COMMENT It is always a useful enterprise to turn obsession into irony. In life it is the great antidote to insomnia; in politics, it is the alternative to hysteria and frenzy.

The crowds in seemingly high dudgeon that demonstrated on two occasions in Seberang Jaya last weekend in defence of Prime Minister Najib Razak's supposedly injured dignity over an example of public derision of the PM's remarks on the price of a humble vegetable were decidedly short on humour, to say the least.

But humourless or not, they seemed to have succeeded in stirring a little debate among the opposition on the appropriateness of an apology over the PM's assumed hurt at an elected PKR representative's supposed audacity at having constructed a figure in the likeness of Najib and stuffing its mouth with the vegetable of newfangled fame.

The PM's remarks about a down-tick in the vegetable's price has become the target for derision at the hands of critics who paint him as out of touch with ordinary citizens' concerns over rising prices and stagnant income.     

First, Umno politicians, rallying to retrieve Najib's injured esteem, decried the lampooning of the PM in social and other media.

This unseemly orgy of Najib-exculpation was followed-up by demonstrators in Penang assembling in rage over the imputed indignity of the whole business of rubbishing supposedly earnest remarks, by what his defenders say, is a people-centric PM.

Incidentally, the 'culture of offendedness', the subtitle of columnist S Thayaparan's compilation of outpourings on Malaysian politics was the subject of what is said to have been a lively forum in Kuala Lumpur yesterday.

No doubt, the trait of easily taken umbrage manifesting itself in Malaysian public life would have come in for what, one hopes, was humorous rebuke at the forum.

It helps to note that one of the speakers at the forum, Ambiga Sreenevasan, two years ago offered a scintillating example of how to embarrass the priggish with polish: the then Bersih leader gallantly offered a round of drinks to demonstrators who had assembled to display their behinds in front of her residence, in apparent protest at her leadership of the polls advocacy reform group's campaign to clean out our election process.

Commentators say that Queen Elizabeth engaged in a the art of the tacit but subtle rebuke when she, attired in yellow, greeted Prime Minister Najib and wife Rosmah Mansor who were on a state visit to Britain in 2011 when the yellow-shirted Bersih were exerting maximum pressure on the Election Commission in Malaysia to heed the call for electoral reforms.

Kit Siang's worry

With these gestures as instructive backdrop, DAP adviser Lim Kit Siang's suggestion that PKR state assemblyperson Lee Khai Loon consider apologising for his role in the flash mob demo that lampooned Najib's kangkung remarks which became the target of Umno-supporting crowds' ire last weekend in Penang is an invitation to those who disagree to the views of others to take their dissent to mob-like extents.

While there is point to Kit Siang's worry that the rabid are waiting to stir up racial and other hatreds by misinterpreting comments and actions that smack of legitimate dissent and satire, actions of contrition to appease mob-like psychologies are futile and invite further misbehaviour.

Khai Loon stretched but did not exceed the bounds of legitimate dissent and satirical parody when he organised the flash mob demo ridiculing Najib's remarks, unlike the protesters in front of Ambiga's residence who in displaying their behinds mistook crudity for contempt.

Sure, many share Kit Siang's worry that there are groups out there waiting to pounce on opportunities to stoke communal passions and hatreds in furtherance of the designs of those who are afraid that the drive for political and economic reform in Malaysia imperils their ill-gotten positions of wealth and privilege.

But appeasement of the mentality of the mob is no way to insure tranquility for the country.

If some participants in the country's political process are short of humour and the ability to turn obsession to ironic effect, their shortcomings are theirs to correct, not their critics to be solicitous about.

It would be useful to recall the brief, though nuisance-causing, career of the one-time leader of sundry protests in Penang during the DAP-led government's first term (2008-2013).

The man faded into oblivion after ill-starring in a noisy period of petty and insolent protests. The state government had to endure the bother while the police looked the other way.

For want of support from a silent majority, that irritant turned out to be a fleeting rash, not a recurring nightmare.

Let's leave the menacingly humourless to their distempers. Appeasement certainly won't do.


TERENCE NETTO has been a journalist for close on four decades. He likes the occupation because it puts him in contact with the eminent without being under the necessity to admire them.