Thursday, May 29, 2008

Open Letter to Mahathir

Open Letter to Mahathir

You did not acknowledge your birth being born to a man of Indian descent who was a Muslim as a result of colonial Muslim power. You must have felt ashamed of your Indian bloodline

Dear Dr Mahathir,

The Malaysian public in general and in specific the Indians must be glad to hear that you have left UMNO.

Just as in the Sumerian story of King Gilgamesh who spent his life seeking in vain the secret short cut to eternal life, you spent your life seeking a short cut for the supremacy of Malays. It was a foolish, self-centered and parochial goal ill suited for the global challenges of the present times.

In the process, you would tolerate no cherished principles of humankind to stand in your way. You would deny your Indian ancestry. You would cast yourself as a Malay in desperation to win their acceptance.

The Great Jengkis Khan to turned to life of crime invading, looting and amassing wealth due to the internal shame of his birth. His mother was someone's wife stolen by his father. He hid this shame by trying to be someone more powerful than anyone could be.

You did not acknowledge your birth being born to a man of Indian descent who was a Muslim as a result of colonial Muslim power. You must have felt ashamed of your Indian bloodline. You painted yourself as a perfect Malay, a super Malay and became one of the most vociferous proponents of Ketuanan Melayu along with the likes of Tun Abdul Razak.

In the process, you turned the peaceful and friendly Malays into religious bigots, lazy and greedy. In your haste to transform them from a rural mindset, by your actions you taught them that the taking the money from the Non-Muslims and amassing the wealth in ill-gotten ways and spending it lavishly is the fastest and easiest way towards bliss. Hurting the non-Malay progress is the way towards enhancing the progress of Malay. Unsupported by research data, you just prided yourself in seeing Malays are positioned everywhere.

You failed to inculcate in Malays about the fundamental time honored principles that call for sound knowledge, tolerance, and skills and putting them to good use. It might take the form of and courageous to be able to stand on own feet despite what may come, and seek out peaceful and harmonious living with others in the country and around the world.

You destroyed the education system in turning out morons as graduates who are ill fit to do anything meaningful. You have let brilliant minds among them not to flourish on account of race and religion. That resulted in an adverse cycle causing almost irreparable damage to Malaysian public especially the Malays.

You tempered with the judiciary, you tempered with the rights of Sultans, you tempered with the goings on in other country on account of religion and you made many countries hate Malaysia and Malaysians.

But there is still hope. Start thinking that Malaysia is a place populated by human beings, and they require leaders who would help the nation grow as a whole.

For a change, you can be an Indian for a while so that you can appreciate how it feels like to be an Indian living under the legacy of your government. Be a Chinese for a whole, and try to understand how the Chinese are treated by the legacy of your government.

The public has spoken. In fact they have been speaking for a long time only that their voice was not heard by the likes of you. In Peninsular Malaysia, how many race-based parties have come into being since Independence? Gerakan as a multi-racial party too failed badly despite being in power as in practice it turned out to be a mono-racial party.

The best option now is for Barisan Nasional to do away with all of its component parties and instead is a single party. Any elected representative should be able to represent any people of any racial grouping. Failing which, the prospects for a genuinely multi-racial party taking over the power from Barisan Nasional is very real indeed. Let anyone capable of leading the nation, be it a man or woman or of any race and religion.

Regards.

Sathia

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