Let them eat kangkung

 

We’re facing tough days, being buffeted by many forces beyond our control – the pandemic; the war in Europe; local political instability etc. Life gets tougher by the day.

Those worst impacted are the B40. “B” stands for Bottom, or in Malay, Bawah. The Bottomers, or Orang Bawahan, are mostly poor rural folk from the interior and from the rough parts of town.

We feel almost numb with the onslaught of these terrible forces, and probably think that nothing in our society can shock us any more. But we’d be wrong.

I can’t help but think again and again about the incident a few months ago when an ambulance had to stop to allow the prime minister’s motorcade to continue unimpeded to wherever it was going.

It reflects the current Malaysian zeitgeist perfectly. Years from now, this is the image that’ll remain in my mind about how far our country has fallen.

The ambulance driver felt he had to stop and let a VIP go first. He didn’t feel that his job of ferrying the sick or the dying should have priority over everything else on the road, as is the case elsewhere in the civilised world.

But please don’t blame the poor guy. He’s just conditioned to behave the way our feudal society wants him to behave. To him it’s natural that you stop ferrying sick or dying people if there’s a VIP on the road.

It’s also very telling that the prime minister himself never said anything about it. He left it to others to explain it away, where they basically said, well, what is the big deal?

Had the prime minister apologised for it, and said he will ensure the authorities do what other civilised countries do (there are many videos of VIP motorcades stopping for ambulances in Turkiye, Japan etc), his popularity would have skyrocketed.

We’d have felt that we’re still a civilised society, where rights and privileges are properly accorded and respected, especially to those being rushed around in ambulances and presumably in need of urgent medical attention.

But he didn’t. It’s either he didn’t know about what happened (even though it’s everywhere on social media, if perhaps not on the official government media), or he didn’t quite know how to handle this matter, or he just didn’t care.

It’s these small things that really shine a light on who we are, and where our society is heading – in this case, clearly in the wrong direction.

It seems the elites running the country, the ones in kayangan, or paradise, really do exist on another plane far removed from the rest of us mere mortals.

Many of them are unbelievably tone deaf. They say things very much along the lines of the remark “let them eat cake” famously attributed to Marie Antoinette when she was told the suffering people of France were running out of bread during the French Revolution.

In Malaysia it would be like saying “let them eat kangkung”, when told that Malaysians are running out of rice.

We haven’t run out of rice … yet. Though I’m sure many out there are running out of money to buy it, which must feel like the same thing.

Then we have the jibe of “reduce eating eggs if eggs are too expensive”, coming from one who probably doesn’t care about having egg on her face.

And the ministers who won’t take a pay cut because “it wouldn’t solve the current economic crisis”.

There’s the “withdraw food subsidies to foreign workers” even though they’re some of the most productive residents of the country, contributing billions in levies, direct and indirect taxes, and especially economic value through their cheap labour.

There’s the “let’s throw some people into jail because they’re guilty of the biggest current problem facing Malaysia – disrespecting the Malay language”.

No this hasn’t happened … yet.

There’s the “throw a woman into prison for months and months for stealing Milo”, but not those who steal the Milo factory, the district the factory stands in and the future income stream of all the Milo factories for the next seven generations.

There’s the “let’s create yet another government committee, call it a jihad and watch the rakyat swoon with our piety” crowd. And said committee’s brilliant idea to help the rakyat? Let’s organise massive discount sales!

Given how many cap ayam politicians are out there right now, we certainly can organise massive sales, especially for chicken.

There’s the “let’s wear a five thousand ringgit shirt, a hundred thousand ringgit watch or a fancy French clutch bag while we make lawatan mengejut, and later become terkejut, on the rakyat’s plight” lot.

There’s the “blame the middlemen for high prices”, as the old 1960’s RTM Malay radio drama used to do.

Meanwhile, in the land of the colonial master

If you’ve been following British politics, you’d know this has been a particularly noisy week in London.

But, at the risk of being labelled as stuck in a colonial mindset (though I’m still waiting to see those who’d label me as such proceed to ditch the Roman alphabet, the houses of Parliament, the rule of law, maybe even electricity, and other vestiges of our colonial pasts), I must say it’s quite invigorating to see an open political play in action.

It was spell-binding stuff, played out on live television. Certainly, much better than waking up one morning only to discover our nation has changed because a few people met and colluded in a fancy hotel in PJ.

A current casualty of the latest British political drama, albeit a voluntary one, is Sajid Javid, who resigned as the health minister. Previously, he was the finance minister, the second most powerful politician in the UK. He said in his resignation speech in Parliament: “I didn’t join politics to be somebody, but to do something”.

Given that he had left jobs that paid him multi-million pounds to enter politics, and by some accounts took a 98% pay cut, he probably meant that.

That Sajid, of Pakistani-Muslim descent and clearly not a British Bumiputera, could rise to such lofty heights (and may very well rise further), along with Rishi Sunak, Priti Patel, Sadiq Khan etc, says a lot about the British colonial mindset that we’re so keen to ditch.

Having people for whom political positions are not the pinnacles of their lives, and who won’t destroy the nation just to be “somebody” because they’re hopeless at everything else, is what gives a nation hope.

As it is, the majority of us are stuck in the group having to deal with the growing hardship that our leaders are unable to solve, and having to endure tone-deaf and insulting words and actions from them while they live in their kayangan palaces.

We’re the new B90, the 90% of rakyat who are blindly careening along on an ever more perilous path, set for us by those insolent, impudent and often incompetent feudal leaders.

We’re the Buta – blind – 90. - FMT

The views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect those of MMKtT.