COMMENT A certain head of psychiatry at a government service hospital in Kuala Lumpur was once asked what sort of personality made the best political leaders. His reply was, “A borderline criminal psychotic.”

He was completely serious. In order to manage the various special interests and ambitions of political players in general, one would have to understand their inner motivations and strategies. The successful leader would be someone who could best achieve this - whether male or female. Sadly, the Muslim ideal of your leader being the most pious among you seems no longer to apply.

The next question is, what sort of personality made the best opposition leaders. The psychiatrist’s reply would be, he or she who displays “Oppositional Defiant Disorder” (“ODD”). This is a mental condition characterised by a pattern of angry, antagonistic, hostile, negative, irritable, and/or vindictive behaviour, towards parents or authority figures.

“ODD” sufferers blame others for their own misbehaviour, argue all the time, and refuse to comply with rules and requests. They, of course, are perfect and beyond reproach. Or, as Napoleon Bonaparte put it, in politics, stupidity is not a handicap.

anwar ceramah in melaka 040112 Some years ago, after Anwar Ibrahim had been fired, one of Malaysia’s academicians, Professor Syed Hussain Alattas, commented in some anger that all he (Anwar) had to do was keep his mouth shut and he could have become the PM. “ODD” had not been profiled back then, and so Malaysia would have lost an opposition leader.

In the years since, Malaysia has wasted a lot of time trying to come to grips with the “ODD” of its formerly popular and respected Muslim opposition leader. Unfortunately, no one else has appeared to take his place, and so we still have our “one-party” democracy, in which election results are not much in question. Not yet, anyway.

On April 26, 2012, M Veera Pandiyan implied in a column in The Star newspaper that Bersih 3.0 organisers must stop acting as if they suffered from “ODD” and come to some sort of compromise with the government over the venue for Bersih 3.0.

But then, he pointed out, so should the government. For example, Bersih 3.0 points out that it is asking a lot to change the announced venue only one or two days before the event. And so it is.

Nevertheless, that is what the government is demanding. And no one knows what will happen if Bersih 3.0 does not comply. That is the course of anxiety and fear that something may go awry a few hours from now, when the demonstration occurs.

A local radio station devoted an hour to a call-in talk show on this issue. The callers were almost unanimously in favour of the demonstration, based on the difficulties they had been having getting government services for various dilemmas they faced in their neighbourhoods.

A Mexican stand-off

Meanwhile, the ideologues are worried that other provocateurs, such as the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transsexual (LGBT) group (who can ever remember all those capital letters now in favour?), George Soros, or other “enemies” of Malaysia, are pouring money into the event precisely because of its potential for public disorder.

NONE What Veera Pandiyan is pointing out in his newspaper column is the well-known “mirror image” nature of group hostilities. When you have what is known in the West as a “Mexican stand-off” (two guys in the street, waiting to see who shoots first), it is known to psychiatrists that the reality perceptions of both sides tend to be very similar. Veera Pandiyan is pleading for compromise, although it would seem logically to be a bit late for that.

There are also clear historical roots to this upcoming situation. The sexual liberals, as well as the “Soros-democratisers”, have been interfering with Malaysia for a long time, and Bersih 3.0 runs the risk of causing some damage to the confidence of the Malaysian public in one of those great democratic rights - freedom of assembly. Indeed, one of the comments on the radio talk show was, “Grow up. Stop fearing public assembly”.

And yet, who started this assembly business? Was it not the opposition leader himself, captured on video as raising his hand in some sort of mock-Heil-Hitler salute and getting a tremendous response from his own assembly of 15,000 people or so?

Or was it that famous “Merdeka” assembly itself, back in the 1950s, as pointed out by some of the radio-show callers? But what can we do, other than pray for and cling to our integrity as a nation favoured of Allah swt?

 

AZRIL MOHD AMIN is vice-president, Muslim Lawyers Association of Malaysia.