple of weeks ago.

So you want the NEP to be abolished and your reason for wanting so is because it is being abused by certain people in high places. That is the same reason being applied by the anti-gun lobbyists in the United States. They want guns banned because they say that the US has a very high rate of deaths/murder due to guns. The pro-gun lobbyists, however, oppose this and say that it is their right to bear arms, as guaranteed in the American Constitution, and that it is not guns but people that kill.

In other words, their argument is that people and not guns are bad. And it is people and not guns that kill. So why should guns be banned because of the fault of the people. You should not punish guns for the crime committed by people.  Cars kill more people every year than guns do. Hence should not cars be banned for causing the death of people? Why should guns be banned but cars are not banned?

Incidentally, in the US, there are 12.3 road fatalities per 100,000 inhabitants compared to only 3.59 per 100,000 inhabitants for the UK. In Malaysia it is 24.1 per 100,000 inhabitants, twice that in the US and about seven times that of the UK. By 2015, it is expected that traffic accident related deaths would be lower than gun related deaths in the US because of a large drop in traffic accident deaths. (SEE CHART BELOW).

Okay, in the US, cars kill more people than guns do and yet you want to ban guns but not cars. And since your argument for wanting to ban guns is because guns kill, then cars should also be banned for that very same reason.

Now, using what many of you will now say is my warped logic (and you say so only because you cannot find any argument to counter this argument), if the NEP should be abolished because, as you say, it is being abused by those people in high places to benefit themselves, should not other things be banned as well for that very same reason?

Many of you say that the Malaysian Election Commission (SPR) is being abused by people in power to remain in power. The general elections are not fair, you say. There is rampant fraud and blatant gerrymandering. Chinese-majority seats see voters as high as 120,000 while Malay-majority seats see voters as low as 5,000. Hence 70% of the seats are Malay-dominated seats while the non-Malay seats are in the minority. The ruling party needs to win only 45% of the votes to remain in power while the opposition needs to win 60% or so of the votes to form the federal government.

That is what you say and you are not terribly wrong. The election process is being abused, just like the NEP is, by those in power to immorally and unfairly stay in power. The people/voters are being cheated by those who walk in the corridors of power. The election process merely legitimises an illegitimate government.

Hence, since there is rampant and blatant abuse of the election process, just like in the case of the NEP, should not general elections be abolished, just like what you propose for the NEP? Anything that is being abused by those in power for their own benefit should be abolished, as what you argue.

We all lament about the Malaysian Cabinet. Those members of the Cabinet, the Ministers, abuse their power and perpetuate corruption to enrich themselves, their families, and their friends. Malaysia, it seems, has lost billions because of this corruption and abuse of power. And it is still going on even as you read this. The latest is the ‘nationalisation’ of the IPPs to the tune of tens of billions of Ringgit.

Do we, therefore, need a Cabinet? Should we not abolish the Cabinet and save the country hundreds of billions of Ringgit? If we abolish the Cabinet and there are no more Ministers, who is going to run the country? I do not know who is going to run the country but for use we will be saving hundreds of billions because there will be no more Ministers to abuse their power and corruptly spend the country’s money.

Another two very abused agencies are the PDRM and MACC, Malaysia’s police force and anti-corruption commission. As what many of you have said, these two agencies appear to be serving Umno’s interest rather than serving the nation. Hence these two agencies serve no purpose other than to keep Umno in power. If Malaysia did not have any PDRM and MACC then there would be no one to serve Umno. And maybe then we will be able to kick Umno out.

So it is in the interest of the ABU movement that we abolish the PDRM and MACC. What will Malaysia do if it did not have a police force or an anti-corruption commission? I am not sure what we would do but for sure it may be easier to kick out Umno without a police force and an anti-corruption commission that props up Umno.

And now we come to the legal system (the courts and the AG Chambers) and all those other agencies that serve Umno's interest...and not forgetting the worst one of all, religion.