The month of October tends to bring out the ogre in certain types of leadership aspirants in Umno.
Twenty six Octobers ago, the stadium at Jalan Raja Muda in Kuala Lumpur was the venue for a frightful demonstration staged by the youth wing of the party that resounded with cries to dip the keris in the blood of assorted racial targets for stepping out of line on febrile issues.
If you are looking for an antecedent to the keris-raising antics of a subsequent chief of the same wing of the party, you would have to cite that bone chilling demo at the stadium on Oct 18, 1987.
Participants included the present prime minister and the head of Perkasa who had to pay somewhat for his participation with a spell under ISA detention.
However, the deprivation of his civil liberties seemingly did not give pause to a tendency for stirring up things on racial and religious issues, as his subsequent personal history proved.
The latest instance of October's tendency to expose the gooseflesh in the Umno hide has seen another graduate of the party's youth wing create a sensation with comments that must simply rule Ahmad Zahid Hamidi beyond the pale.
If 26 years ago, the fear-raising demo at the stadium could be excused as a temporary suspension of judgement by the participants on account of their youth, as a fleeting offence against the rules of engagement between political representatives of race-based parties, no comparable caveats can be tendered in mitigation of what the home minister said during a security briefing for community leaders in Malacca last Saturday.
Bizarre notion
Zahid is 60 years old and the recent recipient of a doctorate from a local university, an attainment of no mean accomplishment when you consider that he did his learning whilst performing his role as a member of the cabinet.
But judging from what he said about a host of issues to do with crime, its prevention, the role of the police force, the legislature and the rule of law, the first alphabet of his name serves as nominal grade for his grasp of the concepts underlying these issues.
Zilch is his understanding of those concepts, a point he underscored when in reaction to the public outcry over his egregious views aired at the briefing in Malacca, Zahid remonstrated with a plea for the recognition of the rights of victims of crime and the police as the targets of criminals.
By that stance he indicated that he subscribes to the bizarre notion that the concept of the rule of law is more likely to facilitate the criminal than to protect victims - therefore shoot at criminals first and ask questions later.
As if that view of his was not repelling enough, he went on to say that some criminal groups ought to be encouraged to carry on with what they are doing because the services they provide locate them on the less culpable side of law-breaking.
It must come as a surprise that just then Zahid's attention was drawn to the presence of the press when the home minister would have been better served if his attention were called to the risqué content of his opinions which must have struck the scribes as incredibly newsworthy.
Clumsy harassment
Not having learnt his lesson about the inadvisability of hectoring the press, which he did a day earlier, the minister careened from disaster to debacle by warning the press that if they reported on what he said their publications would be shut down.
By now the small remnant of the discerning among his audience would have had an idea of how it came to pass that a police report was lodged against Zahid a few years ago by a potential suitor for his daughter who was allegedly punched by the minister.
A civil suit was filed by the aggrieved party but the matter was settled out of court though the lesson there may have held little of chastening value to Zahid, just like the matter of his clumsy harassment of theMalaysiakini reporter hadn't given him suitable pause.
That Zahid is seemingly unhinged is not as much concern to observers of the upcoming party elections in Umno; more worrisome is the prospect that he will emerge as he did at the last party polls in 2009 - as its top vote-getting veep.
That his periodic rides on the wild side would be no detriment to Zahid's prospects of upward mobility would point to a wider nihilism of values among Umno's electorate more dangerous than the candidate's unspeakable insensibility on matters of grave import.
Twenty six Octobers ago, the stadium at Jalan Raja Muda in Kuala Lumpur was the venue for a frightful demonstration staged by the youth wing of the party that resounded with cries to dip the keris in the blood of assorted racial targets for stepping out of line on febrile issues.
If you are looking for an antecedent to the keris-raising antics of a subsequent chief of the same wing of the party, you would have to cite that bone chilling demo at the stadium on Oct 18, 1987.
Participants included the present prime minister and the head of Perkasa who had to pay somewhat for his participation with a spell under ISA detention.
However, the deprivation of his civil liberties seemingly did not give pause to a tendency for stirring up things on racial and religious issues, as his subsequent personal history proved.
The latest instance of October's tendency to expose the gooseflesh in the Umno hide has seen another graduate of the party's youth wing create a sensation with comments that must simply rule Ahmad Zahid Hamidi beyond the pale.If 26 years ago, the fear-raising demo at the stadium could be excused as a temporary suspension of judgement by the participants on account of their youth, as a fleeting offence against the rules of engagement between political representatives of race-based parties, no comparable caveats can be tendered in mitigation of what the home minister said during a security briefing for community leaders in Malacca last Saturday.
Bizarre notion
Zahid is 60 years old and the recent recipient of a doctorate from a local university, an attainment of no mean accomplishment when you consider that he did his learning whilst performing his role as a member of the cabinet.
But judging from what he said about a host of issues to do with crime, its prevention, the role of the police force, the legislature and the rule of law, the first alphabet of his name serves as nominal grade for his grasp of the concepts underlying these issues.
Zilch is his understanding of those concepts, a point he underscored when in reaction to the public outcry over his egregious views aired at the briefing in Malacca, Zahid remonstrated with a plea for the recognition of the rights of victims of crime and the police as the targets of criminals.
By that stance he indicated that he subscribes to the bizarre notion that the concept of the rule of law is more likely to facilitate the criminal than to protect victims - therefore shoot at criminals first and ask questions later.
As if that view of his was not repelling enough, he went on to say that some criminal groups ought to be encouraged to carry on with what they are doing because the services they provide locate them on the less culpable side of law-breaking.
It must come as a surprise that just then Zahid's attention was drawn to the presence of the press when the home minister would have been better served if his attention were called to the risqué content of his opinions which must have struck the scribes as incredibly newsworthy.
Clumsy harassment
Not having learnt his lesson about the inadvisability of hectoring the press, which he did a day earlier, the minister careened from disaster to debacle by warning the press that if they reported on what he said their publications would be shut down.
By now the small remnant of the discerning among his audience would have had an idea of how it came to pass that a police report was lodged against Zahid a few years ago by a potential suitor for his daughter who was allegedly punched by the minister.
A civil suit was filed by the aggrieved party but the matter was settled out of court though the lesson there may have held little of chastening value to Zahid, just like the matter of his clumsy harassment of theMalaysiakini reporter hadn't given him suitable pause.That Zahid is seemingly unhinged is not as much concern to observers of the upcoming party elections in Umno; more worrisome is the prospect that he will emerge as he did at the last party polls in 2009 - as its top vote-getting veep.
That his periodic rides on the wild side would be no detriment to Zahid's prospects of upward mobility would point to a wider nihilism of values among Umno's electorate more dangerous than the candidate's unspeakable insensibility on matters of grave import.
TERENCE NETTO has been a journalist for close on four decades. He likes the occupation because it puts him in contact with the eminent without being under the necessity to admire them.
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