The Government v the People

Went to the Protesi Rally last Sunday night, fully expecting there to be a capacity crowd at the Kelana Jaya Stadium. But surprise surprise we were able to park within 200m of the stadium and when we arrived at 8 pm there was a very meagre crowd of maybe 2000 people.

Just shows how easily Malaysians can be manipulated by fear. A few subtle hints dropped about possible Army intervention and a few cautious comments about Army personell not trained for this sort of thing and might be dangerous if things get out of hand. And Malaysians stayed away in droves

The organisers rightly expected a huge crowd because the rise in fuel prices is something that is affecting everybody, and we havent seen the downstream effects of the rises yet.

But fear reigns in this country. It was interesting to note the palpable change in the atmosphere within the Stadium when the police helicopters flew overhead. Even sane rational me was thinking " What if??"... because I have seen how irrational can be the behaviour of the Malaysian Police at previous demonstration.

Of course, now the Government are crowing about the failure of the Rally... behaving like the people of Malaysia were their enemy rather than their employer

But back to the Stadium and a few other observations:

1. For a long time I have been uncomfortable with the way that Malaysians idolise their politicians. And it was apparent again on Sunday night. On Anwar's arrival at the Stadium the crowd went mad... standing, waving and cheering. It was the most animated they got all evening despite the attempts by other speakers to get them riled up about the price rises.

I often wonder why this is so... in other countries politicians are greeted with cynicism and its only the close party faithful who treat them with similar adulation. But here we have ordinary every day people greeting a man who is not even in Parliament as though he is there long sought saviour.

I suspect part of this adulation is because Islam forbids the worshipping of any form of idol, yet people need something to hang their hat on. In this case its Anwar, for a brief period it was Badawi and for far too long it was Mahathir... and you know where that got you.

The other possible explanation is that Malaysian politics is devoid of Policies. For 50 years UMNO et al gave you "more of the same" because there was no valid Opposition. So that an ad hoc system of governance evolved whereby the Government lurched from one crisis to the next.

Prior to the last election the Opposition parties briefly flirted with a Manifesto produced by RPK from Malaysian Today but that all seems to be long forgotten. Now we have Anwar the wannabe PM promising to lower fuel prices the day after he gets into power. If that's not buying votes UMNO style then I dont know what it is.

More learned economists than I will tell you that maintaining subsidies is economic suicide, what is needed is to raise incomes to better reflect the present day economic climate.

2. Sitting on the grass in the stadium with my eyes at butt level, I was horrified at the number of overweight people in this country