84] Of Spraying and political symbolism

Of spraying and political symbolism
Azly Rahman
Aug 16, 06 2:31pm

As a keen observer of society – as a postmodern flaneur or one who is inside but not immersed in society - I am confused by the way we 'spray' each other.

Two incidents in the last few weeks showcase how we treat dissenting views, as derived from the way we contradict ourselves, the Umno Youth KLCC protest and Mahathir's Kelantan visit.

The protest against US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice near the KLCC could have been a spray occasion had it been organised by, say Parti Sosialis Malaysia. In fact, many months ago they were sprayed for protesting peacefully against the war in Iraq.

The KLCC protest was organised by Umno Youth and therefore there was no need to spray those folks. The organisers, as the media portrayed, had a difficult time submitting the memorandum of protest. I imagine there must have been an easier and less dramatic way for Umno Youth to register its protest.

But then again, whoever owns the media owns the means to project the image of defiance against the American Empire. The image is a postmodern transmutation and transculturalisation of the ancient Malay-feudalistic symbolism of a familiar concept of anger-management gone berserk: amuck

We need to stop using sprays and let people organise themselves to say what they have to say – even if it's a mass protest against the lavish use of sprays. We are entering the age of 3G technology videophones and Bluetooth cellphon-isation of Malaysia - we ought to be more sophisticated.

Back to our analysis of the nation-shattering incident of spraying the 80-year-old Third World warrior turned street fighter: Mahathir.

He was merely doing his nationwide tour to state his point of view of what is going wrong with the nation under the weakening Abdullah administration. If indeed he was wrongfully sprayed by his own people, the use of the spray itself conjures the image of political violence. What next must one expect when power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely?

Was it a strategy to teach Mahathir a lesson on what being sprayed feels like and why it should not be used against protestors in a civil society like Malaysia.

But still, why spray?

Let the man speak his mind and heart. He has a lot of things to say that will make the rakyat learn about the secret wheelings and dealings that have been going on even during his administration. He is a one-man-Opposition show and he is at the moment untouchable. Such is a status of statesmanship he wants to be remembered for. Such, as in the half-bridge issue, his way of not doing things in half-measure. He is bringing his brand of justice to the street and will defy the spraying government.

This is the age of chaos and complexity. Like the law of Karma. One can never be sure how divine retribution works in the overall scheme of injustices.

Larger issue

There are larger issues behind the way this nation uses sprays.

Our politics is becoming more complex and the manner we play with political symbolism is getting more sophisticated. As I read blogs like Malaysia-Today to get a sense of the voices of the subaltern, I believe the rakyat is getting more and more intelligent in its analysis of events.

The larger issue of the complex process of degeneration of all the spheres of national life – economic, politics, education, social relations, etc. – will be shrouded by the seemingly endless war between the families of Mahathir and Abdullah. For those who grow up watching Francis Ford Coppola's The Godfather movies, we will be entertained by episode after episode of the la cosa nostra of this Malaysian-styled vendetta.

The larger issue of the nation having lost its sense of purpose in building a better sense of ethnic relations, a more non-sensical approach to fighting corruption and power abuse, a peace-able approach to the increasingly competitive and intellectually hostile education system, and a widening gap between the rich and the poor - is shrouded.

The larger issue of the loss of good and ethical role-models in our political leadership – one that glorifies investment bankers with the Michael Bloomberg and Arnold Schwarzenegger combined ethos – is shrouded.

The larger issue of the increasingly chaotic development of race relations in all spheres of life – one that presents itself as de jure and de facto racism that is not properly dealt with – is shrouded.

Yet we are nauseatingly reading the issue and non-issue dimensions of the war between these two families – a war over territory, succession and control of resources in a land wherein a lethal combination of oriental despotism, high-tech gadgetry, skyscraping offices, high crime rate and level of corruption, and enshrined Machiavellian culture reigns.

These issues are cloud-seeding our socio-political landscape and creating a massive traffic back-up on the highway to participatory democracy that we are yet to develop.

Neuter/Spay our corrupt practices

Instead of spraying each other, we ought to think of ways to neuter/spray the corrupt practices in the lives we live. We ought to revert hypermodernisation, slow down the process of cut-throat capital accumulation, and improve our public schools and family institution so that we may begin at Ground Zero of our policies that should favour "development of the people by the people and for the people". We should think of a long-term strategy of "revillagising our urban population".

We have classes of people selling their cheap labour in the name of clone "multimedia super-corridor" such as the one in Johor and in Perlis. We have not even taken stock of the human cost of the hyperdevelopmentalist agenda we misunderstood as a result of our political masters' obsession with theories of unchallenged theories of growth that hides large scale human oppression.

We need to spray our culture of materialism and hedonism that would eliminate our need to "live the good life at high price guaranteed", one that pegs human beings with the status symbols of the rich and famous, borrowed from Hollywood movies, advertisements, colonising billboards, television shows, junk magazines and coffee-table books we import from the Western nations ready to colonise us without guns, guts, and glory.

But first, let us not spray each other anymore even if the protests reflect our feudalistic inner repressions: amuck and latah (neurotic).