Hot potatoes, soft targets and sex

Malaysia's style of politics is boxing in Pakatan Harapan politicians to focus on the soft targets of sexual preference and same-sex marriage, instead of commanding decisive and immediate action
on the hot-potato issues of child marriage, controversial religious studies and child safety in our schools.

Conventional, whispered wisdom says it’s a way of political life because Harapan needs to burnish its religious credentials to pre-empt Umno or PAS stepping into any potential void as defenders of faith, doctrine and race, the subtext of which has always been the supremacy of one ethnic group and religion, over all others.

Many Malaysians continue to rightly believe the current Harapan administration is truly bent on supporting a multi-racial and multi-religious population founded on equality, that it is exactly what we
need to move forward, painfully slow as the pace may be.

Nevertheless, the ongoing sandiwara over LGBT acceptability and gay marriage is another wake-up call to remind us that everything changes while everything stays the same.

A history of pragmatism in our national politic may convince Harapan it now needs to deal with the perceived threat from Umno exactly as Umno countered PAS in the lead-up to GE13, by out-performing the opposition in the arena of race and religion.

But in so doing, Harapan faces the real danger of entrenching itself as no more than respondents to the destructive agendas of these two opposition parties to divide, disrupt and ultimately conquer.

For the sake of building New Malaysia, Harapan cannot afford to be a one-hit wonder. It needs more than one, five-year term. As the DAP’s Lim Kit Siang said recently, “real change will take up to 20 years”.

To win that political marathon, Harapan needs to set its own trajectory, leverage Malaysia’s racial and religious diversity, introduce true leadership into the picture. For a change, that should leave Umno and PAS in catch-up mode, forcing the opposition to second guess government, instead of the other way round.

Harapan needs to bite into those hot-potato issues now, allowing for the shock and pain to ease in the coming four-and-a-half years, instead of delaying decisive action for the GE15 campaign trail.

In the New Malaysia, the spectacle of government seeking to be more religious than opposition should rightly be relegated to the bin of the old. Otherwise, it gives religion – any religion – a really bad name and image.

We face a critical time so soon after a nation’s rebirth if those who want us to believe they will lead us to a new destiny, after 61 years of one-party rule by Umno, are on the surface preoccupied with matters of sexuality while "Rome burns" in schools across the national education spectrum, and a virulent underbelly of paedophilia is encouraged while Putrajaya dillies and dallies over criminalising child marriage outright.

Nothing is more important than education system

Our most respected leaders counsel patience with the new administration.

Malaysians are fully capable of showing the same over IMDB, the fact that former premier Najib Abdul Razak is still walking the streets a free man, highway tolls, the focus on national language, constitutional "special provisions" vs misquoted "rights", Zakir Naik and the like.

But patience is no virtue at all in the face of inaction on child brides, young males being taught how they may “hit” their disobedient wives when they grow up, and classroom discussions around justified death sentences on apostates.

Nothing is more important, from a national-leadership point of view, than the national education system, a fundamental building block of any nation’s future, and the protection and preservation of a child’s
human right to a safe environment in which to live, thrive and grow.

But our leaders’ focus on LGBT and same-sex marriage suggests education and children’s human rights are less than urgent.

At the same time, the views presented about the LGBT community and same-sex marriage are hardly trivial.

There is no doubt that politicians who denigrate an already vulnerable and harassed LGBT community may be licensing violence against Malaysian citizens, while they deepen discord and division in New Malaysia.

An abundance of scientific studies shows gays and transvestites are born with hormonal balances and genetic make-up that vary greatly from the heterosexual form.

In that sense, they are different, but in every other way, they are just like you and me – they pay taxes, care for the communities they live within, contribute to the economy, and abide by the laws of the land, except when it seeks to control their very nature.

And they vote.

In the final analysis by Harapan, they may conclude it is forever incumbent on them to appease the 60 percent of Malaysia’s population that belongs to one religion, to play poker in the Umno/PAS house of cards.

But it also behoves the government to recognise the remaining 40 percent are just 10 percentage points short of being half of that same populace.

In any vote tally, that’s a big number, another potential void. And there are independents and smaller parties out there who are only waiting to fill that very void, which Harapan may ignore at its peril.

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WILLIAM DE CRUZ volunteers his time with Bersih Sydney. He is the former president of Global Bersih and continues to cling to the dream that Malaysia’s Coalition of Hope is the way forward.  - Mkini