What Abe Would Have Said To Malaysians Today

The Spanker posted Karim Raslan’s article in the Star entitled “For sure public advocacy is here to stay” because I agree with him, to a certain extent. I agree that where in the past we would have dealt with controversial matters surreptitiously, nowadays such delicacy and tact are considered old-fashioned if not deceitful.

I agree that to most onlookers, it would appear as if Malaysian public life has been hijacked by politicians and hard pushing NGO’s.

It would appear that we are all addicted to “experts”.

They tell us what to eat, how to vote, raise our kids, fix our homes, buy our holiday packages, interpret political events, which God to pray to, What we can and cannot call God and, very recently, who we can and cannot bonk.

They’re all over the media – print and digital, traditional and new, telling us what to think, because there’s just too much information for us to sort out ourselves. So we often cede our own opinions to them because, well… they’re experts, so they know better than us. Right?

This is the part I disagree with Karim. In the opposition’s recent attacks in Parliament on 1MDB and KLIFD, for example, we discovered that some of our self styled guardians of the public – our financial gurus – don’t know much at all.

The main and loudest whiner against 1MDB is Tony Pua. There’s enough been written about how he raped his own company Cyber Village to make millions for himself at the expense of others. Go google it for yourself.

Now that he’s a member of the opposition, he’s suddenly concerned about the rakyat’s public funds? His proposal to cut the "bloated" civil service is another case in point of "cakap tak serupa bikin". Has the PKR trimmed/laid off civil servants in the states they control? Oh wait. Silly me. It doesn't apply to them.   

Another expert we have dishing out her crusade for justice is Datuk Ambiga Sreenevasan. She’s fighting for free and fair elections. An admirable cause, I wholeheartedly admit. What I do not agree with are her methods.

If I have a problem with Ahmad, I will endeavor to sit down with him over a glass of teh tarik and some curry puffs and try and sort things out honestly and sincerely. I would not slash Ahmad with a parang, videotape the attack, distribute it for the whole world to see just how bad Ahmad is and how he provoked me and forced me to violence and then proceed to give him a handyplas and only then ask Ahmad if we could sit down and discuss matters.

Also, giving a press conference after the said incident and being flanked by Lim Kit Siang and Anwar Ibrahim only screams out loud that she has already chosen sides, so where is the “free and fair” struggle?. Remain neutral if free and fair is your actual goal.

I saw her on TV3 recently dishing out killer stares and threatening legal action over being questioned in the Seksualiti Merdeka incident. Wooo. She fierce. Me scared.      

And seriously, the Spanker is getting tired of every single thing being politicised nowadays to manipulate the rakyat’s emotions in anticipation of the upcoming elections. Playing the race card is not only downright disgusting and desperate but dangerous to boot.

What is it about all these so called experts out there? Does having expertise in a particular field actually mean you make better decisions than us regular people? Or are they just part of  the cult of the opposition, an ever-growing agenda of “industry experts” that wants to become our latest new religion?

Abraham Lincoln was indeed a wise man. He got it right back in the 18th century. You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time.