I CRY FOR MALAYSIA

Say what you want – I think this country is going to ruin, if we are not careful. And every time I walk the street and see a foreigner, my heart throbs faster.

I live around Ukay Perdana, Ampang and as I drive home, I see more foreigners, mainly those from Indonesia and Bangladesh. I can easily make them out to be foreigners from the way they speak. Some are no longer wage earners toiling at construction sites, but have become small time entrepreneurs and are even employing locals as haired hands. In the villages, many are known to have leased out plots of land from its rightful local owner, and turn the land to agriculture and selling its produce at profitable prices. The lessor is quite happy to earn some money from the lease of his land, ignoring the fact that he could have earned much more if he had toiled the land himself. The lessee is even much happier to have a place for shelter, a land to toil and a reasonable income from the sale of his agricultural produce. The land provides him with all that is needed to sustain a comfortable life.

I do not envy these small time foreign entrepreneurs making a living for I think they have every right to do so, given the ease at which they can do business without the worry of being harassed by the local licensing authorities. The can do business anywhere and everywhere they please; just pitch an umbrella along the roadside, and that umbrella will get larger and larger and eventually a small hut is built to replace the umbrellas. Even when the hut is built to the obvious knowledge and sight of everyone, the local authorities would still play blind, deaf and mute. You have to see to believe it, and Ampang municipality is famous for such ‘grisly sights’. This trend does not seem to worry the local authorities, and I just do not know the reason why.

Now, I am told that the Election Commission (EC) has registered 820,000 new voters in 2010; a substantial increase of 533,000 voters from 2009. This terrifies me. How on earth can there be such a phenomenal increase over a period on just a year. Am I to believe that all of a sudden, our non-voting Malaysians have awakened from their slumber, and have now decided to register as a voter for the up-coming GE? Why the next GE, when they were not at all concern during all previous GEs? I have known many Malaysians, especially the young ones are not ‘savvy’ about voting, and are not too concern whoever gets elected. Therefore, can the sudden increase in newly registered voters be these Indonesian and Bangladesh entrepreneurs that I have mentioned above? Let’s hope Africans have not joined the queue to be registered voters, but by the way things go, one cannot rule out the possibility that an African can one day be a candidate for parliament. We already have it in the USA, and the person’s name is Obama.

And finally, who now says that Mat Sabu is a traitor? All former soldiers, policemen and auxiliary policemen that served during the First Malayan Emergency fighting the communist terrorist throughout the colonial era ought to be thankful to Mat Sabu the ‘traitor’ for opening his gap by raising the Bukit Kepong incident. Had he not made the Bukit Kepong an issue, I do not think these former soldiers, policemen, auxiliary and their families would get the one-off cash handout of RM3000 that was announced by PM Najib recently. And thanks too for the RM500 bonus due end of the year, and a 2% annual increase in my pension beginning 2013.


CRUSADE AGAINST CORRUPTION