It’s probably the impulse to keep private things relating to the family just that: private. Sometimes what’s worse is not actually being poor, or dysfunctional, or broken; sometimes what’s worse is being thought as such by your neighbours.
I notice how this infects alot of Malaysians. There’s probably nothing wrong with keeping what concerns a family within the family; outsiders really have no business with our own internal squabbles, do they?
All the secrecy, however, breeds a few things: a desire to be perceived as ‘normal’ or ‘with it’; an excuse to silence dissenting voices; and the assurance that if things really are going wrong, the family gets to solve it their own way.
That’s what probably motivated our Deputy Internal Security Minister to tell off potential tourists, though I cannot be sure; we could describe this whole incident as one man suddenly having his authority questioned in a land where he and his ilk have control over everything.
Whether my sentiments about Noh Omar, or whether our Malaysian sense of ‘keeping it in the family’ for the sake of face has any validity, it’s been the presumed cause for an attack against DAP ministers. LKS certainly feels sorely about it. The same follows for Ms Teresa Kok. As LKS remarked, why the sudden turn-around. We all know, of course, that it’s all about politics.
I say presumed cause, because BN parliamentarians are not just playing to the galleries in parliament, but to the people at large. This whole event in parliament today will no doubt be screamed across the newspapers tomorrow morning.
Imagine the man on the street picking up the papers and reading of how his own elected representatives, whose sense he trusts, have come out strong against the supposed maleficience of DAP ministers.
What better way to distract people who should know better than by appealing to our heightened sense of shame - or rather, ‘face’ - than by leveling such accusations? The public, after all, have been more willing to believe even more spurious declarations in the past.
We all know the accusation about DAP bringing ’shame to the country’ is a straw man, but do you expect the public to know better? Especially if you’ve got newspaper columnists allowing us to draw dangerous implications by making obtuse suggestions and stringing words like “Chinese” and “Greed” and “Dollars” and “Profiling” together.
The ‘argument’ or accusation is so laughable, I find it hard to object to it. Who cares what I or other dissenters think? It’s more important what the majority of Malaysians think.
In the midst of this, I have been finding it disturbing how DAP ministers have been praising Nazri Aziz for standing up against his peers (if not in words, then maybe in spirit). This was the same person who screamed the words “racist” in parliament not too long ago.
I’m thinking that since playing the race card hasn’t extricated En Nazri from political cold storage, becoming bedfellows with Opposition MPs on inflammatory issues has become the order of the day.
I hope DAP MPs don’t get too cosy.
