The soul is dyed by the color of its thoughts - Heraclitus
The first three B’s represent the three organs of government collectively operating as “loyalists” to a single drummer who wears many hats including the purveyors of the cliché “national unity.” In this motley crowd are law makers, law enforcers and law explainers and appliers, and the Opposition. The beggar represents the public at large, the civil service, the police force and the armed forces. The boulder represents both education and religion. One tells you to get ready while the other waits for you to get ready to drop your guard. That is the real world of governance and government which is always bandied about as obeying the “rule of law.” People buy into that narrative. One has to be a fierce rationalist to navigate through this labyrinth.
Most of us, in the East, the West and the South, are born into this state of being having been nurtured by family, educational and religious institutions that leave us wondering and pondering about the exhortation by Socrates that “an unexamined life is not worth living.” The conditioning starts early until you are unprepared for college and university persuasions and influences. The entire spate of conditioning never stops until a small margin of intellectual coolies emerges after being fully awakened and enlightened that many things are simply not right and totally out of whack. They try very hard to be politically correct in warning and telling all and sundry that the government has the right to be wrong. Therein begins the end of dissent. That old argument “absence of evidence,” versus the “evidence of absence.” Ultimately we must heed the exhortation of Heraclitus: “Dogs bark at what they don’t understand.” There are aspects of politics that can never be explained.
Mark Twain exhorted us that “religion began when the first conman met the first fool.” Those who figured that out could easily and effortlessly identify the bungler caught with his pants down, or on fire. Meanwhile the beggar laughs because he collects from all three players while dreading having to push the boulder uphill in the fashion and fate of Sisyphus who angered the gods for tricking death, and was thus condemned to eternally roll a massive boulder up a steep hill, only for it to roll back down just as he neared the top, forcing him to repeat the futile back-breaking labor forever in the underworld. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it when government decides to shut you down for speaking up and questioning the status quo. The Sysiphyean syndrome emerged during Ops Lalang between 27 October to 20 November 1987 with the veiled reason of preventing race riots. Media publications and publishers and outspoken activists were rounded up and punished. These dissidents and anti-establishment types are still shoving the boulder uphill both individually and collectively not as a punishment but as an acquired habit.
Government is very much like religion. In fact, government is the synonym of religion. Both are interchangeable. Both have laws, rules, regulations, rituals, practices, processes, procedures and promises. Both guarantee heaven and hell. The here-and-now (debtor pays the creditor with votes and taxes) and the hereinafter (ultimate product which is only delivered after you are dead) are identified as responsibility, stewardship and reward. Blind faith offsets belief. The conman says belief is physical whereas faith is about things you must believe in although you can’t see it. This they insist is “spiritual maturity.” Meanwhile the pundits and purveyors of government largesse get busy constructing, instructing, correcting and directing their calling by ensuring that they are able and capable of building public confidence through election slogans and other dramatic exhibitions of “national unity” where diversity is a recurring nightmare when one race feels threatened although they are the dormant majority aided and abetted by government that favors them from womb to tomb.
The bugler is your conscience, and the burglar is your consciousness. The bungler is your contractarian who doesn’t have to try hard to prove anything because it is in his or her nature to get caught, trapped, charged, tried, convicted and sentenced. This is jurisprudential showmanship. Break the law and we break you. Selective prosecutions and exonerations through judicial acrobatics is the norm in certain nations where the Legislature and the Executive defy and define the separation of powers. The beggar is neutrality personified and pacified as long as “cari makan” is not threatened. Alms are alms whether it comes from a punishing. pompous politician, a priest, prostitute or pimp. Now, let’s put this in the context of local, regional, national and international politics. The beggar has accepted his or her fate as both choice and necessity.
Tiny Britain with Catholics and Protestants convinced enormous India in 1947 with over fifteen religions and three hundred million people to adopt parliamentary democracy as the form of government. India today is divided and defined by conscience, culture, caste, custom, costume, cuisine, contradiction and curiosity despite a written constitution identifying an imported sense of liberty, equality and fraternity. So is Malaysia with 60% majority Muslims, and 40% comprising Hindus, Christians, Buddhists, Sikhs, Taoists, Theosophists, Theists, Deists, Atheists and Agnostics. Our adat that defined and described our culture has been inexorably replaced and displaced if not misplaced by imported English common law dogmas, edicts, principles and tenets. Malaysian students hardly study the Sejarah Melayu, the Kedah Annals,Hikayat Abdullah and the Commentaries of Alfonso d”Albuquerque that explain our rich cultural ancient history that many seem to have forgotten in the matrix of “organized government” that has perfected a weird educational system far removed from the Watkins Marsick model. But Malaysians are expected to express an eternal debt of gratitude similar to thanking an ATM machine for dispensing money. Be that as it may we have allowed even our minds to be colonized.
The bugler beckons every eligible voter who every 4 or 5 years is caught between human nature, habit and attitude. The burglar convinces you of identity politics not performance politics. The former is festooned with a well-known name who is also a populist and fiery orator with the panache to convince an Eskimo to purchase ice. He is adept at confusing proof and evidence. What is the difference between proof and evidence, asks the student. And the master replies: “Evidence is when you answer the knock on your door of your windowless room to encounter a chap holding a dripping umbrella. Proof is when you step outside to see whether it is indeed raining.” Eastern, Western and Southern jurisprudence highlight and showcase proof and evidence as the juggler’s props that are ably and expertly tossed in the air for achieving shock and awe, disbelief and disappointment punctuated by ecstatic moments of politically correct decisions and judgments. It’s quite a show for the purposes of judicial showmanship as well. The records speak volumes of judicial shenanigans tucked away in law journals as “case law” that serves as the oracle of wisdom emanating from the fountain of justice and the mountain of agony that is heaped upon potential litigants fitting the Sisyphean personality.
The bungler lights a host of candles daily at the altar of Napoleon Bonaparte who allegedly said that “in politics, stupidity is not a handicap.” The bungler is also a devotee of Nicolla Machiavelli who was the surreptitious saint of sanity for one of our former prime ministers who innovated the “Look East” policy while sucking up to western recalcitrant philosophies. Niccolò Machiavelli's famous quotes often focus on leadership, perception, and power, emphasizing that a ruler must appear virtuous (merciful, faithful, humane, religious) while being prepared to act otherwise when needed, understanding that people judge by appearances, and learning that it's better to be feared than loved if you can't be both, as well as the need to adapt to changing circumstances. Either you end up at the table or on the menu.
A good and caring citizen is one who laughs all day long in order to survive in this bewildering wilderness of buglers, burglars, bunglers, beggars and boulders. You can make a noise here and there but to your detriment. You stay the course, do your griping on social media and carry on with your life. If you think and imagine you can become the agent of change and reform you will be facing a Sisyphean if not Herculean task. Keep talking and writing about it which is the extent of that which you think is helpful in changing the status quo. Since Malaya gained “independence” change and reform are fantasies and fallacies with a large following of beggars who will merrily vote the same buglers, burglars and bunglers into office. We had fifteen such exercises since 1957. We are lulled into believing that a change in government represents change and reform. That is the beggar’s zone of satisfaction, contentment, comfort and solace while living with curiosity as a merry pastime. We must continue to ask questions that dares to look the angry hungry lion in its face.
And then there is the evident geriatric control of the halls, doors and windows of power. Young men and women seldom make it, and even if they do, they are haunted and hunted by charges of corruption where the musical chairs of trial and appellate courts become another display of jurisprudential jujitsu where constitutional somersaults and other acts of high-wire acrobatics are wholly inevitable if not entertaining. Law reporters get busy as they assiduously add to the growing corpus of law journals as if it signifies the genuine dispensation of justice. Life goes on. Due process of the law becomes a rallying call for law and order especially when broken laws and disorder dictate. Business as usual. “A very bad man may have a very good case; you try the case not the man,” should be the norm. But after all, judges are human too despite their oracular robes in court.
Tourists flock in. The economy is doing great, reportedly. Everyone is happy because we are a nation of wanton public holidays that usually coincide with Fridays and Mondays. And we love paying taxes although we are seldom well represented in government. Imagine if nobody paid taxes. Mass arrests, mass seizure of properties, mass cancellations of passports, massive lawsuits, martial law, national emergency, and all other forms and fashions of social unrest? But Giesecke & Devrient Malaysia Sdn Bhd, incorporated 03-06-2002, Company Registration Number 0573030M / 200201005367 in Shah Alam are still printing our ringgits! Who checks and controls them? If ringgits are printed shouldn’t taxation be abolished so that people can save and spend as they wish, and with adequate price controls I am sure the economy will remain proactively buoyant. If more money is required to be in circulation, there’s always the printing machines in Shah Alam that can get very busy everyday and twice as busy on Sundays.
So here we are coming face to face with identity politics that do not accept performance politics. The beggar seems to have no voice in this sorry state of affairs. We have a gridlock between the Official Secrets Act and the Sedition Act. The nine fundamental liberties entombed in the Federal Constitution represent a miniscule measure of meaningful rights when seen in the grand design and structure of the 182 Articles and 13 Schedules. These fundamental liberties are seldom resurrected but receive regular “crucifictions.” The only way to survive is to take cognizance of an old African proverb recited by Kofi Annan – one time United Nations Secretary General: “When the sharks bite you, do not bleed.” Never show pain outwardly; when you bleed the sharks get great satisfaction; be unfazed. Carry on dissenting in the hope that millions will be awakened as a uniting voice for change and reform.
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