Politics, politics.....

Yesterday I was invited by a friend to go for a dialogue session organized by Democratic Action Party or more popularly known as DAP. Their dialogue was entitled "Whither Bangsa Malaysia?", which was mainly about the unity of races in Malaysia as a single group.

It was about 3 hours long, mainly talking about the racial unity in Malaysia. But throughout the talks, almost every member who gave a speech mentioned our current, infamous, online "star" Wee Meng Chee, or known online as Namewee.

It seems they are trying to push for Meng Chee's freedom, in other words, to try to make sure he's not prosecuted for his work, "Negaraku ku". I really appaud their effort in helping him, as from what I read, he's really innocent(individual's opinion will differ..).

All he's done is tell the truth basically. Yea, the truth is harsh, whether in the eyes of the public or the government, but it's nothing but the truth despite how you may deny it. It is true that he's "modified" the national anthem, but he only meant for it to portray his love for his country. The way he did it is questionable, that's true, but how many of us will actually go to this type of lengths to show love for our country, Malaysia?

I read in one of the newspapers article few days back, which mentioned him bringing along the national flag with him when he went to Taiwan to study... how many people can actually say the brought the flag overseas with them?? Don't even need to go that far... how many people can say they actually have the flag at HOME with them right now, barely 2 weeks from our 50th Independance Day ???

I pass shops, and see just a few hanging the Jalur Gemilang (Malaysia's national flag), I'm not even mentioning houses here. And here, we're trying to prosecute a 24-year-old, who brought the flag to Taiwan with him!!

Yea, people are saying it's an insult to the country, but from the way I see it, what's the insult ? Another thing mentioned in the dialogue was most of these political things are usually misunderstood because of a person's "state of mind". I mean, yea, it's true, a person may see some action or idea differently from others, but this is only because people's experience through life is different.

Show a child the a piece of paper with the exact phrase written as "D**k" and show an adult the same thing, what do you think would be their first word in mind? It's all a matter of perspective really. Just because someone used the national anthem as a means to promote patriotism in their song, it means he's already wrong ?

The song title, "Negarakuku", if you take it as what it actually is suppose to mean, it should have meant "My Negaraku". Instead, people are taking it as "Negara Kuku"! In Chinese, "kuku" means a guy's reproduction thingy... and in the newspaper, someone actually said it was taken as "Cuckoo", as in crazy !!

What the Hell are they thinking?? Yea, I go back to saying, this is all from a person's "state of mind". You only think it's negative because you want it to be negative. Can't you think of it in a positive mindset, as how it was suppose to be listened to???

That is only about the song. Now people want to take action on this guy for doing this. I'm not one who knows the law, but prosecuting him for modifying the song, I guessed it can't be helped since he did do it, but if he's doing that on the terms of insulting the country, I seriously disagree!!

Well, anyways, I don't want to go on, otherwise I'd be the next possible victim... since I've no idea how senstitive this is... but to cut it short, basically DAP is trying their very best to help Meng Chee from being punished because of this rap song.

Last time I used to hate politics a lot, but as time passed, I was more and more aware that politics is around us, everywhere we go, whether we want to care about it or not.. Everyone is influenced by politics, whether you know it or not, which is sad really, as not everyone will notice it, but suffers from it..

but one thing though.. although DAP is very noble in their cause to help Meng Chee, it seems that all these "special help" are suddenly emerging one by one by various major parties. I can't help but think that all these are done just to push themselves up in the coming elections.. Although their help is really a thing to be extremely thankful for, but don't you think it will also make DAP look really good in the light of the public ?

As it is, now almost half of what I browse through in newspapers are about what this party did, what this party said, what this party is fighting for, so on and so forth... But all this are just stepping stones for them to bring in more votes ultimately..

Maybe I'm still very shallow with all these national politics... It's something I need to understand more. But from what I believe in, the only way to see if a party is truly worth supporting, is what they do after the elections are over, the period between then and the following elections.

I take a quote from the famous CHILDREN'S book, Harry Potter:

"If you want to know what a man's like, take a good look at how he treats his inferiors, not his equals. -Sirius Black"

As applied here, it's not how they treat thier own member's or "kind", but it's how they treat others with their powers which determines their true value.