What’s So Great about a 2 Party System?

By batsman 

Really – what’s so great about it? In fact what’s so great about democracy?

To me they are just means to an end, but there will be those who get stuck at these stages for various reasons. Democracy becomes a religion just as a 2 party system becomes a religion. These people get fanatical about it. Their fanaticism is focused on the vehicle rather than the objective. For such people, cars can become status symbols rather than a means of transport, so poor hawseholes like us have to accept low salaries for long hours in order that these arseholes can indulge in their status symbols. 

But it is still OK if some people want to have luxury cars as status symbols. I don’t sweat it especially if they have worked hard to earn their money. However if some people want to turn the 2 party system into a religion and stop the struggle at that stage, they have something else coming, just as if some people want to have luxury cars by accepting bribes, Ali Baba crony contracts and corruption. 

They say that with a 2 party system it is possible to repeal unjust laws such as the ISA and turn the bureaucracy non-partisan and non-party political. All this is true. However it remains an expectation only and may not be realized in practice. 

The problem with the 2 party system becoming a religion is that even when it fails to produce results and we get excuses and bunkum when promises are broken and unjust laws are not repealed, we are told this is all just work in progress and we have to be patient. To a 2 party system fanatic, the 2 party system IS the end, not just the means to the end. 

I guess it depends on how patient you can become as to whether you can accept the excuse of work in progress. Some people can wait forever until the 2 party system becomes an unbreakable habit and the unjust laws are still not repealed. 

So what are we really fighting for? What is the end? I submit that we fight for a continuously improving society. We want a society that is relatively free of crime and corruption. We do not want abuse of any sort and people have respect for each other. 

What is frightening is that our society is degenerating fast and turning corrupt and sinful and we have no brakes just like double-decked buses with suspected faulty brakes coming down Cameron Highlands while the fanatics are praying to their god called the 2 party system to save them. 

OK so we still do not know if psychopaths are born or artificially created. We cannot do much about psychopaths being born, but we can make sure they are caught early if they express their psychopathy violently and if possible treated or cured, at the very least society is protected from them. We can also make sure that the conditions for the artificial creation of psychopaths are removed from society. 

We also do not know if geniuses are born or bred. We are happy if they are born and try to create conditions whereby their genius can be fully expressed. We can also try and create conditions for geniuses to be bred and encouraged to their full potential. We don’t want situations when geniuses are suppressed because of jealousy or the fight for goodies or racial quarrels. 

Similarly we do not know if homosexuals are born or bred. As with psychopaths and geniuses, we cannot do anything if they are born, but we can try and create conditions where their homosexuality is not encouraged or turned into a religion. By taking a liberal attitude to homosexuals, we are actually allowing homosexuality to be preached and turned into a religion. This means that little boys will be more easily exposed to dirty old men and abuse of little boys and girls will become a little grey as to whether it really is abuse or not, thus suffering double sodomy in the process. 

But what do we do with homosexuals already in our midst whether born naturally or artificially created? I guess you have your opinions about this just as I have mine. What I do not want to see is that just like psychopaths, we do not take an overly liberal attitude such that the social disease spreads unchecked and we allow some people to make homosexuality their religion. 

We therefore do not want a situation where little boys and Indonesian maids are sodomised and the perpetrators get away with it while old men are falsely accused of sodomy in the other extreme. Justice must be done and must be seen to be done whether for little boys or for old men. 

Am I too idealistic? Can we achieve such a perfect system of justice? Maybe not, but I hope I am confronting these situations head on. Anyway, what is so idealistic about wanting a crime free society? Some societies have already achieved it (more or less). Don’t tell me Malaysia Boleh cannot and it is too idealistic to try? 

So it is too idealistic to want something more than a 2 party political system? What if I said that I want a healthy and properly functioning 2 party political system, not just a perverted one that has been turned into a religion? Is this also too idealistic? Are we just fit to have a 2 party system that does not work and has become perverted and deformed even before becoming a reality? This is truly Malaysia Boleh. 

Why do I say that the 2 party political system has already become deformed even before it has become reality? Am I a prophet? Hardly. 

I see it in the arrogance of the PR which is already treating people as outsiders and excluded from the political process. They have started to take the attitude that they are the professionals and the experts and non-party persons are just a nuisance and outsiders. They are now so arrogant that even activists (not just ordinary people) who have slogged to put them in power in a few states are now treated as outsiders. 

Everyone is now an outsider and outside the political process except party members and even then only those party members that suck up to the VIPs. Is this what we fight for? 

If this is the 2 party system that we are told has become our religion, then please shove it! We are fighting for the rakyat to be included in the political process, not just casting their votes every 5 years but intimately concerned and involved in fighting abuse and corruption in the bureaucracy as well as in state assemblies and parliament (don’t bother about the senate or the bar council which are just pieces of toothless rubbish). 

We are fighting for the empowerment of the people in improving their own society and fighting racism and abuse as well as crime and corruption. We do not need party men telling us we are outsiders and outside the political process. We do not need a 2 party system where one party is just as arrogant as the other and excludes the rakyat from being part of the political process. We do not need political parties that consider themselves as exclusive entities who are the experts and who have the divine right or the birth right to monopolise the political process – that they are the ones who will get everything fixed properly. 

We do not need a political system where party members protect each other after committing crimes just as we do not need a 2 party system where the political parties protect each other by keeping unjust laws to suppress honest activists and keep ordinary people outside the political process or call both ordinary people and non-party activists as outsiders.