Did We Over-Enjoy RPK?

ARCHIVES 2012

By admin-s On Jan 5, 2012

Here’s my take on why we liked RPK. It’s quite simple: He made us enjoy cursing the government. Before RPK, people had things to say but they didn’t have the ‘secret data’ to drive Barisan fellas into panic mode. Before RPK, people were ‘small’ and without influence but whoo now there’s a prince(!) who tells the government to screw themselves. Before RPK, in short, anti-government commentary was like playing a board-game; now it’s X-Box with sense-surround speakers in your face.

By wyngman

For starters, the Raja Petra Kamarudin u-turn episode should forever caution the rakyat from giving unequivocal support to anyone, even the darlings of anti-government rhetoric/commentary unjustly jailed for their stance. Today it’s RPK, tomorrow Jeyakumar or Karpal Singh or Anwar himself (who – lest politically enthusiastic Malaysians forget – skipped from ABIM to UMNO in 1982 which as we know is kinda like Ryan Giggs jumping to Liverpool…)?

The second thing is how RPK’s recent comments expose the politicization of truth itself, how we respond to truth-claims, the level of lee-way or suspicion we grant to remarks made by the politically integral (and why we do so), etc. A critical question is what would happen if RPK was to make another U-turn back to being his super-anti-BN former self? Would we have learnt our lesson and be less eager to swallow his articles virtually whole-sale? Surely the basis of our reliance on a certain individual’s perspectives cannot be so fickle i.e. if he’s anti-UMNO, we celebrate him; otherwise, we burn him in effigy?

Yet assuming RPK’s credibility is forever ruined, another question arises: why is it forever gone? Have his recent opinions be proven to be less reliable? Are his assertions now lacking in proof (really, have they ever been proven at all?) Or is his credibility finished simply because he’s now goring an ox we’d prefer he not touch?

Doesn’t RPK now, in fact, represent political commentary at its purest i.e. bold statements supposedly based on truth yet which serves to obscure a ominous framework of lies which, in turn, offer fantasmatic support for the truth-claims made?

A quick note that the accusation that UMNO has ‘gotten’ to RPK – like the charge of corruption within the Selangor government – requires this small thing called proof. It’s not that I deny the intuitive plausibility of, say, RPK being blackmailed on account of his son (or some such rumour) but, c’mon, a mature democracy first needs to behave like grown-ups, no? That means – at the pain of having nothing to say – we only hurl charges which can be substantiated even if the other side does otherwise.

So UMNO likes to make wild accusations – should the DAP do the same? So MCA blasts people without proof – should PAS follow suit? Hell, no. The buck’s gotta stop somewhere. Furthermore, these suggestions serve to deflect two key issues 1) RPK’s integrity from the very start and 2) the basis for our previous support of his work yet present berating of it. Perhaps the critical question is not why RPK has ‘turned to the dark side’, but why the rakyat extolled him to the light side in the first place?

Here’s my take on why we liked RPK. It’s quite simple: He made us enjoy cursing the government. Before RPK, people had things to say but they didn’t have the ‘secret data’ to drive Barisan fellas into panic mode. Before RPK, people were ‘small’ and without influence but whoo now there’s a prince(!) who tells the government to screw themselves. Before RPK, in short, anti-government commentary was like playing a board-game; now it’s X-Box with sense-surround speakers in your face.

Blasting the government the way RPK did was something Malaysians were officially disallowed and (until recently) unable to do – these prohibitions INTENSIFIED our delight when the opportunity (and ‘leadership’ in the form that RPK provided) emerged. To put it crudely, we – political voyeurs to the full – were freed to vent our hatred of The Man in a manner which not only did not get us reprimanded but occasioned quiet snickers of satisfaction from everyone else.

In a word, enjoyment – of reinvigorated political criticism, of high-def exposés, of rhetoric, of RPK’s “fist of the people” themes – was the critical ‘category’ which so endeared us to RPK’s work. RPK was obviously enjoying himself. And we enjoyed ourselves watching him enjoy – and he/we knew it. And loved it.

But wait: what about RPK exposing the injustice and corruption and oppression and all those anti-democratic evils of Barisan? Aren’t those important? Of course they are. But RPK gave us all of it and that little extra. He allowed us to sound patriotic and civil-minded whilst secretly (or not so secretly) indulging in gratuitious anger, insults and mockery. (To take this point further, try reading the scholarly material on Malaysian’s political problems and abuses e.g. try digesting Clive Kessler, William Case, Bridget Welsh, Edmund Gomez, etc. they’re far more reliable, ‘scientific’ and rhetoric/distraction-free, but you can bet you won’t get any t-shirts with their name and ‘C4’ next to it and, besides, who are in the world are these people anyway?)

What’s even more problematic is how (eventually) many people simply equated RPK’s writing with political truth itself. To this day many still believe that Najib was responsible for the murder of Altantuya and would credit their belief to RPK’s exposing the PM’s involvement when in fact RPK did no such thing. All RPK did was make a statutory declaration based on information supplied by some seriously dodgy dudes who appear to be the frontmen for some plot possibly hatched by Tengku Razaleigh to bring down Najib. You can read it all from RPK himself – then again, do you trust him anymore?