Jebat's already in the house. Where is Hang Tuah?

Berita Daily

Hang Tuah holds childhood friend Hang Jebat after being forced to end his killing spree.

24/09/2015 08:04 AM

 

How long the wait will be is moot, but the gracious Malays will never be too quiet for too long when taken advantage of by those they consider should know better.

 

Hussein Hamid

 

With their numerical electoral advantage, the Malays have positioned and maintained Umno at the pinnacle of political power in Malaysia for the last half a century. The bond between the Malays and Umno was forged out of a mutual need to advance each other's agendas - for Umno it is politics, and for the Malays, social cohesion and economic advancement.

Sometime in the recent decade, what Umno wanted for itself and what the Malays aspired for themselves were no longer congruent.

For Umno, politics breed not only greed but also arrogance, and, to the chagrin of the Malays, that greed and arrogance was at their expense! Billions meant for the economic advancement of the Malays went into the pockets of Umno's own and the Malays bore the brunt of the arrogance that Umno's political leaders dispensed as they reminded the Malays time and time again of what Umno has done for the Malays.The Malays, so Umno intoned, have much to be grateful to Umno for what Umno has done for them in the years after Merdeka!

Politics and economic advancement were entitlements that Umno increasingly took for itself at the expense of the Malays at large. The bond between the Malays and Umno was no longer tenable and each took flight in diverging directions seeking new couplings with like-minded partners. Today, Umno and the Malays, seem to be irreversibly disconnected from each other.

How and why this has happened would be for history to tell our grandchildren but this much we can be sure of for now.

To its discredit, Umno is responsible for what the Malays have now become - a people mired in conflict among themselves, in conflict with other religions and other races. A people much troubled and full of self-doubt about their place in society, about their status in society and about what the future holds for them.

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