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Saturday, October 11, 2014

Will the real Nancy please stand up?

In forsaking all she has stood for, has Nancy Shukri allowed herself to be made Umno’s scapegoat?
COMMENT
Nancy shukri300Parliament is in session again and many an unsavoury character has let fly logic-defying remarks that have wormed their unfortunate way into our media.
Leading the pack of empty vessels was Bung Mokhtar and his unconvincing display of trauma at having his life threatened – all because of a tweet that he should be gotten “rid” of.
More fiery tweet exchanges and a police report later, and we are all still reeling from the utter absurdity of the entire episode.
However one development that has refused to die down is that of Perkasa’s Ibrahim Ali getting away scot-free after threatening to burn all Malay- and Iban-language Bibles containing the word “Allah”.
Appearing like a Godsend to offer up a defence in the form of gibberish was Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department Nancy Shukri.
Explaining away Ibrahim Ali’s antics as nothing more that his “burning” desire to protect the sanctity of Islam, Nancy committed an even worse sin by saying his threats were in line with the Federal Constitution.
She also went out on a limb, explaining that Ibrahim Ali’s threat only extended to a specific group of individuals and not society at large. Hence the over reaction on everybody else’s part to want the dear fellow charged under the Sedition Act was totally unwarranted.
As the country’s de facto law minister, Nancy has taken a beating for those remarks. In the past few days, she has been accused by political leaders and members of the public for practising “double standards”, talking “rubbish” and being a “coward”.
Christians are incensed with her justifications and even some Muslims are stumped at how she has condoned Ibrahim’s bad behaviour by brushing it off as nothing out of the ordinary.
But for those who know the real Nancy, she is far from the racist and cowardly politician she is made out to be at the moment.
Being a Sarawakian, Nancy comes from a land where racism is a dirty word and religious intolerance is well… not tolerated.
Chinese… Dayaks… Malays… all live together peacefully, respectful of each other’s cultural and religious beliefs regardless of whether they pray to Allah, Jesus or a tree.
Of mixed parentage herself – Scot, Chinese, Iban, Malay, Melanau – Nancy grew up without agonising over whether she was Malay or Chinese. She was just Nancy. And Malaysian.
In an interview she had with online news portal The Nut Graph in 2010, Nancy said that for most Sarawakians, eating at a non-Muslim’s house was never a problem. No one ever asked if the dishes were halal or non-halal. They just ate because “that’s us”.
She also commented that the “Allah” issue the country is currently obsessing over was one Sarawakians chose to remain silent about in Parliament… until now of course, since Najib’s administration has picked her to be the scapegoat, and unfortunate spokeswoman, for its washed-out version of politics.
As one who led Christian hymns in her school days because it was merely a singing activity to her, it is an abomination that she has allowed peninsula-style politics to wrap its hideous tentacles around her once-liberal mind and wring it dry.
Is Nancy merely toeing the line? And if so, is her forsaking all that she has felt passionate about until recently worth the effort?
For someone who once said, “We don’t want anyone from outside Sarawak to come and teach us about harmony or peace or living in unity!”, it comes as a nasty shock that Nancy is now the face Umno has pushed under the spotlight to meet the firing squad as she explains the double standards and religious intolerance perpetuated by Najib’s administration.
While Najib stands at the world stage preaching his brand of moderation, it is the liberals like Nancy, who should be making a stand to right the many wrongs this nation is committing in broad daylight.
If Nancy, who once said she hoped Sarawakians could be a model of how to live peacefully, has seemingly crossed over to the dark side, do the rest of us even have a prayer?

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