Sarawakians fighting to be heard
Sarawakians are fighting for the same self-esteem that Umno fought for in 1946 and it’s wrong for Umno not to recognise this.
By Mohd Ariff Sabri Aziz, Free Malaysia Today
Umno should understand what the majority of Sarawakians are craving for now.
Sarawakians are striving for their own amour propre just as Umno in 1946 was driven by an overpowering desire to retain the Malay amour propre.
Umno fought for liberation from oppression.
This is the philosophical basis of the political developments in Sarawak at the moment.
Just as Umno fought for Malay self-esteem, that same desire must be recognized to exist in the bosoms of every self-respecting Sarawakian today.
Any self-respecting Umno member must therefore stand in solidarity not opposed to the desire of Sarawakians to get the same self-respect.
So, what did Umno fight against? It fought against colonial domination.
Why was it important for Umno to do so?
Let me quote Frantz Fanon, whose book ‘The Wretched of the Earth’, I think is read by so many people in the world.
In a speech before the Congress of African Writers, Fanon said: “Colonial domination, because it is total and tends to over-simplify, very soon manages to disrupt in spectacular fashion the cultural life of a conquered people.
“This cultural obliteration is made possible by the negation of national reality, by new legal relations introduced by the occupying power, by the banishment of the natives and their customs to outlying districts by colonial society, by expropriation, and by the systematic enslaving of men and women.”
‘Colonial’ power
Is this what is happening to the people of Sarawak since Chief Minister Taib Mahmud took over some 30 years ago?
Though not a colonial power in its true sense, Taib took over as the colonizing power.
When he did, in the ensuing years as in a colonial situation, “dynamism is replaced fairly quickly by a substantification of the attitudes of the colonising power”.
In other words Taib did indeed become the new White Rajah. The once oppressed creature now adopts many of the values so detested by him and he now becomes the new oppressor.
The once colonized person then “throws himself in frenzied fashion into the frantic acquisition of the culture of the occupying power”.
Umno should have understood this, because it started with the same fired up idealism to get rid of colonizing power.
It must understand that colonial exploitation and poverty drove the native more and more to join an open, organized revolt.
The necessity for an open and decisive breach is formed progressively and imperceptibly.
Those tensions which hitherto were non-existent come into being.
International events, the collapse of whole sections of neo-colonial empires such as those exemplified by Tunisia and Egypt and the contradictions inherent in the colonial system strengthen and uphold the native’s combativity while promoting and giving support to a new consciousness.
What has taken place since Taib took over was the imposition of autocratic rule of one man which led in turn the imposition of neo-colonial values.
Reaping what we sow
It was a mistake for Taib and others to imagine such imposition did not create repercussions.
It did and now, we are reaping what we sowed.
The widespread revolt against Taib and by extension against Umno and BN because they support the perpetuation of Taib’s colonial values, is really an expression of the collective will to be liberated.
Hence we find the themes behind the social expressions being altered.
We find less and less of bitter, hopeless recrimination and less also of that violent, resounding, florid writing which on the whole serves to reassure the colonising power.
Taib’s neo-colonialist mindset was perceptive enough to have encouraged these modes of expression and made their existence possible.
By giving outlets for such expressions including stinging denunciations, the exposing of distressing conditions and passions, such articulations are in fact assimilated by the Taib’s government in a cathartic process.
To aid such processes is in a certain sense to avoid their dramatisation and to clear the atmosphere.
