CHINESE VOTES
That the Chinese votes are gravitating slowly but surely away from the Barisan National is obvious – from the Sibu by election on Sunday backwards to the 2008 general elections and even before!
The trend is gaining ground as the Chinese furtively show their discontent with the government policies as well as the modus operandi of the biggest Malay political party UMNO. As the UMNO leaders exerted their influence in BN, the Chinese component parties in the coalition lost their voice and their bite to be an effective platform for airing Chinese grievances, needs and demands.
The gutter-fighters in the DAP have used this to their advantage as they prove again and again that their bark is indeed as strong as their bite! That the Chinese voters trust them more than the MCA and Gerakan is a foregone conclusion! As the gutter-fighters among the Malays gather their strength under the banner of Perkasa, the Malaysian political scenario looks set to maintain its racial and growing racist undertones. All foreboding the real danger of a fully-blown racial conflict! A repeat of May 13 1969 GOD FORBID!
I was in Johore Bharu during that tumultous period and was therefore spared its gruesome realities. But listening to first-hand accounts of the emergency and looking at the horrific build-up of street warfare in Bangkok send shivers down my spine. I pray to God that Kuala Lumpur, indeed the other Malaysian political “hot spots” like George Town and Ipoh will be spared the wrath of the Almighty as He shows His displeasure at the utter stupidity of Malaysian TIT 4 TAT politics.
Are the Chinese grievances real or imagined? Is it true that they have been discriminated against by successive ALLIANCE/ BN governments focussed on providing props to build up the Bumiputera/ Malay community? Was the affirmative action programmes of the NEP which were racially biased towards the disadvantaged Malays so damaging to the prosperity of the Chinese as they claimed their share of the economic cake? Were the greed and arrogance of the Malay cronies favoured by the BN government and UMNO so exceptional that the Chinese were left high and dry? Were the BN political leaders the only ones contributing to the nation’s rampant corruption?
I’m sure by now each of these questions have been/ are being answered and rebutted by the Opposition and its predominantly Chinese supporters. It’s almost futile to address the background to the sorry state of Malaysian politics as the Opposition parties, especially, will not admit that they were happy to partake of the spoils when times were good. Chinese businessmen and corporate giants were delighted to kowtow to the BN leadership, please them and bribe them when the going was profitable. In retrospect they have become HOLIER THAN THOU! How disgusting!
The only way out of this racial/ racist mess is for political leaders to emerge with non-confrontational stances and rhetoric as the PM is trying hard to do. The only way is to lift Malaysian politics to the next level where the discourse is freed from the blame game and filled with the substance of ideologies and ideals.
BUILD, BUILD, BUILD to counter the DESTROY, DESTROY, DESTROY!
Street-fighting and grassroots hair-pulling must stop as must the YOU ARE MORE CORRUPT THAN ME game which is accelerating between BN and PR. Let’s face it – Malaysians are a corrupted and corruptible lot PERIOD.
The Chinese want good governance and a clean government! PLEASE clean up the bribery and corruption in your own community first! PLEASE modernise the culture of your people and educate your grassroots supporters instead of hoodwinking them into believing the Malays are to blame for all the country’s ills and evils!
Likewise, the Malays must wake up from their cultural stupor and stop believing they are Allah’s chosen people! We are only as outstanding or as downtrodden as the values we uphold. Reflect them in your conduct and behaviour. There’s no point shouting you are the TUAN when you are still behaving like the arrogant PEON!
Malaysians must be forthright and honest about their own strengths and weaknesses . They must strive to consolidate the positives and eradicate the negatives. Only then can we uphold our integrity and credibility and become a great nation!
nini talk 
I must say that there is little to defend anyone especially the Chinese (as they wish to be identified as and Malaysian when otherwise convenient) and the DAP from your commentary.
I have also had the privilege to note the sanctimonious comments from otherwise ‘admirers’ who now wish to be left out of your list because of your ‘promotion of race hate’ as one reader put it.
At the outset let me make my position clear. I am a Malaysian of Indian extraction who made an informed decision some time ago to leave Malaysia and live in the relative comfort of Australia from where I write. That of itself ought not to be a reason to exclude me from making a comment on your blog, of which I am a regular reader and believe to be the better and more balanced thought provoking in the jungle of Malaysian cyberspace. That does not mean I agree with everything you say or write about.
The DAP like Theresa Kok have never hesitated to fill their blogs, websites, manifestos and other literature with the Chinese script in a more than tacit admission that there are those amongst Malaysian who complain of race politics, who after half a century of independence still require a language other than Malay or English to get by.
That of itself is testimony to the tolerance of Malays first, then the BN which consists of UMNO (dominant) the MIC and the MCA. Unlike many other bloggers and social commentators who find it difficult to differentiate between right and wrong, Malay, UMNO, Islam and an opposition to government policy, you have articulated the position of common people without being paronising or condescending of others in an informed way.
To have not made that controversial distinction and identification of the Chinese problem in Malaysian politics would of itself have constituted a political statement. Your silence or an omission for political correctness would have been a louder and more offensive statement if it were so. I admire your courage in this respect.
SOME COMPARISSSONS
In many of the countries that surround Malaysia in South East Asia, Chinese in all its forms was and in some cases continues to be excised from the local vernacular, overt public displays, any form of use other than the clandestine means the Chinese use to practice their culture in private. Such discrimination has or had the sanction of law in these places till the defect was cured. Sadly it remains a violently and forcefully enforced practice in India and China (Tibet, Sin Jiang and other places within the middle kingdom)
In Indonesia the overt use of Chinese characters was prohibited as unlawful till recently as it was and perhaps still remains unlawful in Thailand and in Myanmar, Cambodia, Viet Nam and Laos where distrust of the Kuomintang Chinese still runs deep. There is therefore no need for you or any other writer to apologise to anyone for putting across a valid point of view as you have now.
WHY CHINESE OR INDIAN
The use of the word Chinese or Indian for that matter to describe any of the non Malay communities in Malaysia to demonstrate a point or discuss an issue contextually cannot be offensive for a number of reasons. These include the continued identification by the two groups of their ethnicity in politics, religion, culture and social circumstances. The continued demands by the MCA (successfully) and that by the Indians for vernacular schools is a case in point. The reluctance to participate in dialogue with government or the dominant Malay party and other organizations in socio economic and political issues is another.
In place of this there appears to be (thanks to the curse of the net) a desire to “shoot first” then speak by the so called democrats and drivers of change in our midst.
The number of blogs from the Malaysian Bar to the Susan Loones and Nutgraphs to defame or allow defamatory material to be published by individual writers who slag off at all and sundry including the Prime Minister and the judiciary simply because someone had a piece of anecdotal evidence to drive the slander is another case in point.
THE DAP AND OTHER HYPOCRITES
The DAP is very much like their collaborators in disinformation and a Chinese dominated anti government sector. There is nothing democratic about them. Nor is there anything democratic about their behaviour or tolerance for dissent.
I have on a number of occasions been banned and censored by the Nutgraph (because my comments had come in too late as it were or were too long. How convenient.) And Lim Kit Siang’s web blog. He has not the courtesy to moderate the material and debates that are carried out on his website. Instead he allows a team of the same old suspects his “Brown Shirts” to make disparaging remarks about anyone who takes issue with his politics and to turn each argument they disagree with into an opportunity for hurling personal insults at those they disagree with. In the end he deletes or bars entry into the website.
Malaysia Kini and Jeff Ooi are no different. The Chinese do have a great deal of economic clout. But the myth that it is exclusive to them in a free market is disturbing and unsettling to them today. That mentality is not too different to that of the White Man’s in places like Australia where the saying goes “What do you call an Aboriginal driving a Rolls Royce?” answer “A thief”. Its reflective of the same mentality that the Chinese and Indians suffer from that compels them to believe that if a Malay succeeds he is a cheat and where the Chinese fails it is because the Malays discriminated against him.
Have to run. But let me say this in passing. The very concept of free speech and freedom of expression is being threatened by those who protest too loud in our midst. Unless government stands up and takes to task those who shoot from the side lines using rumour as fact, the practice will become institutionalised.
These issues aare not race specific. You like others have raised the spectre of government and BN corruption. However painful it may have been to you and others personally for your family history with independence the issue of UMNO cronyism and corruption has also been raised. However for reasons of the real racism that bedevils the politics of Malaysia, it is never recognized.
I could not help but notice a very civilized criticism of your article by e Tengku. If the other detractors could pick themselves out of the real gutter and learn to have a civilized debate on these issues, I feel like many others these issues can be resolved.
The way forward to a more democratic society where good robust dialogue is sometimes a panacea for all of our ills is for government to crack down and to eliminate the rumour mill at its source and to impose the sanction of the rule of law on those who seek to destabilise and to incite amongst all of us.
Gopal