Bungling into clustermania

 

I am enthralled by the cluster of words that creative Malaysians have added to the word “cluster”.

For slightly more than a year now, since March 2020 to be exact, we have been immersed in a daily deluge of the word “cluster”.

Our enchantment with “cluster”, our “clustermania” if you will, began with the infamous Sri Petaling tabligh cluster – Malaysia’s biggest Covid-19 cluster – which was detected following a religious gathering at a mosque in Sri Petaling from Feb 27 to March 3. It was attended by 16,000 people, including 1,500 foreigners.

A total of 3,375 of the 42,023 people screened from this cluster were Covid-19 positive, 34 of whom died. Health authorities found sub-clusters under it in seven states, involving 2,550 Malaysians and 825 foreigners from 28 countries.

The first time I heard the word “cluster” – which, by the way, can be used both as a noun and a verb – was when I read about star clusters and galaxy clusters in primary school.

But “cluster” hit me in the stomach during the 1991 Gulf War when US-led coalition forces rained 61,000 cluster bombs on Iraq and Kuwait, according to Human Rights Watch. In 2003, the rights group said, the US and UK used nearly 13,000 cluster munitions when invading Iraq to destroy that country’s non-existent weapons of mass destruction.

In 2007, the government introduced me, and fellow Malaysians, to cluster schools. I had earlier heard of cluster houses being built in Malaysia.

Today, due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the word “cluster” has become part of every Malaysian’s vocabulary.

The word cluster describes a small group of people or things close together. In the case of Covid-19, it refers to a small number of people who have the disease in a particular area or where the disease is related to a particular place or person of origin.

Talking about origins, the word “cluster” comes from Old English “clyster” which means “a number of things growing naturally together”.

We’ve since heard of wedding clusters, workplace clusters, construction clusters and education clusters, apart from name-place clusters such as the Teratai cluster and the Sivagangga cluster.

Along the way, some of our wonderfully creative observers of politics and politicians themselves came up with new additions: Cabinet cluster, court cluster, ministers’ cluster, SPM cluster and frog cluster. And on April 27, Umno president Ahmad Zahid Hamidi gave us the “spin cluster”.

I’ve heard of spin doctors, of course, but I’ve never heard of a “spin cluster”. I suppose Zahid knows better – having long been in politics and in government.

What prompted Zahid to create this term? It came about after Bersatu information chief Wan Saiful Wan Jan labelled those who criticised the government’s decision to dip into the National Trust Fund (KWAN) for money to fight the Covid-19 pandemic as “kluster merungut” or “grumbling cluster”.

Given the current situation in the country, “grumbling cluster” does not do justice to the feelings of most people. Perhaps “grumbling supercluster” would describe it better.

The “Cabinet cluster” refers to all those Umno ministers who are in the Cabinet and are seen as supportive of working with Bersatu in the Perikatan Nasional government. It is also sometimes referred to as the “ministers’ cluster”.

The “court cluster” refers to the group of Umno leaders, including Zahid and former Umno president Najib Razak, who are facing various charges related to criminal breach of trust, abuse of power and money laundering. These Umno leaders have been painted as being desperate to save themselves from conviction.

Umno’s Machang MP Ahmad Jazlan Yaakub came up with the “frog cluster” when he slammed Bersatu and those who labelled the “court cluster” as opportunists. Jazlan said the “frog cluster”, consisting of those who jump parties, “are more disgusting than the court cluster”.

In January, Muar MP Syed Saddiq Syed Abdul Rahman urged the education ministry to take measures to prevent a possible “SPM cluster” after 18 students returning to their school hostels for the new semester in Sabah tested positive for Covid-19.

Also in January, many people on social media expressed fear that there might be a “chicken cluster” in Putrajaya following a rush by about 2,000 people to collect free frozen chickens being handed out by the local Umno Youth division.

We should also take note of the clusters in Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin’s Cabinet. For instance, Ismail Sabri is senior minister (security cluster) and Mohamed Azmin Ali is senior minister (economic cluster).

Let’s not forget too that the Academy of Professors Malaysia has its own medical and health cluster.

And if you haven’t heard of it, there is such a term as “cluster headache”, which, according to the Mayo Clinic, occurs in cyclical patterns or cluster periods. It is “one of the most painful types of headache. A cluster headache commonly awakens you in the middle of the night with intense pain in or around one eye on one side of your head”.

Most Malaysians today suffer from cluster headaches caused by idiotic politicians and religious fanatics. With this type of cluster headache, the pain is mental, not physical.

While we are talking about idiotic politicians and religious fanatics, let me touch on the clusters of personality disorders and traits.

According to Mayo Clinic, there are 10 types of personality disorders and these are grouped into three clusters, based on similar characteristics and symptoms, with one personality disorder also having signs and symptoms of at least one additional personality disorder.

I won’t go into the details but I’d just like to touch on one of these disorders which will be familiar to readers who have been listening to speeches and statements of some of our political and NGO leaders: paranoid personality disorder.

“Paranoid personality disorder causes patterns of distrustful behavior. People with this personality disorder often feel suspicious about the motives of others or fear that others intend to harm them.” Do you think this could apply to those guys who constantly say their religion or race is under attack by fellow Malaysians?

Sadly, some politicians in both government and the opposition have helped in clustering Malaysians into “us” and “them”. That, like Covid-19, is unhealthy for the nation.

One of the words with “cluster” in it can’t be said in polite company. It describes a “bungled or confused undertaking”. The Cambridge Dictionary defines that word as “a complete failure or very serious problem in which many mistakes or problems happen at the same time”.

Much as Malaysians like to add the word “cluster” to various nouns or verbs, I don’t think they would be so impolite as to use that word to describe the way the Covid-19 pandemic is currently being handled. They may feel it, but are unlikely to use that word. - FMT

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