Hindraf in slipstream of its own confusion

Will Hindraf play the spoiler as it has voiced its intention to do so in some constituencies, with the effect of Pakatan candidates losing to BN in a three-corner contest?

But regardless of the election outcome, wouldn't it be Hindraf or for that matter, anybody’s democratic rights to stand as an election candidate, even in Pakatan contested constituencies?

So why are Pakatan supporters condemning Hindraf? What? Both Pakatan and Hindraf will lose in such a three-corner fight?

But Hindraf said: 'So what! F* you Pakatan selfish bastards ... and of course (being equal opportunity people) ... bitches.'

Who are the people behind Hindraf?

We have certainly heard of the brothers Waythamoorthy and 'I am God' Uthayakumar wakakaka, but what about M Manoharan and V Ganabatirau.

The latter two are DAP members. M Manoharan became the 3^rd person in Malaysian history to win an election while detained under the ISA. He stood as a DAP candidate in the Kota Alam Shah state seat on 08 March 2008 and won magnificently, despite being behind bars then.

In that constituency dominated by ethnic Chinese voters, Manoharan garnered 12,699 votes to thrash Gerakan’s Ching Su Chen (5515 votes) kau kau by a majority of 7,184 votes.

Yet whenever Uthayakumar or some people in his camp talked about Hindraf, it’s as if their No 1 enemy is DAP, when the fact is that half of Hindraf's original leadership have been or are DAP members. That’s the unfortunate lie to the real political picture the so-called Hindraf people have been (mis)representing.

Even sweetie Helen Ang has unfortunately walked down that same path, adopting so-called Hindraf’s postulation, perhaps because the DAP has since become her most disliked political party.

And why has Helen taken the BN’s ‘road to Damascus’ one may ask, when she was previously known to be anti BN?

I won’t claim to be the only one to know the reason but I certainly do, perhaps only one of a rare few, but sorry, I’ll never ever reveal the secret. Even among adversaries (and lamentably Helen and I, once good friends, have become so) there must be honour (of confidentiality).

Today Helen wrote an interesting article in Free Malaysia Today with a catchy title of Hindraf in slipstream of two-race system.

Disregarding for a moment the incorrect and inappropriate claim by some to sole ownership of the Hindraf name, Helen’s article indirectly alluded to a 3 race struggle, with Hindraf's Hindu Indians (mind, not Christian Indians or Muslim Indians or Buddhist Indians but Hindu Indians) struggling in the Malay-Chinese political wake or in a position to cause turbulence to an already turbulent Malay-Chinese roiling vortex. So with Hindraf as an angry spiteful spoiler, it'll be a three-race and not two-race system.

Though at times I don’t agree with Helen's views (in her articles), I have always admired and respected her writings (with one previous exception wakakaka), but she has once again spoiled her latest by the invincible bias she holds against DAP. While we all have our prejudices (and everyone knows mine wakakaka) we should always endeavour as far as possible to stick to substantiated facts. Alas, Helen didn’t when she wrote: “Looking into the future, the Indians will necessarily have to pick sides and their choice will boil down to siding either with the Malays or the Chinese, the latter dominated politically by Christian Anglophiles.”

The Chinese dominated by Christian Anglophiles? Puhleeeze lah, my darleeeng!

Of course when Helen mentioned Chinese being dominated by Christian Anglophiles, make no mistake, she was referring to the DAP.

Okay, let us leave out DAP's Charles Santiago and Joe Fernandez, both of whom, though not Chinese, must be Christians and possibly Anglophiles as alleged by Helen Ang, and thus not true Hindu Indian representatives. But what say the rest, people like Bai Karpal and sons Gobind Singh Deo & Jagdeep Singh, Chong Eng (married to artist Gunabalan Krishnasamy), M Manogaran, cilipadi Fong Po Kuan, M Kula Segaran, A Tanasekharan, S Veerapan, R Sanisvara Nethaji Rayer, K Arumugam, P Gunasekaran, A Sivasubramaniam, V Sivakumar, Sivanesan Achalingam, and a host of others?

I am not just asking about Chinese but also Christian and Anglophilic dominations in DAP.

Nonetheless the ‘convincibility’ (kaytee’s new word wakakaka) of Helen Ang’s well-penned article (notwithstanding some obvious and highly biased inaccuracies) has been seized upon by Hindraf’s National Advisor, N Ganesan, in a letter to Malaysia-Today. RPK has published it under the title Hindraf's Challenge to Pakatan and to BN, where Ganesan wrote:

... it has become conventional wisdom that since Indians do not form a majority in any single constituency, and are an economically depressed community it will be nigh impossible to gain true representation for Indian socio-economic interests which implies that it will continue to be dependent on the largesse of the party in power.

I wonder why Indians do not form a majority in any single constituency. I doubt this is by design, as the insinuation had alluded, as MIC has been a loyal poodle to UMNO for 50+ years, which would have made Indian dominated constituencies virtual BN strongholds. The simple fact remains that ethnic minorities are more likely to remain as minorities in an electoral constituency by virtue of their small numbers.

In fact, it’s widely known that the pro opposition Chinese are deliberately sardine-ized into humongously big constituencies where they then won’t enjoy equivalent enfranchisement as, say, Putrajaya’s residents. So being the ethnic majority in one constituency is not always a good thing and has proven to be counter-productive to equal representation in Parliament.

HINDRAF challenges these three assumptions and the first stones were cast with the 2007 HINDRAF rally. HINDRAF has been unrelenting in this challenge ever since.

... bearing in mind of course many Hindraf leaders have been or are members of DAP.

Effectively what HINDRAF is seeking for the Indian minority community is a more equitable power sharing formula that addresses these inherent weaknesses of the system as far as minorities are concerned. What HINDRAF is seeking is a more just Malaysia, where the citizens worth or rights is not determined by their ethnicity or their economic status, but by more fundamental and natural rights as citizens. HINDRAF works for the larger cause of a more just Malaysia, regardless of what HINDRAF’s detractors have to say.

... precisely what DAP is doing which may explain why Manoharan, Ganabatirau and many in Indraf have joined DAP.

Given the workings of the electoral system the leading parties must yet win the Indians votes, so they can continue to rule.

... perhaps may be worthwhile here to mention that Karpal Singh and sons, Kula Segaran, Ramasamy, Manoharan etc have all won handsomely against BN Chinese candidates (including Gerakan’s President Koh TK wakakaka) with massive Chinese (and not just Indian) support.

They therefore resort to a wide range of deception to garner the Indian votes. One key technique is to have Indians in their ranks in the State Assemblies and in the Parliament and tout it as Indian representation. They try very hard with Makkal Sakthi, MIC and the latest addition to this motley list, Indraf to achieve this deception. Truly representative policies for the socio-economic interests of the Indians are non-existent on both sides of the political spectrum. This has been defacto BN policy for 55 years and stated (yes, stated) Pakatan policy in the last 4 years.

So, according to Nadesan’s bizarre argument, it would be wrong to claim there’s Indian representation by merely having Indians as ADUNs and MPs. And presumably in line with Uthayakumar’s ideology, these Indians would be the despised mandores.

But pray then what would be ‘true’ Indian representations? Only Hindraf candidates? Hey, DAP already has them, so what's next, my dear Ganesan?

Furthermore, Ganesan in groaning and moaning about 'representative policies for the socio-economic interests of the Indians' has effectively back-flipped on his earlier claim of Hindraf 'seeking ... a more just Malaysia, where the citizens worth or rights is not determined by their ethnicity or their economic status, but by more fundamental and natural rights as citizens'. It would seem Ganesan can't make up his mind, not unlike Uthayakumar.

But from there, Ganesan quoted Helen Ang’s article again and changed Hindraf’s arguments from race-base into a class-base struggle, stating:

So it is between the Chinese elite and the Malay elite that the Indian poor have to choose from. The experience with the Malay elite has been one of systematic discrimination, racism and marginalization for the Indian poor. The experience with the Chinese elite and the smaller section of the Malay elite has been equally a disastrous for the Indian poor in a much shorter space of time – if you look at the experience of the poor Indians in Kedah, in Penang, in Perak, and in Selangor. If you have been watching the issues we have raised in Pakatan controlled States in these columns, the story is clear.

Two observations here:

Firstly, Ganesan has unrealistically, yes, unrealistically expected Pakatan to fully address 52 years of neglect in just the four years Pakatan has come into power in Penang and Selangor, and then with only State level power.

Please do not include PAS’ controlled Kedah as even the Chinese have been disadvantaged, having lost their only abattoir for slaughtering pigs and suffering less access in buying houses as the PAS state government raised the Malay quota from 30 to 50%, while in Kelantan, developers must now ensure building architecture follows Islamic character, whatever this means (perhaps minarets and domes of 1001 Arabian Nights' fantasy?), and

Secondly, Ganesan is a wee too late to shift his goalpost to a class struggle, a domain long occupied competently by Dr Jeya and his PSM (or even PRM who has been there for eons).

Obviously, Ganesan must have been aware of condemnations against Uthayakumar’s Hindraf as being too overtly and overly race-base, and has now attempted by stealth to shift its campaign into a class struggle, but still retaining its racist overtones by mentioning:

In the next GE the choice for the Indians as Helen Ang puts it in her article (HINDRAF in slipstream of two-race system- June 3, 2012 FMT) is not between the Chinese and the Malays, it is really between the Chinese elite and the Malay elite. Being the elite, like elite everywhere else in the world, their primary preoccupation is to control the levers of policy, so they can usurp the larger part of the resources of this nation. Ethnicity matters only to the extent of gaining that control. The contention between the Chinese elite and the Malay elite is intensifying.

It’s quite painful reading Ganesan’s surreal (kafkaesque, wakakaka) argument that the Chinese - now, just who would be a Chinese elite? CSL? Vincent Tan? Robert Kuok? - want to usurp the larger part of Malaysia’s resources. One could be forgiven for saying N Ganesan must have been handed, and reading from, Dr Mahathir’s notes – see Those bloody rich Chinese!