Will govt act on Perak Sultan's rejoinder?

 

“The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts.”

- British mathematician and philosopher Bertrand Russell

Officiating the First Year of the 15th Perak state legislative assembly at Bangunan Perak Darul Ridzuan, Sultan Nazrin Shah said, “Firm and immediate action must be taken to stop activities of any party whether through speech or actions, that poison minds and fan negative emotions of people by exploiting differences in ethnicity and religion.”

Two questions should be considered. The first, who are these people who fan racial and religious animus and the second, what exactly does firm and immediate action mean?

This is the problem when the establishment demands swift action against those who incite racial and religious animus, the establishment never specifically identifies the perpetrators and they never define the action needed to be taken.

“Immediate” implies there is a clear and present danger and it would mean national security is at stake. Yet everyone skirts around the issue or does not offer clear definitions because nobody wants to be responsible for the eventual political blowback from reining in extremism in this country.

Sultan Nazrin (above) is right to worry about political instability. Sooner or later, a turbulent economy and lack of social cohesion brought upon by the Pakatan Harapan-led federal government - which attempts to counteract the provocations of PAS and Perikatan Nasional (PN) and no doubt internal machinations of malcontents - is going to destroy whatever illusion of stability generated so far.

These religious politicians have no ability to govern and there will be civil unrest, which could lead to neo-colonialism perpetrated by various power groups at play in the region.

What we are dealing with here is the fallout from decades of political and religious malfeasances carried out by successive Umno regimes, to ensure a voting polity who are hostile towards the non-Malays and democratic norms, reinterpreted through a religious lens, as vile “Western” concepts.

PAS president Abdul Hadi Awang

We have to remember that for racial and religious politicians, democratic-first principles and voting norms are gateways to fascism. What they want is to use democracy to gain power and then destroy democracy to remain in power.

Using the democratic process

PAS president Abdul Hadi Awang’s latest screed confirms the democratic process is merely a means to Islamic domination through racial and religious animus:

“Pilihan raya dan mengundi merupakan jalan bagi mendapatkan kuasa pemerintahan semula kepada Islam.”

(Elections and voting are ways of restoring governing power to Islam.)

All the bleating about freedom of press and speech by proxies of the theocratic state-in-waiting are mere attempts to use the democratic process to transmit their ideas and, when they take power through democratic means, they will turn to fascist instruments to remain in perpetual hegemony.

PN led by PAS is the existential threat facing the mainstream centre-right political establishment in this country. And PN has demonstrated, through various means, that the sacred cows of the establishment mean very little to them.

Buoyed by the facts that uneven voter weightage and gerrymandering have granted them the vox populi of the Malay community, they believe their agenda trumps everything and everyone else in this country.

Hadi and, by extension PAS, have made it clear that economic security is something that is last on the list and must be handled together with Islamic principles.

This, of course, means issues linked to economic security, such as food security and environmental issues, are considered minor inconveniences to the larger narrative of religious and racial supremacy in this country.

For decades, religious extremism was coddled by the state through the religious bureaucracy and governmental policies which created a generation of people who believed that non-Malays are a threat to their economic and religious existence.

No attempt was made to correct this either by funding secular initiatives or reforming the religious political narrative. This has resulted in a polity that truly believes that non-Malays and non-Muslims are second-class citizens.

Cracking down on provocation

Let us be honest here, everything Sultan Nazrin said goes against everything PN and PAS stand for. They do not want transparent systems of governance.

They certainly do not believe in what the sultan said: “Be fair and just in allocating resources and development programmes, and there should be no prejudice, discrimination and suppression against any party.”

But most importantly, painting anyone who disagrees with them as enemies of Islam and the Malay race is the desiderata of PN.

Now, this does not mean I want the state to crack down on PN using Sosma or anything like that. However, the religious and racial provocations spewed out on a daily basis by PN do warrant state intervention using the various laws currently on the books. But this will never happen, of course.

Does anyone think the state is going to assess how religion is influencing people to spew incendiary rhetoric? They may ban communist writings, for example, for influencing the rakyat but would anyone ban the texts of Hadi?

An indictment against PN is an indictment against the religion of the state. We can’t have that, can we? As long as there is no alternative narrative, there is absolutely nothing that can be done.

Unless the federal government has the fortitude to address the racial and religious provocations of PAS and carry out fair and democratic voter delineation exercises, the reality is that the aforementioned forces in this country will triumph.

Unfortunately for those of us who do not want a theocratic state, firm and immediate merely means passing the buck in Malaysian political speech. - Mkini

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S THAYAPARAN is Commander (Rtd) of the Royal Malaysian Navy. Fīat jūstitia ruat cælum - “Let justice be done though the heavens fall.”

The views expressed here are those of the author/contributor and do not necessarily represent the views of MMKtT.