JANUARY 8 — Does he call Low Chee Leong for drinks?
This is what struck me, thinking about Akmal Saleh. My friend, not Low Chee Leong, had Akmal under his supervision when the Umno youth chief was completing his residency at Ampang Hospital, and was the first to raise his name to my attention several years ago.
He was below everyone’s radar until he became the party’s youth boss in 2023.
Which is why I asked him, Akmal who, when he enquired.
My friend, not Low Chee Leong, said Akmal was generally mild-mannered. Not known for the histrionics he is synonymous with today.
Let’s bring Mr Low into the conversation then. He is Akmal’s deputy in his rural development, agro and food security portfolio in the state administration.
Melaka is smaller than Hulu Selangor, not sure how much rural upliftments are necessary. Though, I did overpay for durians in Alor Gajah two years ago.
Which probably explains why Akmal has oodles of time to express shock, horror and disgust at how his race, religion and nation are insulted in equal measure all the time, everywhere in the federation.
From demanding KK Mart stores close down because HQ ordered tone-deaf socks and brought a mob to teach a Kepala Batas shop owner over an upside-down flag, there is no day that passes where Akmal fails to feel insulted on behalf of millions of Malays. It must be purgatory for his therapist.
But I wonder, during the time he is actually in Melaka, does he call Low for a drink?
To socialise with his deputy, to talk to his new bud since 2023. After all, Low is from DAP and Akmal might get a better insight about his sworn enemies if he spent time with a colleague donning the rocket on his sleeve.
Low also is from the mother of DAP seats, Kota Laksmana, part of Kota Melaka parliament.
Which leads to my initial assessment, Akmal probably has no real understanding of race relations except reeling off line after line from canned Umno fixed propaganda from 60 years ago.
Yes, before shouting at me for being premature, know that I punished myself by watching Akmal’s entire speech at the Umno Youth special convention on January 3.
In order to speak about him accordingly, I needed to hear his whole messaging, not just the soundbites picked up by nefarious agents.
I have to admit, it is a skill. A fine skill to speak for 75 minutes and avoid any specifics or depth of analysis.
He appears more general practitioner than in the conveyor belt to be part of the next world class liver transplant surgery team at Universiti Malaya. Incidentally, where the KK Mart which incensed Akmal is located.
And it was painful, the listening. And I had to endure some majorly shambolic speeches from speakers from all over the world during my days as a debate judge in university, in my spotted past. Akmal is a different class, to be charitable.
Which led to other questions.
Like did Akmal grow up in multicultural Melaka, and sip in the air of multiculturalism growing up? Chill at Mahkota Parade and Dataran Pahlawan.
He was still in primary school when the last millennium ended, so probably has no living knowledge of reformasi and the time his party president Zahid Hamidi was imprisoned by the Mahathir Administration. Zahid was Umno Youth chief then.
It was not Malacca High School or St Francis Institution for secondary education. His parents parcelled him off to STAR Ipoh, the boarding school with an almost monoethnic student population, back then.
He is wired to think about race before country. Which was evident in his speech, or worse, it is conflated. His cognitive dissonance disables him from seeing his putting a wedge between Malaysian passport holders based on their ethnic disposition actually harms the natural coming together of people organically.
Meaning, even if people are completely different in every dimension possible, if they just stayed in relative peace near each other, they begin to see each other as people.
And maybe, just maybe, they’d like being near each other.
That is if there were no firebrands around to stress or shriek about how one group is being tormented by another in a literal hell on earth fashion.
He thinks being race-oriented on steroids is being patriotic. That screaming at fellow Malaysians and making them feel less at home is actually somehow raising a Malaysian utopia.
Or that he feels a Malay utopia is the same as a Malaysian utopia.
Or he cares not to read about Thomas More.
He is a victim, if you ask me.
A victim of a context free highly politicised narrative of the past, which he as a millennial just regurgitates from his exposure to Biro Tata Negara which would drop by STAR in those days, just to calibrate the students to the struggle. Party struggle, they mean.
Speak about the end if these brilliant students do not stand up to threats, plant the seeds of devotion to a cause, which is the party.
Umno took him in a long time ago, without him realising it, so it may be harsh to condemn him for being who he is today.
I’d like to tell him this.
Nationalism is about commitment to form a nation. There is no Malay nation, only a Malaysian nation. We decided that a while back.
Umno’s leaders should have recalibrated the party and absorbed sister parties into a single fabric a while back.
The past is what haunts Akmal and leads him to misplace his patriotism.
I wonder how it was for Akmal during the SEA Games last month. Did he cheer harder whenever a Malaysian stood on the podium or regulated his cheering based on our countryman’s ethnicity?
Was he also keeping a keen eye on how our medallists held up the flag, in case they insulted him with them accidentally holding the Jalur Gemilang the wrong way! And the socks they were wearing.
I said Akmal should hang out with Low. The man is 25 years older than Akmal but being from Kota Melaka he might be able to offer stories which differ from what is fed by his Umno seniors.
He might tell how his parents, Low’s parents, felt in 1963, the year he was born and Singapore months from being inside Malaysia. And their fears, being part of the Straits Settlement, to see Singapore go its own way away from Malaysia in 1965.
Distress is not the property of any race in Malaysia, as much as the affinity to enjoy being Malaysian without it being questioned every other day in the country.
The real insult is to think of a country in black and white, or brown and yellow. The real shame is to not feel that underneath that all is just Shylock’s red.
Better call Low, Akmal.
* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.
