Why do the politicians want to kill off Hindraf’s 5 year Blueprint? Before
I get into discussing the whys of this question, I need to clarify that
indeed politicians on both sides of the divide do want to kill off the
Blueprint.
P. Waythamoorthy
This
is the third day of my Hunger Viratham. I have begun limiting my
physical movement so I can conserve the energy for what lies ahead. The
Viratham feeds me with spiritual strength that no food can substitute.
That is the nourishment I truly need. This period of Viratham is going
to be a creative period.
Yesterday
in part 1, I addressed the immediate plans for the way forward for the
minority Indian poor. Today I wish to discuss why I think the political
class wants to kill off Hindraf’s 5 year blueprint to bring the Indian
poor into the mainstream of national development.
PART 2
Why do the politicians want to kill off Hindraf’s 5 year Blueprint?
Before
I get into discussing the whys of this question, I need to clarify that
indeed politicians on both sides of the divide do want to kill off the
Blueprint.
UMNO’s
first approach has been to completely ignore that any such initiative
exists. This is the typical first response. They have not responded to
our overtures to them for a discussion on the Blueprint for a good six
months now. The next approach (and we are beginning to see traces of
that) is to hijack portions of the Blueprint and maybe also the tone of
the Blueprint and hope to render Hindraf’s Blueprint document redundant
in the process. The proof will be in their Election manifesto when comes
out. They are hoping to skirt the issue altogether for now and hope to
sail through these elections and then in the post election period hope
for a natural death to the document. Their pretending is their biggest
initiative to kill off the document.
As
for Pakatan the situation is a little bit more complex as we have been
in discussion with them these last six months. First when the
discussions started we were given verbal agreements by the very top and
they hoped we would accept that as sufficient commitment and then they
take over. But when we insisted on a binding endorsement, then gears
began to shift.
Delay
tactics of engaging us in meeting after wasted meetings and hoping to
drag this process on for as long, to minimize any impact of a breakdown
of the talks was attempted. But that has not worked either.
If
they could not kill the document, then kill the messenger was what they
tried next – so they began to hit at our moral grounds, by insinuating
that we were only interested in seats to contest in the elections,
attempting to make us out into greedy cheating politicians. Trying to
make us look like wolves in sheepskin. They did not have much more to go
on, on that count as we made it clear our priorities are the blueprint
then the seats. But they persist with this approach.
The
next thing they tried was using argument that the Blueprint demand were
inconsistent with that sacrosanct Pakatan principle of “beyond racial
boundaries”. They backtracked on that too because of the backlash. They
then resorted to hijacking a clear portion of the Blueprint for
inclusion in their election manifesto to get by that difficulty .
Now,
the latest attempt has been to cleverly use the Indian leaders within
their party to hit out at us - to further divide n rule, something that
has been practiced by UMNO all these years.
There probably will be more attempts as they have not succeeded in killing off the Blueprint.
Now let me get to why both parties are so earnest about achieving this goal.
Our
theory is that both BN and Pakatan are just puppets. The real power
lies with the puppet masters at the back. The puppet masters are the
political and economic elite of the country. They are the people who own
this country – all the major assets of the country are owned by them.
They call the policy shots as far as the allocation of the resources of
the country is concerned and they use various devices, methods and
processes to achieve this. BN or Pakatan, they are just tools to create
an illusion. Of course what I say is advanced political theory. But hold
these thoughts and ruminate over them. This is a central theme all
common people must become well aware of. This is central to our
understanding of how things work in our universe.
Hindraf’s
political platform is entirely about correcting the historical
injustices and gross and serious violation of human rights of the Indian
poor since the time the Indian coolie was brought in by the white
colonialists into Malaya. The injustice and violations of the rights of
the poor continue till today. Our firm belief is that none of this
happened as if in a fit of absent mind. They were all results of
conscious decisions by the political and economic elite of the country.
That is still true today.
So,
Hindraf is meeting the elite eye to eye in their Blueprint demands.
Hindraf is effectively demanding that the elite accept that they
committed these atrocities and demand they atone for it by implementing
comprehensive programs of correction. The proposals in the Blueprint are
entirely justifiable, no matter which way you look at it. The issue of
racism does not arise at all. Only the defenders of the elite –the
puppets use this as a convenient argument. We are actually engaging in
this conversation with the elite through the political party puppets.
And look at how vehemently the political party puppets use convenient
and self serving arguments to defend the position of the elite .
The
puppets may be two political coalitions, but the puppet master is only
one. So, the fundamental policies will be one. In the contention between
these political parties one-upmanship becomes their real policy. Remove
the chaff and what you get is the same set of policies at the end of
the day from the two parties. We got a glimpse of that with Anwar’s
response to the Australian media when questioned about Lynas the other
day. The same policy comes through. You can give any number of reasons
to justify and once you are in power a lot more comes into play for you.
Hindraf
operates with this model – a model , in our opinion that is devoid of
the illusions that the elite want to create to control us and everything
else.
That
briefly is my analysis of the reasons why both sides of the political
divide want to see the Blueprint killed off. They do not think any such
transgression has occurred as we insist. In their worldview this is
normal. So what we ask is “terlalu”.
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