MARCH 26 — Truly our government makes criticising it too easy. But the line between constructive criticism and rabid partisanship has been crossed so many times the last few days I am moved to slap people around (gently) with a rubber chicken.
I have never pulled my punches with either BN or Pakatan. But both have been annoying, trying to score brownie points with a tragedy. Must we constantly remain in this state of division? Us versus them, you’re either with us or against us, jingoistic versus populist sentiment.
As a nation, we are not very good at accepting differences. Whether those differences are genetic or ideological, we are unwilling to take a live and let live stance.
Unity, my fellow citizens, is overrated. At least, in the Malaysian viewpoint of things. Unity to our leaders means to accept them blindly, be loyal without justification, to surrender trust while abdicating reason and common sense.
It is a different thing altogether to be united by grief. To be drawn together in mourning and compassion. Sorrow knows no denomination or political leaning. We are but people, grieving with those who have lost much.
With all the conflicting reports and confusing information, it is hard for me to truly from an opinion on the search and rescue efforts. What I know is a plane is lost, along with all the souls on board. What I do not know is whether the search and rescue efforts could have done more or been handled better.
But judging from the armchair critics who obviously know everything about aviation and search and rescue, there are many people who are obsessed with finding something or someone to blame.
“The government is hiding something!”
“There has been a cover-up!”
“The US took the plane to a secret base and Malaysia is helping them hide the evidence!”
What next are people going to suggest? That Barney the Purple dinosaur hijacked the plane and took it to Disneyland?
Are we so cynical and conspiracy theory-happy that we want to believe our government wilfully allowed hundreds of people to go missing through sheer malice or incompetence?
There is much that needs to be learned from this incident. For instance, there needs to be better tracking of airplanes over water. Questions need to be asked about our own airspace surveillance.
But what I most want is for Malaysians to stop framing incidents like this in a political light. We should hold our government accountable for its decisions but at the same time know when ire is warranted. How can we ask our politicians to display basic humanity when we aren’t doing much of a good job of it either?
At this time, we need hearts bigger than our prejudices.
*This is the personal opinion of the columnist.
