COMMENT | Sickness of May 13 still troubles the nation

COMMENT | Today is May 13, the 54th anniversary of the day innocent blood flowed profusely on the streets of Kuala Lumpur.

May 13, 1969, was the nation's darkest day when political evil erupted into the streets.

On that fateful day, many innocent young and old men and women, even children, were murdered in broad daylight in senseless, frenzied violence and brutal madness.

The trail of their shed blood leads to the doorsteps of unconscionable conspirators, those still alive and their blind sycophants who followed an evil script and went on a murderous rampage.

The truth about May 13 was buried in layers of deceit and lies. Unprincipled politicians have stooped to exploit it in their political propagating and fearmongering.

Someday, the nation will have to exorcise the lies and heal the nation of the insidious “sickness” of spreading lies. It has to reconcile with the truth of a bloody past and place the blame squarely on political conspiracy and not race rioting. Incitement can't ever be legitimate in Malaysian politics.

“The May 13 incident”, as Wikipedia describes it, was “an episode of Sino-Malay sectarian violence that took place in Kuala Lumpur, the capital of Malaysia, on May 13, 1969”.

However, if the truth is the basis of history, then the conventional description of May 13 as “racial riots” is but a half-truth.

One misses the true picture, the kernel of truth, like skipping the pages of a book or fast-forwarding a video to only watch the action scenes and miss the crucial plot.

May 13, the official narrative of racial riots and bloodshed, describes the symptoms. What one may describe as the “sickness of May 13” however was something more sinister beyond the riots and it still troubles the nation.

Coup d’etat

A credible diagnosis of the “sickness” and its cause that still bedevils the country is a book titled 'May 13: Declassified Documents on the Malaysian Riots of 1969' written by Kua Kia Soong, referencing British declassified documents. It explained the truth behind the May 13 massacres.

Kua's truth was that: “The May 13 Incident was above all, a coup d'etat by the then emergent Malay state capitalist class to depose Tunku (Abdul Rahman) who represented the outdated Malay aristocracy.”

The truth becomes clearer when it comes from the horse's mouth. Then prime minister Tunku Abdul Rahman himself the raison d'etre for the political purge, later openly blamed certain politicians “who were all working with (Abdul) Razak (Hussein) to oust me, to take over my place”.

It was a bloodless coup for Tunku himself but many more than the official statistics of 196 deaths of unwary Chinese and Malays lost their lives.

The country has yet to reconcile the mass murders of the innocents, whoever they are. Accounts from individual eyewitnesses of the brutalities are chilling.

Conversely, stories of Malays protecting Chinese neighbours and vice versa portray the real Malaysia - a success story of multiracial harmony and caring for one another.

It is a story worth telling and what Anwar Ibrahim's government is achieving for the nation at the macro plane.

Malaysiakini did an excellent May 13 story worth reading four years ago.

Razak deposed Tunku and ushered in the era of entitlement. It paved the way for maverick leaders to plunder the nation and amass incredible wealth to the detriment of ordinary Malaysians still bogged in poverty.

Razak, in pushing the ethnocentric agenda, planted the seed of the political idea of “ketuanan”, much criticised by reform politicians and civil society.

Malay supremacy

The concept of Malay supremacy was incompatible with the national motto and ideology of “unity is strength”, integral to a nation built on equal constitutional rights of the diverse races. The add-ons such as creating a “bumiputera” classification of citizens were plainly unconstitutional.

Subsequent to May 13, 1969, successive governments, particularly under Dr Mahathir Mohamad's inordinately long 22-year leadership, failed to achieve the desired and much-hyped national goals.

The mainstay New Economic Policy, which had a use-by date, has been extended ad infinitum because it failed in its goals and created the new problem of wealth disparity among the Malays.

If sedition is understood as the overthrow of a government and people accept Kua's diagnosis and Tunku’s allegations, then those who deposed him were unequivocally guilty of sedition.

That's what a coup d'etat involves and what some politicians are doing to overthrow the current government by misusing religion.

Like the clandestine overthrow of Tunku, there are overt and secret forces organising against the incumbent Pakatan Harapan/BN government today.

They want to get rid of the Agong-sanctioned government helmed by Anwar Ibrahim and deploy the same dirty trick of race-baiting, slander, and lies and add religion to their political arsenal. They carry the “May 13 virus”, deadlier than the mutating Covid-19 virus.

They are “sick” not because they want to win power fair and square, but because they resort to subterfuge and spin lies against the government.

The original May 13 conspirators lied that Tunku was a traitor to the Malays, they lied that the communists were Chinese, ignoring the truth that many were Malays. Later, their political descendants lied that Lim Kit Siang was accountable for May 13, 1969, when he was not even in Kuala Lumpur, and so on.

Virus of lies

Today, the liars are cut from the same evil cloth and lie against the government. While the authorities are busy arresting amorous young courting couples, the liars are actively courting impressionable young Malays.

Academic Mohd Tajuddin Mohd Rasdi sounds the timely alarm in his MySinchew article, ‘Our country is on the precipice’, and beckons his fellow Malaysians to save the country through the ballot in the forthcoming state polls.

The “May 13” virus of race, subversion, and lies has mutated to include religion. Alarmingly, the sickness has spread and if Tajuddin's worst fears come to pass, Malaysia will be another sad story, a basket case, a failed state.

A country run by zealots will end up ruined. Which country run by zealots is a happy, prosperous, and successful place? Why turn the country into another Afghanistan or Pakistan when it is uniquely and truly Asian and free?

DAP leader Lim Guan Eng is right in calling for PAS leader Abdul Hadi Awang to be taken to task for constantly making untrue, offensive, and subversive lies against the government.

How a religious leader can spin the way he does is beyond belief. How can anyone contravene not only his but all faiths and their teaching against slander?

May 13 will not repeat itself in bloody racial fighting between the Malays and Chinese. However, the threat of the “virus of lies” that brainwashes the impressionable to follow the crowd in doing wrong is real. The “sickness” is real and if it spreads will create havoc. No one should be complacent.

What Tajuddin warns the nation is foreboding and should be taken seriously. Every vote against the retrograde agenda of PAS is hope for the nation and saving it from the precipice.

For too long, the lies and subterfuge have eaten away at the innate harmony of the diverse races in the nation. The lying, the organised wholesale poisoning of Malay minds by unprincipled political and religious leaders must stop. Umno has much to answer for past wrongs in this regard and must work overtime to redeem its past.

On May 13, they usurped Tunku's position and then spread lies about him. They spread lie after lie to arouse the anger of the Malays to go berserk and massacre the Chinese. Violence then begot violence. History tends to repeat itself in different manifestations but be warned.

Religion has overtaken race as the cause of conflict. If ever there is fighting again, it will be instigated by callous politicians who abuse religion to satisfy their retrograde agenda. It happened to race on May 13, 1969, but race was not the raison d'etre, the ousting of an incumbent prime minister was.

The subversion of the government and the nation must be quelled. The spread of lies against the government and ethnic communities must be stopped.

The insidious “May 13” virus must politically perish and its spreaders immobilised or kiss Malaysia as we know and enjoy goodbye.

Liars are losers.

STEVE OH believes in good governance. Malaysia is worth saving from the precipice and everyone has to play their part.

The views expressed here are those of the author/contributor and do not necessarily represent the views of Malaysiakini.