I read the news on the formation of the People’s Alliance (Pakatan Rakyat) with glee. Indeed, I am excitedly anticipating the ratification of the new political coalition by the respective parties’ leadership.

Whatever it is, this calls for a congratulatory message. It is not everyday we have something like this happen in Malaysia’s political landscape. Actually, the last time we witnessed such an event was almost a decade ago when Barisan Alternatif was formed prior to the 1999 general election.

This time round, the coaltion was formed after the so-called political tsunami of the 2008 general election. Hence, if we are to be objective and honest with ourselves, the new coalition of Pakatan Rakyat is only possible because of the wave of change brought about by the people’s power to vote and, in particular, their decision to start a new chapter in Malaysian politics.

Therefore, Pakatan Rakyat must recognise this fact and proceed cautiously and responsibly vis-à-vis the people’s hopes and dreams. Now, more than ever, the opposition must be clear and single-minded in their struggle for democracy and unity of this often divided nation.
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I found a definition of fascism at PublicEye.org, which says, amongst other things, “fascism is a form of extreme right-wing ideology that celebrates the nation or the race as an organic community transcending all other loyalties… It seeks to forcibly subordinate all spheres of society to its ideological vision of organic community, usually through a totalitarian state. Both as a movement and a regime, fascism uses mass organizations as a system of integration and control, and uses organized violence to suppress opposition…”

And according to Wikipedia, “fascism is also typified by totalitarian attempts to impose state control over all aspects of life: political, social, cultural, and economic, by way of a strong, single-party government for enacting laws and a strong, sometimes brutal militia or police force for enforcing them. Fascism exalts the nation, state, or group of people as superior to the individuals composing it. Fascism uses explicit populist rhetoric; calls for a heroic mass effort to restore past greatness; and demands loyalty to a single leader, leading to a cult of personality and unquestioned obedience to orders.”

The above descriptions sound eerily like what’s happening in Malaysia. And, mind you, the Abdullah regime is not the first in Malaysia to be compared to the fascists. An ex-colleague of mine created a clever photoshop image of a Hitler-like Mahathir about ten years ago.
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This morning, on a whim, I checked out our Opposition Leader’s website, and chanced upon a hot-off-the-press posting by Dr. Chen Man Hin. In his posting, Dr. Chen suggested that the Prime Minister invite Raja Nazrin Shah, the Crown Prince of Perak, to be his personal adviser, in light of the latter’s speech at the first Malaysian Student Leaders Summit 2007.

For what it’s worth, I must say that that’s an ingenius and interesting idea from Dr. Chen. I wonder what Raja Nazrin thinks. (By the way, Raja Nazrin’s credentials are quite impressive. Check out the link to his entry in Wikipedia above.)
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Once again, I’d like to comment on Dr. Chandra Muzaffar’s article, but this time, I agree with what he’s saying.

Basically, I agree that “when we go beyond labels such as ‘secular’ and ‘Islamic’ and connect with the substance of our three principal documents we will discover that there is a degree of congruence between the two positions.” And the three documents that Dr. Chandra is talking about are the Federal Constitution, the Rukunegara and Vision 2020.

Now, my question is, how do we move forward from this apparent impasse? It’s very obvious that the current hooha is created by the Deputy Prime Minister for political reasons. Indeed, it’s so idiotic for him to make such a statement that I won’t even go into the so-called debate.
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I’ve been meaning to write about the Information Minister’s recent comments about the so-called “social contract” in Malaysia. I’ve heard some politicians misuse this term before, and I believe they have been using it deliberately to mislead the Rakyat. Then again, maybe they think they sound clever when they use a philosophical term although they don’t really understand the meaning of it.

Well, I was prompted to write this by an email from a friend that contained a news article on Zam’s comments on another but somewhat related issue. Anyway, I think it’s time he and other like-minded Umno-BN politicians stopped misleading the people about how independence came about in 1957 and the current social realities.
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Just imagine. It’s not difficult, I assure you.

Just imagine a nation with its diverse peoples. A few hundred years back, the inhabitants of this nation were native peoples who lived in the forests.

Then one day, a visitor from a neighbouring nation came. He saw that the land was good and he decided to bring his people to this nation.

Imagine over time, his people grew and grew, and began to dominate this nation. Soon, the visitors became the Majority.
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