After GE15, picking up the remains of the day

 

We’re now in the morning after the night before, “the night before” being the night when GE15 polling closed and votes were counted. And the winners are…

I don’t know who they are. I’m writing this on the night before the morning after, when everything is still up in the air and everybody still has hope and it’s too early to try to bribe newly-elected MPs into jumping ship.

They can’t jump ship now, but that wouldn’t stop them from steering their whole ship to where they want to jump. It’s a funny part of our culture that what’s forbidden for individuals is OK for groups.

But perhaps this morning everything has been sorted out and done and dusted and are in ship-shape and Bristol fashion (whatever that is!), and some of us are giddy with excitement while some of us…aren’t.

Would Boleh Nasional, the perennial favourites and direct descendants of the original coalition, come out of the wilderness, and give its leaders hope against some difficult legal cases?

Their so-called court cluster is desperately looking for a victory where the euphoria it creates would hopefully vaporise their legal jeopardies. But should this happen a large group of people would be very unhappy indeed – their lawyers.

If it’s not Boleh Nasional, could it be Pakatan Hopeless then? They won the main prize in GE14, only to be robbed after 22 months. That left a huge scar in their psyche and drove them into an extended funk, which only now is beginning to lift.

Or would it be that marriage of convenience, the one calling themselves Perhentian Nasional, where people of all vintages and quality would board any bus as long as it takes them to Putrajaya?

Would the core components of Perhentian Nasional, Abah Tu and Pertubuhan Ahli-Ahli Sesat (in English, the Association of Lost People) decide to take separate buses to Putrajaya? Would they be able to make up and bury the hatchet, and would that be in each other’s back?

There’s only one bus to Putrajaya – Route 112. Everybody is scrambling to get on it and praying it won’t be hijacked along the way with them getting kicked off it before it reaches its destination.

If they successfully reach Putrajaya though, they’ll have police escorts any time they want and be able to wear gaudy shirts and expensive watches with names they can’t pronounce, and they’d no longer have to care about the promises they made during campaigning.

There’s yet another coalition named Manafaat Nasional, happily benefiting themselves while ordinary people struggle to pay for food and rent. They didn’t create many beneficiaries apart from themselves, and perhaps their next seven generations too.

And there’s still another coalition that came into being recently, helmed by the usual suspects, some old, some unsavoury, some both. It’s called Good Times Again, made up of a random collection of fulltime and part-time politicians. The smart money isn’t betting on them.

We can safely disregard the smaller parties, such as the one whose members’ average age, even including their youth wing, is 83, and Parti Social Malaysia too, who ironically doesn’t like to socialise with anybody at all.

And we can disregard the many groupings in East Malaysia, all fancying themselves as king-makers.

Over there it’s full of Warisans and Gagasans and Gabungans and Alliances, most of which exist for only as long as subatomic particles do, and are often as small and as invisible too.

The purpose of all these parties and alliances is to ensure the survival of the unique Malaysian species, the mammalian invertebrate (that means no backbone) creature named politikus kitamampus.

In the true Malaysia Boleh spirit, we celebrate having more politicians per capita than any other country, and hence more cabinet ministers, deputy ministers, ministers without portfolio (with pay) and various special envoys and advisors (with pay and free travel) as well.

We also have many ex-prime ministers, all costing us various amounts of money – in one case paying for his food and accommodation for the next 12 years, and possibly longer. It also seems every kampung can produce a prime minister, and it seems many do.

Due to interbreeding of politikus which breeds like rats, various hybrids have spawned, all of which have longer lifespans and resistance against the usual causes of morbidity (shame, conscience) and predation (transparency, rule of law).

Many of these politikus aren’t often seen at their usual habitat, the Dewan Rakyat at the Parliament House. I think we can change this behaviour by renaming this place as the Parliamentary Sheraton Kuala Lumpur, and give it a five-star rating. Attendance will boom.

Many seem to have used the “Malaysia Tanah Melayu” Trade Mark as their own, hoping to excite the kampung folks, but hopefully not enraging the East Malaysians too much. It’s an old tune, but still a favourite of many. We’ll see if it hits the charts this time.

The non-Malays aren’t doing much better. They, too, used to be led by the best among them, but their leaders now are pygmy politikus, either obsequiously kowtowing to their Malay political partners to keep their political positions, or running loose with their own version of ethnic Armageddon.

You could have voted for me with my 3S (Semua Saya Sapu) party, the only party that’s guaranteed to remain true to its word after winning elections.

But alas, I didn’t run, so the only choices you had were people who, you know, surely won’t fulfil their election promises.

Such a pity. Maybe I’ll run when I’m a hundred and be our three hundred twenty-eighth kampung-boy prime minister. - FMT

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