An Acceptable Viewpoint on 10 November

Found this post by a certain Vincent Lau which does make sense. I had felt that the memorandum should not have been handed over by Anwar and the other Opposition personalities but instead by NGO representatives. The reference site states his profile as: Vincent is a 23-year-old mechanical engineer who grew up in the city. His current job has taken him to kampungs, in which most urbanites have never heard of before. It has taught him lessons about this country and its people - lessons that a lot of Malaysians take for granted. Visit his site.

Bersih rally a farce, its organizers are hypocrites

By VINCENT LAU
Let’s not kid ourselves, OK? The Bersih rally - peaceful or not, was not about a call for real democracy or handing over a memorandum to the king. A rally could have been held in a stadium where like-minded people could have gone and stayed out of everybody else’s way. And if they really wanted to hand over a memorandum to the king, I am sure the opposition leaders could have done it themselves, behind closed doors. They didn’t have to hype up the event.

Quite simply, the protest was nothing more than a demonstration of power. They are telling the present government that they have the support of the people. They are telling the people that the present government is doing something really wrong and that they are our saviours. It may shock you, but I fully agree that things are messed up. But two wrongs never made anything right and the rally was nothing more than a farce.

The opposition leaders needed to make it big and hype it up. But disrupting public peace is not the way to go about doing things. Thousands of people were affected by the rally - businesses were undoubtedly disrupted and tourists given a horrible impression of the country. Street demonstrations are bad for business - one could only venture a guess as to how many foreign investors were shoo-ed away by the protest.

Somebody said that this is the price to pay for freedom and rights. Yeah, so why is it that the opposition parties are allowed to decide this on my behalf?

The Star reported 5,000 people at the gathering. Malaysiakini said there were 40,000 people. This is my case in point - different lie, same bullshit. This has always been the case. Reading too much of only one source clouds your judgment, so let’s settle for an in-between figure of 20,000 people, alright?

There are 4 million people in Klang Valley. Isn’t it ironic that at a rally for democracy, only 0.5 percent showed up to tell us what is right and wrong. Please do away with the hypocrisy. The Bersih protest was nothing more than a political statement designed to tell the public that the general elections are coming and that we should vote for the opposition.

As for the current administration, everyone knows their faults and screw-ups. And as voters, we would really be stupid to allow politicians who messed up so badly to do so again.

Yet, what the opposition is proposing is not good enough.

We have a bunch of opposition parties working together on the principle that “your enemy is my enemy” even though their ideologies are as similar as chalk and cheese. The opposition parties don’t exist with the intention of winning the general elections. Their only objective is to disrupt the operations of the incumbent government. They have no clear and fixed ideologies, except to oppose whatever the government is doing.

When the presiding government messes up big time, the opposition parties get more supporters and voters.

The corruption scandal involving our chief justice is a good example. Misappropriation of funds is another.

But when the opposition opposes the removal of fuel subsidies, the more informed Malaysians know that they are only doing it to fish for votes.

They fought the fuel price hikes because it was the popular decision at that time. I don’t care who is in charge of this country. I’ll be damned if the guy at the top makes decisions based on a popularity contest.

Let’s look at Anwar Ibrahim. Here’s a man who is championing the removal of the NEP and calling for it to be reviewed. That’s all fine, except for the fact that he spent his political career seemingly fine with the idea. Then he gets screwed over, and suddenly the NEP is a bad thing. Hypocritical, isn’t it?

It has come to the point where people think it is acceptable to hold mass protests and disrupt public peace just to get their idea across. It is not. People think that the lesser of the two evils is acceptable. It is not.

So what do I propose?

Frankly, I have no idea. I don’t have the faintest idea what the solution should be. Which is why I wept for Malaysia on Nov. 10.