SUARA RAKYAT MALAYSIA (SUARAM): NOTHING CAN BE MORE MISLEADING WITH THEM.

…HOW CAN THEY CLAIM TO BE THE VOICE OF THE PEOPLE OF MALAYSIA, WHEN THEY ARE NOTHING BUT A TINY NGO DOMINATED BY SO FEW CHINESE AND INDIANS ONLY?

By Mansor Puteh

There are many individuals in the country who claim to be good to it, they alone who can determine the future of the country to lead it to better development.

And they knew they could not do it alone; so they had to establish their own NGOs which in many instances are nothing but private limited companies led by a small group of individuals of like minds.

But they put on the NGO face and issue statements and protestations now and then, which in most cases also expose who they are and what their main aims are without realizing how chauvinistic they are, and who are also against the Constitution.  

The worse of the NGOs are those that claim to represent the whole country. The truth is that they are just five or six persons who do not even represent their own communities who have not sought for their establishment in the first place.

Worse still, is when they are just a small group of Chinese and Indians mostly Tamils and Hindus. They are not even other Indians nationalities and who are Muslims.

Worst still, they may be receiving funding from foreign establishments who are clearly out to destabilize the country and society, so they are just fronts for them to serve foreign elements.

And many of the NGOs do not account from where they seek and got the funding from, and how they spend the money doing what to who and getting what in return. In short, they are not democratic, transparent as well as truthful.

Yet, they want everybody to respect them for what they are, NGOs like NGOs are all ordained by the higher being.

So if they cannot be truthful in such matters, how on earth did they get the energy and pride as well as confidence to claim that they are representing the whole country, the people or ‘rakyat’?

This is what’s wrong with many of the NGOs in Malaysia. The persons who established them seemed to have got carried away with the little authority or power that they have, which is mostly in the propensity to pass value judgment acting as judge and executioner on issues which are mostly sensitive in nature, which almost always promote the personal biases and prejudices of the officials of the NGOs themselves.

Who is to be blamed? The government for allowing the creation of such NGOs which are essentially private limited companies.

The media too must share the blame for publishing the views of those NGO officials, and for promoting their stand which are baseless on most accounts, as there are mechanisms in the country that had been put in place to ensure that the society can develop.

The existence of such pseudo-political and pseudo-intellectual NGOs is a fairly recent development in the country.

They NGOs mostly found the energy or inspiration from those that had been established in America and the west.

Whereas in America and the west the NGOs do not align themselves to any political organization, in Malaysia, some have been known to do so, although they may claim to be independent.

But the truth is that many of the NGO officials or office-bearers soon found themselves trapped in their own lies when they later go into active politics by aligning themselves with the opposition.

It is obvious that these persons did not know what NGOs are supposed to do. They are definitely not fronts for them to establish their connection with opposition or any political party, and their principles are based on true democracy.

Now we get to Suaram, a NGO which has been embroiled in some sort of controversy which can also be seen to be a scandal of late.  

Can we compare Suaram with Aliran, another NGO which has been established earlier than Suaram, which is perhaps a true NGO that does not seem to side with any particular political party on both sides of the divide? They try to champion the cause of the downtrodden.

But Suaram is something else. It is totally unlike Aliran.

The only thing that makes the two similar is how the like to use Melayu names for their organizations, so they are palatable to the Malaysian public especially the Melayu.

Why can’t they use Mandarin or Tamil ones, especially if all their office bearers and founders are not Melayu?

Suaram stands alone in its cause, which not many Malaysians especially the Melayu can guess what it is.

And when can we see a Suaram lookalike and soundalike in Singapore, the other countries in Southeast Asia, America or the United Kingdom? Never.

Suara Rakyat Malaysia or Suaram, therefore can be described as a pseudo-political and pseudo-intellectual organization or NGO. They claim to want to do justice to the country and to all.

Who do they think they are? They are like the many other NGOs who are self-appointed, with no credibility to exert themselves more than the political parties which have been established long and which had proven their worth, while they are individuals who have their hidden agendas which they are not brave enough to disclose.

They have created some individuals who end up serving the opposition running in the last general elections and winning with some who are in fact members of the state governments.

So Suaram can be said to be their platform to create a public profile for themselves, which they could do to establish their political careers later.

They don’t even know what claims they can make, the least of all is to tell the whole country they are representing the voice of the people of Malaysia.

Who on earth gave them such an accolade or recognition or endorsement? Who asked them to represent the ‘rakyat’?

The Melayu generally do not trust the Chinese and Indians in the country who can’t speak and write in Melayu well to represent them.

I for certain do not regard Suaram to represent me.

Suaram should call themselves ‘Suara Rakyat keturunan Cina dan India di Malaysia’ since they are the ones whom they can claim to represent and write their names in Mandarin and Tamil.

But how many of the Chinese and Indians of Malaysia can they claim to represent? They have to determine that too.

So it is best for them to say they only represent themselves, a small group of Chinese and Indian left of the country, and not all the other Chinese and Indian left of the country, who may have different views on all matters compared to their own.

Whatever it is, Suaram must definitely be the only organization of its kind in the world. There can never be a Suram or its lookalike and soundalike in Singapore, Indonesia, Thailand, the Philippines, Myanmar and the other countries that also have sizeable Chinese and Indian communities in it.

Suaram can only exist in Malaysia and not even in America or the United Kingdom where there are also many Chinese and Tamils.

Yet, they have failed in the first test, which is to be balanced or representative of who they want to represent.

Let’s home Suaram is open and transparent enough to allow anyone to analyze them as much as they expect everybody to allow them to do the same on the government and whoever they have tried to study in the past, to be fair to all.