How a shyster trolled the cabinet and exposed Harapan's hypocrisy

"Ha-ha !"

- Nelson Munch (The Simpsons)

Mohd Khairul Azam Abdul Aziz, vice-president of some far-right outfit, managed to troll the Pakatan Harapan cabinet with his letter of demand, which resulted in the spectacle of several ministers visiting a high school in Puchong.

A shyster somehow managed to convince a schmuck of principal (with the help of the police) to take down Chinese New Year decorations because it meant propagating to Muslim students.

Now some folks like the spectacle of cabinet ministers parading about affirming the multicultural foundations of this country, but the reality is that these feel-good moments are nothing but spitting in the wind of the systemic dysfunction of the government.

First off, what kind of principal removes Chinese New Year decorations because of a dodgy letter of demand? Did the principal alert colleagues at the Education Ministry of the bizarre race-baiting letter? Did the principal alert the press that some racist provocateur was threatening a public school?

And the really silly excuse by Deputy Education Minister Teo Nie Ching that the police merely “advised” the school to remove the decorations to de-escalate the situation.

First of all, what kind of police do we have here? Removing the decorations by definition is an escalation. This is what raises the temperature, especially on social media, where the perception is that a lone far-right person has more influence over a public school than the principal, the parents and even the police.

Also, removing cultural symbols of non-Muslims from public spaces is the definition of the Islamisation process that many folks fear.

But I do not really blame the school in this instance. What happens if they decided to ignore the advice of the police? What would have been the consequences of ignoring this advice?

Which is why I find the deputy minister's rather facile excuse intolerable. As usual, Harapan does everything in its power to ignore the real issue.

What the cabinet should be doing instead of handing out autographed lanterns or whatever they were doing in that school, was to inform that the police should no longer back race-and-religious-baiting people like this lawyer.

And this is really what the police did. They enabled this shyster and he got a win out of this.

Harapan cabinet ministers who are losing credibility by the day, got a chance to trot over to this school and have a feel-good moment when most of the ministers who were there are either by silence or overtly perpetuate the very system that allows this conman to get away with sending letters of demand based on racial and religious agendas.

Just take a moment and look at the pictures of those Harapan ministers joyously holding lanterns.

We have the boy minister Syed Saddiq Syed Abdul Rahman engaging in a little bit of multiculturalism while asking us to move on from the Zakir Naik issue.

Then read what this far-right lawyer said about the excessiveness of the decorations. On why he deemed the SMK Pusat Bandar Puchong 1 decorations to be excessive, he said: “Because I feel like it!”

This is exactly the kind of thinking that is behind most religious provocations in this country carried out by the far-right. And they get away with it because Harapan regime has no counter-narrative that differentiates it from these buffoons. 

Can anyone really make the argument that the Harapan religious czar’s “compassionate Islam” is different from the likes of this lawyer? Harapan’s religious czar Mujahid Yusof Rawa pontificates about a moderate Islam, but has no problem with a religious department in a supposedly “progressive” state labelling a woman’s movement within Islam as deviant.

This sends out a message to every Muslim that the far-right and the religious bureaucracy control the official narrative of the state and Muslims had better watch their step.

Harapan loves to talk about how people are inciting the populace with racial and religious provocations. But what they can’t do is justify why they have a race-based party in their alliance, carry out “don’t spook the Malays” agendas, bow out of international treaties which eliminates racism and of course, why the state security apparatus which is supposed to be an independent institution coddles far-right extremists while doing the bidding of their political masters with regards to targeting their political opponents or those in the favour of the power elite.

I mean balaclava-clad state security operators take down Indian citizens of this country for possessing “LTTE literature” and this shyster sends the equivalent of a parcel bomb to a school – how can you think of it as when Harapan cabinet ministers feel they have to visit the school to make a point – and Khairul Azam is all smiling after he was interviewed by the state security apparatus.

This shyster trolled the cabinet and probably the Harapan base, and no doubt there are others waiting in line to do the same.

I will close this piece by referencing the whole Jawi controversy. Did anyone else read A Kadir Jasin’s piece on the subject? Eye-opening for sure but is Kadir going to court the displeasure of the far-right? 

Remember when Pakatan Harapan lawmaker Wong Shu Qi was accused by the far-right for insulting Jawi by linking it with pornography?

“Slide two gave examples of other reading materials which used Jawi, including pornographic reading materials,” her statement read.

Now we have Kadir writing about reading Utusan Melayu.

“I remember the many hours of sheer ecstasy I had reading the lurid details of sexual relationships among the beautiful teenage model Christine Keeler, the British War Minister, Lord Profumo, and the Russian spy, Yevgeni Ivanov, in the Utusan Melayu. Thanks to my Jawi proficiency and the liberalism of the Utusan Melayu at that time – 1963 if my memory serves me right – I had many hours of excitement and gratification.”

Indeed.

I guess Harapan needs to reconsider how it sells Jawi to the non-Malays. It’s always about the sell. I guess Khairul Azam is not the only one who likes to troll Harapan. 

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S THAYAPARAN is Commander (Rtd) of the Royal Malaysian Navy. A retired barrister-at-law, he is one of the founding members of Persatuan Patriot Kebangsaan. - Mkini