The Javanese leader of UMNO

COMMENT | So the Perikatan Nasional (PN) state is going after DAP secretary-general Lim Guan Eng for his joint statement with other Pakatan Harapan leaders about the emergency. Apparently, what he said was so damaging that the state security apparatus has to investigate him.

This is extremely funny because if Parliament was in session, as everyone but PN seems to want, then these MPs would be saying the same thing in the Dewan Rakyat with all the privileges that come with it.

Meanwhile, Umno president Ahmad Zahid Hamidi says democracy is dead in this country, and nobody, certainly not the Malay uber alles crowd, bats an eyelid. Keep in mind when Zahid says something like this, he knows what he is talking about.

The only thing Zahid gets wrong is that PN killed democracy in this country. PN may have landed the killing blow, but democracy has been assaulted in this country for decades under the long Umno watch. The fact that Zahid can say something like this and the government goes after Guan Eng, not him, is demonstrative that democracy is dead or is near death in this country. After all, in the prime minister's announcement of the emergency, he said:

“My warning to anyone who tries to disrupt the government’s efforts to manage the Covid-19 pandemic and the country’s economy – we will take stern action against them to uphold national security and welfare of the people.”

So, basically, the prime minister warned folks not to disrupt efforts of managing the pandemic and economy but here we have a Malay power-broker claiming that democracy is dead in this country and everyone goes on about business as usual? This should tell us what the Malay uber alles crowd thinks of democracy.

The same way that the Immigration Department ignores an interim court order and the establishment does not consider this as contempt of court but when five anonymous netizens do a drive-by in the comments section, a news organisation is fined half a million ringgit. This should tell us what PN thinks of supposedly independent democratic institutions.

A decade ago, Penang opposition leader Azhar Ibrahim, in a spat with then Penang chief minister Guan Eng not only referenced May 13 but also said Umno has three million members and that he would call in the Malay 'Tiga Line gang' to teach the state government a lesson. Of course, calling in outsourced thugs to secure political victory or usurp political power is a threat many in Umno have no problem making.

At the time, Penang Gerakan vice-chairperson Teng Chang Yeow said: “Such remarks do not reflect the kind of democracy that Barisan Nasional stands for." But it kind of does, right? BN component parties were accomplices in the assault on democracy.

Zahid, of course, is no stranger to issuing threats against democratic institutions such as the media when he said at a ceramah: "The minister then warned that it was a closed-door event and prohibited the media in every language from publishing the contents of the forum, failing which he warned he would have the dailies all closed down."

Shows you how much Zahid really cares about democracy and free speech. He, of course, is one of the main culprits in the assault on democracy in this country and this idea that he now mourns its demise is totally ironic.

In 2016, in an Umno pow wow, he claimed that opposition propaganda was like Nazi propaganda - "It was based on lies... Hitler once wrote: 'If you are going to tell a lie, tell a big one and if you tell it often enough, people will begin to believe it'."

Have Zahid and Umno not been telling big lies for decades? The lie that non-Malays were a threat to the Malay community. The lie that Islam was under siege in this country. The lie that the NEP was needed to uplift the Malay community. The lie that the alternative media was detrimental to national unity. The lie that only Umno could defend the economic and social “rights” of the Malay community. The lie that repressive laws were needed for national unity. The lie that restrictions on free speech were necessary for national cohesion.

All those lies and the policy decisions that went into realising those lies were the stabs at the democratic body politic of this country. Even when he was home minister, as shown above, he was busy threatening or dismantling democratic institutions when they got in his way.

All Umno folk did that. So it was a shock to them when, despite the repression, they still got thrown out the front door in the last election. And then, realising that democracy did that to them, they came back in through the backdoor, thanks to Azmin Ali and his treacherous bunch.

Democracy is made up of ideas, principles and institutions and throughout the long Umno watch, these bodies have been slowly poisoned. All these petty tyrants who now talk about democracy - when they were the ones who were destroying it when they were in power - is the kind of politics that exemplifies mainstream politics in this country.

To be honest, I don't even think they understand what democracy is. How could they, when there was nothing democratic in the way they handled their party politics, which could be said of every political party in this country. The difference is, Umno has a long track record of brutalising democracy in this country, and what the opposition has a track record of is making bad choices when it comes to endorsing autocratic leaders.

Zahid may be right.