COMMENT | An unforgettable year to forget
COMMENT | That’s what 2020 is (I use the present tense ‘is’ because it has been extracted from the normal stream of years, more resistant to the dimming of memories with passing time) – a year that will always be remembered... for all the wrong reasons.
Above everything else, the virus, and its early flowering, almost a year ago. Supermarkets running out of stock and empty store shelves. Road-blocks and quiet highways.
Barbed-wire barriers strung around neighbourhoods, confining lives and spread of the disease. The deadly environment battled by teams of space-suited men with toxic sprays. The hum of life stilled to a quiet pulse.
The setting for a dystopian society, the fertile ground for many science-fiction classics, except this was no fiction, just science.
Now, the Malaysian landscape is coloured blue, masked Malaysians carrying on with their lives and business, having their temperature taken, their details...
COMMENT | That’s what 2020 is (I use the present tense ‘is’ because it has been extracted from the normal stream of years, more resistant to the dimming of memories with passing time) – a year that will always be remembered... for all the wrong reasons.
Above everything else, the virus, and its early flowering, almost a year ago. Supermarkets running out of stock and empty store shelves. Road-blocks and quiet highways.
Barbed-wire barriers strung around neighbourhoods, confining lives and spread of the disease. The deadly environment battled by teams of space-suited men with toxic sprays. The hum of life stilled to a quiet pulse.
The setting for a dystopian society, the fertile ground for many science-fiction classics, except this was no fiction, just science.
Now, the Malaysian landscape is coloured blue, masked Malaysians carrying on with their lives and business, having their temperature taken, their details recorded on MySejahtera or scrawled in battered books every place they enter.
Now, the daily toll of well over a thousand new Covid cases registers only as a flicker in most consciousness… until it hits closer to home like when a resident in the condo block next to mine was said to be positive a few days ago.
Otherwise, it’s alert fatigue. For all the optimistic news of vaccines, there are stories every day of countries hitting new highs in the number of new cases or deaths, of facilities strained and frontline staff stressed, a daily glut of bad news.
To compound the viral pall hanging over the whole country, our politicians had to get up to shenanigans. The year started with one poor hotel, desirous of its name branded as a haven of quiet luxury, having it, instead, forever linked to a meeting that led to the ousting of the elected government.
If this isn’t a Muslim-majority country, I would say the year was Biblical in the visitation of God’s wrath: first, a plague to fall ill on the people and lay waste to lives, then a plague of frogs. (I must say this swarming and cluster-fxxxxxg of amphibians is seasonal and not that rare.)
When the dust had settled on the hotel move – actually, it hasn’t really settled, not after the several convoys of cars to the palace to determine the prime minister of the country, not even after the recent budget session in Parliament when Anwar’s promised numbers didn’t materialise.
A majority of three is so splinter-slim, the government had to whip in three MPs, quarantined in protective gear, to cast their votes.
A round of musical chairs with state governments culminated with elections in Sabah. Hello new state government, hello Covid, make yourself at home. Spread around, we Malaysians are sharing folks. Red alert!
The one thing you can say about our politicians is they are tireless in their schemes and re-cycled dreams. Barely was the fractious change in the state government in Perak calmed down to a quiet simmer, politicians from both sides were championing the cause of a “grand coalition” for the next general elections.
It is good to have a dream, but this idea of an overwhelming grand coalition verges on delusion. It’s a trite label to tart up a tattered reality.
What grand coalition is possible when the components are still the same? What new permutation can there be in the current cast of characters, all of them insisting they can be friends with all, except for…?
On the one hand, we have the menage-a-trois of Perikatan Nasional (PN) and Muafakat Nasional, an arrangement that Umno, daily, is loudly calling for a talak (divorce), while PAS piously pleads for peace, because it wants to make its polygamous bed with both parties.
On the other, we have Anwar Ibrahim, his reputation dented when he couldn’t deliver his promise; Shafee Apdal whose appeal has not been tested in the peninsula and fell short in the recent state elections; and of course, the indefatigable Dr Mahathir Mohamad, heading a party that can’t even get registered, who confidently doesn’t look over his shoulder to confirm his belief that the Malays are right behind him.
Anyone seen Wawasan 2020, last seen brightly going off to work in Cyberjaya a few years ago? Wonder where it wound up? In some squalid, over-crowded labour dormitory? On top of a tree, on top of a hill in Sabah or Sarawak, searching for a Wifi connection? Or gone for good overseas?
For me, the relief in the gloomy political scene is the lack of a sense of irony in our politicians. Like Umno Youth chief Asyraf Wajdi Dusuki accusing Bersatu of buying over Umno members for RM100 each.
Firstly, RM100! He should have kept mum about the figure. It doesn’t say much about the loyalty of Umno members.
Secondly, why be upset over the loss of members who can be bought for a paltry RM100?
Thirdly, offer them RM150 lah. It’s the rainy season, a frog’s paradise.
Like Umno vice-president Mohamed Khaled Nordin when he touted the relevance of BN because of its moderate ideology, consensus-based decision-making, and its administrative style that has modernised Malaysia.
Moderate ideology – I won’t bother to discuss this, waste of time.
“Consensus-based decision-making” – really? He laughs at the non-Malay members of Bersatu, calls them penyeri (ornaments). What does one call the MCA and MIC?
“Administrative style” – that allowed a not only world-class, but top of its class kleptocracy, with a finance minister whose defence is he didn’t know what was going on, he had no control over his personal finances, and he didn’t look a financial gift-horse in the mouth by asking where the money came from, all those bountiful billions.
Malaysian politicians remind me of the monkey in one of my favourite childhood reading, Rudyard Kipling’s “Kim”: “My people are the wisest people in the jungle, my people have always said so.”
THOR KAH HOONG is a veteran journalist.
The views expressed here are those of the author/contributor and do not necessarily represent the views of Malaysiakini.
