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Shoot on sight
THIS IS a must buy book. Those who were shocked, amused or merely contemptuously dismissive of the asinine utterances of our politicians should have "Malaysian Politicians Say the Darndest Things" on their book shelves, to be taken down to chortle over before falling into deep sleep.
The collection starts off with the infamous "We will shoot on sight." That was what Mahathir would have done to the Vietnamese boat people seeking safety on the East Coast. This was in 1979 when he was deputy PM. It characterises the brusque doctor. Tough guy talk was his forte. When Anwar Ibrahim' s Islamic youth movement came out one day wearing Arab turbans and gowns of green he did not like the demonstration one bit. Bring out your 2000, he challenged, and I will bring out 4000 in black; bring out green 4000 and I will show you 8000 in black or something like that. That got the Ayatollah Khomenei worshippers really scared; they abandoned their Saudi costumes and quietly reverted to what they usually wore.
If British football hooliganism emerged during the Thatcher era, Malayan police brutality coincided with Mahathir rule. The force, much admired by many in KL for its apparent "law and order" impartiality and discipline during the May 13 killings, became what the man in the street calls "uniformed robbers." Their misconduct made the headlines: stripping naked arrestees and making them do the "squat" punishment; hammering detainees, as was exposed by the Anwar black eye, which demonstrated that even being a former deputy PM was no protection; arrests and ill treatment of beating up innocent foreigners even san Indonesian karate referee and the wife of the Indonesian education and cultural attache, which angered their governments, locking up lawyers making inquiries about their clients; assaulting hotel guests on mere suspicion; there were unexplained deaths in police custody; trigger happy killings, the vilest being the brutal shooting of MIC committee members going to a meeting in a van which the coroner, in a rare inquiry, found to be wrongful. RELA men ran wild, even forcing people out of their homes for a check on illegal immigrants, and beating people of darker colour; senior policemen piling up illegal wealth. That no one was punished or even demoted sinisterly marked the regime.
With this historical background we are not surprised at the news of the day and night "man hunt" for 37 of the 41 demonstrators of Batu Buruk. Their crime - calling for reform of the electoral system at a meeting called by BERSIH, the coalition for Clean and Fair Elections.
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Parroting a slur
"Please don't test the Malays. They know amok." This
unconscious parroting of the colonialist sneer came from a man promoted by
Mahathir to be secretary general of
UMNO, the man who nearly ran "amok" in 1987 and was saved by
his boss.
And that was the time that language in Parliament was illuminated by Bung
Moktar Radin MP crying out "Fuck you! Fuck you!" Object
of vituperation: DAP's Chong Eng (yes, a woman). The man should
study the history of how and why the form of address "Honourable member for .." came to be a by law in the English
parliament.
"The best way to improve your golf is to chop down the rain forest .. We get too much rain in Sarawak - it stops me playing golf" from Amar James Wong, a Sarawak minister. That too is in the book.
And the naively innocent Tunku Abdul Rahman writing in The Star in 1987, "Everybody seems to be corrupt. In my time, we didn't have anything like this" The Tunku forgets that the newspapers and Hansard have on record tons of questions about corruption when he was PM.
And there is that famous advice of Wanita MCA leader to women: "Put on more lipstick and try not to put on weight." That presumably would avoid their wayward husbands visiting prostitutes. Our always resourceful pimps now offer something more attractive - a "mistress-for-hire-at-RM2000 per month" model. It will take more than lipstick, dear wanita
chief.
I hope the volume to follow will not miss such fatuous instructions as Mohd. Rahmat's: to sprinkle water from tall flats to dissolve the Indonesian haze and the one about pumping water from the KL river for the same purpose. Not to forget the one about banning super bikes from the highway.
Lim Kean Chye
Malaysian Politicians Say the Darndest Things Vol 1
compiled by Amir Muhammad
with illustrations by Shahril Nizam
Mata Hari Books 2007
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