It is NOT all about race

By Batsman

UMNO would be delighted if Malaysians retreat back into thinking it is all about race. UMNO will be orgasmic if Malaysians believe that the problems in this country are just one big Malay-Chinese fight. UMNO will have won the psychological battle if Malaysians think along racial lines. 

To the Chinese and Indians, I say it is NOT all about you. UMNO wants you to think it is all about you, but it is not really. UMNO acts as if the Malays need to defend themselves against you and take steps to cut you down to size, and you feel it is all about you. How could it be otherwise – everything UMNO does is to discriminate against you and stops you from being the best you can be? 

I have got news for you. UMNO does this purely to maintain itself in power. If all Malaysians believed that the fight is about something else, UMNO will lose power overnight. 

So please – the fight is REALLY about decency versus indecency. It is about integrity and honesty against abuse of power and corruption. It is about having a decent and honest government versus a manipulative, abusive, corrupt and hypocritical one. It is about having a fair, neutral and efficient administration, law enforcement and judiciary versus a sycophantic, hypocritical, dishonest and corrupt civil service. 

It is about good people – Malays, Chinese and Indians on one side and bad people – Malays, Chinese and Indians on the other. You can analyse it any way you want, but in the end it is all about good versus evil. 

Some people try to use class analysis, but this complicates and confuses things because class analysis arose in the west where the social structure is ideal for application of class analysis. In Malaysia, things are not so clear cut and class lines are blurred by race and religion. So people who prefer to use class analysis start to wish …. if only this and if only that… then class analysis will be the perfect tool to analyse the Malaysian situation. 

Besides if one uses class analysis, it would appear as if the Malay community is already split into antagonistic and hostile groups as is the Chinese community and the Indian too. This would make everyone uneasy and uncomfortable and therefore trigger more attempts to try and unite one race against the other. 

Some people use race as a basis of their world view. This ties in well with the values of a moneyed class that gets its power, profits and benefits from their own community and needs to compete against the wealthy of other communities, but this cannot explain away the fact that evil exists in ALL communities regardless of race and religion. 

This world view further limits Malaysia forever and breaks her down into separate, distinct and competing communities. With such a world view, Malaysia has NO chance of being a united nation in spite of fancy slogans such as “One Malaysia”. 

Some people use a religious world view, but if religion is used exclusively, it acts in the same way as race and divides people rather than unites them. Religion therefore must be inclusive. All those who are good must be included regardless of religious beliefs and race. Faith is not meant to divide but unite. 

So it is that after 52 years of UMNO rule, there is a widening gap between the good and the evil, between unity and division. The gap grows between those who are willing to sacrifice decency and honesty in their hunger for wealth, power and riches on the one hand and those who say development must not be at the expense of decency. The gap grows between those who tolerate and encourage social corruption, discrimination and abuse of power to achieve individual wealth and power on the one hand and those who will not tolerate any debasement of decency nor sacrifice honesty and social fairness for obscene wealth and selfish development. 

The gap grows between those who will sell their own children into prostitution for wealth and power versus those who struggle to maintain ethics and morality. This is the real struggle, for those who would sell their soul for wealth and power would also sell their children into neglect and immorality and will sell Malaysia down the morass of abuse of power, corruption, vice and decay, murder and mayhem.