COMMENT Jamal Mohd Yunos, the Sungai Besar Umno division chief, reminds us of those coarse, rascally people who swagger and bluster as they indulge in their favourite pastime - looking for a fight and stirring up trouble.

One of the synonyms or connotations of ‘stirring up trouble' is ‘taking to the streets'. How apt this one is. This coarse rascal has just done exactly that.

And he carries the title ‘datuk'. Malaysian honorifics, it seems, are worth less than the medals pinned to the recipients' chests. And that is, if you can find anyone foolish enough to want to buy them to keep as souvenirs or whatever. There are even datuk seris and tan sris and tuns who aren't exactly the epitome of purity and respectability. That's obvious to us.

Jamal is the archetypal species that fantasises itself as the superior race — blaming everyone else outside their species for their failures or predicament, and deceiving their own kind for their own selfish gain.

He has blamed the Bersih 4 rally for the assault on Petaling Street. We know the reason he gave is simply nonsensical.

He has blamed the Chinese traders on Petaling Street for not wanting to share the spoils of that street. We know that that is totally false. Quite besides something very revealing that we will see shortly, something that will show him as a total cad, the street is not paved with gold and studded with diamonds for the Chinese traders to scrape and to dig out.

But the big, big problem is that some Malays are ignorant of reality. Not that they are to be blamed; they are intentionally kept ignorant by the very people who trumpet themselves as their saviours.

Thus they have joined Jamal and those birds of his feather to create ruckus and mayhem. Of course, as per Umno's SOP, they were also provided with free transport and an allowance. All paid for with money stolen from Malaysian taxpayers, of course.

'Stolen', because Malaysians don't pay taxes to finance such disgusting acts.

We know only too well the reason for the commotion and bedlam — to divert the citizenry's attention away from the scandalous multibillion-ringgit outright thievery.

Thievery committed by a datuk seri who enjoys full support from other datuk seris and tan sris and datuks - and even at least one tun.

Did I say Malaysian honorifics seem worth less than the medals representing them?

Jamal has threatened to sue the alternative media for what he has claimed to have caused him to be a very short-term guest of the police. We know that the threat is nothing but all bluster, as temporal and ephemeral as hot air wafting out of his barbecued fish just taken away from the grille.

We also know that the night's stay after a doubtless cosy chat over teh tarik and kuih was all only for show. Real victims have been intentionally made to cool their heels in cold cells over the weekend, that is, for three days and three nights, and taken to a magistrate court on Monday morning to have them remanded for God knows how many more days and nights.

The Chinese extract gold from the sweat of their brows

National Crime Prevention Foundation vice-chairman Lee Lam Thye has informed that when he was the MP for Kuala Lumpur, in the 1970s, Malay traders were given licences to do business and lots to operate from in Petaling Street. Before long, those Malay traders had given up.

Raub MP Mohd Ariff Sabri Abdul Aziz has informed that many traders in the street are Indonesians, Bangladeshis, Myanmarese, Nepalese and others. And that these people are making use of the opportunities that the Malays could have seized but did not.

We don't have to think very hard to tell why those Malays have failed, while the Chinese and those foreigners have succeeded.

Petaling Street is not one of the London streets Dick Whittington had been made to imagine. That street is not paved with gold to be scraped and studded with diamonds to be dug out to enrich yourself.

The traders there have extracted gold and diamonds from the very sweat of their brows. Sheer hard work and the tenacity to compete — and to do so in a fair manner — is what it takes.

Rent-seeking culture flourishes in Umno

Jamal has not been truthful even with his own kind. Not a surprise, that. It's in the DNA of all of his feather.

Mohd Ariff Sabri further informed that many licences to operate in Petaling Street are held by Umno leaders, and that these people sublease them to the Chinese.

Outpoint: Many Umno leaders hold licences to operate in Petaling Street, but they sublease the licences to the Chinese.

That sounds all too familiar, doesn't it?

And the reason they sublease the licences to the Chinese and not to their own kind isn't hard to figure out, either.

Of course, the purveyors of, er, truths and unadulterated, unembellished, uncensored news have found that too uninteresting to publish. They much rather publish, er, real news about those from the opposition camp and enjoy paying out compensations to the latter after the courts have found their stories to be highly plausible and very interesting.

Being an Umno leader, Jamal must surely know the thing about the subleasing of licences to the Chinese.

And here he is blaming every other entity save for his colleagues in his own political party. He has deceived his own people, the ordinary, ignorant Malays, to cause them to go against the Chinese.

And he is a datuk? No wonder a former colleague of mine, a well-educated Malay, said that if you threw a stone up into the air in Malaysia, it would fall on three datuks.

It isn't hard to figure out the other reasons, besides those already given above, as to why Jamal is doing all that, is it? Three million ringgit is one of them, no?

ODIN TAJUE is a regular Malaysiakini commenter.