A happy May 13th to everyone?
Two events in May have, for more than four decades, set the course of this country’s history. It is quite apparent that both two events lie behind Malaysia’s failure to develop as a nation. One is the anniversary of Umno’s founding. Two days later is the anniversary of Malaysia’s day of infamy.
By Gobind Rudra
Those two events, like steel threads, are woven stiffly into the tapesty of Malaysian life. Until all Malaysians, and Malay society especially, have come to terms with the full story of those days of horror in 1969, there will be little reason to be optimistic about a joint Malaysian future free of racial strife.
On Tuesday, Umno marked its 64th anniversary, with lashings of self-congratulation and a note of caution. On May 13, another Malay-rights movement holds a rally for 10,000 ostensibly to urge the Malay community to strive harder to improve themselves.
The Umno event was attended by Najib Tun Razak, son of the man at the centre at May 13, 1969 and its aftermath. With them was Dr Mahathir Mohamad, the other half of the Jeckyll-and-Hyde face of Malaysian race relations.
Najib’s message at the celebrations bore little of the jingoistic bombast of past such events. That may yet come when Mahathir, the prime proponent of race politics, makes his keynote address at the May 13 rally in Kuala Terengganu.
It will be a celebration of race under the guise of empowerment and advancement, with the visible support of the man whose political philosophy, rooted in half-baked notions of race and genetics, and an uncompromising approach to power, has held back the flowering of Malaysian society.
By no means can an event bringing together Mahathir and 10,000 others, “Malays First”, and May 13, be regarded as anything but as a celebration of race supremacy and the politics of brute force.
And as such it will be a truly grotesque spectacle.
“Uncivilised,” says PAS vice-president Salahuddin Ayu. “Outrageous. Unhealthy. Bordering on extremism. Dangerous” were other words that the Islamic party used to describe it.
Yet organisers of the May 13 rally say they have been misunderstood. Gertak, the name of the umbrella group holding the event, is a Malay word that means “to scare”. The rally’s theme is “Malays Rise”. It is held on May 13. It is held in a city chosen as the venue because few Chinese live there.
Yet rally chairman Razali Idris, a minor Umno apparatchik, insist there is no malice. “We just want to remind the Malays that we are not better off,” he was quoted as saying. “ It is not our intention to threaten other races.”
That is utter drivel, typical of the double-speak that Mahathir Mohamad practised and encouraged in his decades in power.
No one who lived through those times can doubt the visible meaning of an event held on May 13, with the theme “Malays Rise’ and the presence of a man whose political career was built on race-baiting, with a philosophy likened to that of Nazi Germany.
Read more at: http://www.freemalaysiatoday.com/fmt-english/opinion/editorial/5481-happy-may-13-everyone
