THE PAKATOON CHILDREN

Unfortunately, however, we are dealing with a bunch of very immature and childish Pakatoons who would rather fight than compromise. Hence we shall have to continue to fight to please this bunch of children who discovered politics only since 2008 and who think that politics is about taking to the streets, insulting each other, challenging and daring each other, and acting like gangsters in a Chinese kungfu movie.

NO HOLDS BARRED

Raja Petra Kamarudin

Many of the Pakatan Rakyat supporters, a.k.a. Pakatoons, were not born yet 40 years ago in the mid-1970s when some of us started to become politically conscious and politically active.

The 1970s is what I would call the post-May 13 era when many of us, Malays that is, joined the Malay Chamber of Commerce (Dewan Perniagaan Melayu) to fight for the betterment of the Malay community.

Most of us were not even Umno members. I, for example, was a staunch PAS supporter (complete with white skull cap and Arab dress), and still am till today, more or less. But we realised that Umno was in power and that Umno called the shots. So on many an occasion we had to sit down with Umno, a number of times with Prime Minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad himself, to iron out issues that affected the Malays.

To the Pakatoons who were not born yet 40 years ago this would be seen as selling out, a betrayal, etc., and we would be called turncoats and would be accused of having been bought. But then that is how children think.

What these Pakatoons — who discovered politics just recently, many only since 2008 — do not understand is that the cause has to be placed about party politics. There are times when we need to set politics aside and seek a compromise for the good of the cause. And our cause was how we could help the Malays improve their lot, basically through the New Economic Policy or NEP.

The NEP is actually what we call a serampang dua mata, literally translated to mean double-edged prong, spear or spike. This means the NEP was supposed to (1) reduce the gap between the haves and the haves-not and (2) reduce the gap between the various races.

If you can see from the serampang dua mata strategy, the NEP was not just about the Malays but was about those from all races who needed help.

When we first entered the political arena Dr Mahathir was not yet the Prime Minister. The Prime Minister then was Tun Hussein Onn, who had just taken over from Tun Abdul Razak Hussein who died in London. In fact, current Prime Minister Mohammad Najib Razak was still just a student in the UK.

In that sense I became a political activist even before the Prime Minister became a politician. That would make me ‘senior’ to Najib even though he may be the Prime Minister and I am not even a Wakil Rakyat.

Nevertheless, I am not a politician not because I am not capable or qualified of being one but because I chose to not be one. I wanted to be above politics and even though I supported, and still do support, PAS, I never became a card-bearing member.

By the way, just to digress a bit, I noticed that many people are talking about the RAHMAN theory. This is actually a bullshit theory. The Prime Ministers of Malaysia since Merdeka are Abdul Rahman, Abdul Razak, Hussein, Mahathir, Abdullah, and Mohammad Najib.

Depending on whether you want to take their first name or middle name, the six Prime Ministers would be AAHMAM or RRHMAN. Where in heaven’s name did you get the so-called RAHMAN theory?

Anyway, back to the issue. When Dr Mahathir took over as Prime Minister in 1981, we knew, as much as we did not like him, that we had to work with him. He held the power to decide what happens so if we wanted things to happen we had no choice but to sit down with him and find solutions to the many problems that the Malays were facing.

Do you know that one of the first things that Dr Mahathir did when he became Prime Minister was to invite us from the Malay and Chinese Chambers of Commerce for dinner at the Equatorial Hotel in Kuala Lumpur?

In his dinner speech he told us that the NEP, which was to end in 1990, was already halfway through and it was going to end in 1990 as planned. There were no two ways about it because it was unfair to the non-Malays to continue with the NEP past 1990.

The problem is, added Dr Mahathir, was that the Malays still had a long way to go to catch up and by 1990 the Malays are going to be far short of the target. Hence, said Dr Mahathir, the Chinese and Malays must sit down to find a solution on how the Chinese and Malays can work together and cooperate so that the government can back off and not interfere and allow the Chinese and Malays to sort this matter out.

What many did not forecast, not even the economic gurus of the west, was that just four or five years later the world was going to go into recession and many Chinese as well as Malays were going to get wiped out. Some Chinese tycoons even went to jail because of the recession.

Hence, as they say, man can plan but God decides. And the idea for the Chinese and Malays to work together was dashed when the Chinese became too busy trying to keep their heads above water that they had no time to worry about others. The Chinese could not even save themselves so how to save the Malays?

The government had to step in to try and save as many Chinese and Malay businessmen as they could. Not all could be saved, however, and it was a case of every man for himself. When the Titanic is sinking you rush for the lifeboats and try to save yourself.

So 1990 came and went and the government was at a loss. By then Umno had split into two with Umno Baru and Semangat 46. Many of us in the Malay Chamber aligned ourselves to Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah’s Semangat and we threatened Dr Mahathir that if he ended the NEP as promised we would all make sure that PAS and Semangat, with DAP included, take over the country. The fact that PAS and Semangat had kicked out Umno from Kelantan meant that this was possible.

The point is, Dr Mahathir was at his weakest and he had his own problems to worry about. So he could not afford to fight on a second front. Napoleon and Hitler did precisely that and see where that got them. So Dr Mahathir had no choice but to sit down with the Malay Chamber and try to come to some sort of compromise.

That compromise was in the form of a Kongres Ekonomi Bumiputera that was attended by not only the Malays but the non-Malays as well. But the problem was, the opposition such as DAP and PAS boycotted the effort and if the opposition does not support the effort then nothing can be achieved. Semangat, however, God bless them, was more supportive (but now, unfortunately, Semangat is defunct).

That was our first effort at an attempt to put politics aside and seek what we could probably call ‘national consensus’ — the very thing that they are talking about today, more than 20 years later.

How ironic, more than 20 years on, politicians are now talking about national consensus. But when we attempted that in the early 1990s, these same politicians who are talking today were the hindrance to a national consensus. If the politicians had been sincere and wiser — these same politicians talking today — then the NEP controversy could have been settled a long time ago.

The issues that we raised in the Kongres Ekonomi Bumiputera in the early 1990s was regarding the abuse of the NEP, the bad implementation of the NEP, the misinterpretation of the NEP by people who thought that the NEP was just about the Malays, and so on.

We still need to resolve these issues, not only regarding the NEP but also regarding the very dangerous race and religion politics that is threatening the peace and stability of Malaysia. That is also the opinion of the PAS President, Abdul Hadi Awang, who wanted a national consensus, not a unity-government with Umno.

Unfortunately, however, we are dealing with a bunch of very immature and childish Pakatoons who would rather fight than compromise. Hence we shall have to continue to fight to please this bunch of children who discovered politics only since 2008 and who think that politics is about taking to the streets, insulting each other, challenging and daring each other, and acting like gangsters in a Chinese kungfu movie.