‘Foot in mouth’ outbreak worrying
Our politicians need to think before speaking. A little sensitivity and some restraint from talking down to the masses will go a long way towards earning our respect.
Jasmine Wong, Free Malaysia Today
While the nation deals with yet another outbreak of JE virus infections, and with dengue cases on the rise too, one disease that has been around for the longest time is foot-in-mouth. And many of our politicians have succumbed to it.
The most recent and deadliest strain must certainly be the one Bung Mokhtar contracted. His outrageous remark of “Long live Hitler” is insufferable, to say the least and, coming from a politician, downright thoughtless and shameless.
Also in the same boat is FT Minister Tengku Adnan, whose caustic comments about the homeless reflect the terrifying depths of insensitivity a foot-in-mouth patient can descend to when the disease takes full control of his faculties.
Our Prime Minister has fallen ill on many occasions too. There’s no need to revisit the kangkung or chicken-for-RM1 episode because everybody—politician and man on the street alike—has had a field day with both. Those blunders showed how out of touch he obviously was with the rakyat’s woes, and the aftermath showed how no amount of damage control can wipe them off the public consciousness.
Now our Deputy Prime Minister has been bitten by the same bug. How else can we explain the utter callousness that made him threaten a May 13 kind of unrest?
Honestly, how can race relations improve when our Home Minister himself practically condoned the cow head incident with his “big mouth” statement? That remark, however, has turned around to bite him.
One can no longer mention his name without the itch to tag “Big Mouth” to it.
Yes, the foot-in-mouth disease is unforgiving. It condemns its victim to public contempt.
What happened to thinking twice before speaking? Or counting to 10, as we were told as children?
Clarity and compassion
If our politicians want the rakyat’s buy-in on issues that affect us, whether economic, religious or racial in nature, they must understand that speaking with clarity and compassion is key to bringing the message home.
Brazenness, audacity or presumptuous chutzpah doesn’t cut it. It only distances them further from the public, drawing an invisible but impenetrable divide between them—the big, important politicians who want for nothing—and and us, the cursed masses nobody cares for.
To threaten a revival of the deadly May 13 racial riots is unforgivable. After all, the ones who form public opinion with their statements and policies are none other than the politicians themselves.
Why stir up a hornet’s nest with shocking statements that remind us of a grim past we wish wasn’t part of our history? Shouldn’t our politicians be protecting rather than threatening us?
Our opposition leaders are no better. Lim Guan Eng has rubbed many the wrong way and resorted to name calling when in a fit of anger. We all remember the “old grandmother” incident, do we not? So too those in his camp who think nothing of calling municipality workers “kucing kurap”.
Someone with a permanent foot in his mouth is the so-called mastermind behind the Kajang Move. Now that the scheme has backfired spectacularly, at least we can savour the silence from his corner of the room.
