Do the bad guys always win in politics?

 

Do the bad guys always win? Will the politicians who put so many Malaysian lives and jobs into the ICU pay for their pathetic performance?

Will those who betrayed the voters' mandate, manipulated the emergency, invented “artistic” excuses in Parliament, and now, even defied the Agong himself, emerge victorious in the end?

Karma is a funny thing. Even though it may seem that the high and mighty somehow always escape punishment, yet divine justice declares “you shall reap what you sow”.

Let’s take the most powerful country in the world. The United States of America told the big lie of WMD (Weapons of Mass Destruction) to justify invading Iraq. But it ended up with its reputation in tatters and a Shia Muslim government in Baghdad friendly to USA’s enemy - Iran.

It invaded Vietnam and Afghanistan, bombed them to so-call “save them”, while supporting corrupt governments there. And the final result? The US was defeated in both wars despite its overwhelming military might.

Let’s come closer to home. When Dr Mahathir Mohamad was prime minister the first time, he sowed various evil seeds. When these ripened, he himself got to taste the bitter fruits.

For example, he could not legally challenge being kicked out of his own party, Bersatu, because he changed the law over 30 years ago to prevent precisely that! Our dear Tun nowadays complains of dubious court decisions, cronyism, corruption, and political frogs. But he only needs to look in the mirror to see who created these monsters.

God pays cash

In Islam, those who do wrongs shall receive hardship from God as balasan (payback). This can be so severe that the bill is settled via “cash” in this life, rather than “credit” in the afterlife.

And so, when flash floods hit Penang in 2016, PAS declared that “Allah bayar (paid) cash” to the state government because DAP had been “arrogant” earlier in criticising PAS about the massive Kelantan floods of late 2014.

What about those who betrayed the voters’ mandate via the Sheraton Move? Has their evil boomeranged back to hit them? While they seized power by the backdoor, could they end up with something that stinks?

In less than two years, they “succeeded” in pissing off their own Malay supporters. The fire was lit with the chaos of flip-flop MCOs, derisively called Most Confusing Orders.

But people really burned with the injustice of dua darjat - where VIPs and politicians escaped punishments for durian feasts and joget dangdut parties while humble burger and rojak sellers were fined a whopping RM50,000!

How much Malay support have Umno and PAS lost? They scored a crushing victory during the Tanjung Piai by-election of Nov 2019. So, even if they did not snatch power via the backdoor, these two parties may still be sitting pretty now, playing their traditional game of blaming everything on the evil “Cina DAP”. But now, they have nobody to blame for the Covid mess except themselves.

Meanwhile, Umno, PAS, and Bersatu are proving that their slogan of “Malay unity” is a joke by openly fighting each other. There’s infidelity too, with PAS abandoning its marriage to tired, old Umno in Muafakat Nasional to run off with the new bachelor Bersatu.

But karma bites back. So just as Bersatu stabbed Pakatan Harapan in the back with the Sheraton Move, it now finds itself stabbed (in the front) by Umno; when, on July 8, Umno president Ahmad Zahid Hamidi announced the party was withdrawing support for the prime minister. Verily, verily, those who live by the sword shall perish by the sword.

And so, the immoral Sheraton Move, done in the name of “saving the Malays”, has instead ended up displaying the true, naked, and obscene motives of those parties, thus discrediting the 3R politics of race, religion, and royalty.

Unforseen consequences

Those who undertake heinous actions do not always foresee the sour results that will emerge eventually. The Sabah power grab by Umno’s Musa Aman ended up triggering our current Covid third wave, heaping massive anger against the Perikatan Nasional government.

Azmin Ali may have thought he was clever in engineering the Sheraton Move, but his reputation as a minister handling the economy has been seriously damaged. And he may be in big political trouble now as nobody likes or trusts him.

When Prime Minister Muhyiddin (or Mahiaddin, or whatever his name is) Yassin got the Agong to quietly agree to an emergency in Jan (whether to stop Covid or to shut Parliament), I doubt he could have imagined how this whole thing would blow up in his face seven months later with a royal rebuke. Was this a divine “cash payment” for his cynical scheming?

Many Malaysians believe in ghosts, suay (bad luck), and pantang (taboos). If I was superstitious, I would say the PN government has been jinxed from the start. But don’t just look at the politicians.

Have we, as a society, been guilty for years of ignoring the welfare of foreign workers, cramming them into tiny hostels ripe for Covid outbreaks? And has karma now hit us back hard with economic destruction?

When voters keep voting those they know are corrupt, just because they are of the same race and religion, or because they give some crumbs from the master's table, are they hastening the country’s decline?

For the non-Malays, when I talk about reforming political funding, to stop towkays from “donating” to politicians to influence them, I sense some of my friends are reluctant to support this, because "this is the way the Chinese survive".

When we “just keep quiet” because we don’t want to “rock the boat”, are we passively supporting the nonsense going on? Ultimately, in a democracy, the choices of the people end up producing the leaders and system we have to live with.

So it’s not just the politicians who get their just desserts. Let us also be careful with what we sow - lest we reap the horrible karma of our actions.

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ANDREW SIA is a veteran journalist who likes teh tarik khau kurang manis. You are welcome to give him ideas to brew at tehtarik@gmail.com.

The views expressed here are those of the author/contributor and do not necessarily represent the views of MMKtT.