Is sleeping with the devil a measure of Lim Kit Siang’s desperation or optimism?
Umar Mukhtar
Lim Kit Siang is busy these days trying to cushion the prospective failures and counter-productivity of his recent initiative to team up with an old enemy, ex-prime minister Dr. Mahathir Mohamad.
In his interview with a vernacular newspaper for the benefit of his confused flock, in his desperation to save his vision of Malaysia, he tries to be statesmanlike and pragmatic by admitting that risks have to be taken. The future cannot be foretold he said but something has to be done. Whatever it may take. And he will not just twiddle his finger and rant.
And as if to show that he is in the company of greats, he quoted his tokong the communist leader Deng Xiao Peng when Deng set off to reform communist China by having capitalistic dynamism intertwined into a totalitarian communist regime.
Such contradictions in terms that would make Karl Marx roll in his grave, Deng had no precedent and so he did not have a master plan. Neither has LKS, only rhetoric. The similarity between the two ends there.
Like Deng who had proceeded with care, LKS, too, will cross the river groping each stone with each foot ‘Mo sze shi tou gua he’. How profound, considering that he is crossing the river holding the hand of Mahathir who had demonstrated that he would not have hesitated for a moment to drown LKS. And LKS better wear shoes or the poisonous water urchins will get to him.
Kudos to LKS for at least trying anything at all in the face of desperation. But it remains that trying anything does not mean that it includes beating his head trying to break established physical laws like ‘Water finding its own level’, ‘Heat expands’, ‘Do not fight fire with fire’, just for the sake of trying the impossible. Some impossibilities cannot be changed.
It is hard to see if sleeping with the devil is a measure of LKS’s desperation or his optimism.
Meanwhile, those who are not fans of mortals trying to make hypocrisy a norm prefer to quote the Quran that warns true Muslims to stay away from those who are evil,
‘And incline not to those who do wrong, or the Fire will seize you; and ye have no protectors other than Allah, nor shall ye be helped. Surah Hud, ayat 113.
Of course that warning goes both ways, to whom it may concern.
The harmonious meeting of these differing schools of thought seems a more beneficial challenge for LKS to undertake in his old age than to so-called unite Malaysia using some people’s personal megalomaniacal tendencies.
