57 years old and still racially straitjacketed – Dr David Quek
As we have all been discovering, of late, there has been a steady escalation of ethnic tensions, of human rights' violations and selective interpretation of the law (especially the Sedition Act) to systematically target opposition leaders as well as dissenting common citizens on very contentious and arbitrary, even petty, issues.
Nowhere in the world do we have so many misguided people using the idiotic recourse of making hundreds of "police reports" against one another, based on political and inane issues. Worse, our police selectively use these politically motivated and manoeuvred police reports to take selective actions against those they choose to believe as "threats" to society.
Worse too, that the police now feel they cannot ever be criticised by anyone, even when what they have been doing has been blatantly biased and plain wrong to most ordinary citizens. Are the police above the nation's laws? Are the police now the true powers running the country on diktats of their own, or the home minister? Are we in a police state or under an emergency or military rule? These perceptibly unjust actions of selective and disproportionate application of the law and justice or police action is creating unease and anger among reasonable citizens. They render our rule of law arguable and reek of sadly regressive and repressive overtones!
This is not what our citizens want or wish for. We do not respect, accept nor can we condone such an increasingly cynical administration that is running on unrestrained police actions, runaway hate-mongering bigots, political power-play and shenanigans run amok.
We appear to have law enforcers and deeply-ingrained bigots who are more interested in playing political games, cursing, catching and handcuffing white collar law-breakers, including utterers of unkind words, and irreverent social media rantings, silly "jolok mata" nudists, exhibitionists who dared judder some of our "holier-than-thou" sense of prickly morality and sensibilities!
Let's see, who had been harmed really? No one but themselves, unless of course we choose to think that these could corrupt and undermine our religiously weak-minded brethren! So it seems we'd rather catch these socially-inept misfits than the real criminals, robbers, snatch thieves, or corrupt officials!
These "laws" are now used arbitrarily and selectively to punish, prosecute, and persecute anyone who threatens or dares to criticise this devolving government and power brokers now under siege from their own self-destruct mindsets.
Sadly under the anemic and torpid leadership of our direction-less political masters, some ministers and wannabe politicians and extremists have been pushing the envelope of right-wing, race-baiting agendas, and spreading of ethno-religious hatred with escapable impunity.
This is indeed sad and unbecoming of a modern nation that is aspiring toward a fully developed status by 2020. We appear to have hopelessly stumbled into a stagnating and retrogressive ethnocentric apartheidism, after this long-suffering government found itself losing its power base following the last GE13.
Instead of searching for the root causes of its political weaknesses and shortcomings through an in-depth post-mortem, this minority government has instead embarked on a series of witch hunts to demonise long-suffering minorities and resurrect the archaic but extremely dangerous spectre of racial hatred and ethnic supremacy, now so passé in today's society of global multiculturalism.
We are now running on empty. We are moving backwards when all around us, every neighbouring developing nation has been pushing ahead post-haste to advance and progress, by harnessing the vibrant energies and rich diversities of all its citizens.
It appears that this dastardly cabal of kleptocrats is willing to do everything in their power to stay in control, at whatever costs. They are willing to test the limits of a new-found "banana-republic-style" autocracy by dragging down and bankrupting the entire nation, not just in terms of exhausting all our diminishing financial reserves, but also to shatter our already tattered institutions of governance and civil society.
Please, let's break out of this spiralling cycle of self-defeatism and authoritarianism where the rule of law is no longer respected by the powers that be, where favoured arrogant ministers and callous demagogues are tacitly allowed to spew hatred and racism, while dissenting others face concerted if not starkly different attacks on their personal and civil liberties!
Now we have ministers who think that modern liberal concepts are all but evil and that their own brand of demagoguery based on arbitrary dictatorship and religious extremism is superior!
I fear for Malaysia! We appear to be entering an extremely dangerous phase of our nationhood. We're facing a real risk of potential break-up of our Malaysian polity as a nation of disparate multi-diversity and enriching cultures.
Instead, we're finding faults and excuses to tear apart the fragile fabric of our long-honed multi-ethnic and religious-tolerant cohesiveness. We're drowning in the centrifugal vortices of Charybdis of provoked inter-ethnic hatred and eruptive mutual distrust!
We must stop this madness from spiralling out of control! We must not allow our nation to boil over, into an internecine fire storm of mutually-assured destruction, of them and us. We must resist using the power of dictatorship to kickstart racial and religious apartheid and extremism.
We must not become an irrational failing or failed state! Civil society must step up and be counted to condemn these dastardly acts of rising kleptarchy, autocracy and political supremacist mayhem!
We must reignite our Merdeka flame of unity amid our dispersing diversity and challenges, and work hard toward greater inter-ethnic as well as mutual multicultural acceptance and tolerance. – September 3, 2014.
* Dr David Quek is a consultant cardiologist and president of Malaysian Physicians for Social Responsibility.
* This is the personal opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of The Malaysian Insider.
57 years old and still racially straitjacketed – Dr David Quek
As we have all been discovering, of late, there has been a steady escalation of ethnic tensions, of human rights' violations and selective interpretation of the law (especially the Sedition Act) to systematically target opposition leaders as well as dissenting common citizens on very contentious and arbitrary, even petty, issues.
Nowhere in the world do we have so many misguided people using the idiotic recourse of making hundreds of "police reports" against one another, based on political and inane issues. Worse, our police selectively use these politically motivated and manoeuvred police reports to take selective actions against those they choose to believe as "threats" to society.
Worse too, that the police now feel they cannot ever be criticised by anyone, even when what they have been doing has been blatantly biased and plain wrong to most ordinary citizens. Are the police above the nation's laws? Are the police now the true powers running the country on diktats of their own, or the home minister? Are we in a police state or under an emergency or military rule? These perceptibly unjust actions of selective and disproportionate application of the law and justice or police action is creating unease and anger among reasonable citizens. They render our rule of law arguable and reek of sadly regressive and repressive overtones!
This is not what our citizens want or wish for. We do not respect, accept nor can we condone such an increasingly cynical administration that is running on unrestrained police actions, runaway hate-mongering bigots, political power-play and shenanigans run amok.
We appear to have law enforcers and deeply-ingrained bigots who are more interested in playing political games, cursing, catching and handcuffing white collar law-breakers, including utterers of unkind words, and irreverent social media rantings, silly "jolok mata" nudists, exhibitionists who dared judder some of our "holier-than-thou" sense of prickly morality and sensibilities!
Let's see, who had been harmed really? No one but themselves, unless of course we choose to think that these could corrupt and undermine our religiously weak-minded brethren! So it seems we'd rather catch these socially-inept misfits than the real criminals, robbers, snatch thieves, or corrupt officials!
These "laws" are now used arbitrarily and selectively to punish, prosecute, and persecute anyone who threatens or dares to criticise this devolving government and power brokers now under siege from their own self-destruct mindsets.
Sadly under the anemic and torpid leadership of our direction-less political masters, some ministers and wannabe politicians and extremists have been pushing the envelope of right-wing, race-baiting agendas, and spreading of ethno-religious hatred with escapable impunity.
This is indeed sad and unbecoming of a modern nation that is aspiring toward a fully developed status by 2020. We appear to have hopelessly stumbled into a stagnating and retrogressive ethnocentric apartheidism, after this long-suffering government found itself losing its power base following the last GE13.
Instead of searching for the root causes of its political weaknesses and shortcomings through an in-depth post-mortem, this minority government has instead embarked on a series of witch hunts to demonise long-suffering minorities and resurrect the archaic but extremely dangerous spectre of racial hatred and ethnic supremacy, now so passé in today's society of global multiculturalism.
We are now running on empty. We are moving backwards when all around us, every neighbouring developing nation has been pushing ahead post-haste to advance and progress, by harnessing the vibrant energies and rich diversities of all its citizens.
It appears that this dastardly cabal of kleptocrats is willing to do everything in their power to stay in control, at whatever costs. They are willing to test the limits of a new-found "banana-republic-style" autocracy by dragging down and bankrupting the entire nation, not just in terms of exhausting all our diminishing financial reserves, but also to shatter our already tattered institutions of governance and civil society.
Please, let's break out of this spiralling cycle of self-defeatism and authoritarianism where the rule of law is no longer respected by the powers that be, where favoured arrogant ministers and callous demagogues are tacitly allowed to spew hatred and racism, while dissenting others face concerted if not starkly different attacks on their personal and civil liberties!
Now we have ministers who think that modern liberal concepts are all but evil and that their own brand of demagoguery based on arbitrary dictatorship and religious extremism is superior!
I fear for Malaysia! We appear to be entering an extremely dangerous phase of our nationhood. We're facing a real risk of potential break-up of our Malaysian polity as a nation of disparate multi-diversity and enriching cultures.
Instead, we're finding faults and excuses to tear apart the fragile fabric of our long-honed multi-ethnic and religious-tolerant cohesiveness. We're drowning in the centrifugal vortices of Charybdis of provoked inter-ethnic hatred and eruptive mutual distrust!
We must stop this madness from spiralling out of control! We must not allow our nation to boil over, into an internecine fire storm of mutually-assured destruction, of them and us. We must resist using the power of dictatorship to kickstart racial and religious apartheid and extremism.
We must not become an irrational failing or failed state! Civil society must step up and be counted to condemn these dastardly acts of rising kleptarchy, autocracy and political supremacist mayhem!
We must reignite our Merdeka flame of unity amid our dispersing diversity and challenges, and work hard toward greater inter-ethnic as well as mutual multicultural acceptance and tolerance. – September 3, 2014.
* Dr David Quek is a consultant cardiologist and president of Malaysian Physicians for Social Responsibility.
* This is the personal opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of The Malaysian Insider.
57 years old and still racially straitjacketed – Dr David Quek
As we have all been discovering, of late, there has been a steady escalation of ethnic tensions, of human rights' violations and selective interpretation of the law (especially the Sedition Act) to systematically target opposition leaders as well as dissenting common citizens on very contentious and arbitrary, even petty, issues.
Nowhere in the world do we have so many misguided people using the idiotic recourse of making hundreds of "police reports" against one another, based on political and inane issues. Worse, our police selectively use these politically motivated and manoeuvred police reports to take selective actions against those they choose to believe as "threats" to society.
Worse too, that the police now feel they cannot ever be criticised by anyone, even when what they have been doing has been blatantly biased and plain wrong to most ordinary citizens. Are the police above the nation's laws? Are the police now the true powers running the country on diktats of their own, or the home minister? Are we in a police state or under an emergency or military rule? These perceptibly unjust actions of selective and disproportionate application of the law and justice or police action is creating unease and anger among reasonable citizens. They render our rule of law arguable and reek of sadly regressive and repressive overtones!
This is not what our citizens want or wish for. We do not respect, accept nor can we condone such an increasingly cynical administration that is running on unrestrained police actions, runaway hate-mongering bigots, political power-play and shenanigans run amok.
We appear to have law enforcers and deeply-ingrained bigots who are more interested in playing political games, cursing, catching and handcuffing white collar law-breakers, including utterers of unkind words, and irreverent social media rantings, silly "jolok mata" nudists, exhibitionists who dared judder some of our "holier-than-thou" sense of prickly morality and sensibilities!
Let's see, who had been harmed really? No one but themselves, unless of course we choose to think that these could corrupt and undermine our religiously weak-minded brethren! So it seems we'd rather catch these socially-inept misfits than the real criminals, robbers, snatch thieves, or corrupt officials!
These "laws" are now used arbitrarily and selectively to punish, prosecute, and persecute anyone who threatens or dares to criticise this devolving government and power brokers now under siege from their own self-destruct mindsets.
Sadly under the anemic and torpid leadership of our direction-less political masters, some ministers and wannabe politicians and extremists have been pushing the envelope of right-wing, race-baiting agendas, and spreading of ethno-religious hatred with escapable impunity.
This is indeed sad and unbecoming of a modern nation that is aspiring toward a fully developed status by 2020. We appear to have hopelessly stumbled into a stagnating and retrogressive ethnocentric apartheidism, after this long-suffering government found itself losing its power base following the last GE13.
Instead of searching for the root causes of its political weaknesses and shortcomings through an in-depth post-mortem, this minority government has instead embarked on a series of witch hunts to demonise long-suffering minorities and resurrect the archaic but extremely dangerous spectre of racial hatred and ethnic supremacy, now so passé in today's society of global multiculturalism.
We are now running on empty. We are moving backwards when all around us, every neighbouring developing nation has been pushing ahead post-haste to advance and progress, by harnessing the vibrant energies and rich diversities of all its citizens.
It appears that this dastardly cabal of kleptocrats is willing to do everything in their power to stay in control, at whatever costs. They are willing to test the limits of a new-found "banana-republic-style" autocracy by dragging down and bankrupting the entire nation, not just in terms of exhausting all our diminishing financial reserves, but also to shatter our already tattered institutions of governance and civil society.
Please, let's break out of this spiralling cycle of self-defeatism and authoritarianism where the rule of law is no longer respected by the powers that be, where favoured arrogant ministers and callous demagogues are tacitly allowed to spew hatred and racism, while dissenting others face concerted if not starkly different attacks on their personal and civil liberties!
Now we have ministers who think that modern liberal concepts are all but evil and that their own brand of demagoguery based on arbitrary dictatorship and religious extremism is superior!
I fear for Malaysia! We appear to be entering an extremely dangerous phase of our nationhood. We're facing a real risk of potential break-up of our Malaysian polity as a nation of disparate multi-diversity and enriching cultures.
Instead, we're finding faults and excuses to tear apart the fragile fabric of our long-honed multi-ethnic and religious-tolerant cohesiveness. We're drowning in the centrifugal vortices of Charybdis of provoked inter-ethnic hatred and eruptive mutual distrust!
We must stop this madness from spiralling out of control! We must not allow our nation to boil over, into an internecine fire storm of mutually-assured destruction, of them and us. We must resist using the power of dictatorship to kickstart racial and religious apartheid and extremism.
We must not become an irrational failing or failed state! Civil society must step up and be counted to condemn these dastardly acts of rising kleptarchy, autocracy and political supremacist mayhem!
We must reignite our Merdeka flame of unity amid our dispersing diversity and challenges, and work hard toward greater inter-ethnic as well as mutual multicultural acceptance and tolerance. – September 3, 2014.
* Dr David Quek is a consultant cardiologist and president of Malaysian Physicians for Social Responsibility.
* This is the personal opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of The Malaysian Insider.
57 years old and still racially straitjacketed –
Dr David Quek
The Malaysian Insider, Published:
3 September 2014
Our
Malaysian polity at 57 years old is under serious threat. We are in deep
troubles, and are seemingly still devolving and falling apart.
As
we have all been discovering, of late, there has been a steady escalation of
ethnic tensions, of human rights' violations and selective interpretation of
the law (especially the Sedition Act) to systematically target opposition
leaders as well as dissenting common citizens on very contentious and
arbitrary, even petty, issues.
Nowhere
in the world do we have so many misguided people using the idiotic recourse of
making hundreds of "police reports" against one another, based on
political and inane issues. Worse, our police selectively use these politically
motivated and manoeuvred police reports to take selective actions against those
they choose to believe as "threats" to society.
Worse too, that the police
now feel they cannot ever be criticised by anyone, even when what they have
been doing has been blatantly biased and plain wrong to most ordinary citizens.
Are the police above the nation's laws? Are the police now the true powers
running the country on diktats of their own, or the home minister? Are we in a
police state or under an emergency or military rule?
These
perceptibly unjust actions of selective and disproportionate application of the
law and justice or police action is creating unease and anger among reasonable
citizens. They render our rule of law arguable and reek of sadly regressive and
repressive overtones!
This
is not what our citizens want or wish for. We do not respect, accept nor can we
condone such an increasingly cynical administration that is running on
unrestrained police actions, runaway hate-mongering bigots, political
power-play and shenanigans run amok.
We
appear to have law enforcers and deeply-ingrained bigots who are more
interested in playing political games, cursing, catching and handcuffing white
collar law-breakers, including utterers of unkind words, and irreverent social
media rantings, silly "jolok mata" nudists, exhibitionists who dared
judder some of our "holier-than-thou" sense of prickly morality and
sensibilities!
Let's see, who had been harmed really? No one but themselves, unless of course we choose to think that these could corrupt and undermine our religiously weak-minded brethren! So it seems we'd rather catch these socially-inept misfits than the real criminals, robbers, snatch thieves, or corrupt officials!
Let's see, who had been harmed really? No one but themselves, unless of course we choose to think that these could corrupt and undermine our religiously weak-minded brethren! So it seems we'd rather catch these socially-inept misfits than the real criminals, robbers, snatch thieves, or corrupt officials!
These
"laws" are now used arbitrarily and selectively to punish, prosecute,
and persecute anyone who threatens or dares to criticise this devolving
government and power brokers now under siege from their own self-destruct
mindsets.
Sadly
under the anemic and torpid leadership of our direction-less political masters,
some ministers and wannabe politicians and extremists have been pushing the
envelope of right-wing, race-baiting agendas, and spreading of ethno-religious
hatred with escapable impunity.
This
is indeed sad and unbecoming of a modern nation that is aspiring toward a fully
developed status by 2020. We appear to have hopelessly stumbled into a
stagnating and retrogressive ethnocentric apartheidism, after this
long-suffering government found itself losing its power base following the last
GE13.
Instead
of searching for the root causes of its political weaknesses and shortcomings
through an in-depth post-mortem, this minority government has instead embarked
on a series of witch hunts to demonise long-suffering minorities and resurrect
the archaic but extremely dangerous spectre of racial hatred and ethnic
supremacy, now so passé in today's society of global multiculturalism.
We
are now running on empty. We are moving backwards when all around us, every
neighbouring developing nation has been pushing ahead post-haste to advance and
progress, by harnessing the vibrant energies and rich diversities of all its
citizens.
It
appears that this dastardly cabal of kleptocrats is willing to do everything in
their power to stay in control, at whatever costs. They are willing to test the
limits of a new-found "banana-republic-style" autocracy by dragging
down and bankrupting the entire nation, not just in terms of exhausting all our
diminishing financial reserves, but also to shatter our already tattered
institutions of governance and civil society.
Please,
let's break out of this spiralling cycle of self-defeatism and authoritarianism
where the rule of law is no longer respected by the powers that be, where favoured
arrogant ministers and callous demagogues are tacitly allowed to spew hatred
and racism, while dissenting others face concerted if not starkly different
attacks on their personal and civil liberties!
Now
we have ministers who think that modern liberal concepts are all but evil and
that their own brand of demagoguery based on arbitrary dictatorship and
religious extremism is superior!
I
fear for Malaysia! We appear to be entering an extremely dangerous phase of our
nationhood. We're facing a real risk of potential break-up of our Malaysian
polity as a nation of disparate multi-diversity and enriching cultures.
Instead,
we're finding faults and excuses to tear apart the fragile fabric of our
long-honed multi-ethnic and religious-tolerant cohesiveness. We're drowning in
the centrifugal vortices of Charybdis of provoked inter-ethnic hatred and
eruptive mutual distrust!
We
must stop this madness from spiralling out of control! We must not allow our
nation to boil over, into an internecine fire storm of mutually-assured
destruction, of them and us. We must resist using the power of dictatorship to
kickstart racial and religious apartheid and extremism.
We
must not become an irrational failing or failed state! Civil society must step
up and be counted to condemn these dastardly acts of rising kleptarchy,
autocracy and political supremacist mayhem!
We
must reignite our Merdeka flame of unity amid our dispersing diversity and
challenges, and work hard toward greater inter-ethnic as well as mutual
multicultural acceptance and tolerance. – September 3, 2014.
* Dr David Quek is a consultant
cardiologist and president of Malaysian Physicians for Social Responsibility.
* This is the personal opinion of
the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of The
Malaysian Insider.
- See more at:
http://www.themalaysianinsider.com/sideviews/article/57-years-old-and-still-racially-straitjacketed-dr-david-quek#sthash.iWrCqfNT.dpuf
57 years old and still racially straitjacketed – Dr David Quek
As we have all been discovering, of late, there has been a steady escalation of ethnic tensions, of human rights' violations and selective interpretation of the law (especially the Sedition Act) to systematically target opposition leaders as well as dissenting common citizens on very contentious and arbitrary, even petty, issues.
Nowhere in the world do we have so many misguided people using the idiotic recourse of making hundreds of "police reports" against one another, based on political and inane issues. Worse, our police selectively use these politically motivated and manoeuvred police reports to take selective actions against those they choose to believe as "threats" to society.
Worse too, that the police now feel they cannot ever be criticised by anyone, even when what they have been doing has been blatantly biased and plain wrong to most ordinary citizens. Are the police above the nation's laws? Are the police now the true powers running the country on diktats of their own, or the home minister? Are we in a police state or under an emergency or military rule? These perceptibly unjust actions of selective and disproportionate application of the law and justice or police action is creating unease and anger among reasonable citizens. They render our rule of law arguable and reek of sadly regressive and repressive overtones!
This is not what our citizens want or wish for. We do not respect, accept nor can we condone such an increasingly cynical administration that is running on unrestrained police actions, runaway hate-mongering bigots, political power-play and shenanigans run amok.
We appear to have law enforcers and deeply-ingrained bigots who are more interested in playing political games, cursing, catching and handcuffing white collar law-breakers, including utterers of unkind words, and irreverent social media rantings, silly "jolok mata" nudists, exhibitionists who dared judder some of our "holier-than-thou" sense of prickly morality and sensibilities!
Let's see, who had been harmed really? No one but themselves, unless of course we choose to think that these could corrupt and undermine our religiously weak-minded brethren! So it seems we'd rather catch these socially-inept misfits than the real criminals, robbers, snatch thieves, or corrupt officials!
These "laws" are now used arbitrarily and selectively to punish, prosecute, and persecute anyone who threatens or dares to criticise this devolving government and power brokers now under siege from their own self-destruct mindsets.
Sadly under the anemic and torpid leadership of our direction-less political masters, some ministers and wannabe politicians and extremists have been pushing the envelope of right-wing, race-baiting agendas, and spreading of ethno-religious hatred with escapable impunity.
This is indeed sad and unbecoming of a modern nation that is aspiring toward a fully developed status by 2020. We appear to have hopelessly stumbled into a stagnating and retrogressive ethnocentric apartheidism, after this long-suffering government found itself losing its power base following the last GE13.
Instead of searching for the root causes of its political weaknesses and shortcomings through an in-depth post-mortem, this minority government has instead embarked on a series of witch hunts to demonise long-suffering minorities and resurrect the archaic but extremely dangerous spectre of racial hatred and ethnic supremacy, now so passé in today's society of global multiculturalism.
We are now running on empty. We are moving backwards when all around us, every neighbouring developing nation has been pushing ahead post-haste to advance and progress, by harnessing the vibrant energies and rich diversities of all its citizens.
It appears that this dastardly cabal of kleptocrats is willing to do everything in their power to stay in control, at whatever costs. They are willing to test the limits of a new-found "banana-republic-style" autocracy by dragging down and bankrupting the entire nation, not just in terms of exhausting all our diminishing financial reserves, but also to shatter our already tattered institutions of governance and civil society.
Please, let's break out of this spiralling cycle of self-defeatism and authoritarianism where the rule of law is no longer respected by the powers that be, where favoured arrogant ministers and callous demagogues are tacitly allowed to spew hatred and racism, while dissenting others face concerted if not starkly different attacks on their personal and civil liberties!
Now we have ministers who think that modern liberal concepts are all but evil and that their own brand of demagoguery based on arbitrary dictatorship and religious extremism is superior!
I fear for Malaysia! We appear to be entering an extremely dangerous phase of our nationhood. We're facing a real risk of potential break-up of our Malaysian polity as a nation of disparate multi-diversity and enriching cultures.
Instead, we're finding faults and excuses to tear apart the fragile fabric of our long-honed multi-ethnic and religious-tolerant cohesiveness. We're drowning in the centrifugal vortices of Charybdis of provoked inter-ethnic hatred and eruptive mutual distrust!
We must stop this madness from spiralling out of control! We must not allow our nation to boil over, into an internecine fire storm of mutually-assured destruction, of them and us. We must resist using the power of dictatorship to kickstart racial and religious apartheid and extremism.
We must not become an irrational failing or failed state! Civil society must step up and be counted to condemn these dastardly acts of rising kleptarchy, autocracy and political supremacist mayhem!
We must reignite our Merdeka flame of unity amid our dispersing diversity and challenges, and work hard toward greater inter-ethnic as well as mutual multicultural acceptance and tolerance. – September 3, 2014.
* Dr David Quek is a consultant cardiologist and president of Malaysian Physicians for Social Responsibility.
* This is the personal opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of The Malaysian Insider.
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