[Malaysian social political article; meant primarily for Malaysian readers]
What is national distress?
When we are invaded.
When nature disaster strike; something huge like the Asian Tsunami.
When food crisis strike; not just temporarily shortage of sugar or cooking oil… but when people started to feel the hunger because of food shortages.
When hyperinflation… not when people chatting in Starbucks complaining about expensive fuel, but when people can’t even afford a cup of coffee at mamak stall.
When people are losing jobs and couldn’t find new jobs. When unemployment is largely due economic failure and not because of workforce incompetency.
When the police and armed forces turned thugs. Set aside isolated political cases, the cops are still doing their job to fight crimes. Remember this, a few of them have lost their lives, and some of them are still risking theirs, to protect ours.
When democracy is irrelevant. Don’t tell me that our democracy is dead… we are given the rights to vote, and despite not being perfectly fair, we do have the power to determine which parties and people we want to form our government.
If Malaysia is in distress, what should we call other countries like Philippines or India? For goodness sake I don’t even think the likes of Philippines and India are in distress yet, let alone Malaysia?
The rant is in respond to three famous yet too pampered Malaysian bloggers who propagate to hang the national flag upside down during the month of August as a signal of national distress. Seriously, WTF.
Malaysia flag belongs to the country, the people, and not just the government; the government might be doing some lousy jobs, but there are millions of Malaysians who are working hard to make a living and to make the country a better place… and the flag is our pride and should not be ridiculed. Period.
Malaysian social politics
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i absolutely agree with you, jee. am going to blog about this too later on.
i love my country. i love the jalur gemilang. i dislike the politicians (not all!) and i dislike the gomen’s policies and so on… yes all those i dislike but i don’t dislike my country so why should i display the flag upside down – as you said it is indeed an insult to my country if i do. oh… they say it is a sign of distress… if our country is really in distress, would they still be able to be blogging happily away? oh! guess their definition of distress is totally different from us.
Right on. While we’re on the topic of flags and Malaysian morons, can I point out to those that plan to put little mini flags on their cars with plastic poles to please refrain from doing so?
The glue is not strong, so going about 110km/h on the highway is guaranteed to rip it off. You end up:
#1. Hitting some other car with the flag and causing mishaps
#2. Leaving the flag on the road to be run over by other cars
agree with u bro!! ;)
i dunt like the act of flying our nation’s flag upside down!! ;)
i have to agree with you on this one. they took it to an extreme stage. well, it’s a common malaysian mentality. since our country is too peaceful and nothing much exciting happen, this seem like the most interesting and exciting event ever. Politic!! since we don’t have any major disaster or anything so people’s get excited and want to bring it to the extreme.
Marshall law in Thailand last year is a distress. Here, we still shop, club while smoking cigar and watch Dark Knight!
Apart from this, i do agreed Malaysia politic is in a total mess now!
Finally someone like you show us the difference between being patriotic to the country and patriotic to the government.
Hi. the more i read about bloggers AGAINST the upside down flag flying, the more i feel that the majority of people who support such acts are morons.
Your post make my day and it gave me hope to blog about it too!
happy merdeka!
If you are going to hang our Malaysian flag upside down and call it national distress, I will call you then ” a traitor” and you don’t deserved to be called a Malaysian. Are we really in distress? The answer is yes and no. Yes if you were to look from negative angles of the political scenarios of the country. And no if you were to look at the bright side. Whatever views you will take it does not permit you to hang our Malaysian Jalur Gemilang upside down!!!
If we are all the times in Malaysia, we almost do not know what is happening to the world other than the selected news that we received and to some the internet news. But the question is whether those news really represent the fraction of the world’s news or some fabricated news that we almost believe as the gospel truth. As I have traveled to almost all part of the world, by comparison, our country is still the best place on earth. Talking about national distress, are we really in DISTRESS?
My personal view is that we are not at the critical stage yet. But if something is not immediately done perhaps we are moving towards that. My belief stands from the present political scenarios in the country. I know part of political game that one politician is attacking one another on the opposite camp. Whether coincidental or otherwise the arrest of DSAI on sodomy case appears to be parts of political strategy. But if it is true, than the advisor to the political campaign is not careful enough to adopt this kind of strategy. The masses is getting bored with this sort of tactic and the anger is directed towards the government. The loss of many BN seats in the large GE to me is mainly due to the boring advertisement on TV calling
voters to support BN.
Malaysia at present is having weak leadership and some leaders are believed to be corrupted not only at the political branches of BN but also at the cabinet level. Things can be corrected if the PM is having support from clean leadership who always focus on the wellbeing of the people rather than their own well being.
If there were to be a change of leadership from BN to PKR, the change is not because people is supporting PKR but mainly people wants something different and is bored with the present scenarios.
I always pray whoever takeover the government, do it for the well being of the rakyat and we can save our country from DISTRESS!