Tokong of Penang met God of Climatology

Malaysiakini - Amid Penang floods, Chong tells ‘deity-like’ Guan Eng not to fight the heavens (extracts):

MCA Youth chief Chong Sin Woon today waded into Lim Guan Eng’s appeal to the federal government for assistance in Penang's devastating floods, stating that the chief minister was not able to overcome the problem despite his "deity-like" status.

"We saw Lim Guan Eng made a video in the early hours appealing for assistance from the federal government.

"(Despite being) ‘deity-like’…he is not as powerful as he claims to be in solving the flood problem.

"Therefore, don't fight the heavens, even if you're a deity," he said during the 64th MCA annual general assembly at the MCA headquarters in Kuala Lumpur today.

Chong's comment elicited laughs and applause from the floor.

But I personally feel Chong's joke was flat and very much off colour because the joke insinuated Lim Guan Eng had been 'fighting' the heavens, and thus in a very nasty sense Chong had imputed (politically at least) Guan Eng has been disrespectful to the Chinese concept of 'Heavens' (Gods).

Nor for that matter, Guan Eng had ever resorted to divine name-dropping.

The unpleasant truth has been that no one expected Typhoon Damrey to leave such a powerful devastating impact on a traditionally non-typhoon country like Peninsular Malaysia, especially its north-western state of Penang.

Whether one is superstitious or scientific minded, the physical wrath of the climatological God cannot be denied nor avoided.

Secondly, t'was not LGE who called or appropriated for himself the title of 'tokong'. It was a covert-naughty appellation given to him by Lim's somewhat grumpy DCM I, Mansor Othman of PKR, in 2012.

I had then written:

Penang DCM I, Mansor Othman, thought he was safe within the confines, comradeship and confidentiality of a closed-door PKR special (to Chinese echelon leaders) meeting, when he let loose his opinion of CM Lim Guan Eng wakakaka.

Mansor Othman 

And it sure as mafulat didn’t help when his CM boss belongs to a different (and potentially rival) political party. Alamak, not brilliant ler for a PKR No 2 saying his DAP No 1 is cocky, arrogant and (considered by Penangites as a) tokong, wakakaka.

As FMT journalist Athi Shanker (who I suspect from his previous writings doesn’t like DAP, wakakaka) cleverly put it:

Just when PKR thought the worst was over, the CAT has reared its ugly head again, much to the chagrin of the party’s Penang chief and Deputy Chief Minister I Mansor Othman.

CAT here is not the “competency, accountability and transparency” tune routinely sung by Chief Minister Lim Guan Eng about his Pakatan Rakyat state administration.

In this instance CAT means “cocky, arrogant, tokong”, a reference Mansor allegedly made of Lim.

If Guan Eng was equated to Guan Yu (Kwan Kong), the CM needn't fret as the 'tokong' is worshipped for his integrity, honour, righteousness & brotherhood

wakakaka

Perhaps in a sense, Chong in referring naughtily to the teasing mythical divine status of Guan Eng had capitalised politically on a 'nastie' put out initially by PKR, a so-called ally of DAP. I guess as a DAP leader, Guan Eng can always rely on PKR for tricks, traps, bobby-traps, mines and pitfalls.