MARCH 18 — We live in confusing times.
A group started a petition requesting interference from a foreign country. They claim it is their duty as patriotic citizens to fight injustice in Malaysia.
How is asking for foreigners to meddle in our domestic affairs patriotic?
And of all countries, they chose one that had waged wars based on made-up allegations, imprisoned thousands without trial in foreign lands, whose politics, diplomacy and “intelligence” agency contributed to the very monsters they are bent on destroying.
ISIS. Al Qaeda. Hamas. Taliban. Well, that is what they tell the world at least.
A country that has embraced torture as part of their Standard Operating Procedure to extract information from “suspected” terrorists. And if you think we are bad, they actually came up with something called “protective order” to restrict lawyers and victims from saying anything incriminating during detention, including details of torture if and when these matters are brought to the courts.
Isn’t that convenient?
Perhaps you have not seen or forgotten the pictures of their soldiers posing with “suspected terrorists” in a manner that can only be described as inhuman, disgusting, sick? The ones where the “suspected terrorists” were stripped naked and piled onto one another while the soldiers cheered on?
I don’t know about you, but I find it unbelievable that all this comes from a country that polices and “frees” the world of injustices and abuse of human rights.
Delusional is an understatement, given that they actually kill and orphan people, scratch that, destroy communities, societies and governments that disagree with them.
These are the very same people some of us are calling over. Are they “high”?
Or were they taking cues from our history where the Sultans invited foreign powers to “help” keep them in power and manage the Malay peninsula?
Someone should tell them that was how we lost our independence.
Sure, the current nincompoops running the show are testing our patience. We are inundated daily by their unbelievable antics and extravagant expenditures. The latest involved some expensive hairdo while the low income families were once told that RM500 can last them for a whole year.
And when it’s not about their handbags and hair, it’s about multi-million US dollar condominium shopping sprees by close friends and relatives, and playing hide and seek with billions of ringgit in taxpayers’ money; one moment it is hiding in the Caymans, then brought back home, and now suddenly in Singapore.
A confused lot who said no bailout one day, then pledged close to a billion ringgit as “standby credit” a few days later for a privately funded, but government-owned company.
I get a headache just from writing the last paragraph alone.
But we are wiser than them lot, no?
And because we are wiser, we should ask ourselves what is the price that we are willing to pay for their “assistance”? Or are we naive enough to think the great “protector” of human rights will do it out of charity?
And using as much logic as we can possibly muster, how do you think the foreign country will pressure our government? Economic sanctions? Military interventions? Stop “golf diplomacy” with our supreme leader? All of the above?
Except for the last two, are we willing to risk all that? His immediate family and those who stand to immediately profit might, but will you? Will you stake your future and children’s?
This answer will actually tell you where your loyalty lies.
Whether your loyalty is to a person, a party, or to the country. Because the last time I checked, no one is bigger than this nation. Our interest supersedes that of the prime minister, members of the Cabinet, their wives and that includes the Opposition Leader.
Unless you are politically affiliated, we need to be able to make decisions and think objectively, independent of political influences and pressures.
Wrong is wrong. Right is right be it from the government or the Opposition. Opposing for the sake of opposing, and supporting for the sake of supporting will get us nowhere.
Hence the rut we are in.
Anyone who tells you otherwise, for whatever reasons, has a political and personal motive.
And if you are smart enough to see that, you will realise the need to rise beyond that. Beyond individual, party and familial politics. It is time we fight for the country instead of one person. Or party. Or family.
Whoever that person, party or family might be.
National interest comes first. Everything else is a disposable second.
* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.
