Boycott?

Malaysia-Today - You deserve UMNO & BN [extracts]:

Are you really serious about change? Do you really want to see electoral reforms? Are you determined to see an end to abuse of power, corruption, mismanagement, etc? How serious are you? Are you serious enough to boycott businesses and companies of those cronies who finance Umno to ensure that they stay in power?

You may need to seriously consider another course of action. If you think that the Mamaks are the ones who are playing up race and religious issues, in particular in Penang, then boycott all Mamak businesses. If you think that Vincent Tan is one of the biggest Umno running dogs, then boycott all services and businesses associated or linked to Vincent Tan. And so on.

Let’s be clear about one thing: YOU are helping the cronies to get rich. And with this money they are keeping Umno-BN in power. Stop eating fast food (it’s bad for your health anyway). Stop buying lotteries. Stop buying cars and motorcycles from crony companies. Stop banking with crony banks. Stop using communication services from crony companies. Stop flying with crony airlines. And so on.

But many of you are too selfish. You would rather have others do the fighting for you. You would rather not suffer any inconvenience by boycotting every service and business that is linked to the ruling party. This is too much trouble. And because of that Umno and Barisan Nasional will continue to be in power even if you organise Bersih 10.0. 

Boycott has been (and still can be) a very powerful weapon, traditionally used most by Chinese Malaysians, at times for the wrong reasons.

I was told by my uncles that immediately after May 13, many Chinese boycotted the eating of satay and durians. Uncs felt the boycott was for the wrong reason, that in attempting to 'punish back' for racial attacks against Chinese, the Chinese punished many wrong people, mainly innocent traders and hawkers.

Recently we read about calls to boycott a certain brand of bread, again because of racial reason, where it was alleged that one of UMNO's cronies had cornered the flour mill sector and raised price of flour.

However, the most effective and most correct (appropriate) boycott in Malaysian goods had been that of mandarin oranges many years ago, when a certain favoured crony cornered the importation of mandarin oranges from China during the run-up to Chinese New Year (CNY).

Mandarin oranges or kam was/is an essential and vital item during CNY, so one asshole thought, with his connection, he could rake in millions by using (or misusing) his connections to possess the sole right to import the CNY-required citrus fruits. It was to be a institutionalized way to corner the lucrative market.

Naturally, the traditional importers were mightily pissed off by the crony-ized hijacking. It wasn't long before word spread around of the brutal and arrogant monopolization, and virtually every Chinese housewives (and hubbies) boycotted Chinese mandarins for that year, resorting instead to use of American, Australian and even Thai oranges (Sunkist or chiam), and then, just for the symbolic display of kam.

As the CNY approached and zillions of crates of mandarins remained unsold in warehouses, and possibly began to rot away, the wannabe millionaire panicked. He attempted to offload them, initially at reduced price, then when it was still no go, at cost price (a steal), and finally in desperation, at below cost price, but alas, the boycott was total, where wholesalers, retailers, hawkers and buyers were all united in their determination to punish that favoured 'crony' of some powerful person wakakaka.

Only American, Australian and Thai oranges were on sale and purchased.

I was informed that he suffered humongous losses, but I'm sure through our wonderful system, he was eventually compensated, perhaps by some 'friendly' insurance, wakakaka.


RPK's proposed boycott is not directed for racial reasons nor against corruptly institutionalized monopolization but to punish the UMNO-BN political cronies and subscribers to UMNO's war chests.