PKR vice-president N Surendran weighed into the escalating fisticuffs between the DAP and supporters of Umno deputy president Muhyiddin Yassin’s use of the May 13 analogy with a reminder that the alleged causes of that “historic trauma are now in grave doubt such that employment of that analogy is decidedly risky business”.
“The conventional narrative about May 13 is that it was a spontaneous racial riot arising from so-called DAP racial instigation against a background of Malay discontent with their poverty and threats to their political primacy,” observed the MP for Padang Serai.
“But this has long been disputed and the conventional version regarded as dubious and its employment as political capital seen as reprehensible.
“The May 13 incident has never been subjected to open and honest inquiry which would have helped heal the psychic wounds it caused and allow the nation to move on wiser and stronger,” said the federal legislator in remarks toMalaysiakini.
Surendran was referring to new-fangled attributions of the May 13 incident to motives that were sinister rather than spontaneous.
The PKR leader cited the story revealed last year by former Umno stalwart and now PAS member Tamrin Ghafar that ex-Umno luminary Ghazali Shafie had in 1983 told a youth delegation of the party that police investigations suggested that May 13 was part of a putsch launched by ‘Young Turks’ to unseat then-prime minister Tunku Abdul Rahman and have him replaced by his rebels-sympathetic deputy, Abdul Razak Hussein.
Tamrin said that the youth delegation was led by Anwar Ibrahim. Ghazali, once a powerful home minister and aspirant for top positions in Umno, died in January 2010.
What Ghazali (third from left in photo) supposedly said to the Umno Youth delegation and the findings of academic researcher and social activist Kua Kia Soong, whose scouring of declassified documents on the incident and attempt to disentangle fact from fiction in his eponymous work May 13 Fact & Fiction, have created grave doubt about the veracity of the conventional narrative.
“The jury is still out on what caused May 13 and things will stay that way until the Umno is voted out of Putrajaya,” opined Surendran.
Meanwhile, he said, Umno can foist its theory of why May 13 happened on the body politic but it can’t coerce belief in its version.
“So long as another school of thought exists on the episode’s origins, Umno cannot rest easily on its theory. Indeed, history is written by winners but winners don’t stay so forever,” cautioned the human rights lawyer.
“The stakes are high in this drama. Once the other theory gains validation and corroboration – and there’s a higher possibility than ever it would - the heroes of Umno’s post-May 13 hegemony in Malaysian politics may well be consigned to a gallery of villains,” argued Surendran.
In other words, it’s a risky business using the origins of May 13 as a stick with which to beat adversaries for it may well boomerang.
“The conventional narrative about May 13 is that it was a spontaneous racial riot arising from so-called DAP racial instigation against a background of Malay discontent with their poverty and threats to their political primacy,” observed the MP for Padang Serai.
“But this has long been disputed and the conventional version regarded as dubious and its employment as political capital seen as reprehensible.
“The May 13 incident has never been subjected to open and honest inquiry which would have helped heal the psychic wounds it caused and allow the nation to move on wiser and stronger,” said the federal legislator in remarks toMalaysiakini.Surendran was referring to new-fangled attributions of the May 13 incident to motives that were sinister rather than spontaneous.
The PKR leader cited the story revealed last year by former Umno stalwart and now PAS member Tamrin Ghafar that ex-Umno luminary Ghazali Shafie had in 1983 told a youth delegation of the party that police investigations suggested that May 13 was part of a putsch launched by ‘Young Turks’ to unseat then-prime minister Tunku Abdul Rahman and have him replaced by his rebels-sympathetic deputy, Abdul Razak Hussein.
Tamrin said that the youth delegation was led by Anwar Ibrahim. Ghazali, once a powerful home minister and aspirant for top positions in Umno, died in January 2010.
What Ghazali (third from left in photo) supposedly said to the Umno Youth delegation and the findings of academic researcher and social activist Kua Kia Soong, whose scouring of declassified documents on the incident and attempt to disentangle fact from fiction in his eponymous work May 13 Fact & Fiction, have created grave doubt about the veracity of the conventional narrative.“The jury is still out on what caused May 13 and things will stay that way until the Umno is voted out of Putrajaya,” opined Surendran.
Meanwhile, he said, Umno can foist its theory of why May 13 happened on the body politic but it can’t coerce belief in its version.
“So long as another school of thought exists on the episode’s origins, Umno cannot rest easily on its theory. Indeed, history is written by winners but winners don’t stay so forever,” cautioned the human rights lawyer.
“The stakes are high in this drama. Once the other theory gains validation and corroboration – and there’s a higher possibility than ever it would - the heroes of Umno’s post-May 13 hegemony in Malaysian politics may well be consigned to a gallery of villains,” argued Surendran.
In other words, it’s a risky business using the origins of May 13 as a stick with which to beat adversaries for it may well boomerang.
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