Mariam Mokhtar | September 20, 2015
Free Malaysia Today

They need to exorcise the demons inside them and to wean themselves from the entitlement culture.

COMMENT

It looks like the red shirted Umno-Baru Malays are condemning themselves to a life sentence of self-denial. They assume that everyone else in Malaysia owes them a living. It is time they came to terms with the real world. They need to exorcise their inner demons, and they need to wean themselves from the entitlement culture, which they expect will nurse them from cradle to grave.

Malays throughout Malaysia were ashamed to be associated with these bigots, who claim that they held the Red Shirts Rally to uphold Malay dignity. Their protest had nothing to do with Malay dignity. The rally was held primarily to distract us from the 1MDB scandal.

What kind of dignity can we associate with insolence and the hurling of insults at other communities? What dignity is there in transporting the elderly from the villages to boost attendance at the Kuala Lumpur rally? Taxpayers’ money was probably used to facilitate the transportation and to provide meals and pocket money.

A friend who once worked with a bank of which the chairman was a senior Umno-Baru politician alleges that he had to sign blank cheques to pay for the mobilisation of participants in many Umno-Baru events. How many other secrets do workers in similar organisations hold?
What dignity does the Sungai Besar Umno chief, Jamal Md Yunos, think he upholds? He claimed that Malay NGOs were compelled to rise because the “DAP had brainwashed the Chinese in the Bersih 4 rally” and had insulted Malay leaders.

Jamal is just another leader who enjoys a Datuk title and other perks thrown at him by the Umno-Baru leadership. His role is to mobilise the thugs under him and threaten the peace. He cannot see the damaging effects of corruption, injustice and abuse of power. His values are warped. He cannot distinguish between right and wrong. The DAP must be doing a good job of enhancing community relations and rebuilding the community if bigots like Jamal feel threatened.

In what way does Jamal think that Malays are threatened? The majority of jobs in the public sector and the armed forces are reserved for Malays, as are public housing allocations and many other handouts.

What dignity was Ali Rustam thinking of? He stands accused of involvement in money politics, and during his tenure as the Chief Minister of Malacca, it was alleged that he used the machinery of the state to facilitate his son’s grand wedding. When challenged he claimed that he had received sponsorship from various companies. His critics asked, “What was given in exchange for this sponsorship?”

What dignity were Ahmad Maslan and Ismail Sabri Yaacob thinking of? In many people’s minds, Ahmad isn’t even qualified for his job. People ridicule him for an apparent inability to talk economic sense, or any kind of sense for that matter. And Ismail’s only claim to fame is his blaming of the Chinese community for the Malays’ inability to grasp the basics of business.

It is doubtful that these Umno-Baru politicians understand the meaning of dignity. To them, dignity means the ability to shout the loudest and make the crudest insults.