Who The Heck Is The "Silent Majority"???

[Adrian Wong]

Like Marina Mahathir, I too foamed at the mouth when I read the drivel posted in the newspaper. This is why I ceased subscribing to newspapers like The Star. If you catch me buying The Star, it's really for the movie listing and comics. If I want news, I go online because that's the only bastion of press freedom in Malaysia.

Anyway, my latest rant is over a new spin campaign by the government and their agents. To combat BERSIH and HINDRAF, government agents have concocted a new umbrella body called Damai Malaysia. Damai is short for Peace, but in all honesty, I think it really stands for Piss.

While I do not quite agree with some aspects of HINDRAF, at least they did not have the arrogance to claim that they represent the majority. Heck, only the government has had the arrogance to make such claims.

It is therefore NO surprise that this new umbrella body, Damai, has claimed to represent the silent majority. How odd! I do not recall Damai ever asking ME about the issue. Heck, I have NEVER even heard of Damai in my entire life!

Who the heck is Damai? And who are these 395 NGOs it claims to represent?? I don't know, but someone who did a quick check had this to say, "I googled DAMAI, and got a disabled organization of Selangor & WP."

Okay, the government agents probably usurped the name of a disabled organization just because it sounds nice. Heck, who doesn't like peace? But it's obviously a very last minute thing. Until the newspaper report, no one in Malaysia has ever heard of Damai.

Which makes me wonder how the heck did they come up with such a freaking thick memorandum??? See the attached picture. That is a truly monstrous volume. I dare say it's a LOT thicker than my medical textbook!

It took doctors and medical researchers centuries to come up with the knowledge to fill a medical textbook. I must say it is a real achievement for a new umbrella body to come up with such a thick memorandum. Of course, that's assuming that they actually wrote anything of value inside. For all we know, it could merely be a really long love letter to Badawi, consisting of nothing more than "I love you", "You are the greatest PM on earth", and similar praises.

For context, here is what Marina posted :

It isn't often that I start the day feeling angry but today took the cake. No sooner had I picked up the newspaper when I started to foam at the mouth in outrage so strong that even an hour and a half torturing myself in the gym could not quell it.

It wasn't just about the five people who got arrested under the ISA. Surely there must be a How-to-Govern manual somewhere that says 'Thou Shalt Not Martyr Thy Opponents Unless Thou Really Is Not Interested in Winning the Hearts and Minds of Thy People'.

It was this:

I'm sorry, who are Damai Malaysia and who are the supposed 395 NGOs represented by them? Where is the list of those NGOs? So far the ones mentioned are all related to political parties which, in my book, don't count as NGOs.

Secondly, where do they get off saying that they represent the silent majority? Were YOU asked? I'm sorry, I haven't said much but I am NOT represented by this Damai lot. Who the hell is Mohd Saiful Adil Mohd Daud anyway?

Thirdly, what is in the memo? If they are claiming to represent the silent majority, then don't the silent majority have a right to read that memo? I haven't seen any report that actually tells us what is contained in that memo. And I love how thick it is! They seriously expect the PM to read the entire thing? (Or maybe it just says nothing except 'we love you' throughout?)

Fourthly, what is the difference between presenting this memo and those other memos? Just because this one says 'We Think You're Wonderful' and 'People Who Demonstrate Are All Thugs', they get to hand it directly to the PM? While the ones that say 'Please Can You Listen and Deal with Real Issues?' have to go through police barricades, water cannons and tear gas? Is the inability to go shopping the most important issue of the day?

I can tolerate most things but I can't abide being insulted and treated as if I'm stupid. Since when does peace mean maintaining hotel room bookings and retail sales? You mean, as long as tourists come and we're shopping we're OK? How dumb is that?

Peace is not possible without justice and equality. Look at places like Palestine; without justice and equality for all the people who live there, there can be no peace. Do we condemn their need to protest, even while we may not support some of their violent forms of expression?

Just because we don't have violence doesn't mean we have true and meaningful peace. Peace doesn't mean just being able to go round without worrying if someone is going to shoot you ( though going by some of the stories in the papers, we should worry about this too). It also means living with a clear conscience, that your friend and neighbour is not suffering from injustice. It means everyone has the opportunity to better themselves, not just some.

I resent the implication that those who support the right to dissent and protest do not want peace and want violence. Hey, I have kids too and I want them to grow up in a peaceful country. But I don't want them to grow up in place where they cannot say what they think, where they are treated as if they are retarded if they want to express what they feel, where if they do not agree with the Government they are immediately labelled traitors. Excuse me!!! Do you know of any country where whole swathes of people are called thugs and traitors yet still remain peaceful? It is the name-calling, accompanied by thuglike behaviour on the part of Government institutions, that leads to violence, not the other way round.

All it takes is some empathy. I am so appalled that all the discussion is about what a nuisance demos and protests are when the real issues are swept under the carpet. Demos are just symptoms, not the real issue. What is so difficult about saying, "OK, enough already. Let's all be civilised and sit down and talk?"

One oft-used criticism is that the protesters have not gone through 'the proper channels'. It is unclear to me what the 'proper channels' are. If that was so, then why does Damai need to hand over their memo at TUDM base? Is that the 'proper channel'? Do people have to lie in wait at airports and places in order to be able to talk about their grievances?

For more, head over here - RantingsbyMM: How Dare They Insult Us!!

[Dashken]

Another act to brainwash those who still read newspapers and watch our local tv channels (or should I say, those 'katak di bawah tempurung'?).

[rusty]

well, you should get a copy of the Star, today. It seems that 5 000 signatories form ipoh outnumber 40 000 demonstrators during the bersih rally 10 Nov.
so... 5 000 people represent the silent majority while 40 000 doesn't?

[Max_87]

Yawn~ Getting really tired of all these, I'm leaving. LMAO

[peaz]

The soap opera continues.... *yawns*

[PsYkHoTiK]

Originally Posted by Max_87

Yawn~ Getting really tired of all these, I'm leaving. LMAO

You know you want my ambient temps.

[Adrian Wong]

I'm still waiting for them to list down the 395 NGOs..

Here's Raja Petra's take on the issue :

To further impress Malaysians that race riots are imminent they got this chap called Mohd Saiful Adil Daud to form DAMAI MALAYSIA, supposedly an amalgamation of 395 Malay NGOs with a combined membership of 1.5 million Malays. That is the biggest crap I have ever heard. You would be hard-pressed to find 39 Malay NGOs, let alone 395. And even then some of these so-called NGOs have less than a dozen members. Why did they not list down the names of these 395 Malay NGOs? They couldn’t because these NGOs do not exist. And certainly these 1.5 million members do not exist either.

Saiful is actually the runner of a well-known Malay gangster called Drs Suleiman a.k.a. Man Brandy. Man Brandy used to sell ganja around the Kampong Baru mosque area in the days before May 13. He then escaped to Indonesia when the police hunted him down for murder and that was where be bought his very impressive ‘Drs’ title. Later he came back to Malaysia and was made the Deputy Minister of Health after he won the Titiwangsa Parliament seat. It is a shame he did not legalise ganja and recommend it as a health weed when he was the Deputy Minister of Health. Now it is too late.

The mastermind behind DAMAI MALAYSIA is Mamak Rezal Merican Naina Merican of GPMS. Their job is to stir the Malays into a feeding frenzy like what Datuk Harun Idris did on 13 May 1969. Unfortunately the effort failed. The Malays today are not like the Malays of 1969 and it is not so easy to incite them into an anti-non-Malay frenzy like how they did on 13 May 1969. Even the rumours they spread and the SMSess they circulated did not work. And the so-called PEKIDA rally in Kampong Baru on Sunday, 16 December 2007, the supposedly prelude to May 13 II, did not happen as planned. Nobody turned up except for the truckloads of riot police and Special Branch officers who patrolled a deserted street. It reminds me of how they cordoned an empty Dataran Merdeka on 10 November 2007.

But there is something else that happened during this same period and which went unnoticed and unreported. On 10 December 2007, the Attorney-General wrote the Deputy Minister of Internal Security a letter asking him to release Goh Cheng Poh a.k.a ‘Tengku’ Goh from Restricted Residence. As reported earlier, Tengku Goh is number two to BK Tan, the head honcho of the organised crime syndicate that controls the drugs, prostitution, loan-sharking and illegal gambling network all over Malaysia. He also controls the police computerised information system.

The next day, Johari Baharum released Tengku Goh in spite of the fact he has in his possession half a dozen signed Affidavits and other damaging evidence which implicates top police personnel with having links with the underworld. Two of these Affidavits are in fact signed by the underworld figures themselves.

Johari’s action of releasing Tengku Goh has just hung the many police officers plus the Director of the Commercial Crime Division who were instrumental in detaining Tengku Goh. What Johari is ‘saying’ is that he agrees Tengku Goh is a victim of a mala fide detention and that all the allegations against the latter are false. This can only mean that the police are crooked while the so-called ‘crime boss’ is an innocent victim of trumped-up charges.

Yes, while the HINDRAF, PEKIDA and DAMAI MALAYSIA brouhaha kept us distracted, a crime boss is quietly released on the personal instruction of the Attorney-General. And the police officers who detained him are going to be crucified for ‘wrongfully’ detaining this crime boss. And the agency that has been tasked with fixing up the police officers is the Anti-Corruption Agency which is taking action against the police officers, not for the crime of corruption but for the ‘technical’ offence of wrongly filling in the forms. And the HINDRAF 5 are detained under Ministerial order under Section 8 and not Section 73 of the Internal Security Act so that the Special Branch and Bukit Aman can’t get their hands on them and interrogate them to get to the bottom of the whole thing.

For more yummy goodies like this, take a look here - The Corridors of Power 2007 » All that crap