MARINA MAHATHIR IS A ROHINGYA?

Umar Mukhtar

Of course not! The Rohingas have no choice. They are fleeing a well-documented genocide at the hands of the Burmese government. Marina Mahathir is announcing a privileged choice. It is hard to imagine Marina in an open wooden boat of hundreds, shitting and sleeping in the open. Nevertheless, it is everybody’s right to seek better abodes.

In spite of not holding a permanent job in her life, she has the luxury of choice unlike the hundreds of thousands of us who may have to break our backs for a plane ticket out. I guess it helps that her father held the exorbitant-paying job of Prime Minister.

And it runs in the family. One sibling has practically settled in the United Kingdom. Not migrated, he still has his to manage his money that still comes from this dump called Malaysia, which his father helped shape. Still from a political vantage birth-position of a PM’s son and a Malaysian political class called Bumiputera. That way, it’s almost like earning money like the colonialists of yesteryears.

And you can’t expect her to suffer the cold winters of Plymouth to open up new lands where she can practise the way of life she chooses. Instead, she will hitch a ride in a matured society which had sacrificed the lives of thousands of patriots in fights in the past to make their country the way it is today. She will be second-class in the hearts of the original  inhabitants. But she will overcome that with whatever that money can buy. She has plenty.

And Marina the activist will be fighting too, even though she will be abroad – like those middle-aged Iranian women she mentioned, begging tree-hugging delegates at international conferences to save their country from things they don’t like. It is always comical when this happens. Unlike the Khomeinis and the Chin Pengs and the Raja Petras who continue their own fights abroad because to stay back means prosecution.

Marina will not face prosecution if Hudud is implemented here. Unless she plans to be a thief or a murderer, her hands are safe. Her heart can bleed for the thiefs and the murderers who did not spare thoughts of human rights of their victims. But she will not be prosecuted. Like the economic refugees of Vietnam with gold bars sticking out of their pockets, we even went on a limb to lend them Pulau Bidong. The Rohingyas are no Marina Mahathir

We all have grouses one way or another. Staying back to fight is the honourable thing to do. Otherwise the well-intent Group of 25 and the Chinese racists would have gone by now. They have other considerations, not just money, for them to show tantrums of a spoiled child. Otherwise, it legitimises the ends of numerous arguments to be like Perkasa’s ‘you don’t like Malaysia, you can go’.

This a democracy, warts and all. Society changes. The USA of today is not like the USA of 1800s or 1700s. One does feel alienated when the new majority have different political values but one has no right to impose one’s lifestyle on the emerging majority just because one had a wonderful time previously.  But one can try. Stem the tide of inevitable change if it is by being in the home country, in the midst of things. Add to the numbers.

If voting with your feet is the answer, can we expect Dr Mahathir to leave for his thousand-acre ranch in Argentina if Najib Razak remains Prime Minister? Or better still, will he flee the country when his prediction of a chaotic Pakatan Rakyat victory becomes a reality? No wonder he is fighting tooth and nail for Mahathirism to continue. And Dr Mahathir is no quitter like his daughter.

But we will  wish her well, at the first-class lounge with parting gifts of sambal belacan, golden bangles and branded Swiss watches for her now-safe wrists. The Rohingas seem far away and remote.

When you have privileged choices, flaunt it in interviews.