Fortune befriends the bold.
– John Dryden, English poet
When you begin to “thync” different, you will automatically shed being diffident and scale the realms of derring-do. Moving away from forced cowardice to heroic courage is a very natural human tendency. Many of us have experienced this reformation.
Helen Keller, the American disability rights advocates who was blind at the age of two, summed it up admirably when she observed that “life is either a daring adventure or nothing”. Shape up or ship out.
Daring to be different clears the path to greatness in derring-do attainments through experiments, innovations and experience. Another natural human tendency.
In politics, especially, where people’s lives matter, the art and science of “thyncing” different is the only reality worth bringing into total focus to eclipse career politicians.
The derring-do of offering interest-free loans to the under-privileged, the under-represented, and the disenfranchised is one ground-breaking path to helping those in need matched only by those whose greed is unquestionable and unquenchable.
The Magna Carta of 1215 was a derring-do moment in history when King John’s rebellious barons forced him to sign the document guaranteeing political liberties for England. The guillotine awaited those who opposed the King, but the great charter forced his hand and stayed the blade.
Derring-do incidents habitually change the course of human affairs as it manifested itself during the Revolutionary War of the American colonies between 1775 and 1783 that decimated the British yoke premised upon political liberties guaranteed by natural law. Derring-do is when a nationalist or a patriot is branded a revolutionary.
“He who is not courageous enough to take risks, will accomplish nothing in life,” declared the great pugilist Muhammad Ali. Edmund Hillary spared no effort in this realm of taking on the odds when he reached the topmost peak of Mount Everest in 1953 with Sherpa Tenzing.
The Platonic creed that underscores the fact that courage is knowing what not to fear should be the people’s guide and guardian to be realistic and do the impossible. The voters have to press home the advantage.
Sanitised, artificially sweetened and saffronised representative democracies are no match to an awakened rakyat not afraid of being weakened anymore in a master-servant relationship.
The derring-do of requiring only the utter basic necessities of life will make the governed “thync” different while the government begins to be diffident. An awakened people are a living threat to people wanting a career in politics.
Thucydides, the Greek historian, offered a secret recipe for law, politics and government — “that the secret to happiness is freedom, and the secret to freedom is courage.” Courage to stay the course and not stray from your rights and beliefs.
“I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear,” observed Nelson Mandela who paid with twenty-seven years behind bars for his nationalistic convictions.
A no-man’s land situation — an indeterminate or undefined place or state — must be made into law for those seeking careers in politics where it is said that there are no permanent friends or foes. The voters have the undeniable advantage.
Derring-do politics made the difference for India’s Narendra Modi when he found a safe harbour for nationalism while disintegrating the Nehru-Gandhi dynastic stronghold over Indian politics since 1947. The people were fed up and geared up for real change.
What’s lacking in Malaysian politics is the courage by those tasked with governing to stand up for the “supreme law of the land” regardless of the outcome that will inevitably emerge from court judgments and legislative commands endangered by weak, partisan, biased and inefficient interpretations.
The rakyat must act now to withdraw their investments in misery.
Personality politics is not derring-do but a daily dosage of disintegration of values and beliefs in a nation claiming to play by the rules of parliamentary democracy embedded in a constitutional monarchy.
All said, done and dusted, no organ of government in Malaysia can dispute the ultimate source of power and authority when Articles 38, 39, 40, 41 and 150 of the Federal Constitution (FC) are juxtaposed. It reverberates with one voice. The unmistakable constitutional derring-do is inescapable.
Of late, we have unerringly witnessed that one voice unaffected by constitutional intoxication. We may have real hope that right will become the might of the nation when the boring predictable fight in politics is silenced.
The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the New Sarawak Tribune.
