#KitaLawan: Isn’t it time to step back?

We cannot afford to be careless because it looks like there's a build-up towards real conflict.

COMMENT

Words cannot describe the relief I felt when I read that the #KitaLawan rally yesterday had come and gone without any untoward incident.

With the arrests of Hishamuddin Rais, Rafizi Ramli, and Tian Chua the night before, there was a palpable tension in the air, and there had to be some worry that the rally could turn violent should there be agent provocateurs on either side of the fence.

I am not against rallies. I walked Bersih 2.0 next to some of you who are reading, and I too raised my voice in defiance at Kelana Jaya stadium that night after the 13th General Election, feeling like my vote was ignored, that my choice, our choices, for the future of Malaysia had been stolen from us. A rally is a powerful thing, a tool for the people to make their voices heard in throwing support behind a common cause.

But isn’t it time to take a step back?

In conflict there is something called escalation. It comes in response to an offensive, going one step further in a game of one-upmanship that has no end until one side cries uncle. One possible outcome is mutual destruction.

And make no mistake, the escalation did not begin on Friday night. It’s been happening right in front of us for some time.

In the escalation of warfare against the injustices of the government, is there an end point? Do we stop when there is blood on the streets? Do we keep marching, casualties be damned, until we get what we want? Do we sit and camp in public places, harassed night and day, to make a statement?

Do the police start raiding civilian houses in the middle of the night based on tweets? Will we see our mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, friends, being dragged to prison on specious accusations? Do we see our leaders dragged through the streets in a show of what happens to those who defy authority? Are we going to be beaten as we walk through the streets? What else will they do to us? How do we reach the finish line, and where is it?

What is the finish line?

Cooler heads must prevail now. The rhetoric of escalation between the public, the opposition, and the government must be silenced before we reach the point of no return, because we have no idea what lies beyond that door. I will not raise the spectre of May 13. Enough has been said about that, and I for one am sick and tired of hearing it being used to deter the people from speaking their mind.

That being said, we cannot afford to be careless. It does look like our Prime Minister is doggedly stubborn in his insistence on holding on to his power, and there is no telling how he will react when pushed into a corner.

I plead with the leaders of this country, for the love of God, do not bring us to that point. I understand the anger, and the need to speak out against injustice, and I am not saying that we must remain silent even as we witness the country being mismanaged, the law being abused, and our money being frittered away.

The peace table

But this is the time to lay down arms and to meet at the peace table. We cannot and we must not let this be settled through chaos, although there are some who are of the opinion that a change of government can occur only through bloodshed. We must not pay heed to those words, because we’ll then be going down a dark path, through a national trauma from which we may not be able to recover.

Look at the Arab Spring, you say. Look at how the people took back their power.

Look again, I tell you now. Those countries are failing, lacking the capacity to make use of that miracle because it came from outside the system. The system may be corrupt, but trying to break it from the outside only results in tumult and insecurity for the people. We must change it from the inside for our own sake.

I know that some of you are already calling me an apologist. To be honest, it matters little. But ask yourselves, are you willing to take this fight that far? Sure, it is a worthy cause. Justice will always be a goal worth pursuing. But principles will change when we go down to the street level, Malaysian against Malaysian, both bleeding out because we love this country.

At the end of the day, you won’t just be fighting the police, the army, the FRU, you name it. Are you willing to fight a fellow Malaysian who disagrees with you but who also believes deep in his heart that he is right?

I plead with you, our Prime Minister, to pull back your forces. Don’t spirit people away in the middle of the night. The people will not allow such injustice. You gain nothing, less than nothing, by arresting your political foes in such a manner. Perhaps you hope to sap the spirit of the rallying protesters, but it should be crystal clear to you by now that you cannot silence the people in that way.

For the opposition, I turn to Lim Kit Siang. Hadi is hopeless. He is too distracted by his goal of being the lapdog of PAS’ ulama faction to be a leader of the people. And PKR still has no clear leader in the absence of Anwar Ibrahim. Only Kit Siang’s voice is authoritative enough to speak for the coalition, and only he has the influence over the people to hold them at bay before this escalates to a point we cannot return from.

Both of you, Najib and Kit Siang, are our leaders. Do you really want this to come down to Malaysian fighting Malaysian in the streets? I want to believe that neither of you wants it to come to that.

We are Malaysians, defined by our multi-cultural, multi-lingual heritage, a sometimes fractured, often dysfunctional family bonded by our mutually beneficial co-existence. We are also a peaceful people.

Do we want to destroy what it means to be Malaysian, even for the elation of finally unseating a government that has been allowed its excesses for too long? This language of escalation is not a viable option for the future of our nation. It is too dangerous a path to take.