10 questions for Khairy, starting with 'Malay wisdom'

“I'm sorry, did I break your concentration? I didn't mean to do that. Please, continue, you were saying something about best intentions.”
– Jules Winnfield, Pulp Fiction

COMMENT | Dear Khairy Jamaluddin,

I do not normally write open letters. The last one I wrote was to PAS president Abdul Hadi Awang, and he didn’t reply. This made me, as Donald Trump would put it, sad. Now, I know I have publicly declared you as my bête noire. But really, this was when Umno was winning, and as you can tell I was pretty pissed. So don’t take it to heart.

Anyway, since you are the only one from Umno who speaks “sense,” as Hannah Yeoh claims, I thought I would address these question to you. I had attempted to address these question to some of my other Umno friends, but they demurred.

Truth is, I also asked some of these questions to Pakatan Harapan operatives. Same reaction. So, I thought, why not Khairy, who really has nothing to lose. Sorry, didn’t mean to bring up losing.

Anyway, the last article I wrote was about the eventual sublimation of Umno into Harapan. I received a lot of hate mail from my Umno friends, who said that I should give the opposition a chance, like I did when Harapan was not the establishment.

Now, I don’t know if all these people are your friends, but most of them said that you are the future of Malay politics, even though most of them could not stand your guts. I really couldn’t tell if this was because of what you say, or because they had nothing new to say.

But don’t worry. I won’t hold your political baggage against you because, well, I voted Harapan in and those guys have baggage up the wazoo. I’ll ask the question and give a little context in italics.

1. What is Malay wisdom?

I addressed this question to a few political operatives from Harapan and they said, whatever Dr Mahathir Mohamad says. Ok, I’m kidding. They told me that by asking this question, I was spooking the Malays.

All jokes aside, one of them said, it was Khalid Samad’s explanation of the move to compel tahfiz centres to register with Jawi. I thought that this was a pretty good answer.

And of course, this same political operative said, “What the hell is Malay wisdom?” This political operative is Malay, and even she has not heard of Malay wisdom.

I tried asking some of my friends from Umno, and they said Malay wisdom, is listening to Mahathir when he told them to dump Najib Abdul Razak. So I guess there is something to listening to the old maverick, but I digress....