Why Hindraf Indians won’t vote Pakatan next election

“Indian representatives in BN are political mandores, as Hindraf Makkal Sakthi and the HRP put it. If so, Indian representatives in Pakatan are ‘double mandores’. The difference is that the former can mention ‘Indian’ in public while the latter are barred from doing so.”

– Joe Fernandez in Free Malaysia Today (read here)

‘Indians will not vote Pakatan’

According to Joe’s analysis published today, “There’s no need for Umno, BN and MIC to persuade Indians not to vote Pakatan. Indians will not do so.”

Joe explains why Pakatan’s so-called New Politics, especially as played by DAP, perversely criminalizes a Malaysian’s ethnicity (see also here). He writes:

“With regard to Pakatan, the Indians have clearly decided to withdraw their support but not to direct the same support towards BN because there’s no reason on earth to do so.

“It’s unfortunate that Pakatan, unlike Umno and the BN, doesn’t want the term ‘Indian’ even mentioned. The excuse is that Pakatan is not about race and religion that drive people apart ‘but about bringing people together’. At the same time, in a contradiction in terms, Pakatan has no qualms about talking openly about the Chinese and Malays.”

DAP’s race politicking is evident to Indians and Malays. Only the party’s Chinese supporters are trying to pull wool over one’s eyes.

Dua kali lima sahaja

Take, for instance, Penang’s two deputy chief ministers both of whom are race tokenism bloating the state cabinet to XL size — the same scenario as with the federal government ministerial line-up that the opposition is always complaining about.

DCM (I) is Malay and DCM (II) is Indian. P. Ramasamy assumed office in March 2008. Mansor Othman was appointed to his position in June 2009.

Ramasamy is senior to Mansor but the Indian guy remained DCM (II) while Mansor was catapulted ahead of him because the chief minister Lim Guan Eng still observed the Malay First pecking order.

Despite all the party secretary-general and his evangelist faction’s loud protestations about rejecting race politics and introducing meritocracy, DAP selalu cakap tak serupa bikin. In the state government of Penang as regards his two lieutenants, Guan Eng clearly stuck to the established race hierarchy.

Unless he cares to explain to the Indian electorate why he believes Mansor has more merit than Ramasamy; if not, then the simple basis of seniority without making an issue of whether the Malay guy trumps the Indian guy, or vice versa, should apply in assigning (I) and (II).

Then there was the matter of Guan Eng calling a press conference just to announce his taking on Zairil Khir Johari as a political secretary, with the emphasis that Zairil is Malay. If the appointee had been a Chinese, the CM’s office would not have invited media coverage.

When Dr Ariffin Omar – an academic who was formerly the Aliran secretary (read about Aliran’s double standards here) – joined DAP, there was a similar publicity blitz by DAP to highlight the fact of Ariffin’s Malay name. If a 62-year-old Indian man of similar stature suddenly became a card-carrying party member, DAP would not have trumpeted it as a news item.

Bangsar M’sia prone to calling others ‘racist’

P. Uthayakumar stripped the pretense of Bangsar Malaysian in his peroration, ‘Politicians playing to the majoritarian gallery‘.

Uthaya writes:

“Yet for our [Hindraf/HRP] necessarily selective focus on a single race, we are accused of racism by the preening and posturing multi-culturists and mono-culturalists who ride their high horses.

Their warped label of ‘racists’ hurled against Hindraf is to be found in no other part of the world except Malaysia.

Going by this perverted definition constantly applied to Hindraf by our detractors, Nelson Mandela would be considered anti-white – a veritable racist for fighting apartheid rule in South Africa because his opponents were of one colour.

And Mahatma Gandhi would also be a damn racist as he fought the white rajah’s rule in India. Why don’t the same people who are so fond of knocking Hindraf similarly insist that Gandhi must be colour-blind and that he cannot be allowed to single out a particular race (i.e. the whites) for moral censure?

Accusing us of fighting the racism that victimizes Indians with our own brand of Hindraf racism is just about the most convenient but lamest excuse used by shallow, unthinking Malaysians.

This particularly applies to the English-speaking groups who love to sound magnanimous. They are usually the Indian elites priding themselves that their best friends are Malay and Chinese, and patting themselves on the back for their liberal credentials because they move in social circles not exclusive to their own kind (i.e. the dark-skinned).”

Uthaya points to upper middle-class/professionals who speak English [and refusing to acknowledge their keturunan India] as the type most prone to denying the real problems confronting poor Tamil and Telegu Hindus.

Screenshot taken from Malaysiakini readers’ comments to a Nov 13 article ‘Uthaya’s demand for 53 Indian seats unrealistic‘.

Going by Paul Warren’s “We are Malaysians” [actually anti-Indian] rhetoric, where would he ask the Ibans, Kadazans, Senoi, Temiar, Malays and others – who hold their self-identity going by keturunan - to pack their bags and go? Timbuktu?