What I learned from the HS buy-election
Art Harun
Okay guys. The by-erection is over.
As many of you might notice, I am a history freak. I just love history. I don’t know why. But one thing for sure, I like to look at how people behaved or acted before so that I could learn a lesson or two from them in order to enable me to predict how people will behave in the future. I think that’s part of the reason why I love history.
What can I learn from the Hulu Selangor buy-election?
First and foremost, this buy-erection teaches me the sure fire way on how to get something done in my constituency. Let’s say there are pot holes everywhere on the roads leading to my house. Or there is an old abandoned school project (there are everywhere, aren’t they?) which stands like a sore thumb in my housing area which has also doubled up as a drug haunt.
Let’s say my kids need a laptop each. And the old folks near my house need some help with their monthly expenditures to make ends meet. Or I need some road humps near my house because there are bloody idiots who drive 80kph on roads in housing estates in their Cayenne or whatever behemoth they drive. And I have been writing countless time to my MP to help. But there isn’t anything done.
The trick is to ask my MP to resign. Or to pray that he or she would kick the proverbial bucket.
Then a buy-erection would be declared. And oh my God wouldn’t all my prayers be answered instantly! The abandoned school project will immediately be revived. All the pot holes will instantly disappear. My kids will get new laptop. The road humps will suddenly grow on the road in front of my house. Like wow wow.
And I tell you what. If Baraisan Nasional wins, I could even get to go to Putrajaya to see the Prime Minister who will see to it that a sum of RM3 million or whatever will be allocated for my mosque, Chinese school or whatever. Fooh…like tawdally simply happenin’.
I also learned from this buy-election that many Malays do not know the difference between a “gift” (for which they should be thankful or grateful) and something which they are already entitled to.
Yes. I am talking about the RM50000.00 each paid to 100 FELDA settlers. That money was not a gift from the government. Nor was it a contribution of any sort from the government. That money belonged to the settlers in the first place because their lands have been taken away more than 10 years ago. That money was long due to them. So there was nothing to be thankful to the government for paying it.
I mean, should I thank you if you had taken my Porsche GT3 (note: this is just an example. I do not have a Porsche GT3 or any Porsche for that matter) about 4 years ago and now you pay me 500 bucks for it?
Yes. But the FELDA settlers could not differentiate between the two. They are owed about a million each for their lands. They are now paid 50000 bucks and they thought it was a gift.
What to do?
I also learned that the Chinese people don’t give two hoots to the Barisan Nasional or MCA. To them, the BN or MCA can do or say what they like and they just could not care bloody less. If Pakatan Rakyat had put a chimpanzee as a candidate, the majority of the Chinese people would vote for that chimpanzee. Even if Chua Soi Lek was the challenger.
Then I learned that the Indians however are a predictable lot. They would follow whatever the Barisan Nasional say. Even if UMNO rejected their own party’s preferred candidate, the Indians would still support BN. MIC had wanted Palanivel. Local UMNO boys preferred Mugilan. UMNO head honchos put in he-whose-name-is-truly-1Malaysia. And the Indians still supported him.
The next thing I learned is the fact that HINDRAF is now more complicated and dynamic than middle-east politics. They have right winged HINDRAF. Then the left. Then the right-leftist and also the left-rightist. Then they have the true HINDRAF. Also the true right, left, right-leftist as well as the leftist-right. Which makes all the other HINDRAF, whether right, left, rightist-right and leftist-right untrue. Then they have the extreme right, which in other word is known as right-right HINDRAF. As well as left-left HINDRAF.
I don’t even know who they support. Or whom they are against. I think they should change their party’s name to HUH?DRAF instead.
