May Day for August House

In this country, politics divides people into two broad camps: the governing national front (BN) and those in the opposition parties. BN members in the Malaysian Parliament view opposition party members of parliament (DAP, PAS, PKR etc) with disdain and utter contempt. The former have very little respect for the latter. However good the latter’s ideas are, since they come from the ‘opposition’, they have no merit whatsoever. This shows the immaturity of our politicians in political affairs, despite receiving their education from developed countries.

Even the PM and DPM belong to this category when it comes to dealing with ideas emanating from the opposition. There has never been a case where good ideas of opposition are taken up and adopted as government policy. The BN guys are just too proud and arrogant to admit and give credit to good suggestions, propositions, and recommendations originating from the opposition.

Thus it did not come as a shock to me at all that MP Ms Fong Po Kuan’s (MP for Batu Gajah) move to refer the two recalcitrant MP’s (Mohd Said Yusof of Jasin, and Bung Mokhtar Radin of Kinabatangan) to the privileges committee was rejected by the Speaker of the House, Ramli Ngah Talib. The speaker’s excuse was completely unacceptable and merely goes to show the low mindset of the BN politicians in this country. Minister Nazri Aziz’s defence of the speaker’s action was expected—equally ‘haprak’. Talk of majority rule.

The BN women politicians, except for Ng Yen Yen from the MCA, were equally pathetic to say the least since the insults thrown by the two notorious rabble rousers (Jasin MP and Kinabatangan MP) affected all women on the face of this earth, not just the Batu Gajah MP.

How could they have tolerated this demeaning insult without batting an eyelid? Were they afraid that their rice bowl would be pulled away from under their chins had they voiced their disgust at the two goons for their filthy remarks? Just because the person being insulted directly was an opposition woman MP, does it mean it was ‘business as usual since it does not concern me after all’? How wretched!

Should we continue to call our Parliament the ‘august house’? Should we continue to address our representatives ‘Yang Berhormat’ when we know too well they have lost their ‘kehormatan’ by the droves. Some of these YB’s are not fit to sit in the so-called ‘august’ house because they behave more like ‘samseng jalanan’ than respectable representatives of the people. These samseng jalanan would sit around (lepak) by the roadside with their friends and would tease at girls passing by. They would bluster off wolf whistles to make their act even more aggravating and intimidating.

I would like to register my utter disgust at what happened in our Parliament on May 10 although I was on a plane from Jeddah to Kuala Lumpur that day. The news was picked up by Associated Press and published in the International Herald Tribune (http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/05/11/asia/AS-GEN-Malaysia-Sexist-Remark.php).

Now the whole world knows about Malaysia’s standard of debate in Parliament. One more reason why tourists should come to Malaysia this year!

It was a black day for Malaysian Parliament; it was most un-Islamic, for Islam is against such use of filthy joke in the course of promulgating a law for the people. I do not know whether “Islam Hadhari” being propagated by the Prime Minister can condone this act of the two BN MPs. By the look of things, from the deafening silence of the PM and his Deputy, it appears that Pak Lah’s “Islam Hadhari” can put up with grimy remarks from his two colleagues in the ‘noble’ house. The people being insulted by the two are actually themselves, the BN and Parliament.