The following is an imaginary roundtable discussion between Prime Minister of Malaysia Najib Tun Razak, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and China's President Hu Jintao at an undisclosed location in China. I will just call them Jin, Jib and Jad to rhyme with the similar ideology of stamping out political dissent.
NO HOLDS BARRED
Vijay Kumar Murugavell
Hu Jintao (Jin) : Welcome gentlemen, please have a seat. Can I get you anything to drink?
Najib Tun Razak (Jib) : Water please, “yin shui si yuan”. When drinking water, don’t forget the people who dug the well (beaming proudly).
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (Jad) : Get me a Zam Zam Cola.
Jin : Oh, you still boycotting Coca Cola and Pepsi?
Jad : Nooooo (sarcastically) because the Director of Zam Zam Cola is Ahmad Haddad Moghaddam who happens to share a similar second name with me. What do you think? (sneering)
Jin : Sorry don't have that in stock. Instead I offer you what we call feichang kele the Chinese people's own cola it is also called Future Cola.
Jib : When drinking Zam Zam Cola don't forget to thank the Well of Zamzam in Mecca from where its name is derived.
Jad : What's it with you and well's? You look different from when I last saw you in Kuala Lumpur, lost some hair and I did not realize you wore contacts.
Jib : That was not me. It was the former PM Badawi. He's retired now catching up on golf, gardening and fishing. He could not take the endless lampooning by bloggers which turned out to my benefit however this RPK is a thorn in my side.
Jin : RPK? Ruchnoy Pulemyot Kalashnikova, the Kalashnikov assault rifle?
Jib : No, the Scarlet Pimpernel of bloggers, Raja Petra Kamarudin.
Jin : Does this RPK have a Twitter account?
Jib : Yes he does, but he has yet to post anything on Twitter.
Jin : Why not?
Jib : Have you seen the length of some of his articles ? His preamble alone even after being summarised will not fit into Twitters limit of 140 characters per post, damn cheong hei.
Jin : Eh? Cheong hei? What do you mean?
Jib : (Rolling eyes and sighing) Cheong hei, you know, long winded.
Jin : You have got your Cantonese and Mandarin mixed up, here let me write it down for you its C-h-a-n-g Q-i
Jib : Yes , OK.... Chunky...whatever......
Jin : Its pronounced Chang Chi....
Jib : The point is you will need a certain concentration level to read his articles, our former PM , Badawi, who has a limited concentration span, would start snoring after the second paragraph. On the other hand my wife, by virtue of her name being mentioned in his articles, has a morbid fascination. She will read, then re-read his writings in between fits of tantrums and shouting over the phone over a series of calls. We have five special branch officers undergoing counselling due to a nervous breakdown as a result of monitoring his articles and taunts from his supporters.
Jin : Did RPK write anything about China recently?
Jib : Yes, he calls me a hypocrite for wanting to visit and do business with China while barring a former communist leader from entering Malaysia. We are thankful that China's leadership has refrained from commenting on Chin Peng.
Jin : It’s the least we could do, we appreciate that during the Beijing Olympics, the torch arrived safely in Kuala Lumpur under heavy guard while you warned your own citizens against protesting about Tibet. So as long as Malaysia has no official stand on Tibet, we have no official stand on Chin Peng. Democracy or Communism what’s the difference? After all our methods of muzzling the press, clamping down on dissent and putting political interests above human rights are so similar
Jad : In Iran we do the same for the greater good but are relatively tolerant. If Iranian intelligence services were to arrest anyone who speaks ill of the government in private, we simply couldn't build cells fast enough to hold all prisoners." Jails are expensive to build. Why not have RPK arrested on trumped-up charges?
Jib : We tried but he did not attend court on the excuse that the court was within the state of Selangor, since he is a minor royal who is on a self-imposed exile from the state, he refuses to attend court.
Jin : So arrest him for not attending court.
Jib : We tried but he disappeared. We suspected that he was in Brisbane and had asked Interpol to help us extradite him but we hit a snag. (He takes out a file from his briefcase and flips the pages). This is the extradition treaty we signed with Australia in 2006 under article 3 of that agreement, exceptions to extradition under subsection 1(b) is as follows:
"If there are substantial grounds for believing that a request for extradition for an ordinary criminal offence has been made for the purpose of prosecuting or punishing a person on account of that person’s race, colour, sex, language, religion, nationality, ethnic origin, political opinion or other status, or that that person’s position may be prejudiced for any of those reasons."
So, to avoid an embarrassing failed extradition attempt and to give our supporters the impression we can actually do something about it, we have denied initial reports that he is in Brisbane. Besides, the last time we tried to extradite an alleged lover of an opposition politician, Interpol told us to bugger off. They do not consider consensual sex outside of marriage as a crime. They cheekily told me to arrest a friend of mine who is a self-confessed adulterer instead.
Jad : These people can be pests. Supporters of my main opponent Mir-Hossein Mousavi, who is very popular with young people, write lies about me. So, to teach them a lesson, I blocked Facebook and Twitter.
Jin : My sentiments are similar. It's been 20 years since the Tiananmen Square massa...er…I mean illegal uprising. But some still want to make it an issue. So I blocked twitter.
Jib : It won't work. When we blocked RPK's site, Malaysia Today, people circumvented it by using mirror sites and proxy sites. He became even more popular so we decided to unblock his site and cooked up some story about honouring our pledge not to censor the internet.
Jin : Then how do you quell dissent?
Jib : Well, we arrest candle light vigilers -- those who wear black, those who utter the name of "she who shall not be named", cyclists wearing red T-shirts, those who gather without permits and recently we closed down a Cafe serving white coffee because some miscreants were going to gather there to sip black coffee while wearing black.
Jad : That is in some ways worse than what we do in Iran. Are you not afraid that the people will rise up in protest?
Jib : We have a counterbalance to sustain our support base using the NEP.
Jad : Ah, yes, we use the NEP in Iran too. Our Nuclear Energy Policy is very clever. When I talk to the UN I say that we are pursuing peaceful means of sustainable nuclear energy. On the other hand, when I talk to the anti-American groups, I have them believe that I am going to target an Intercontinental Ballistic Missile at Washington. Of course we are light years away from such capabilities but it works as a distraction for those at home who may scrutinise my failed government.
Jib : Very interesting but that's not the kind of NEP I am talking about, though the doubletalk is similar. We say one thing to the politically dominant Malays to rile them up about Malay supremacy. Then, when we talk to the non-Malay crowd, we talk about unity and reconciliation. In Malaysia, NEP is the acronym for New Economic Policy. "Ketuanan Melayu" is the OPIUM (Candu) fed to the Malay Masses by the Ruling UMNO SPECIAL Malays through the NEP. If the philosophy of the NEP is questioned, for example, we say it will result in social unrest. If we forget history, history will punish us, etc. The effect of the sum total of all the weight of this conventional and historical bogeyman is to instil fear. It is actually nothing but a big lie to preserve the status quo of an UMNO led ruling coalition called BN.
Jad : Sounds more complicated than a Nuclear Energy Policy. How does it actually work?
Jib : It's quite simple, really. First we break your legs, then we give you crutches after that we say that if it were not for the Government you would not be able to walk. The NEP is uniquely Malaysian launched in 1971.
Jin : Your NEP is not so unique. We had something similar 10 years before Malaysia launched its NEP. China had a NEP in 1960-65 to cut a deal with farmers and peasants from an uprising. This New Economic Policy was called the "sixty articles of agriculture". The Chinese communist party in 1962 promised not to interfere in their private lives, while painting beautiful socialist pictures. We implemented policies based on Mao's theory of continuing the revolution under the dictatorship of the proletariat. We also flexed our muscles via the One-China policy a principle that there is one China and that mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau, Tibet, and Taiwan are all part of that China.
Jib : I do admit that the One China policy inspired me to come up with my 1 Malaysia policy. You see we lost an unprecedented five states to the opposition in the last general elections and I want them all back. 1 Malaysia, to me, is where all Malaysian's pay obeisance to BN and by extension UMNO but some bleeding heart liberals mistake it for calls of unity and meritocracy. I would like to thank you for the Falun Gong busters China sent us in 2007 to help us with our HINDRAF problem. The idea of banning an organization that was not even registered was brilliant. Those guys are good. Are they similar to Malaysia's UTK (Unit Tindakan Khas)?
Jin : They are from the 6-10 office, an arm of the National Security Bureau and Public Security Bureau of China. The agency was formed on June 10, 1999. The name of the office derives from this date it was established to target dissident groups. Our official stand is of course to deny the existence of this office. Please do not compare them to your UTK boys who blow up a victim with C4 but keep her earrings as a souvenir in the pocket of their jacket. Talking of jackets, they are badly disguised with their customary black jackets riding pillion, escorting motorcades. They stick out like sore thumbs against your white uniformed traffic police escorts. They seem pretty inept to me.
Jib : Not true, in mid 1994 UTK stormed a hiding place of P. Kalimuthu or Bentong Kali at Medan Damasara, Selangor. In the shoot-out with the police, the Most-Wanted Criminal was successfully killed.
Jin : Isn't that what your regular police force should be doing?
Jib : You see, our police are more adept at arresting skinny opposition politicians, catching people who gather without permits, candle light vigilers, those who wear black, those who utter the name of "she who shall not be named", cyclists wearing red T-shirts, bloggers,............
Jad : OK OK..... we get the picture. But why wait for people to gather before taking action? In Iran we have special police corps officially tasked with checking the cell phones of Iranians. All text messages and audio or video files considered 'illegal' are erased such as news on scandals, distasteful jokes about me (ahem) and other political leaders, information on meetings, political assemblies and rallies.
Jib : Malaysian's are very attached to their cellphones and guard them ferociously but ironically they exposed a personal SMS between me and Shafee Abdullah the lawyer who represented my good friend in the murder trial of "she who shall not be named"…I hate Maxis.
Jad : I hate maxi's and miniskirts's too, the proper attire should be full hijab.
Jin : So Jib, what do you intend to go back and tell Malaysian's about your visit to China?
Jib : I intend to delve into our historical friendship. It dawned on me that Admiral Cheng Ho visited Malacca with 35,000 troops and 300 vessels. If an armada of that size had desired to capture Malacca then, it would have been achieved easily. However, China had no such intention. Instead, it extended a hand of friendship. Malaysia does not consider China a threat because Malaysia had many times to evaluate China over the past 600 years.
Jin : (laughing hysterically) Friendship? Not Really. The Persian Gulf at Hormuz was known to be a city of amazing wealth and goods, including pearls and precious stones which were much coveted by the Chinese emperor. The Fleet also went to Africa to trade, which at the time was a very rich country. Malacca was just a warehouse and a place to rest before resuming the voyage, a pit-stop if you like. Had Malacca resisted Cheng Ho would have crushed them. Lets be realistic here. Your countrymen are historically not noted warriors. Pretty much anyone from the Portuguese, Dutch, British and Japanese just stepped in and took over by a walkover. If not for World War 2, your country may have been a British colony right until the 1990's like Hong Kong. But go ahead. Say what you want to your countrymen if it sounds good. Will there be anything else?
Jib : Yes, my wife has been pestering me that she wants to emulate Nixon who showed off his chopstick skills at no .18 villa in 1972. I also need to rush back. I am very sure that one wily opposition leader will start insisting that I call a motion of confidence in Parliament like my father did on his return from China. I also need to do damage control over my statement about "she who shall not be named" and 2 star hotels. I warned my foreign minister to keep his mouth shut the entire trip. He created quite a spectacle when he met Hilary Clinton. He now has a phobia of using the word "lucrative". So officially he will declare this trip as a "fruitful" one and that is what our compliant mainstream media will be told to print.
Jad : Farewell my friend. It was nice meeting you. Suddenly I feel my problems are so small in comparison. I think you should use that statement about thanking the people who dug the well, and hope that you fare WELL (snickering)
Jin : Thank you for coming gentlemen. It’s a pity Kim Jong Il, General Than Swee and Robert Mugabe could not join us today.
Note: They say that some truths are made up of fiction and some fictions are made up of truths. The above conversation is definitely fictitious. It only happened in my fertile imagination. But I leave it to you Dear Reader to discern between fact, fiction and probability.
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