A collective of fears and insecurities

Last weekend, 330 NGOs rallied at the Sultan Sulaiman Club in Kuala Lumpur to express their insecurities and paranoia.

The main theme was the tired threnody that had persisted in the national narrative, resistant to reality and constitutional facts, for the past six decades – race and religion were under dire threat, Malay rights were vanishing.

The new attorney-general confesses to unfamiliarity with the national language, and the national language is menaced. 

Get better in a second language like English, and it is belittling, setting aside the national language.

The royal institution is under attack. Excuse me, who ticked off the Perlis sultan and being ‘kurang ajar’ to the max?

And I think a storming of the Bastille will require more than A Kadir Jasin.

As for a malleable Dr Mahathir Mohamad being manipulated by the demonic DAP, all I can say is they must be smoking some killer weed to reach such a hallucinatory belief.

Representatives of a proud race, and all they talked about were their fears, the many things they were scared of.

Is there a sociological link to the popularity of horror movies? Hantus everywhere. Heck, years ago there was a film of a malevolent salty spirit in a ‘kicap botol’.

The adversarial rhetoric was threatened “us” against encroaching “them.”  

They did piously pound the drum for unity in insisting the country should have one school system. Why should the Chinese schools be allowed to do their own thing?

Ahem, there is a flourishing industry of private institutions doing their own lucrative thing, preparing students for overseas degrees.

Study in unified harmony? Chinese schools have many non-Chinese students. Thousands have come out in support of keeping the campuses of UiTM racially pure.

(I taught in UiTM, Shah Alam for three semesters. I enjoyed working with the performing arts students, but I also remember that year as the year of “enforced savings.”

(I was paid a year’s fees two months after I had left UiTM – don’t ask, long story that would not reflect well on the university.

(I left UiTM to lecture in UPM, because the friend who poached me said I was an idiot to work for free. Three weeks into a new year, I went to UiTM to see if the mystery of my missing fees had been solved.

(I bumped into the head of the department in the corridor. I said she must be aware that I was no longer with her faculty.

(The corridor was noisy with students shifting classes. She misheard and took my statement to be a query. Her reply: I don’t know what you’re teaching this semester. I have to go to my office to check.

(Sheesh! Third week into the semester and she was… amuse yourself, fill in the rest of the sentence.)

A besieged race   

The national school and university systems have been dumbed down for decades to help the disadvantaged.

A high number of passes in SPM subjects, for example, was a help to the education minister.

You know lah, Kit Siang and his unreasonable, disruptive party members, slightest thing they will make a big fuss in parliament, talking rot about the rot in education.

As for the many university graduates who can’t think for themselves, can’t talk, can’t write, they joined the Umno civil service.

This rhetoric of a besieged race and religion didn’t appeal in the last elections, and it didn’t have much appeal at the Sultan Sulaiman Club.

The least charitable of the reports of the rally said there were about 1,000 people.

Most generous was the police who estimated 3,500-4,000.

Okay, take tops – 4,000 fearful citizens, 330 NGOs, averages out to about a dozen per NGO.

The Cantonese rudely describe anything small in size or quantity as a booger (nasal crap).   

In talking about the rally, Malaysiakini columnist R Nadeswaran refers to rent-a-mob.

Sometimes the rent is not paid.

My friend Aini’s son was persuaded by his friends that he could get an easy RM50 if he were to don a free Red Shirt to posture loudly in front of Low Yat Plaza a few years ago.

He went home at about 5 in the evening because there was no sign of the RM50. At 7pm his friend called, said they would be paid at the Brickfields Umno office.

He was home two hours later, still empty-handed.

I wonder who he voted for, in Taman Muda, in the last election?

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THOR KAH HOONG is a veteran journalist. -Mkini