Friday, December 17, 2010

So, Malaysian Politicians Are Incompetent. Who knew?

Or as they say here, really-ah?

When WikiLeaks put it out there that Malaysian politicians are "incompetent", there was much brouhaha from the said politicians, naturally, but amongst the actual people of the country the mood was more along the lines of tell-me-something-I-don't-know. Perhaps more revealing was the description of Anwar Ibrahim being set-up for for charges of sodomy, but having walked into it nonetheless. If we ever needed the reminder, here it was: that it's not just that bozos are in power, but bozos of a different stripe who would like to be in power.

If anything, the recent chaos in government underlined how dilute Malaysian politics lie. The ridiculous Speaker called for an oral vote amidst sheer pandemonium, and could somehow still discern that there were more votes in one direction than the other, suggesting either that he's confusing cameras in Parliament for an audition at a B-grade Bollywood flick, or he's got Superman's hearing abilities. The police - under the watchful eye of the government - had the audacity to arrest people marching to the Human Rights Commission, which sort of did the job of the protesters in half the time.

But at the end of the day, the real point has gone missing: so what if the "1 Malaysia" concept was created by the public relations company that made "1 Israel"? To equate a company with the foreign policy of a client is a silly attempt at scoring political points from - if successful - an equally silly public. The result really at the end of the day is not to show that Najib and Co. are on the side of Israel (whatever that means), but to show that we don't have a 1 Malaysia at all, and the real losers at the end of that is the Malaysian people.

Kee Thuan Chye wrote of The Day Malaysia Woke Up. Unfortunately, it looks like it woke up with a bit of a hangover, and it'll take some time for it to get sober.