Mahahtir Mohammed crossed the line, when he tried to further downplay the role of the Tengku - "the father of the nation" and accuse him of selling the country. An act of insurrection? No even worse than that.
This staunch disciple of Heinrich Luitpold Himmler of the Third Reich - Mahathir Mohammed bears a strange resemblance of his master and has all the makings of a Neo Nazi.
Lying in State
By Howl Pillay
We
were brought up not to speak ill of the dead. At home and in school. We
were taught that we must have the courage to say our peace; not
excoriate the dead long after they are gone. It is a sign of cowardice
even. Restraint and respect for the departed is a sign of civilised
behaviour. At times we fail the test. Our conscience pricks us. And it
hurts. We learn. The next time around we desist from such behaviour. And
we are on the road towards building a civil society.
Surely building a
civil society is not about monumental buildings or grand projects. Or of
grabbing the wealth of the rich and stealing from the poor in the name
of governance. It is about a scrupulous adherence to the rule of law. It
is about men and women behaving in a civil manner in the simple things
they do everyday in their everyday lives. It is about politeness; about
grace; about fairness. We hold our tongue and our horses, especially
when we hold the reigns of great political power. Truly great men are
humbled by that experience. They are transformed by it. After retirement
they retreat to within themselves to better understand themselves and
the people they governed; to acknowledge their mistakes and their
weaknesses.
And the exemplariness
of their life carries a message for future generations; a message that
acts as a light and a lamp to guide us in our journey to the better
place we seek. These are the Lincolns, the Rizals, the Ho Chi-minhs, the
Tunku Abdul Rahmans, the Kartinis, the Gandhis, the Mandelas of
history. Lincoln’s Emancipation Speech will serve as an inspiration for
as long as there are enslaved people; Rizal’s incredibly courageous
farewell message to his people written on the night before facing a
Spanish firing squad and smuggled out, hidden in an old lamp, “Mi Ultimo
Adios” is the proud patrimony of every Filipino; Ho Chi-minh’s words,
deeds and steely courage inspired the Vietnamese to defeat two Western
powers and unite a country after thirty years of war and sacrifice and
yet he died as poor as a Vietnamese church mouse; and Kartini’s
educational endeavours on behalf of girls and women in her country is
still honoured and her birthday is celebrated by two hundred and fifty
million Indonesians as Kartini Day and school children solemnly pledge
to continue her legacy every year. And what more need we say of Tunku
Abdul Rahman who forged a nation and a people out of lands divided by
race, religion, creed and colour and that were ruled as a colony for
hundreds of years, without shedding a drop of blood.
But the minds of the
unscrupulous leaders, the incorrigible ones, the recalcitrant ones are
different. They turn up the volume of politics and fill it with racial
hatred and tension. They invoke ancient animosities and stoke the flames
of religious intolerance to achieve their own ends. They hit out at all
and sundry; they trash their rivals; they conveniently forget; they
selectively remember and they humiliate those who have the courage to
stand up to them. They piss and puke on the graves of others who had
come before them. They rave and they rant; they twist and turn until all
meaning is rendered meaningless. Like questioning the place in the sun
of those who built this nation through hard work and sacrifice. And they
enrich themselves at every opportunity for their greed is insatiable.
It is they, who through their speech and deed come closest to making the
dead turn in their graves.
And they are not
content doing the dirty work of dirty politics when in office. They
continue with the same after leaving it. And they do it with even more
vehemence and venom. Old habits indeed die hard. But still we who are
civilised know that it is wrong to wish the death of another. A
no-no-no! And so we take our unconscious thoughts with us to bed. And in
sleep they become our dreams and nightmares; often forgotten on waking
and if remembered, often nightmarish. But at rare times they wake us up,
imbued with the rare persistence of dream memory that is as clear as
day.......
A long line of men
and women are streaming past a bier. And the line stretches back miles
to some unknown place like ants streaming out of an undetectable hole in
the ground. And yet more people are waiting patiently in groups and
clusters both large and small in the streets of the capital. They speak
in quiet, dignified whispers. And soldiers guard the dead man, the
‘great man’, heads bowed. I walk, unhurried looking for the end of the
line. I must not jump the queue; I am part of building a civil society.
And then out of the blue I spot an old friend. We exchange greetings
politely. All his life he spoke of his disgust for the man now lying in
state. I am puzzled. I ask him, in a whisper, why is here. And he
whispers back:
“To make sure he is really dead”.
A
nod of my head, and I continue. I have walked hardly a hundred meters
when yet again I see an old friend from my Uni days; a journalist once
who gave up writing on anything at all after the newspaper he worked for
was closed down by this ‘great man’. Again we exchange greetings. He
shakes my hand vigorously, like he is energised and happy. I say to him
that he was the last person I expected to patiently wait his turn to pay
his respects to this man. He suppresses his laughter before whispering:
“I will bow low before him so that I can see from close quarters how a mouth can fallen silent forever”.
I look at his now sad
face and move on looking for the end of the line. The sun is beating
down mercilessly. And yet no one is complaining. They quietly sip cold
water from bottles, holding handphones and wearing earplugs. The
umbrellas are out. Someone calls out my name. I scan the line of people
just ahead. I see a smiling face. Why, yes, it belongs to an old buddy, a
good friend in school. A colourful character who became a successful
businessman only to lose it all when the rules of the game changed
forever during the tenure of this ‘great man’. He never forgave him or
his Cabinet. I ask him why. He says with a smile:
“I want to hear the silence of a heart that had no conscience”.
In
a daze now, I walk on wondering whether it could have all been
different. Lost in thought, I stumble into the queue. A woman stretches
out her hand that stops me from falling. And then she says quietly:
“Well, well, well! What a coincidence! Fancy meeting you here!”. Brenda,
my ex-boss was a dynamic lady who quit working at forty five, at the
prime of her career. She had enough putting up with ‘twenty two years of
his government’s interference’. I ask her why. And she says, cursing
under her breath:
“I want to see the ears that never heard the pain of ordinary people or listened to anyone”
I can hardly take one
more step. Then I hear a familiar voice. I look up. Its my English
teacher from my school days. Yes, he is an old man now, all white and
grey. And pale and frail; a ghost of a man. I pick up enough courage and
ask him why. He says with a mischievous glint in his eyes:
“Don’t
worry about me. Just remember the thing I told everyone of my students
in school: You will be judged by not what you say but by what you leave
behind. And never spit on the dead!”
I know it is all a
dream! For when he dies, as we all will, he will be wrapped in white and
tightly secured in accordance with the tenets of his faith. My four
friends who came to me in my dream will not see his face, his ears, his
mouth or hear his heart not beat anymore. He will lie in state: and for
once the ceremonies he is honoured with will match his character! But as
always with him, the real lie will accompany him to that other place,
shrouded and secure!
That incorrigible man!
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