Bar Council is legally right but politically wrong - a reply

By TEH TARIK

Folks, thanks for the feedback. It’s interesting how people have responded to my article - Bar Council is legally right but politically wrong.

For instance, Hakim Joe wrote how he had made comments more or less similar to mine. Yet he was voted down until MINUS 33 for it while my article had many people agreeing to it. Why the difference, he asks?

From the very fact that this can happen on Malaysia Today among us “matured and educated” readers shows that the WAY we say and do things sometimes makes all the difference. What more among the so-called "Umno goons" as some commentators call them?

Pakatan Rakyat is supposed to be about GENUINE inter-racial cooperation. Please... for those non-Malays brimming with anger, perhaps you should ask yourself, could you say the same things if you were in a real meeting with Malays from PAS and PKR, the very same people you supported and voted for in the elections?

I don't understand why some commentators jump immediately into a "them versus us" mentality.

That we must "fight" the Muslim morons, bastards, etc., etc. and that kind of language.

Would it have hurt non-Malay rights if the Bar Council had postponed the forum until after Sept 16? (after Anwar is re-elected in Permatang Pauh and after the Pakatan forms the Federal govt?) Would it have hurt non-Malay rights if the Bar Council had said, “OK, it’s too hot now, let’s reconvene three months later with more Muslim representation?”

The moment Umno applied pressure and forced the IKIM and Jabatan Islam fellas to withdraw from the forum, the Bar Council should have smelt trouble. Do you walk into a building when you smell petrol on the floor?

Also, an interesting comment by Stormquest:

The minorities of this country have been appeasing UMNO for 51 years. Where did it get us, playing to UMNO's tune? We are boxed into a corner, with no way out. As Sir Winston Churchill once said, "An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile hoping it will eat him last”.

To that I will say, sure if you are Great Britain, and have the whole might of America behind you, then you can fight the Nazi “crocodile” oppressors instead of “appeasing” them. But what if you are a weak country like Czechoslovakia or Poland with no support from powerful allies? How do you fight?

As Umno plays it, Might is Right, including using the police for their own ends. So what does Stormquest want the non Malays to do? Use force against force in a face-to-face confrontation? Is that how Sun Tzu would do it?

Of course, we non-Malays have legitimate reasons to be angry at the unfairness of certain things. Of course, the protesters at the forum were uncivilised brutes. Of course, they were denying us our civil rights. Of course, they should have sat down at the Carcosa Seri Negara with us and discussed this issue intellectually over a cup of Earl Grey tea like proper English gentlemen.

But that’s not who they are. They are classic “agent provocateurs” sent to stir up Malay-Muslim feelings. Now please... if you see a raving madman screaming on the road, do you confront him? Or do you move away quietly and let the madman shout all he wants until he looks stupid screaming all by himself?

And also, to those who accuse my article of being a MCA-style “surrender”, please tell me, after this whole fracas, have our non-Malay rights been advanced? Can we move forward on other more important issues like the economy and education? Have we not just given Umno a golden racial-religious card that they can use to counter-attack the non-Malays?

And what better weapon to use than religion! Now that the “ground” has been set that the non-Malays are intent on “attacking Islam”, can the non-Malays demand more places in public universities? Have we not just made it harder for the Pakatan state govt to approve land for churches and temples?

Look at the way Umno has been attacking Pakatan in Perak, calling the PAS MB a “boneka” puppet controlled by the Chinese, and of signing a “second Pangkor Agreement” to sell out Perak’s Malays to the DAP (the first Pangkor Agreement of 1874 saw the British taking control of Perak).

Even worse, how much harder has the Bar Council fracas made it for genuine fair-minded Muslims like Dr Mehrun Siraj to speak up? And when they do now, will the Malays in the kampungs fed on a diet of Utusan Malaysia think of them as “Western-educated” Malays who are “too chummy” with non-Malays?

That’s what Umno has done and has been doing - splitting people up. Why do we want to dance to their tune?

Sometimes I wonder if those commentators on Malaysia Today who make such inflammatory remarks are not walking the path taken (or set up) by MCA people like Ong Ka Chuan to stir up Chinese feelings?

Why are they playing the agent provocateur role? So that Umno can use it as a weapon to rally the Malays back to their side and then the Barisan can retain power - with MCA getting their share of the spoils?

That IS the classic Barisan “divide and conquer” game isn’t it?

I mean, come on people, after all the years of “education” from Raja Petra about the crafty way Umno operates its “wayang kulit” style of Malay politics, for example in the sodomy and Altantuya sagas, we SHOULD KNOW BETTER. Or have all of Raja Petra’s revelations fallen on deaf years? Have we non-Malays not learnt anything from him?

If we believe that the Pakatan is the best hope for a better Malaysia (at least for a two party system if nothing else), then we non-Malays should be thinking strategically to achieve that objective.

As it stands, the majority of non-Malays support Pakatan cos it seems to be fairer, not corrupt (yet) and more balanced. So if we are thinking like Sun Tzu, the question is how to bring in the majority of Malays to support Pakatan.

Do we do that by walking into Umno’s trap set up around the Bar Council forum? Think about it.