Malaysia - a nation divided

A sure sign that the nation is divided is witnessed by accusations coming from one side of the political fence, of police harassing the gathering in Kuala Terengganu which led to two people being shot, but thankfully not mortally.

As malaysiakini reported, Anwar Ibrahim of course would express his ‘deep concern’ over the ‘new heights of police harassment’ that he said led to the shooting incident.

He said the use of water cannon and tear gas by the police in the Batu Buruk incident was evidence of “new heights in police harassment towards gatherings considered unfavourable to the government."

He was posturing of course. Use of water cannot or tear gas hasn’t exactly been ‘new’, regardless of whether those actions could be considered as ‘heights’ in forceful police action. But then, Anwar Ibrahim always has a way with words.

I didn’t expect him (or did I Lim KS) to say anything about the possibility of scary mob behaviour towards a solo police office in mufti caught amidst the angry crowd.

Those of you who haven’t been caught by a mob wouldn’t know what I mean – and mind you, even my own experiences, though frightening, were considerably light with one even having a humorous outcome. But some mobs can be and had been deadly serious and extremely nasty!

Trust Anwar again to resort to his pseudo-Renaissance nice-to-hear statements like ‘political power does not flow out of the barrel of a gun.’

He added: "The discharge of gunshots in the incident suggested that police harassment has reached new heights. This is cause for grave concern.”

The reality is that this stage we still don’t know what had happened. In my previous post Shooting truth? - Truth shot? I did attempt to analyse what had occurred.

I considered one possibility of a mob terrifying a police officer, who might have lacked the cool and collected judgement and indeed disciplined training to refrain from being Rambo.

But at the end of the day, we lacked the correct information while possessing plenty of prejudice, but our actions against a supposedly neutral party (no, not the political type but the uniformed men and women in blue) speak volumes of our divided nation.

Leaving aside those opposition politicians whose jobs are to criticise the BN politicians ceaselessly (and that's their job), most anti-BN people would readily jump the gun (pun not intended) to blame the police, because the police (apart form its notoriety) is seen as UMNO's own Praetorian Guards and not the neutral trusted public service it ought to be - and we're talking about 'best case' scenario in this respect - the 'worst case' is of course the police are viewed as uniformed criminals.

Also, that DPM Najib said one shot when some alleged there were two drew accusations of him covering up for the police. The reality has been that Najib could only comment on what he was told by the police.

But of course everyone anti-BN expects that it's only normal for Chief Inspector Najib Tun Razak to be down in the field to carry out investigations as to whether one or two shots were fired before he as DPM made any comments on the shooting. - such has been our powers of reasoning clouded by prejudice of hatred.

Well, we've just learnt from malaysiakini that the police latest brief gave 4 shots being fired while the policeman who did it wasn't a FRU bloke but rather, just an ordinary General Duties mata-mata (policeman), who received several stitches following the mob attack and is currently on medical leave.

According to malaysiakini, the FRU bloke (not the mata-mata) is undergoing treatment for injuries sustained during Saturday’s clash between the police and opposition supporters. He was hurt when the angry crowd pelted police personnel with bottles, stones and other objects. In total, four police officers, including Wan and Azmi, were injured.

Yes, we have in the blue corner the BN and its ally, the Royal Malaysian Police, whilst in the red corner stand the main opposition parties (yes, political ones this time), namely PAS, PKR and DAP.

Of course in other cases, in one corner would be most Muslims against pig farms, whilst in the other were non-Muslims (not so much for pigs but more) for anything against Muslims and Islam.

I can think of one more situation where the blue-red corners get all sorts of bizarre combination – eg. re Malaysia being an Islamic nation, PAS would join DAP, MCA, MIC and Gerakan Party to say bull to the notion that UMNO has formed an Islamic State, while of course UMNO would be (alone in) saying Yes.