Simply treemendous!

What an inspired idea it was for Pakatan Rakyat to declare the site of the March 3 sitting of the Perak state assembly a living shrine to democratic ideals.

And to mark this historic occasion with not just with a plaque beside the ‘Tree of Democracy’ under which it took place, but also with the planting of five companion saplings representing the democratic virtues of Justice, Integrity, Welfare, Transparency and Trustworthiness.

These raintrees - or, as long as they represent the supreme sovereignty of the people, I guess we could make that reigntrees - are potent symbols of opposition to the corrupt and racist police state run by Barisan Nasional (BN).

As the ousted Perak Menteri Besar Mohd Nizar Jamaluddin reportedly remarked at the March 8 dedication ceremony: “Just as Umno has killed the constitution of democracy, we hope that these trees will remind us that we are capable of breathing new life into it.”

The virtually immediate vandalism of the ‘Democracy tree’ plaque, and its subsequent removal by the Ipoh City Council, are clear testament to BN’s fear of the growing discontent and desire for change that the trees represent.

But destructive and draconian actions will only serve to further fire peoples’ determination to banish BN and all its works to history - or, as a blog I read the other day put it - ‘histree’.

By then, with the way the global financial crisis is going, we could all be back living in trees. Not that there’ll be room there for all of us, as both the legal and illegal loggers of the world are as busy as ever cashing in our fast-vanishing forests.

This has had disastrous consequences for countries like Australia, for example, where two centuries of clearing woodlands for farming, grazing and other purposes has caused catastrophic problems like soil degradation, erosion and salination.

And the situation is even more dire in locations like Haiti and regions like the sub-Saharan Africa, which are now almost utterly treeless and turning to desert.

Admittedly some of the world’s great forests remain. In Canada and Scandinavia, for example, they’re replanted or given time to regenerate faster than they’re being depleted.

And of course some great forests still survive in Brazil, Russia, Indonesia and Malaysia, if only because the timber, pulp-wood and plantation companies just can’t cut or slash-and-burn them fast enough.

Occasionally the governments of tree-rich but integrity-poor nations make token attempts to stem the arboreal slaughter. But their efforts, usually hypocritical or half-hearted at best, are inevitably stumped by greed and corruption.

Some time ago, for example, Abdullah Ahmad Badawi decried the wholesale destruction of Malaysia’s rainforests. But, as always with Abdullah, his bark was worse than his bite, and there was no apparent diminution of the activities of timber barons.

50 years of purgatree

I feel bound to declare my vested interest in this issue, as not just an environmentalist and tree-lover but as a descendent of actual tree-worshippers. My family roots go back to Ireland and Cornwall, where in the days of the Druids my Celtic ancestors reputedly revered oak trees.

So maybe it’s this kind of idolatree in my ancestree that makes me so deplore the wanton felling of rainforests for personal profit at the expense of the ‘primitive’ peoples who live there, and the flora and fauna within.

And maybe it’s this same hereditree influence that also gives me the horrors when I see ‘modern’ housing “developments” with not a sign of, or indeed any space for, so much as a single shade-tree.

It’s sad to see so many Malaysians so alienated from their heritage of rainforests, plantations and leafy kampongs as to live in such tree-free desolation.

But I’ve been astonished to discover that some actually prefer it. Years ago I thought I was doing my extended family a favour by planting lots of palms and mango trees in the previously bare and sun-blasted compound of a house in Ipoh. But recently I learned that somebody had cut them down on the highly questionable grounds that such trees attract and harbour mosquitoes.

Hence my particular delight, I suppose, in not just Pakatan’s decision to declare the Tree of Democracy an icon of resistance and hope, but also in the highly evident popular resolve to ensure that it’s protected from harm and preserved for posterity.

A person wishing to be known only as ‘Puan Zee’ might well have been speaking for the majority of us when she declared to a Malaysiakini reporter recently that: “If the tree should ever be harmed for any reason, we will replant it. We will be satisfied only if it dies naturally. And even after that, we will plant a new one.

“If the plaque should be destroyed, we will build a new one. I hope the tree and the plaque will be preserved so that my grandchildren will be able to behold this historical marker.”

Sure enough, Puan Zee’s and our fears have been realised already, with first the damage and defacement of the plaque and now its total removal.

The newly-planted Trees of Justice, Integrity, Welfare, Transparency and Trustworthiness may well be the next to go, as they’re still small and thus easily broken or uprooted.

And I wouldn’t be at all surprised if someday soon, or rather some dark night, BN members or supporters take chainsaws to the Tree of Democracy. But with every such atrocity - or, if you prefer, atrocitree - BN comes closer to its inevitable fate.

As Barrack Obama said to BN-style governments around the world in his inaugural address, “Those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent, know that you’re on the wrong side of history”.

In other words, whatever future may or may not be in store for Perak’s symbolic trees, the Malaysian rakyat will someday win a treemendous victree over BN greed, injustice and banditree. Finally the people of this great countree will achieve a government that respects libertree, integritree and equalitree.

And histree will eventually remember BN rule as nothing but 50 years of purgatree, or a seemingly endless bout of political dysentree.