Musings on the pedantry and pettiness of politics in our country

Musings on the pedantry and pettiness of politics in our country


31 Jan 2025 • 6:30 PM MYT


TheRealNehruism
Writer. Seeker. Teacher

Image credit: Focus Malaysia/Focus Malaysia / The Sun


I can’t believe that Ramasamy’ Urimai has not been registered yet. The way that Ramasamy has been going hither and thither, I thought that his party must have been registered a long time ago , and he was just going about town preparing for an election to come.


Turns out I was wrong. Not only has Ramasamy’s Urimai not been registered, he is even being forced to go to court to get it registered.


According to Ramasamy, the delay in the registration of Urimai forced Urimai to pursue judicial review, which was scheduled for Jan 27 at the High Court in Kuala Lumpur, but even his date with the court has been postponed to next month.


Hearing about the amount of trouble that he has to go through just to complete the humble task of getting a political party registered, I am even beginning to get suspicious that Ramasamy might be a more important political figure than I had presumed.


I am quite sure that it was more than a year ago that Ramasamy had asked me to give him a good name for a party that he wished to start. I remember giving several names, but more than the names itself, i remember giving him the suggestion that it would be good for the long form of the name of his party should be in English or Malay, but its acronym stand for a Tamil word.


Although Ramasamy did not take up any of the names I had given him, I would like to believe that the fact that the acronym for the United for the Rights of Malaysians Party is Urimai, which is a Tamil word that stands for rights, means that I might had some part in the naming of his party anyway.


But I digress.


The point I want to make here is, why does it take more than one year to register a political party?


Afterall, how hard can the process be? If you can register a business in a few days, I think you should be able to register a political party within a half a month at most.


Considering all this, it is really difficult for to believe that the delay in registering Ramasamy’s party is not a petty attempt to stump Ramasamy from making his mark on the country's politics .


Anyway, I hope that Ramasamy’s party will get registered soon, not only because I have a sentimental attachment to it, on account of having played some part in the construction of its name ( or at least that is what I believe. I have no way of knowing whether this is true, but this is what I believe. These days, you have to qualify everything you say, less some politician takes offense to it and make a police report or sue you for it), but also because his situation seems to be the another incident in a long series of incidents that suggests that political situation in the country is becoming palpably more edgy, pedantic and petty.


Other than Ramasamy's unusual delay, I find that whenever I read the news these days, I can't help but find one incident and after another of a molehill being transformed into a mountain for petty, pedantic and superfluous reason.


Just a moment ago, for example, when I was scrolling through the news, I found out that Hannah Yeoh is serving a Pas politician a letter of demand for saying that she is related to YTL founder Yeoh Tiong Lay. I also read that an editor at Malaysia Kini had his laptop confiscated simply for printing an alleged defamatory statement made by Khairy Jamalluddin, which Khairy had earlier uttered on his podcast.


I really don't understand why a politician has to say who another politician is related to on stage, or why the other politician has to make arrangements to sue the politician for saying it ? Who cares who your relatives are? Are we so petty to think that if your relative is Bentong Kali, you must also have the qualities of a hardened criminal? And how would you know you are not related to Bentong Kali? Do you really know everybody you are related to? Is there really no chance that your mother's brother's wife's uncle's cousin's sister's nephew might be Bentong Kali ?


As for the Malaysia Kini editor who had his laptop seized, that editor did not even come up with the alleged statement, mind you. That editor had merely reprinted it, and what was reprinted was based on something that anyone can view on youtube. Despite that, the editor’s laptop was seized anyway.


Looking at all this, I feel that everybody has to walk on eggshells in the third year of the Madani government's reign, because you can get yourself in an awful amount of trouble for the most trivial of things, like having the wrong labels on a garbage bag that you bought online.


As a content creator, I have to say that pettiness is blessing, but the edginess is a curse.


The edginess is a curse because it is causing me to censor my own thoughts too often for comfort, which interrupts my flow of thoughts, and reduces the quality of my work.


When I write, I enjoy it best when I write as if I am talking to a friend - it is fun when I can say things in a flow, without needing to be so punctilious and dot every i or cross every t, because I would like to believe that you dear readers, are an intelligent person who can think for yourself and put things together on your own without needing everything qualified and explained to you. This is how your friend should speak to you, isn't it ? They should speak to you while respecting you as an intelligent person, and without suspecting that everything you are saying to them is attempt by you to harm, mislead or befuddle them.


But this year, I have to say, I reckon that it is only angels and demigods that will be able to enjoy communicating in Malaysia, because the pressure to get everything right is getting so overwhelming, that when I write, I sometimes feel that I can't even say that “ I think that it is going to rain tomorrow”, without somebody asking me to justify the source of my information or feeling like I am liable to being sued because of what I had said, even if it is what I said is something inoccous as what I think the weather tomorrow might be, because someone somewhere is looking at every sentence and word that I utter to find a falut, so that they can take offfense and make it sound as if I spend all my time plotting on how to say something that is “false, misleading and cause panic in society.”


But on the bright side, I must say that the pettiness in the political landscape in the country is also a sort of a blessing in disguise, because it gives you plenty of material to write about with little to no need for research . Honestly, what research is there to do about issues like a couple of politician arguing about what “ham” means or why the ex-prime minister's wife intends to sue someone for saying she indulges in black magic.


Nothing, absolutely nothing.


My fellow Malaysians and readers however, seem to be complaining about it the insignificance of it all relentlessly.


“Can’t you find anything more worthwhile to write about, Nehru?” They keep pestering me in the comment sections of my articles.


Well, all I can say to their criticism is that “Friends, it is not me that doesn't want to write about something meaningful in the political situation in the country, but it is easier to find a shadow at midnight than do what you ask of me, considering the material that I have to work with. As much as you don't appreciate it, it is these pieces, about ham sandwiches and black magic, garbage bags and who a politician thinks another politician's relative is, that I will likely have to regale you with, because this is likely going to be as good as it gets in this beloved country of ours in the year of the snake.