Zahid Hamidi slept with an Indian

One month ago I posted Patriotism - a useful UMNO word where I wrote: Defence Minister Zahid Hamidi stated in response to a question in Parliament that the low number of Chinese and Indian recruits in the military could be due to the Chinese and Indians [being] 'not patriotic enough'.

Zahid Hamidi, once a very close ally of Anwar Ibrahim and the man who accused Dr Mahathir of corruption and cronyism in an apparent impatient move by the Anwar faction in UMNO to nudge then-PM Dr M out for Anwar’s final ascendancy to the PM’s post, but who has since abandoned his allegiance to Anwar to be allied to Najib, is hardly an appropriate person to talk about patriotism or loyalty. But Zahid is certainly the very model of treachery in UMNO or, if one really wants to be kind to him, a mercenary unprincipled opportunist.

DAP’s Kulasegaran was the man who called Zahid a patriot coward wakakaka when he scooted out of the Dewan Rakyat to evade opposition questions after delivering his 'non-Malays lack spirit of patriotism' controversy.

Since then, Zahid has made some half-hearted back-down, trying to spin his way out of his self created bigoted mess in much the same way as he had spun his way back into mainstream UMNO after deserting the Anwar Ibrahim camp.

Clever bloke and a potential general in the art of tactical redeployment wakakaka.

Yesterday in Parliament, Kulasegaran latched on to him and fired several barrage of HE (high explosive) artillery shells, passing a motion to deduct a symbolic but very indicting RM10 from Zahid’s pay. That forced Zahid to come out in girlish defence of his 1Malaysia credentials. Why ‘girlish’? I’ll come to that shortly.

After reversing his earlier comment on non-Malays lacking spirit of patriotism, and in a shameless 180 degrees direction, praising the contribution of non-Malays in the armed forces during the emergency period and the Indonesian confrontation (he failed to mention their contributions on overseas missions) who had “given their limbs and lives for this beloved country”, Zahid claimed the following as proof that he wasn’t racist:

"I have many Indian and Chinese friends and voters in my area who are non-Malays. Did you ever have friend in university who are not of your race?

"I used to share a room in the dorm with an Indian, in my final year in University Malaya. I shared a room with an Indian."

The roar of wakakaka’s from the opposition bench shook the foundations of the already unstable Parliament building. Kula sneeringly commented: "What does that have to do with anything? That does not explain the statement you made as a minister."

I too have been overwhelmed by a bout of heavy wakakaka-ing at Zahid’s resort to a very girlish reply.

Two years ago, as I posted in Racist Malaysians, a sweetie blogger by the name of (ironically) Sammy wakakaka (no relation to that Samy), made a very hurtful racist comment against Indians. I wrote:

Blogger Sammy, alas a sweetie, of Life is a Drama is certainly living up to her motto of ‘A life without a dash of conflict and colour will not be a complete one’, except she chose the theme of colour a wee too literally, and consequentially is now reaping the ugly conflict.

According to Malaysiakini, Sammy went ballistic when two alleged Indian youths snatched her mobile phone left on a table while she was having lunch. She did the silly thing by resorting to cynical stereotyping of Indians in the worst ways, and then made things worse for herself by posting the entire racist raving rant on her blog. […]

After she had ‘woken’ up from her rage she realized the enormity of what she had done and apologized, but when I read her blog this afternoon I thought she could have closed the whole issue (or at least most of it) by making an unreserved apology, instead of qualifying it by stating she apologized to ‘educated’ Indians, whatever that meant.

Much later in another post she admitted being told that her apology had been ‘grudging’. She posted:

I realised this is getting way out of hand. I was also dubbed as 'grudgingly apologised' in my later post. Since text has no tone and emotions, I don't know how to make it sound sincere but I do hope to get this out as sincere as I can. Again, I will apologise and say sorry to those I've offended, Indian or no Indian. I hope this official apology does not sound 'grudgy' again.

I was not racist and was acting out of my anger the last few days. If i've to face the police, then yes i will to explain the whole situation. If i were to hate indians, I would not wear saree on my Indian friend's birthday party because that would be ridiculous.

Sammy’s proof of her non-racist attitude towards Indians was that she wore a saree, not unlike Zahid’s sharing a room with an Indian. That’s why I said Zahid was ‘girlish’. Pity Zahid didn’t claim he wore a dhoti wakakaka.

But at least Sammy unlike Zahid made a full apology the second time.

But it’s amazing that these people dare expect us to accept their claims of mere superficialities as proof that they aren’t bigots. It certainly reflected on the superficial nature of their characters.