A tribute to RPK: Storm the Bastille!
In 2009, Malaysians can still afford to buy bread, rice, and even cakes. The urban middle-class Malaysians who read blogs are mostly property owners, or petty capitalists. In Marxist language, they are the “kiasu kiasi” bourgeoisie, consumed with their petty personal mundane daily pursuit, rather than putting their bodies in harm’s way to bring national change.
By Sim Kwang Yang
I have never met Raja Petra Kamarudin RPK; through I did talk to him briefly on the phone a few times.
I do read his entry on Malaysia To-day first thing in the morning, every day. He does have a way of gaining access to very private information denied to most Malaysians, including me.
Though I do not always agree with him, I like to read his stuff because his view is often incisive, original, provocative, and sometimes ironic, a literary technique that few Malaysian bloggers are capable of.
He is a very well-read person and a writer with a flourish that keep readers’ interest to the end of an article. Almost single-handedly, he has pried open a new open sky on the Internet for a multitude of alternative narratives to bloom and blossom in Malaysia.
Now he is on the run, a fugitive from unjust archaic laws which should have been banished to the dustbin of history long ago. That is what I call creative civil disobedience. Socrates would not have agreed, but this is modern Malaysia, not ancient Athens 25 centuries ago.
I hear he is also bankrupt, when before he was quite wealthy. He has also exile himself from his home state of Selangor. Your heart cannot help but cringe at his suffering.
I do not know him personally but from his actions and speech, he does seem like the all-or-nothing man. As he once pronounced, quoting somebody I neglected to remember, “Give me freedom, or give me death!” Already, he had announced that if he were to be dragged back to Kamuntin under the ISA, he would starve to death inside.
Long before Black Thursday in Ipoh, RPK had called for people to descend upon the sleepy town to “storm the Bastille”. After the event, he lamented that when the farce was being acted out before the world inside the Bastille, the Perak people did not storm the Perak legislature building.
As he pointed out, most of the people congregating around that shamed house of legislative assembly were mostly social activists and bloggers from outside Perak. The Perak people did not turn out in full force.
Then again, Malaysia in 2009 is very different from France under King Louis IX in 1879. The cryptic question from Mary Antoinette then was “Why don’t they (the poor French people) eat cake?”, when the people did not even have the money to buy bread!
In 2009, Malaysians can still afford to buy bread, rice, and even cakes. The urban middle-class Malaysians who read blogs are mostly property owners, or petty capitalists. In Marxist language, they are the “kiasu kiasi” bourgeoisie, consumed with their petty personal mundane daily pursuit, rather than putting their bodies in harm’s way to bring national change.
These are the people who will cheer RPK on from the sideline as their new iconic mentor, the liberator sent from heaven to free them from an oppressive regime, as RPK climbs his own invisible mountain for his vision of a free and fair society. Then, when RPK is crucified on the cross, they would mourn and miss him, and compose great poems in his memory and homage. It will never occur to them to march with RPK side by side.
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