Yes,
it is not easy to turn the Malays against the Chinese any longer, not
like in 1969. It is easier to turn the Chinese against the Malays. By
doing so the Malays would merajuk
(sulk). They may not take up arms like they did in 1969. That may be
too much to expect from present day Malays. But the Malays suffer from
an illness called cepat kecik hati (feel hurt too easily).
NO HOLDS BARRED
Raja Petra Kamarudin
It was soon after the March 2008 general
election. Umno was holding a meeting in Subang Jaya to discuss the
election ‘disaster’. All the key Umno ‘activists’ were going to be
there, many veterans or children of veterans of May 13.
I
invited half a dozen of my Chinese and Indian friends to follow me to
the meeting. ‘Why the hell would we want to attend an Umno meeting?”
they asked me. “To learn, of course, to learn.”
Speaker after
speaker took the rostrum. The crowd was stirred. “What happened in the
March general election was exactly like what happened in May 1969,” said
one renowned Umno activist, son of one of the architects of May 13.
“Therefore, what happened in March 2008 also needs the May 13 solution.”
You
do not need to be a standard six student to understand what that meant.
However, considering that many of you who post comments in
Malaysia Today
do not get what is being said even when it is sticking up your arse,
maybe I should spell it out lest you start huffing and puffing off
tangent.
On 11 May 1969, the opposition almost toppled the
ruling party and grabbed or checkmate a few states. Two days later, the
ruling party counter-checkmated the opposition by triggering race riots.
On 8 March 2008, it was history being repeated,
déjà vu. Hence, the same ‘solution’ will be required to ‘solve’ the 8 March 2008 disaster.
Unknown
to most Malaysians, a few attempts were made to arouse the sentiments
of the Malays like what they successfully did in 1969. But this time
around the Malays were not aroused like in 1969 so the effort failed.
An
example would be like what happened in Penang when some Indian-looking
Malays held an anti-Chinese demonstration against Lim Guan Eng in front
of Komtar in Penang and the white skullcap wearing Malays faced them and
dared them to cross the line.
The 500 Indian-looking Malays
did not dare take on the 1,000 white skullcap wearing Malays. There were
no Chinese in sight. It was Indian-looking Malays versus white skullcap
wearing Malays. And the white skullcap wearing Malays were there in
defence of Lim Guan Eng, a Chinese.
So it looks like the race
card no longer works in this day and age like it did back in 1969. A new
strategy would be required. Instead of trying to turn the Malays
against the Chinese, which will not work, why not let the Chinese whack
the Malays? If we try to tell the Malays that the Chinese are the enemy,
the Malays will not buy that. But if the Chinese whack the Malays then
in time the Malays will get sick and tired and turn their back on the
opposition.
The Chinese are more aggressive than the Malays.
Even Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad thinks so when he lamented that the Malays
are too passive and should be more aggressive like the Chinese. So,
instead of trying to work up the Malays against the Chinese, why not
work up the Chinese against the Malays?
When provoked, the
Chinese react very strongly with foul language and all. Malays, being
more feudalistic (another thing about the Malays which Dr Mahathir is
pissed about) have been ‘trained’ since when they were toddlers to
kowtow to authority. Even the Friday prayer
kutbah (sermons) keep reminding the Malays that they must
kowtow to authority. So the Malays are not as militant as the Chinese who kicked out their feudal lords a long time ago.
The Malays are also more forgiving. They can whack you for ten years but once you
turun padang
and go visit them at home, they become very honoured and immediately
become your strong support. You also need to just hold the chief for the
rest to follow -- again, the herd mentality, as Dr Mahathir said. Even
Tunku Abdul Rahman, Malaysia’s First Prime Minister, agrees with this. ‘
Pegang kepala cukup. Yang lain akan ikut,” said the Tunku.
But Malays have two idiosyncrasies. One is ‘M
elayu pantang di cabar’ (it is taboo to provoke a Malay). The other is the
amuk syndrome. Is not the English word
amok taken from the Malay word
mengamuk?
That’s because Malays appear to be the only race that has a penchant
for doing this (the result of the legend of Hang Jebat, a Malay hero).
Malays also have a proverb that goes:
biar mati anak, jangan mati adat. Malay culture and traditions must be upheld even if the child needs to be sacrificed.
And
what else does the Malay hold dear and will kill or die for? What else?
Islam of course! If the Malays can be made to feel that Islam is being
compromised, challenged, insulted, etc., then they will rise in anger as
they do even if they are not Malays like in Pakistan, Afghanistan, etc.
A challenge against Islam is a challenge against God and hence you must
die or else I will die trying to kill you. That is my duty as a Muslim.
Take
all these ingredients and mix them into a bowl and what do you get?
What you get would be a fruitcake. And we need fruitcake Malays if we
want to turn the Malays against the Chinese.
Yes, it is not
easy to turn the Malays against the Chinese any longer, not like in
1969. It is easier to turn the Chinese against the Malays. By doing so
the Malays would
merajuk (sulk). They may not take up arms like
they did in 1969. That may be too much to expect from present day
Malays. But the Malays suffer from an illness called
cepat kecik hati (feel hurt too easily).
Hey, I can believe that. I am only part Bugis, part Orang Asli and part Welsh and even I get
kecik hati with many readers of
Malaysia Today when I read the comments they post. Even I, who can claim to be not pure Malay, have many times considered just closing down
Malaysia Today and tell the lot of you to go to hell or go screw yourselves. What more the Malays from the
kampongs?
Today,
PKR, PAS and Umno are united on the Erykah Badu ban. They are also
united on the view that apostasy needs to be combated. So the Malays
can, if they want to, set aside their political differences and unite
under a common cause. You just need to find that cause. And there are
enough causes out there to latch on to. The rest would be clever
engineering.
And this is something the Chinese do not
understand. The Chinese are prepared to compromise. They can accept a
bad government in the interest of
cari makan (rice bowl). They
can accept ABU even if we replace a bigger devil with a smaller devil
and even if both are devils but merely differ in degree. They can accept
the lesser of the two evils as long as the lesser evil is to their
interest.
The Malays, as Tun Dr Mahathir lamented, are too
passionate, sentimental and emotional (which makes them better lovers,
of course -- and am I not passionate, sentimental and emotional in the
way I write?). The Malays, according to Tun Dr Mahathir, are not
pragmatic like the Chinese. And this is why the Malays fail while the
Chinese succeed, argued Tun Dr Mahathir.
Sun Tzu said: to win
the war you need to know your enemies. Raja Petra Kamarudin wants to add
to what Sun Tzu said: to win the war you also need to know your
friends.
The question is: which one is your friend and which
one is your enemy? Your enemy is not the 51% Malay voters who voted
Barisan Nasional in March 2008. Your enemy is certainly not the 49%
Malay voters who voted Pakatan Rakyat in March 2008. Your enemy are
those who walk in the corridors of power in Putrajaya and the 2,500 Umno
delegates who attend the Umno general assembly to elect their party
President who then becomes the Prime Minister of Malaysia.
Today, many Malays already feel
kecik hati. If Raja Petra can become
kecik hati
what more the other Malays? And this can only mean one thing: Umno is
succeeding. Umno did not succeed in turning the Malays against the
Chinese. Umno succeeded in making the Malays become
kecik hati because they feel the Chinese have now demonstrated that they are not real friends of the Malays.
That,
my friends, is called realpolitik. And would Umno be able to rule
Malaysia for 55 years if they did not understand realpolitik? Can those
of you who entered the scene only in 2007 be better than those who have
been playing this game since 1957? I fear not, my friend.
