COMMENT | White flags: How politics smears everything it touches
COMMENT | Malaysians are angry. Malaysians are desperate. Malaysians are compassionate.
Even as their government fails them on all sides, Malaysians keep finding more and more ways to help one another get through this Covid-19 nightmare.
The white flag campaign is the latest initiative that seems to have caught fire.
It likely resonated as an easy, effective way to get help to those who need it the most.
A day or so after it was launched, Local Government and Housing Minister Zuraida Kamaruddin tried to jump on the bandwagon and expressed support for the campaign.
She was met with furious backlash, with netizens tearing her apart online.
Their main contention was, if the government did the job it was supposed to be doing, there would be no need for the campaign...
COMMENT | Malaysians are angry. Malaysians are desperate. Malaysians are compassionate.
Even as their government fails them on all sides, Malaysians keep finding more and more ways to help one another get through this Covid-19 nightmare.
The white flag campaign is the latest initiative that seems to have caught fire.
It likely resonated as an easy, effective way to get help to those who need it the most.
A day or so after it was launched, Local Government and Housing Minister Zuraida Kamaruddin tried to jump on the bandwagon and expressed support for the campaign.
She was met with furious backlash, with netizens tearing her apart online.
Their main contention was, if the government did the job it was supposed to be doing, there would be no need for the campaign in the first place.
This type of backlash is not uncommon. Almost every time International Trade and Industries Minister Azmin Ali opens his mouth on Twitter, he’s drowned by attacks from all sides.
These two particular individuals tend to elicit a particularly passionate response because they are seen to have been at the very heart of the Sheraton Move, which has arguably completely destabilised politics for a year-and-a-half now.
Basically, the vast majority of netizens seemed to want Zuraida just to shut up, and stay as far away from the white flag campaign as possible.
They expressed this alongside some extremely palpable outpourings of anger and frustration - emotions that are no stranger to Malaysians who have been long locked down, with no end in sight.
Failed government, weak opposition?
It’s not only politicians on the government bench, though, who have attracted brickbats in relation to the white flag campaign.
Amanah’s take on the campaign was to initiate mobilisation orders, instructing members to put up at least 10 white flags in each kawasan.
This is ridiculous.
The idea of the white flag campaign is for Malaysians in need to fly a white flag if they need help. If a political party is putting up white flags just to try and make a political point, then how can we tell who needs help and who doesn’t?
This means that the said political party either did not have the requisite intelligence to understand the white flag campaign or, more likely, that they too are seeking to hijack this campaign and use it for political means - namely, by trying to subvert the original meaning of "help needed" and changing it to "protest against the government".
This is in extremely poor taste, and once again merely demonstrates how, when politics come into the mix, our so-called "leaders" are all too ready to completely shove aside genuine attempts to help people in order to pursue their own political goals.
This type of politicking has given rise to how the ever-popular hashtag #KerajaanGagal is now increasingly often being followed by #PembangkangLemah.
Malaysians are drowning
If NGOs are lifeboats built to save the drowning, then political organisations (POOs) are like warships. They are built to wage war on one another and they do so with little care for who is drowning in the water.
Everything POOs touch turns to crap. With today’s extremely bizarre press release from the Prime Minister’s Office, this has started to take a slightly literal twist.
It seems extremely unlikely that a functional communications team with the slightest bit of foresight would release such a short statement regarding the prime minister’s bowel movements - unless it indicated something more serious.
The statement led to all sorts of speculation online about whether this was because of calls to reopen Parliament, whether the PM is in fact direly ill, whether it was part of some internal sabotage and all sorts of other conspiracy theories. At this rate, it could have been to distract from the white flag campaign, for all we know.
It’s hard to overstate just how badly the political class is infecting everything around it with infuriating toxicity.
Worse yet, it is doing so amidst a complete failure to handle the Covid-19 crisis.
It is bad enough that the government’s welfare initiatives are so deficient that we are forced to turn to self-care initiatives like the white flag campaign.
Worse yet, there are signs that the Covid-19 numbers are trending upwards again.
Feasting on durians while Malaysia burns
Despite this alarming news, indicating a potential failure of our lockdown, we can see people reporting on Twitter and elsewhere that their companies have secured Miti letters and are now reopening.
This complete and absolute denial of the situation we are facing is literally life-threatening.
In our own bizarre version of fiddling while Rome is burning, we find that instead of solving our problems, our ministers and deputy speaker of the Dewan Rakyat are literally having durian parties with all their friends.
The same goes for (the previously?) highly regarded Economic Affairs Minister Mustapa Mohamed, who was pictured dining-in with friends.
I don’t know which is more stupid - that they were flagrantly flaunting SOPs, or that they let someone catch them doing it on camera.
All this stems from a deep, deep sense of entitlement felt throughout the political elite class.
This #AntaraDuaDarjat idea that once you become a prominent politician you no longer have to follow the rules took root long before the pandemic started.
As they say, Covid-19 didn’t break the system, it exposed a broken system.
But the pure, unadulterated hypocrisy of our politicians telling us to tighten our belts and look only to each other for help, while they literally feast with their friends?
That may be just the straw that breaks the camel's back.
NATHANIEL TAN is a strategic communications consultant who believes in #BangsaMalaysia. Twitter: @NatAsasi, Clubhouse: @Nathaniel_Tan, Email: nat@engage.my.
The views expressed here are those of the author/contributor and do not necessarily represent the views of Malaysiakini.
