Malaysia's own worst enemy

More and more Malaysians of every race and creed are sick of being taken for a bunch of twits.

Or at least that’s the impression I get from the torrent of critical comments on Khairy Jamaluddin’s recent Twitterings against his fictitious claim that Singapore Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew has called Malaysia a ‘failed state’.

To anyone unaccustomed to Khairy’s self-promoting ‘patriotic’ posturings, his rebuttal of Lee’s alleged condemnation of Malaysia might have appeared impressive: “For cynics who say Malaysia is a failed state: I was a war correspondent in Taliban Afghanistan. I know a failed state when I see one. We’re not.”

But in fact he was merely employing Dr Mahathir Mohamad’s old ploy of putting words in critics’ mouths as a pretext for projecting himself as a champion of poor, defenceless, unjustly victimised Malaysia.

Having carefully read a transcript of the Sept 1 Seth Mydans interview with Lee for the New York Times and International Herald Tribune, I haven’t been able to find where Lee calls Malaysia a “failed state”.

What he actually said when asked if he had any disappointments in his career was, “Well, first I regret having been turfed out of Malaysia. I think if the Tunku (left) had kept us together, what we did in Singapore, had Malaysia accepted a multiracial base for their society, much of what we’ve achieved in Singapore would have been achieved in Malaysia. But not as much because it’s a much broader base.”

“We would have improved inter-racial relations and an improved holistic situation. Now we have a very polarised Malaysia. Malays, Chinese and Indians in separate schools, living separate lives and not getting with one another. You read (about?) them. That’s bad for us as close neighbours.”

Much later in quite a long interview he further commented that “Malaysia took the different line; Malaysia saw it as a Malay country, all others are lodgers, ‘orang tumpangan’, and they the bumiputras, sons of the soil, run the show.

“So the Sultans, the Chief Justice and Judges, generals, police commissioner, the whole hierarchy is Malay. All the big contracts (are) for Malays. Malay is the language of the schools although it does not get them into modern knowledge. So the Chinese build and fund their own independent schools to teach Chinese, the Tamils create their own Tamil schools, which do not get them jobs. It’s a most unhappy situation.”

While Lee’s words are far from complimentary, they seem to me to go nowhere near proclaiming or even insinuating that Malaysia is, in words that Khairy evidently invented for himself, a “failed state”.

Nor do Lee’s comments seem to me at all “ill-informed and coloured with historical bias,” as Khairy claimed, or “biting and insulting and calculated to divide Malaysians even more.”

United in detestation of KJ and his ilk

In fact, to judge by all the feedback I’ve seen, Malaysians appear more united than ever in their detestation of Khairy and his ilk in Malaysia’s rotten Barisan Nasional regime than of foreign critics like Lee.

Nor are so many Malaysians fooled any more by such ridiculous rhetoric as Khairy’s “We are different and cannot be compared apple to apple with Singapore. If we followed the Singapore model, Malaysia today would be a failed state. We are not practically homogeneous and not the size of a postage stamp.”

I must confess that I was not previously aware that Khairy had been, as he claims, “a war correspondent in Taliban Afghanistan”. But if he brought as clouded a view of the facts and as much confusion of expression to his combat reporting career as he does to his political pronouncements, it’s no wonder he’s kept it quiet till now.

In any event, he didn’t need to travel all the way to Afghanistan to see what a failed state looks like. A short flight to Burma would have sufficed, or even a few days watching CNN or BBC World to see the parlous state the planet is in due to the kind of racism, repression and corruption practised by the BN regime he’s apparently so proud to be part of.

Lee’s Singapore may not be perfect. In fact it’s a showcase for how boring and soulless a city-state can be under a ruthlessly repressive political machine. And its PAP-dominated news media are, if possible, even more dire than Malaysia’s. But there’s also no denying that there’s lots less crime to report on in Singapore than in the corrupt and kleptocratic police state that BN operates in Malaysia.

As more and more Malaysians are aware, despite the efforts of Khairy and his kind to identify themselves with the nation, Lee and others critics aren’t hostile to the Malaysian nation or the Malaysian people, or even the Malaysian system of government. They’re critical specifically of the Barisan Nasional coalition and the terrible toll it takes on the wealth of country and the welfare and well-being of its citizens.

More and more waking up

And, as I said up front, more and more citizens are waking up to Khairy and other ‘defenders’ of the sick status quo.

Bobby Cheng, for example, just one of dozens commenting on the Malaysiakini report of Khairy’s fake “failed state” protest, writes: “Oi KJ, what you say regarding 12.5 billion PKFZ scandal, late Datuk Z/K Toyol mansions, multi-bil submarine scandal, 1.8 bil double track scandal, multi-bil MAS scandal, 8 bil BMF scandal, multi-bil naval ship scandal, helicopter scandals and the list of multi millions and billions scandals doing on and on!

“Tell us, what these 1Malaysia scandals all about! Sick and tired wasting our time! Time to delete this BN scandal-tainted party from planet Earth for once and for all. Hello rakyat Malaysia are you there? Or are you still in the moon?”

And here comes KillBN: “Excuse me KJ, what do you call a nation whose judiciary, police force and politicians are so tainted with corruption and scandals yet continue to sit in lofty positions of power?

“What do you call a nation where criminals blue-collared and white-collared ones in particular, get away scot-free for murders and blatant pillaging of the nation’s natural and financial resources? What do you call a country where its citizens have to set up guard houses in their housing areas just to feel safe?”

In short, Malaysians are becoming more critical of the current state of their nation than Lee or any other foreigner could be. And increasingly aware that the only enemy they have to fear is the one within: BN.

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DEAN JOHNS, after many years in Asia, currently lives with his Malaysian-born wife and daughter in Sydney, where he mentors creative writing groups. Already published in Kuala Lumpur is a third book of his columns for Malaysiakini, following earlier collections ‘Mad about Malaysia’ and ‘Even Madder about Malaysia’.