Selangor Crisis: It was democracy that failed Selangor

Raggie Jessy

These days, constitutional polemics have taken such a grip on the nation that just about every political enthusiast seems enmeshed almost inextricably. Why, even your friendly neighbourhood milkman gets caught up with the question of liberties, much so, since various authorities came forth cautioning a people against raising issues deemed sensitive or definitive. In the interim, high and mighty politicians have reduced Article 10 of the Federal Constitution to quite the nugatory tenet, one that could do jack shit for Anwar adherents, already seeking to play down the prestige accorded to our Monarchial Institution.

And Anwar is doing just that while twiddling his thumbs, with his henchmen huffing and puffing in futility to blow the Palace down. Figuratively, that is, while his little red riding wife sits anticipating a miracle that could have her ushered into office as Selangor Menteri Besar, with 30 reasons to back her up. Now, these are 30 ass-kissers who signed declarations in her favour, arguably from the plank. The way she rattles on, one would imagine her lackeys to bite silver bullets for her as well. As it turns out, they just may. After that, they’d chew them up and spit them out right on her face, it would seem.

So, on one hand, we have a constitutional crisis, with the government bent on suppressing your fundamental right to question tenets of the constitution. On the other, we have a battle of wits, with Anwar flying straight into the teeth of the Monarch. In the thicket, we, the commoners, are treated with a cockamamie power struggle between opposition allies that range from the sublime to the ridiculous, with Pakatan Rakyat stalwarts going off half-cocked while importuning a people for support.

Seriously, it gets zanier than this.

For some weeks now, we’ve been entertained with nothing but breaking suppositions and conjectures, coupled with digests and rundowns of ‘thing’s Anwar or the Palace did or didn’t do.’ Now, we don’t need more of that. No. It’s about that time, when someone coughed up a political laxative, potent enough to wipe shit-eating grins off the many, many faces that rejoice every time Anwar spins a yarn.

Off-the-wall; that’s my phrase for the day. Nothing that you’re going to read henceforth is anywhere near conventional, let alone fathomable.

1. Malaysian Democracy

An ideology wrought with loopholes, democracy today is nothing more than a compendium of genteel confabulations, a truth beneath the shroud of a comfortable, easy euphemism; evolution. It hinges on an idealistic group of doctrines, preserved over generations by governments’ ancillary to surreptitious forms of capitalism and tyranny.

Democratic governance of today epitomizes a new world order, one driven by an alliance of quick-witted leaders who conform to fraternal organizations, possibly the Freemasons.

But it would take a hundred like articles to properly advance tenets to an intrigue of such proportions. Suffice to say, we’ll deliberate on matters with just the right dose of perspicuity to illustrate why democracy itself may have been causal to the Kajang blunder.

Read politics, and one would be treated with paradigms that converge on the purported essence of democracy, the sum and substance of which is the rule of majority. That is to say, a democratic process involves elections, with the majority voting in persons from within their fold as a people’s representatives, who in turn, develop and establish laws that affect both the majority and the minority.

Constitutional democracy engages with the latter by enforcing the precept of equal rights as an order pursuant to law, a criterion accentuated by Thomas Jefferson, the third President of the United States, who (in his first inaugural address in 1801) said;

“All . . . will bear in mind this sacred principle, that though the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail, that will to be rightful must be reasonable; that the minority possess their equal rights, which equal law must protect and to violate would be oppression.”

Malaysian democracy is cut from the same cloth, where majority rule is circumscribed by the Federal Constitution, serving to protect the rights of individuals. Tyranny by minority over the majority is constitutionally barred, and vice versa.

What you’ve just read is part to a truth, which to me, is a whole lot of Irish bull.

2. Democracy and The Gullible Majority

Malaysians rarely make a conscious effort to seek the truth, particularly when political circumstances prove cumbersome and perplexing. Consequently, social capitalists, geniuses and connoisseurs of political gambits begin to emerge, with enough clout to mesmerize an audience full of hopefuls who seek not greener pastures tomorrow, but yesterday.

In essence, people of the present century are particularly egocentric and self absorbed to care much for the Joneses, and prefer to buckle up within comfort zones while raking in the dough.

Thence, carpetbaggers, the likes of Anwar and Kit Siang, have the world at their disposal, simply because they conform to a class of capitalists and connoisseurs who trade favours for political mileage. They possess within their coffers the right currency to trade barbs with the government while rallying a rabble, trumping up charges against polity.

In simpler terms, they’d promise to grant you just about any wish even a genie in a bottle couldn’t. And they get away with murder, simply because people are inclined to ask their newspaper vendors for tomorrow’s edition of the Star, today.

That’s right. Our people want everything desirable, and they want it now. They want it quick. They don’t give two hoots how you get things done. They just want you to get things done now. And Malaysians tend to be a pretty reckless lot, within the context.

And then, there’s facebook. Here, the age of social media has particularly substantiated a hypothesis brought forth by Zuckerberg; almost everyone is willing to share just about any piece of information, with just about anybody he/she may or may not know. Now, that’s a human trait Aristotle unwittingly gave the slip. He didn’t have the luxury of the worldwide web, where billions of information bits reciprocate every second at the push of a button. Aristotle may have foretold a legion, but it is Zuckerberg who corroborated his hypothesis with technology.

Under the circumstances, there are almost a billion sitting ducks worldwide listed on CIA databases. They constitute a billion idiots who didn’t care why they did what they did. As long as it didn’t affect them or their day to day survival, they had no qualms expressing themselves any way they deemed fit.

I seem to have drifted a little, although, the revelation does help one adduce a point in contention; that Malaysians are generally a naive and gullible lot. A vast majority of a people are largely and relatively, stupid. Constitutionally and politically, that remains a concise corollary. It’s the order of nature.

You simply don’t have a classroom brimming with students coming out first in exams. You just have one, with the remaining 29 in a class of 30 constituting a majority. Take 10 classrooms to a given academic year, and multiply that with a hundred schools. Now, that makes for 1,000 top achievers who could vie for that scholarship from say, Harvard, or Oxford. Only one or two would qualify, with the remaining 9,998 pupils, or the majority, failing in the attempt. Now, that’s 2 out of 30,000 students for a given year of study, providing a constant ratio of 30 to a class is observed.

Not everyone is born smart. Live with it.

Democracy has always been adorned by minority capitalists or social virtuosos with just the right dose of charisma to pull an elephant out of a hat. It has always been the rule of a minority over a gullible and impressionable majority. And while the minority play it to their whims, they cajole votes out of a confiding majority, who seem to possess the propensity for eleventh hour rhetoric and solicitation.

3. The Tyrant-Capitalist

Acing into the best of Academic Institutions certainly doth not a politician make.

Not just anyone can manage a quick-witted riposte within social circles, like Mahathir can. And neither is everyone a player within capitalistic fraternities, with enough dough and a network of subservient adherents all too willing to place a wager on them.

You see, a variant to liberalism prevails within every democracy, at least within those I’ve taken the liberty of perusing. Principles of Laissez-faire are very much alive in these democracies. That is to say, larger democracies boast economies devoid of tariffs and subsidies, with minimal intervention by governments in maintaining a secure and conducive marketplace.

Yet, capitalism gradually seeps in, with the vast majority of businesses reeling under the excess avoirdupois presented by clusters of capitally affluent merchants, traders and tycoons, who run rings around the government while striking deals with political factions willing to trade principles for votes. Consequently, every other business would conform to a monopoly of sectarians reigned over by minority clusters.

So when Anwar speaks of toll obliteration and tax diminutions, he’s really sucking up to minority capitalists who have politicians twirling around their little fingers. These minorities had once positioned their stables in Anwar’s turf, waiting to strike at the eleventh hour. They envisioned an equitable marketplace emancipated off the Social Contract and the NEP. Well, that was the story before Kajang. The clock has struck one, and Anwar has since been run down by his own ego.

4. Did the democracy fail us in Selangor?

“I have sworn…eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.” Those were the words of Thomas Jefferson, who failed to inform us of capitalistic tyrants, spawned off the very democracy he venerated. Anwar is a product of that democracy; the one Jefferson inclined to take the stand for. He is a product of capitalistic attitudes among a minority, with the political acumen and wit to stand above the rest.

Yes, democracy failed us in Selangor. But not in the manner you’d think it did. Democracy failed us, because democracy allowed for capitalistic tyrants to rear their ugly heads in Selangor.

When Kit Siang made his debut in Serdang, 1968, he began by advocating a common market for Malaysians, where everyone would contend on a platform of equality. He accused the government of fostering racial, cultural and language chauvinism, just 11 years post independence. Like Lee Kwan Yew, Kit Siang seemed to underrate the Malays and their propensity to lead, at a time when the Chinese had an ace in the hole with business.

And while the Malay majority gradually came to terms with multi-racialism, Kit Siang had the younger Chinese segment feverishly clinging on to their portion of the economic pie, wanting more. The average Malay farmer who toiled in his padi field couldn’t engage with development like the Chinese. They were simple people, contented with what they had. To them, they saw their rights being gradually usurped by foreigners, who had come to claim their ancestral heritage.

So when Kit Siang spoke of a common market, he vexed the Malays and fret still waters. To the simple Malay farmer, Kit Siang had come to claim his land. The average Malay began labelling the Chinese as bottom-feeders and racists, while urbanized moderates viewed him to be against the very essence of nation building.

Now, DAP, like Kwan Yew’s PAP, advocated a Malaysian Malaysia. Kit Siang’s arguments, however, could easily be turned to account by the apologist of Laissez faire. That is to say, Kit Siang preferred an economy free from tariffs and subsidies, with minimal government intervention. And of all people, Kit Siang knew too damn well, that such a market would curtail prospects of a more representative economy. It seems that Kit Siang sought to subvert the social order by means of capitalistic tyranny.

Had Tunku caved in to such pressure by minority capitalists who had come to be domiciled in the land of the Malays, the Chinese would have licked the government clean.

But neither did Tunku succumb to pressure, nor did Tun Razak. In fact, Razak went on to quell fears among a Malay populace by ushering in the New Economic Policy (NEP), drawn with a mission to eradicate poverty while serving up opportunities for the Malays. The greater goal invariably hinged on nation-building; by bridging socio-economic divides among various ethnicities that stood at pathological junctures.

Razak did right. He diffused tensions that had brimmed over by reaffirming UMNO’s commitment towards the social contract. But a bad penny always finds a way to turn up. Kit Siang began where he had first started, accusing the government of racial and cultural chauvinism. He rewrote Chinese articles of faith, amassing a legion over the years. Subscribing to his brand of politics, the Chinese were nevertheless apprehensive of prospects to a Kit Siang driven government, one rid of the social contract and UMNO. To the Chinese, Kit Siang didn’t have it in him to lead the Malays by the nose.

Anwar’s emancipation in 2004 granted a boon to Kit Siang, who so suddenly became the next Chinaman you’d want to be associated with. Being somewhat of a capitalist himself, Anwar had once sought to diffuse Malay capitalism within UMNO by advocating Western Imperialism. He was willing to move heaven and earth by selling Mahathir down the river, and acquiesced to the infusion of western capitalistic attitudes. During the 1997 financial crisis, Anwar stood an apologist for the International Monetary Fund (IMF) plan, which would have emasculated the social contract.

So there you have it; Anwar and Kit Siang are nothing more than modern day Capitalist-tyrants spawned off democracy, both seemingly in collusion to annul the Social Contract. They and their likes conform to a confederacy of minorities who gradually turn anarchists when repeatedly denied mainstream representation by the government of the day. And while the vast majority of an ever gullible crowd resonates with an order of naivety, Anwar and Kit Siang would have you believing forever and a day, that the cow did in fact jump over the moon. Now, that’s what I’d like to call a ‘moo point’. It’s insignificant.

And just what did the government do?

They came forth cautioning a people to stay clear of Constitutional tenets deemed sensitive and definitive. That is to say, you can’t question Malay special rights, as much as you can, Constitutional Monarchy. No. Article 10 of the Federal Constitution isn’t apparently what it’s hyped up to be. It isn’t, because the Reid Commission didn’t seem sincere when circumscribing tenets that guaranteed freedom of speech, assembly and associations. Well, at least that’s what I’m led to believe. You see, I’ve been told, like the rest of you, that I may not question certain tenets to the constitution.

So, while PAS wages a battle royal in Selangor, government factions rose to the occasion by prodding on constitutional liberties with the hope of regaining some composure within Malay majority enclaves. In the thicket, ‘moo point’ advocates have begun stamping the government as tyrants, while Kit Siang seems to be on a roll, dragging the government to task for racial, cultural and language chauvinism. It’s 1968 Serdang once more, no thanks to our ‘quick-witted’ politicians, who seem to make heads spin along with their wheels.

The government has a penchant for cutting-off at vantage points recklessly, depriving a people of broader perspectives on issues that could spell the difference between what is right, and what matters. Some politicians simply discredited their portfolios by failing to communicate circumstances afflicting polity to the public. Instead, they made concessions to subdue dissidence by infringing on guaranteed constitutional liberties.

It’s about time Najib’s administration made a conscientious stand against the ludicrous proportion of inane rhetoric being churned out by politicians. Putrajaya seems to be trekking through time while dropping bricks, leading them straight back to their preponderant ways pre-GE12. By any standards, we haven’t a cat in hell’s chance of pulling through GE14 should the government persist in glossing their blunders over with silence every time it drops a clanger.