No May 13, No "Ketuanan Melayu" (revisited)

[From an email I posted on the Artisproactiv forum on 14 October 2004. It was subsequently published in this blog on 30 September 2008, but I feel it's worth reprising one more time to mark the 50th anniversary of 13 May 1969]


Date: Thu, 14 Oct 2004 16:41:20 +0800
From: Antares
Subject: Re: UNMASKING THE HORNETS

Those in power will do ANYTHING it takes to remain in power. This is a basic Machiavellian truism. Exceptions to the rule occur, of course, but all too rarely. It takes a Prince Siddhartha to turn one's back on the false and treacherous allure of earthly power and embark on a personal quest for truth and enlightenment.

Or perhaps a prince like Tunku Abdul Rahman who resigned a sad and broken man after May 13 rather than battle those within Umno who wanted him out.

Shortly before his death, the Tunku confided - in a series of intimate interviews with K. Das, former bureau chief of the Far Eastern Economic Review, who was working on the Tunku's official biography - that what happened on May 13, 1969, was really the implementation of a contingency plan to prevent the political opposition (in this instance the DAP and PAS) from forming a parliamentary majority after the 1969 general election. The Tengku actually named FIVE individuals who were the key conspirators.*

Strategies had been laid long before the general election to spark off "racial riots" - in the event of a poor showing for the ruling party in the polls - that would precipitate the declaration of a state of national emergency (temporary martial law and the hasty formation of the National Operations Council) - and the nullification of the 1969 election results. The loss of a few hundred lives was deemed a necessary sacrifice to ensure Umno's continued dominance and the political survival of the Alliance (now the Barisan Nasional).

The plan obviously worked. By declaring it a "sensitive" issue, the May 13 plot effectively acquired the status of a national taboo, thereby protecting its perpetrators from a royal commission of inquiry and charges of criminal treason. 35 years down the line, not one of the five key conspirators has ever been exposed and charged with complicity in this deadly and repugnant sandiwara.

This sort of strategem is actually standard practice - and since "winners" rewrite history as they please - it often takes ages before such skeletons are excavated from the dusty remains of political cupboards, centuries later.

Take the infamous Gulf of Tonkin "incident" which led directly to America's invasion of Vietnam... or the JFK assassination of November 22, 1963: the whole thing is still shrouded in mystery and much discussed amongst "conspiracy theorists." Despite the Freedom of Information Act in America, and a slew of well-researched books on the subject, the general public still unthinkingly accepts that JFK's assassin was Lee Harvey Oswald. Same thing with RFK (Robert F. Kennedy) and MLK (Martin Luther King).

Then there was the story (planted by PR firm Hill & Knowlton) about Saddam Hussein's troops snatching infants from their incubators in Kuwait, which swung public opinion in favor of Emperor Bush I's 1991 Operation Desert Storm. And now we have September 11, 2001 as America's very own "May 13."

Race riots, my foot. May 13 was really just "Plan B": a carefully orchestrated mengamuk.

Yup, it's Chicken Run all over!
______

* One of the five May 13 conspirators is still alive and plotting - and among the others, some of their offspring are still active in politics. So I won't name any of them without proper legal backing or documentary evidence. However, I can drop a heavy hint: two of them subsequently became prime ministers. How did I come by this info? I collaborated with K. Das in 1986 on a book of political quotes and we had a few good conversations over the years.

Vernon Emuang forwarded this Malaysiakini essay by Sim Kwang Yang:

It would seem to be a clear case of sedition when a political butterfly dressed up in hornet's armour tried to revive the ghost of May 13 in the recent Umno general assembly, to the thunderous applause of all those present.

Speeches during Umno general assemblies are more likely to be carefully orchestrated representations of their mainstream thinking, rather than the spontaneous cut and thrust of creative ideas. So we - who are excluded from the inner sanctum of Umno faithful - have to assume that their perennial call to arms is an integral part of Umno ideology. After all, May 13 was the cornerstone upon which the grand superstructure of the NEP had been erected for the past 35 years.

[First posted 30 September 2008, reposted 13 May 2009]

Why the home minister is coming down hard on ISA protesters

Michelle Yoon, a 22-year-old Malaysian student abroad, posed this pertinent question on her blog, I Am Malaysian:

THE ABOLISH ISA VIGILS: WHAT BRINGS THEM BACK?

Honestly, what brings them back, week after week?

This question, it seems, can be asked to both the public, and the police.

Every week, people still seem to be going back to attend the vigil demanding that the ISA be abolished. What goes on, perhaps those who attend such vigils can tell these stories. And there are plenty out there who do.

But every week, the police come to ask these people to disperse. Every week, that is, since November 10th last year.

[Read the whole post here.]

I LEFT A LONG COMMENT ON HER BLOG, THEN DECIDED I OUGHT TO RECYCLE IT AS A BLOGPOST. SO HERE IT IS...

Michelle, I'm sure you're aware we have a terribly benighted and insecure home minister who's only a first-generation Malaysian citizen. His father arrived from Indonesia and created a political niche for himself by becoming a rabid jingoist and espousing Ketuanan Melayu (even though he was in truth a Yemenite Hadhrami).*

Well, this guy (whom I prefer to call the Potatohead Gestapoman for obvious reasons) has taken the rakyat's defiance as a personal insult - especially since his ill-advised attempt to do a Mahathir and nab three people under the ISA on 12 September 2008. His heavy-handed move backfired, as to be expected. Instead of cowering in fear the rakyat let out a deafening roar of outrage while the whole world shook its head sadly or sniggered, seeing Malaysia's international standing go down the chute so tragically.

Potatohead had been instructed by the Umno Supreme Council to silence Raja Petra Kamarudin (RPK), and his botched attempt to block Malaysia Today yielded only a harvest of hysterical giggles from around the blogosphere. So he signed an order to detain RPK for two years.

RPK was out in two months - thanks to a sharp legal team who convinced the judge that the home minister had gravely erred on procedure and had, in fact, grossly abused his power. More embarrassment!

With RPK walking free and leading the rakyat's call to abolish once and for all the repugnant ISA, these weekly candlelight vigils took on an almost religious aura as churches, temples, and folksingers were galvanized into hosting these community events where kindred spirits could meet and network, creating robust, organic interfaces between the virtual and actual world.

Unless nipped in the butt (I mean clipped in the bud) these Abolish-the-ISA gatherings would soon spread like candlefire across the nation and eventually attract thousands - because they were so sweet and significant and Malaysians were always at their lovable best at these rallies.

Everybody except Umno knows the Ketuanan Melayu party is on its last legs. The only weapon it has left is its control of the Polis Di Raja Malaysia and Petronas. The Hindraf protest of 25 November 2007 has shown that teargas and watercannons are a sheer waste of money (didn't stop people from marching by the thousands) and they make the police look really bad. In fact EVERYTHING they do - or don't do - makes the police look bad.


The only thing that can improve their image is if all the uncorrupt officers staged an overnight coup and arrested all their senior officers who have been accepting bribes from criminal syndicates and who were promoted mainly because they performed dirty tricks and broke the law on behalf of Dr M.

Anyway... these days it's hard to tell apart the Umno government and the PDRM. They appear to be run by the same bunch of hardcore crooks. In their puny brains they have computed that once the ISA is abolished by popular demand, people will feel free to express their true feelings. That will ultimately result in all the races realizing they share a common destiny and possess similar values and, in fact, pretty much desire the same things in life. Ketuanan Melayu will become irrelevant and nonsensical, along with the purulent source of this poison, Umno.

The ISA (they imagine) is their lifeline and insurance against being totally obliterated by the forces of evolution. In effect, Umno in its dementia senilis, perceives these harmless middle-class folks gathering every week with lighted candles as specters of its own imminent demise. They imagine people are celebrating the death of Ketuanan Melayu (any decent human being would, so what? :-)... which means, essentially, the end of THE REIGN OF ROBBER BARONS!

That, my dear, just about sums it up. Burrrp.

_____
*Syed Jaafar Albar was named by Tunku Abdul Rahman as one of the key conspirators behind the gory May 13 coup d'etat.