My instincts are always against people who want to fasten some sort of hegemony onto things.
– Clifford Geertz, American anthropologist
Problems just keep coming one after another in Malaya; the PH government gets shakier and more vulnerable with each passing day.
More than any other issues, the same sex video scandal is by far the most hurting to Prime Minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad’s government.
It is becoming more and more complicated, so complicated that on some days it threatened to break up the government.
One thing looks certain though, PKR is split right down the middle even though party president Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim tries hard to project an image he is still in control.
Of course, Anwar is in control but only over his side of the camp. The opposite camp, which many believe is a substantial part of PKR, is under his deputy Datuk Seri Azmin Ali.
The same sex video scandal is not just PKR’s problem; it’s PH’s problem, which is why all the party bosses are trying hard to draw attention away from the issue by creating new issues.
Last week Dr Mahathir visited Turkey where he told his audience that corrupt Malaysians were hiding money overseas, in an attempt to make the world believe that former prime minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak is a bigger issue than the steamy against-the-order-of-nature sex video scandal.
The fact is, while the dirt of the sex scandal gets thicker, Najib’s defence team is unveiling evidences that do little justice to the prosecution’s case.
No, there is no hiding the fact that the PH government is in deep, deep trouble no matter what its leaders do to try to play that down by pretending and narrating different stories.
Anwar, Mohammad Sabu, Lim Kit Siang, Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin and Zuraida Kamaruddin were among the PH top leaders who were in Kuching last week. All of them came, singing new tunes hoping to lull Sarawakians into believing their sickly new government was never healthier.
Anwar, the man touted to be Malaysia’s next prime minister but meeting hurdles at every turn, came, ate and slept in Kuching and spoke of ‘capturing’ Sarawak.
Lim, who once said Malaysia’s biggest thievery was Forex, also came, ate and slept in Kuching. He, too, spoke of forming the next Sarawak state government because the current government to him is a bigger thief than whoever was behind that Forex loss.
Muhyiddin, who, despite holding the highest post in Bersatu as its president, but never considered qualified to succeed Dr Mahathir as prime minister, also came, ate and slept in Kuching, and he spoke of dividing Sarawak up amongst the PH coalition member parties. It was as if these Malayans had come to discuss what was there for them and to see how much each would get to bring home when the day was done.
Sarawak is a land of plenty, its forests and timbers are the envy of people like Lim, who said Sarawakians aren’t capable of managing their forest resources.
Sarawak is a land of unique people, and the natives, easily mistaken for the Orang Asli in Malaya merely because they are natives, are good political pawns to politicians like Zuraida who came with a grand plan for the longhouses in Sarawak. She not only wants every longhouse chief paid an allowance but Malaya will appoint them.
On top of all that, Muhyiddin, the Home Affairs Minister, said it is his ministry that decides who in Sarawak gets to be called Malaysian citizen. It’s a stark reminder of Sabah’s infamous Project IC.
Dear Sarawakians, do we allow our state politically cut up and divided among Malayan interests? Do we just sit back and watch our resources plundered under our very own noses?
Must we believe that Malayans make better leaders than our own Sarawak-born? Why must we believe that Zuraida knows longhouse life better than us?
They have troubles enough in Malaya that they cannot solve yet they come to Sarawak telling us they are capable of finding answers to our problems.
Malayans in Johor are being poisoned and there is still no answer to that.
The Orang Asli in Perak have just been told there is no such thing as ‘Adat’ land in the state. Is there any guarantee that if PH ever comes to power in Sarawak the natives will not be told there is no such thing as native customary rights (NCR)?
One last thing, Gabungan Parti Sarawak (GPS) does not have only Malayans to contend with; sadly, there are Sarawakians who are playing lapdogs to these Malayans.
Before May 9, 2018 these Sarawakians were fighting for everything Sarawak and Sarawakians; today they have conveniently forsaken their past struggles.
National Day is exactly a month from now, I am reminded of an article ‘Sarawak should scrap the Aug 31 holiday’ published on Aug 23, 2018.
Columnist Francis Paul Siah wrote, “Interestingly, two years ago, Sarawak DAP chairman Chong Chieng Jen called on the state government to stop celebrating National Day on Aug 31, saying that ‘there was no justification and reason to waste public fund celebrating a day which has no historical significance for Sarawak and Sarawakians’.”
He claimed that Sarawak has been forced to spend millions of ringgit to mark Aug 31 each year in keeping with a federal directive, which could be better used for rural development instead.
If I may add, Aug 31 marks the day of another colonisation of Sarawak. If the state celebrates that day, we will be sending to the world the wrong message — that we are what the Malayans want us to be: a people not capable of looking after ourselves let alone ruling the state; that we don’t mind being colonised.
Whereas the truth is we are more than capable, which is why GPS is in complete control now — a stark difference from PH which is breaking up and losing control.
