Remember the British Intervention - Now read RECYCLING PANGKOR

by 
Howl Pillay

June 11 20202

Shame on our politicians! Once again it looks like we need help from 
outside to fix our problems.

Remember the Pangkor Treaty circa 1874?

A quick refresher and we are on our way..

Sultan Ali rules Perak from Sayong on the Perak River. His palace is a modest 
house with thatched roofing amidst a few coconut palms. Compared to the 
rich merchants in Singapore and Penang the Sultan is a poor man indeed. 
Bo lui la!

Nothing wrong here for world trade has by-passed him. The tin mines in 
the north, at Larut, worked by rival groups of Chinese, are controlled by a 
powerful chief Ngah Ibrahim working closely with rich merchants in Penang. 
No, not Jho Low la!

The death of Sultan Ali in 1871 sparked a fight for the throne, 
ignoring established procedures. 
Clearly a gomen official had forgotten to revise the SOPs governing these 
matters. All the claimants smell money, big money, so SOPs don’t count 
anyway.

But first a side story. When Sultan Ali was dying he requested to see his 
daughter Raja Tipah, married to the Raja Muda, Abdullah, one of the 
claimants. Fearing a plot, Abdullah refuses to take her home up the Perak 
River.

Angry, she says: “ I will follow any man brave enough to take me 
to my father”. We are not sure if she said, “I want to advise you 
something”. 
Raja Daud of Selangor, pretending to take her to Sayong, takes her 
instead to his kampong. 
They elope!

Abdullah does nothing to avenge himself except divorcing Raja Tipah. 
Big mistake! You can hear the boos along the Perak River all the way to 
the estuary, his power base. In steps Yusuf from Senggang, the second 
claimant, senior to Abdullah.

The third claimant, Bendahara Ismail whose powerbase is in Upper Perak is 
strictly not royalty although married to one. Twice he had been bypassed for 
promotion to Raja Muda. 
Now an elderly man, his followers egg him on: “Boleh Boss, apa na malu?”

Now for the fourth claimant, Ngah Ibrahim of Larut, the wealthiest of the 
chiefs, closely associated with the Chinese in Penang, and he supported 
Ismail the third claimant, harbouring thoughts of becoming Sultan himself 
one day.

No, we are not talking about the present but the past. History! All the big 
shots are now summoned to Sayong (not Sheraton la!) to bury Sultan Ali and 
choose a new one. Abdullah demurs, knowing Yusuf was waiting upriver 
at Senggang, with evil intent.

In Abdullah’s absence, the chiefs chose the third claimant as the Sultan, 
and the suspicion is that the chiefs wanted a pliable man like Ismail to rule 
over them for their own selfish ends. The weaker the Sultan, the stronger 
the warlords. 
Beware! 

Then the Chinese start fighting again viciously, over tin. The Sultan, the 
claimants and the chiefs realign their loyalties until friend becomes foe and 
foe becomes the enemy of my friend or whatever.

Finally, fearing a general unrest and citing ‘commercial interests’, one 
Andrew Clarke with that fearsome white moustache did some Chinese 
bashing a at Pangkor followed by more of the same dished out to the 
Malay chiefs but again it all sounds familiar.

Abdullah turned up at Pangkor requesting a Resident in return for becoming 
Sultan; Sultan Ismail was invited but was a no-show and Yusuf was not even 
invited. 
So Sultan Abdullah ruled in the south and Sultan Ismail, the north, hanging 
on to the regalia.

If you are confused by now, start reading the papers, nevermind history. 
So how do we go from here is the billion ringgit question. We are done with 
Sir Andrew Clarke and the Brits. The Americans are rioting and the Russians 
are sorting out the Arabs. 

First look for a nice small round table. Then double the ECRL price, smiling at 
the Chinese. That done, increase patrolling the waters around Pangkor using 
our submarines. Then look up a costume shop for Victorian-era props and 
costumes.

Almost done! Now let us invite Comrade Xi Jinping to ‘kow-thim” our 
warring parties, still at it after 150 years as to who should succeed and 
who should wait for his turn while the rakyat are reduced to a feudal 
condition, living on handouts.

Just to frighten our great chiefs into cutting a compromise for the common 
good and making a sacrifice for succeeding generations, we must insist 
Comrade Xi sport a white walrus moustache bought from that costume shop 
I told you about. 

One last thing, a hundred years hence, a history exam question may read 
like this:

Soalan - Sewaktu negara kita dilanda oleh politik gila kuasa sekitaran 
tahun 2020, pemimpin Cina yang membantu penyelesaiannya ialah:

1. Deng Xiaopeng

      

2. Michael Cheng

3. Lee Kachiang

   

4. Xi Jinping

5. Mahathir bin Muhyuddin

     

The Bangala, Nepali, Rohingya, Myanmarese, Indon, ain't heavy he is my Brother

These are unprecedented times, so let us not condemn people collectively as we would not like to be condemned either.

WE ARE IN THIS TOGETHER.

arrested illegal foreign workers

Like us these are people so let's treat every mother's son with respect and let's give them their dignity, they are human too and they deserve it.

This is the reason of this global calamity, we have to examine ourselves,and look at every other human being as our brother, regardless of race or creed.

The tiny spec called the corona virus a mciro spec has sent us to our homes to sit down and reflect our attitudes to the earth and all its inhabitants.

The earth is ours,it belongs to all its inhabitants, we are part of that and so are these people amongst us.

Do not forget we are in this together, and I really wonder how many of us are being looked after (caregiver) by an illegal immigrant at this time.

We have the head of UMNO Hamid Zahid come out and make the most stupid remarks you may have eveer heard time nd time again and he is aspiring to be our Prime Minister and yet millions of Malaysians support him while millions of other Malaysiansa dare not come out to tell him what an  a confounded idiot he is just because he is the President of UMNO. They are just plain scared that this idiot may become the Prime Minister of Malaysia and they'll ahve to reckon with him. They'd tolerate that fool and they wqill not condemn the race, but one Rohingya has to come out and make a stupid statement and we blame not only him but his whole community as well.

We have to learn to stop collectively bullying people who are defenseless, poor, many ignorant, many who are here not because they chose to come here as illegal immigrants but who were cheated to part with huge sums of money to come here with the lure of great paying jobs and comfortable lifestyles only to find out that they were cheated the minute they land on Malaysian shores, put yourself in their shoes and imagine the despair.

Many more come here as legal workers and a lured by other agents to work foer others with the promise of better salaries only to find out that once they do it their work visas are no longer valid and are at the mercy of these unscrupulous  agents. They too ar thrown into despair and that too by people perhaps their own countrymen whom they trusted, they to are thrown into despair.

Are the Malaysian authorities also acting in concert with these agents?

There are many reasons ot believe they are?

Contributing to the development of the nation.

Every move made by these workers who are now illegal and brought into this country with false documents for which they mortgage lands and assets with money lenders in their home countries to pay agents with these fake papers to try and legalise themselves will cost money too, from the meager earnings they earn here, and dos they resort to every trick they know to earn as much as possible to pay to legalise themselves, pay their huge loans back home and send money to their dependents back home who have placed their trust on these workers.

Please stop for a moment and and imagine yourself in this plight, away from home where everybody is a stranger, where everybody is out there to exploit you because of the situation you are in, where even your own countryman who purportedly is trying to help you is only out there to make a fast buck out of you and reflect on what you'd do to get yourself out. 

This my friend is the situation the Bangala, the Nepali, the Rohingya, the Myanmarese, the Indinesian and most other foreign illegal worker in this country is faced with.

To add insult to injury these chaps are harassed by authorities who take money out of them at every opportunity they can.

Even legal foreign workers are nto free of harassment of the local authorities, they are stopped at almost every turn and their papers checked as though foreigners form the biggest part of local criminals.

Local criminals are aplenty and they come in all shapes and sizes and from every strata of society, they form the bigger part of the criminals in this country, and the Police should actually be using their resources to target these, they come from the highest offices int he land t the lowest and the latest revelations indicate the biggest crime rates are among those who occupy among the highest offices in the land. 

These Illegals  are the most vulnerable and the poorest in our society, if they have or seem to have accumulated wealth it is because the circumstances forced them to be that way, if they are marrying more and more Malays girls to live in this country it is also the circumstances force them to, and the local Malays girls find them better than the locals so do not deprive them that.

Many of them have come forward  to be tested for the covid 19 virus, we had given them an assurance that the test data will not be used to hunt them out of their homes like foxes from foxholes and let us be honourable  enough to give them that at least. Have we no honour?

The Rohingyas yes I have had y misgivings too, they are economic migrants, but those who are here as refugees must be treated with dignity, work with them to ensure that, and work with Myanmar and Bangladesh  for their repatriation either directly into Myanmar or via Cox Bazaar or to third countries.

These are desperate times  we have to think of ourselves as humanity and not the way Mahathir Mohammed thinks, that as full of hate, he isa religious bigot and bigotry will only take us into greater suffering and conflict.

I remember the time he proposed to shoot the boat people from Vietnam on sight and to sink their boatsm, that is how wicked and thoughtless this man is, it shows his true colors, he si not someone who loves peace he does nt even understand the word.

He is filled with hate, that is why the other Burmese refugees are not evnen recognized as refugees even though the UNHCR recognises them such.

In detention

We have to be more humane in our treatment of refugees, he knows how humane European countries are to Muslims, they are more humane than he can ever imagine to be, when he pretends to be humane he has evil political intentions in his heart so let us distance ourselves from him politically and socially he is evil and do not follow the tyrant with wicked and evil intentions.

Like one Malay recently asked on social media if he is really so sympathetic tothe Rohingya ask him to ask his daughter to marry one of them.

Let us not forget that in this nation all the recent developments in this country from the days of the KLCC have been built on the blood and sweat of the foreign worker and a substantial part on the back of the illegal foreign worker.

Let us genuinely care and lift these people from their misery if not at any other time at least at this time of this global calamity, let us give them hope.  

The Bangala, Nepali, Rohingya, Myanmarese, Indon aint heavy they are my brothers.