Lim Kit Siang speaks of crisis of confidence, Malaysiakini likes to imagine slaughter, and Najib Razak extols 1Malaysia. False, catchy one-liners like these reflect the present times, a mass media (“pigs over humans”) and their Internet followers, adrift, jobless, with nothing to do, are stuck with clichés that generate lots of noise, hollow, no way out, and all echoing in bad English.
It’s immaterial where problems originally arose. Buah Pala, the Kedah abattoir, Umno-PAS unity, the NEP of PAS, forced conversion of minors, all end in one place: Pakatan Rakyat. The Justice PKR party is a new mold only in packaging, but not PAS, which is 50 years old, originally made in Umno. The DAP’s version is longer than all three, but worse for it, made in Europe. Key elements that go into its mold are the following:
- trust god,
- people are naturally good,
- systems make people bad,
- individuals are inalienably righteous,
- all cultures are equal.
Consequences of those premises? A DAP government can’t touch Buah Pala; you can’t even negotiate because simply to be Indian, as it is to Malay, is to be on the right side. PAS lies openly, works with the enemy, and all Pakatan can do is pretend, business as usual.
It is time for the DAP to re-examine its raison d’etre. Only two aspects of it are offered below.
- Democracy: the best leaders are rarely, if at all, chosen democratically. Free elections offer equal opportunity, but opportunities for scoundrels, false prophets, pretenders, and incompetents. The best wants to stay away from this mess while, at the same time, the mass public is assumed to be smart enough to be able to tell the differences. Often they don’t.
- Meritocracy: this is to separate the clever from the stupid. But for a nation to be well governed, rulers need not be clever; the system only needs to be self-regulating and regulating well. The system needs the righteous and righteousness is found not in god. It is found in humans. Discovering those is true meritocracy.
Recall Mencius:
A man lives in the spacious dwelling, occupies the proper position, and goes along the highway of the Empire. When he achieves his ambition he shares these with the people; when he fails to do so he practices the dao alone.
