Love, Hate, PAS and UMNO
By batsman
To a religious person, a man’s heart is more important than his skin colour. To a confidently intelligent and skilled person, a man’s talent and brains are more important than his skin colour. That leaves an insecure and bigoted person who thinks that skin colour (which essentially the owner cannot control) is all important. How then does UMNO measure up with its obsession about race?
It is common view that BN VIPs are rich and powerful. Why then should they feel insecure? One of the possible reasons is that wealth is obtained by foul means and not though talent or skill. That would be a very good reason to feel insecure. That also means that those who obtain their wealth through foul means are not only insecure but wicked.
What would be the best political policy for an insecure and wicked person? One of tested and tried policies is to pander to those who are also insecure and wicked – to use race as an instrument of divide and rule.
That means those at the bottom of the pile of insecure and wicked people can be made to become eager foot soldiers in the war to rob and grab riches. After all, no one can escape from his race and skin colour, so the war is eternal and peace is impossible. Even Michael Jackson who sought to make his skin white through plastic surgery and chemicals was hounded all his life by those eager to rob and steal his riches and punish him because he had the wrong skin colour. Even Michael Jackson could not escape from being a black man.
Unfortunately things in this complex world are not as simple as made out above. What would make a religious person with a good heart consider skin colour as important? The only thing I can think of is that nationalism is placed foremost and religion made secondary i.e. protection of the race is essential for the protection of decency. This is an extremely dicey subject and involves volumes of philosophical argument. As such it is easy to manipulate and even good people can be made very confused by such policies.
This is why it is also a favourite tactic of racists – to confuse people that race is now more important than religion. The success rate is quite high. That is why it is a favourite tactic in the first place.
The protection against such racist policies is not so much intellectual argument but faith and basic decency.
Another complication that arises in this complex world is competition. Not all skilled people are equally skilled and talented. Insecurity sets in because competition creates set-backs and set-backs create insecurity. This means that even skilled and talented people often rely on the security of racial competition as opposed to individual competition. As a race or group, there is advantage in combined strength. This makes even very skilled and talented people prey to racism, chauvinism and nationalism.
Thus it is that people of faith make better leaders in a world where decency is important, where the advantage of one racial group is not turned into domination and abuse, where insecurity can be replaced by trust and fair play.
Of course in a world where decency is not so important, people of great talent and skill make better leaders. In such a case, the commonwealth can be best invested for the greatest returns and people of talent and skill can be justly rewarded. Of course it is bad luck for those at the bottom of the pile with no great skill or talent, but I am sure some form of charity can be organized for these unfortunate souls.
The great tragedy is when we have leaders who have no real faith and decency and who manipulate racism without conscience, who use brute force and dirty tricks to suppress opposition and who use their power to corner great wealth for themselves and who are rumoured to be even capable of killing recalcitrant ex-lovers.
Such a choice of leaders is made available to the voters of Manek Urai. I hope and pray they choose well.
