The Malaysian Insider

AUG 20 — "All great world-historic facts and personages appear twice. The first time as tragedy, the second time as farce." So Marx wrote in the 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte.

I doubt the trumped-up sodomy charges, now in its second version, against Anwar Ibrahim would appear even as a footnote in world history but it could very well ended as a chapter that our grandchildren have to master to pass their history exam. We could only imagine how they would amuse themselves at the farce.

But how such a tragedy, and now a farce, could be staged in our country? We have all the trappings of modernity, the facade of rule of law and governance, and an expanding enlightened middle class where such occurrence would be incongruous with our national life.

So perverse was the conduct of key institutions of our modern state and society-- the police, the prosecuting agency, the judiciary, and let us not forget the mainstream media - in handling the first sodomy case, one thought that it took place in a banana republic.

After a decade of reformasi and the dismal defeat of Mahathir's machination to smear and to assassinate the character of his former deputy I presume those inheriting his apparatus of power would have wised up, make amends, if not for idealistic reasons, for their own survival. One must live with some dignity and able to walk the street with self-respect.

The compliant mainstream media, never known for its fairness, have proven how low they could stoop and how unintelligent they were prepared to be. Let's not talk of integrity they have lost or credibility undermined because they never had it, as far as I can remember. As for freedom they never desire it let alone to fight for it.

Now they meet their nemesis. Not among the bloggers, because they are sometimes too full of themselves and grumpy old journalists with an axe to grind in their midst also didn't help, but with the emerging independent news portals.

Professional and energetic cyber journalism with the power to attract advertisers is what going to take down the toadying media, led by Utusan Malaysia, and pushed them out of the mainstream. With their hegemony gone, exclusionary discourse such as ketuanan Melayu, the fetish of Bumiputera robber barons, will have to compete with the voice of reason and the advocacy for inclusionary national interests.

The economic situation is bleak enough.

The country needs new policy initiatives, bold measures, to energize the economy. Stale and failed policies must be discarded. Much imagination and intellectual courage is needed. Still Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi insists to re-enact the sodomy episode and bungling himself in every steps.

So what do we have? An act of buffoonery from a college dropout elevated to front pages, filling so many column inches, and follow-up stories, in the sunset days of the mainstream media. And our Tun Mahathir Mohamad, constantly alert and ever generous in supplying comments, partakes in the national buffoonery by joining the chorus demanding Anwar to swear by the Qur'an to assert his innocence.

Of course Tun Mahathir never believed in the rule of law and the integrity of the judges.

He burnt more midnight candles to plot the downfall of judiciary as an independent institution with integrity than in the construction of the twin towers.

One will have to leave it to historians to undertake a forensic study to catalogue his subversions of key institutions of justice.

That's what will happen if modern institution of justice fails, a retreat into way of settling disputes in the bygone era - swearing and duelling.

Does the Tun think that justice which requires rigorous procedure and stringent rules of evidence could be replaced with a simple swearing by the Qur'an?

Has he forgotten, in one of the most famous episode in early Islamic history, Muawiyah, on the advice of the wily Amr bin al-As, employed the mushaf of the Qur'an as ruse of war to save his army from destruction?

They hoisted the Qur'an at spear point suing for ceasefire and submit to arbitration. The Caliph Ali could see through the ruse, but the majority of his army, pious but naive, succumbed to it, as a result they snatched defeat from jaws of victory.

There is an old mosque in Melaka - the Mesjid Kampung Hulu. It was the mosque of Abdullah Munshi, the greatest of the enlightened Malay intellectuals and man of letters.

So many pious people, and perhaps saints, have prayed and taught there and the mosque acquired a great sanctity.

But for the ignorant, the superstitious and kampong buffoons of Melaka they go to the mosques not for knowledge or prayers.

They go there to swear and curse each other with God's calamity as a means of settling disputes.

It seems that village buffoon, the butt of kenduri jokes in my younger days, is a species that has not gone into extinction.

Far from it, it acquires a status of national celebrity, beyond the wildest imagination of traditional buffoons.

They must thank Umno immensely for it.

Will the antics of our national buffoon sell? "The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living" said Marx again in the same book.

Education Minister Datuk Seri Hishamuddin Hussein, is one great promoter of the buffoon. Can we trust the brain of our children to him?

Khalid Jaafar is a Parti Keadilan Rakyat supreme council member

Comments (1)

Show/Hide comments

Show/Hide comment form