Umno must act to prevent a suicide run
Bluster and rhetoric will not make Malaysia’s problems go away.
Scott Ng & Amin Khairuddin, FMT
As the Umno AGM looms, Malaysia’s non-Malay communities prepare for another round of racial insults and possible keris waving. It’s a standard procedure for Umno’s basest elements to indulge in good old-fashioned xenophobia whenever the AGM rolls around, and this year no one expects any different, especially with ugly rhetoric already polluting the airwaves in the form of Johor assemblyman Shahruddin Salleh suggesting that students who do not master Bahasa be stripped of their citizenship.
The Chinese community in particular grows ever warier as the date approaches, as the anti-Chinese rhetoric this year is sure to come thick as has been standard practice for a while now, and especially after the wholesale abandoning of the MCA in GE13. But what the community finds ever more terrifying is the escalation of that rhetoric when things get inevitably worse in Malaysia in the coming months.
You see, Malaysia is not exactly in the best place right now. We’re limping at best economically, relations between races is at an all time low, and religious fundamentalists have made it their mission to stamp out any hint of dissent or multiculturalism in the country. The true issues are not being brought to the fore because nobody likes to hear the cold hard truth in Malaysia, and the truth is that BN is doing a very, very bad job at getting its act together. And when BN can’t get it’s act together, Umno turns to it’s favourite scapegoat.
The inflammatory rhetoric may just be rhetoric right now, but our leaders seem to discount the power of the spoken word and it’s ability to instil an idea into a person. They’ve already lost control of the situation to the extremists, who are hell bent on making the headlines everyday with acidic rhetoric, including that old standby of “balik pendatang”, never mind how much the targeted communities have contributed to the country.
When the situation erupts – and mark our words, it will erupt soon enough – the blame will rest entirely on the shoulders of BN leaders who perpetrated this xenophobic mindset and the leaders who failed to control the rhetoric they unleashed into the wild.
So this AGM, Umno needs to get the plot straight. There are too many issues that need to be addressed in this country that really should be the focus of the discussion at the assembly. Chinese bashing does nothing except increase Malay distrust of their Chinese compatriots and fray the already fragile bond between the two. This habit of pushing all the blame on the Chinese benefits no one, especially since it’s being used as a smokescreen to hide the real issues, such as the cost of living.
