Rudyard Kipling"
“When you're left wounded on Afganistan's plains and
the women come out to cut up what remains, Just roll to your rifle
and blow out your brains,
And go to your God like a soldier”
General Douglas MacArthur"
“We are not retreating. We are advancing in another direction.”
“It is fatal to enter any war without the will to win it.” “Old soldiers never die; they just fade away.
“The soldier, above all other people, prays for peace, for he must suffer and be the deepest wounds and scars of war.”
“May God have mercy upon my enemies, because I won't .” “The object of war is not to die for your country but to make the other bastard die for his.
“Nobody ever defended, there is only attack and attack and attack some more.
“It is foolish and wrong to mourn the men who died. Rather we should thank God that such men lived.
The Soldier stood and faced God
Which must always come to pass
He hoped his shoes were shining
Just as bright as his brass
"Step forward you Soldier,
How shall I deal with you?
Have you always turned the other cheek?
To My Church have you been true?"
"No, Lord, I guess I ain't
Because those of us who carry guns
Can't always be a saint."
I've had to work on Sundays
And at times my talk was tough,
And sometimes I've been violent,
Because the world is awfully rough.
But, I never took a penny
That wasn't mine to keep.
Though I worked a lot of overtime
When the bills got just too steep,
The Soldier squared his shoulders and said
And I never passed a cry for help
Though at times I shook with fear,
And sometimes, God forgive me,
I've wept unmanly tears.
I know I don't deserve a place
Among the people here.
They never wanted me around
Except to calm their fears.
If you've a place for me here,
Lord, It needn't be so grand,
I never expected or had too much,
But if you don't, I'll understand."
There was silence all around the throne
Where the saints had often trod
As the Soldier waited quietly,
For the judgment of his God.
"Step forward now, you Soldier,
You've borne your burden well.
Walk peacefully on Heaven's streets,
You've done your time in Hell."
Anwar is right to play the class card By Commander S THAYAPARAN (Retired) Royal Malaysian Navy
Monday, May 08, 2023
Malaysiakini : Attempting to raise populist sentiment, he called out the fat cat
Malay plutocrat class, who claim to have the best interests of the Malay
polity at heart but in reality merely exploit them.
He said,
“They should not use their powers to enrich their family members. And
when they are rich but have lost power, they go on to say ‘long live
Malays’ and ‘save the Malays’.”
Dr Mahathir Mohamad
Of
course, all this is laying the ground for his battle royale in the
courts with former prime minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad, who for some odd
reason believes his family wealth is somehow immune from the public
scrutiny that would come with a court case and an adversary with the
machinery of the state at his disposal.
Anwar also said the quiet part out loud when he said,
“I want to tell the leaders with the titles of ‘Tun’ and ‘Tan Sri’ who
are rich - if you really want to save Malays, give them half of your
billions in profits tomorrow.”
It is talk like this which frightens the more intelligent members of
the religious extremist coalition going up against this coalition
government. For instance, former Bersatu information chief Wan Saiful
Wan Jan wanted to know if Anwar was attempting to instigate class warfare.
Wan
Saiful as part of the Malay political elite really does not want any
class-conscious raising amongst the disenfranchised Malay classes but
has no problem providing them with crumbs from the table through racial
and religious entitlement programmes to keep them dependent and with a
sense of racial and religious superiority.
Haves and havenots
Now
of course entangled in a corruption charge, all these political elites
are deathly afraid that Anwar’s class rabble-rousing will gain traction
especially since it would be difficult to counter now that bank accounts
are frozen.
Former PKR deputy president Syed Husin Ali has warned us, in an interview with Free Malaysia Today, that even a monoethnic Malay polity would descend into class warfare.
He
said, “Pertama… adalah kepentingan nilai seperti agama dan moral,
manakala kedua adalah kepentingan berkaitan politik seperti perkembagan
ekonomi dan pendidikan. Apabila kepentingan-kepentingan ini
bertentangan, maka wujudlah konflik.”
(One concern is values such
as religion, while the other concern is economic growth and education.
If these concerns clash, then conflict will arise.)
And then he
dived into the nature of the eventual class conflict that would arise -
“Misalannya, kurang kekayaan dalam kalangan Melayu. Orang Melayu yang di
bawah akan menganggap mereka miskin kerana kekayaan dikumpul oleh
kelompok (orang Melayu kaya) yang sedikit. Justeru, timbullah konflik.”
(For example, the lack of abundance among the Malays. The Malays at
the bottom will see themselves as poor because of the wealth amassed by
the few [rich Malays]. Thus, conflict arises.)
However, this dirty system
that Anwar talks about is more than just corruption. It is a system
predicated on keeping the majority uncompetitive and subservient to a
political class, which wilfully wants them to remain ignorant and
subservient because it fuels the very system which is disenfranchising
them.
I will give you an example of this system. In Kedah, at a recent Raya event, Anwar promised funding
for the building of a long-promised mosque. First off, you have to
wonder if another mosque would really be of benefit as it was reported
there are currently three mosques there.
Details are scant but the new mosque has apparently been a repeat election promise since the 2004 general election.
But
never mind, there should be a forensic audit of the various initiatives
to build the mosque over the decades. I believe such an audit would
demonstrate how dirty this system really is. It would define the nexus
between the political and religious classes and how they loot the
coffers of the state.
Poverty alleviation programmes
The
Malay political class and corruption are part of the system but the
other part, which Anwar is so far avoiding, is that after decades of
special privileges and entitlement programs why are the Malays in the
situation they are in?
Former prime minister Ismail Sabri Yaakob
admitted that all those poverty alleviation programmes were carried out
by the vast bureaucracy and nobody had any idea about their
effectiveness: “Many ministries had programmes on poverty alleviation
but there was no specific monitoring on their effectiveness.”
Keeping
in mind that monitoring these programmes would not mean there would
automatically be transparency. This is because many of these programmes
are part of the gravy train driven by bureaucrats, political operatives,
and their various proxies.
Indeed, Dr Jeyakumar Devaraj talked about this in his rejoinder to Harapan not to blow their second chance. He wrote:
“Transparency
in the use of funds provided by the Ministry of Rural Development
through the district offices to maintain and upgrade public facilities
and residents’ houses in rural areas. (It is currently about RM5bn per
year! Not a small amount.)
“The level of funding must be
maintained for now, but it will go much further if the pilfering (by
local politicians and district office employees and their crony
contractors) is reduced by requiring all the allocations and the
specifications of the projects approved to be put up on online notice
boards that the local population can access.”
Sustaining kleptocracy
This
is why Ahmad Zahid Hamidi as rural and regional development minister is
anathema to any kind of reform. Mind you, it could help Anwar and
Harapan if Zahid can maintain the gravy train for operatives on the
ground thereby drawing back support from an Umno base which PN has been
extremely successful in leaching away support from.
Again, all
this does is maintain the feudalistic system that has mired the majority
polity, especially in the Malay heartland, in the miasma of religiosity
and economic deprivation that becomes fodder for people like Mahathir
and PAS president Abdul Hadi Awang to claim that the Malays are under
threat from other more successful ethnic communities.
Who knows,
maybe Anwar and Zahid understand that in this new political terrain,
Malay voter sentiment can change swiftly now that the majority polity
understands they have more choices, and the economic welfare of the
community will blunt the sharp kleptocratic instincts of the mainstream
political establishment. We will soon find out.
The non-Malays on
the other hand, having left to fend for themselves, have opened up
economic, educational, and social spheres in which connective tissue has
allowed the state to sustain a kleptocracy that has endured for
decades.
Reforms of state institutions that minimise corruption
and deregulation which minimises cronyism are some things we can all
agree with and, perhaps, the most economically viable way to sway the
Malay public option. This is why PAS is determined to make this a
culture war.
All this talk of poverty alleviation, especially when
it comes to the Malay community, is mired in the kind of corruption
that plagues the mainstream political establishment. Remember what
Jeyakumar said - “If you stop affirmative action for the rich Malays,
even the poor Malays would accept it.”
Anwar
was dealt a bad hand but it is better that he plays the class card
rather than the race and religion card, which PN plays better.
