MALAYSIA’S DEVOID OF THE OPPOSITION, WHO HAVE REDUCED THEMSELVES TO ‘STREET PERFORMERS’ AND ‘STANDUP COMEDIANS’.

By Mansor Puteh

There are Malaysians who exist in a suspended sense of belonging, of not knowing where they are and where they want to take the others with them. They are a majority of their minds, onto themselves. The others are all wrong; they are right always.

They are that conceited. But they do not realize this or want to know it. They always think the others who are so.

They who have obfuscated views of things, which are blinkered by their own limited vision, who have done some outrageous things in the past themselves, and whose only need to exist is to purely spend time on the other side, trying to outshine the others by exhibition ideas which carry their own logic.

Some of them are professional politicians who do not know of any other thing to do, while a smaller number of them rightly should be pensioners, yet, they insist on creating a new career post-retirement.

And they are the ones who hog media traffic with their antics, which border from the outrageous to the downright offensive to many other Malaysians who consider themselves to be more sane and normal than them.

They do not care if they are bundled in police trucks in full glare of the media. They are not fazed with their incessant display or illogical diatribes.

The only reason why they can carry on with their antics is simply because they are in politics.

If they are not in politics, but who operate as independent groups, surely, they would have been forced to face the full brunt of the law, with some of them being branded, charged and condemned for being heretics who conduct unIslamic activities, with their pronouncements on Islam, by passing fatwa after fatwa branding some others who do not behave and think like them to be people who had been cast out of Islam.

There was once such a group, whose supreme leader became so brash so much so that he began to see and fashion himself into a later day leader or ‘pseudo-messiah’. He was arrested and condemned.

Unfortunately, his only mistake was that his organization was a mere company who side activities include propagating other forms of Islam.

If it was a political establishment, the person could have been allowed to do as he so pleased, because being a politician gives him some measure of invincibility and perhaps immunity from the law.

By and large, Malaysia really does not have an opposition. What we now have is a small group which exists in the fringe of society, whose members are those who have seen better days; their logic is illogical; the common sense, not so common.

They harp on the same tired issue. They like to ape their counterparts in the west by promoting themselves as freedom-fighters; they who believe in the freedom of speech, of the press and of whatever else.

Yet, they do not respect the freedom others, the majority in the country want, which is to be able to live in peace, so that the streets are safe from such likes, who seem to be attracted to the streets, squares and other public places in the city centers.

They do not like to perform their antics in secluded places away from the public. They want to cause the most damage to public safety and get support from the media to highlight their misdeeds.

Worst of all, they aim to attract the attention of those in The White House and perhaps the Nobel Prize selection committee.

Unfortunately, they have not done much to deserve to get the attention from these bodies, who require that they do more harm to themselves and to the others in their own countries.

The last general election and the previous ones in recent times only managed to create a group of people who are fault-finders, noise-makers and who now prefer to be described as ‘street performers’ and ‘standup comedians’.

This is sad when most of those in the so-called opposition do not prefer to use the established and respected platforms available to them, such as the parliamentary and state assembly seatings, but who prefer to take to the streets to exhibit their antics.

In the past, the antics were expressed in all sorts of ways in parliament and the state assemblies.

But they soon found that such places to be less favorable for them to be expressive. The crowd there is too small.

In the streets, they could perform more antics, to thrill a small crowd, which to them represents the whole country, when it is but such a small group of people.

It is sad, how they have reduced the His Majesty’s Opposition to a group of people with diverse backgrounds, with most of them who have gone over the hill, to become so.

The one common dominator which anyone could see is how most of them, if not all of them are those who had not studied or lived abroad for a considerable period of time, especially in America or England, and they like to copy the antics of the street performers in those countries.

This is their problem really, that they like to copy the activists and other street performers in those countries, when they should behave better and show better judgment.

It is also ironic how in America and England, the opposition there do not exhibit such traits as those in Malaysia; they prefer to express their feelings in the parliament or Congress, but not in the streets.

If there are demonstrations or protests in those countries, they are mostly organized in a peaceful manner, without the direct involvement of anybody from the opposition.

And most of them are people who are not too well-educated, who are presentable, and who can debate intelligently.

They are those who could not get into any of the prestigious universities abroad to prove their intellectual prowess, that they now blame the others for their personal failures.

So no wonder, none of them could create any excitement abroad, unless if they criticize the government of the day.

In Malaysia, it seems that no street demonstration or protest can happen without the involvement of the same people from the few opposition parties, who harp on the same issues, which most of Malaysians found to be trite to be taken to the streets, as they are stale matters which have been settled on other platforms long ago.

It seems that the opposition in Malaysia really do not have real issues to take to parliament or the state assemblies, including the state assemblies they dominate anymore as the grounds they stand on have been seized from under their feet.

And the more they realize they are losing grounds with the people, the more they rejoice in wanting to perform more antics in the streets.