NINETY-ONE PERSONS FROM THREE GROUPS BANNED FROM SOME AREAS OF KUALA LUMPUR ON 9 JULY: MOST OF THEM NEVER STUDIED OR LIVED IN AMERICA.

By Mansor Puteh

What was that all about?

This is what the Bersih group or coalition wanted to do in Kuala Lumpur yesterday, 9 July, which is to bring in America to the streets of Kuala Lumpur for their own failure to go there when they were much younger. Alas, it's America of the 1960s.

Some others brought in the break-dance and rap they saw on television; others who had the means and authority brought in Hollywood films and American television programs and music as well as plays from Broadway for their own stations and halls and fast-foods for their restaurants.

They are purveyors of the failed American Dream.

So now they could only watch the country from television and the media and try to copy some of the things that the Americans do or did since most of the time they only managed to copy things that were done in America a few decades earlier, including the street protests.

Their group’s financial standing and their background are all shrouded in mystery; so how could they insist that the charge they make on the Suruhanjaya Pilihanraya Malaysia (SPM) or Elections Commissions be open and transparent, for they themselves are not open and transparent?

Is it a sheer coincidence to see how the 91 persons who have been banned from going to certain areas in Kuala Lumpur, so they do not attract unnecessary attention to themselves and whatever else the police think they could do. This is probably the first time such an action has been taken by the police?

It is definitely not.

However, many do not know what is the connection between the academic backgrounds of the leaders’ protestors from the three groups or organizations to what is happening with the Bersih protest.

There are many Malaysians who had held public office or who are in the limelight can now take the opportunity to use or misuse their status, to create mischief.

They do not have anything else better to do.

Malaysia is a small country with limited extra-social-cultural activities. All that they have are pseudo-political activities to take part in.

This is to express their failure to exhibit their intellect and academic qualification by dealing with the issues of their concern from the other perspectives – psychological, historical and sociological.

They end up politicizing everything even for small and petty issues concerning the SRM, which is a very convenient pumping bag for them to take shots at.

So few of these Malaysians who are by right retired individuals can go far, abroad to take part in international discourses on many things. So they end up spending their retirement age doing mischief after mischief.

They are not politicians; they are pseudo-politicians. And they do not have issues; they only have mischievous acts.

They are aided by the media which seems to be prodding them on so that they could benefit from their actions, as can be seen in the sales of their newspapers, while pretending to practice freedom of the press.  

So who are the ‘dalang’ or puppet masters behind the protests in Malaysia? The press, no doubt.

There are many Malaysians who are disappointed that the ISA has not been invoked by the police on some of the more hardcore supporters of the Bersih protest.

But what really is interesting from what one can see in the list is how all or most of them are those who had not studied or lived in America.

There are so few amongst them who had studied abroad especially in England with some from PAS who had studied in Mesir, Pakistan and India.

The others are mostly those who had not studied and lived abroad.

What can be analyzed from the list of the 91 people is how all of them seem to be too keen to do it the ‘American way’, whatever that means – mostly by shouting their voice coarse and hoarse without saying much or anything that anyone else can discern.

The marching in the streets is really a throwback from the 1960s American practice, popularized by the quest by many Americans to stop their government then, under the presidency of Lyndon B. Johnson who wanted him to pull back American troops from Vietnam.

More than sixty thousand young American men and women had been slaughtered by the Vietcongs, so they cried and demanded American withdrawal from Vietnam.

It finally happened, but at huge cost. It left a Wall of Shame that was constructed near the White House where the names of the American troops had died in the Vietnam War.

Few films had been made by Hollywood.

But all these could not dispel the fact that it was a stupid war. America had failed itself.

Yet, America had not learnt much or anything at all by its engagement in other new wars in Afghanistan and Iraq where it is again losing.

Osama bin Ladin is winning in these wars as America and its allies start to withdraw their troops in these countries.

This is what the organizers and supporters of Bersih had tried to do – or to copy, the Americans of the 1960s who had marched in the streets, and also the students in the universities who had seized the administration buildings of their universities, demanding the full withdrawal of American troops from Vietnam.

This student movement was lead by the students of Columbia University in New York City which later spread to other campuses climaxing in the massacre of some students at the Kent State University where some of them were gunned down.

America had learnt a valuable lesson from this. They had not repeated it since then.

The scenario was being repeated in Kuala Lumpur. But with the sudden move by the police, any chance for the protestors of creating mischief has been thwarted.

How disappointed they are for not being ‘martyred’ and be turned into international media heroes of dissent.

The organizer had also probably been incensed and encouraged by the Jasmine Revolution of the Arab Spring and wanted to spread it in Malaysia.

Unfortunately, their intention was sprung back at them by the unusual intervention from Istana Negara.

Malaysia does not need Bersih which has been declared an illegal organization. It also does not need some of its ungrateful citizens from behaving or misbehaving like the Americans of the 1960s.

They are those who should feel misery for not having an American educational background to know the ways of dissent of the present era and not to repeat them.

The days of Tom Hayden and Jane Fonda speaking their voices coarse against their American government and policies are over.

Tom ended up in Congress while Jane whom he married later divorced her. It was like a marriage that was created in the streets than at the altar.