Miss Malaysia 2008 & Keris

saharman · Post time 28-7-2008 01:49 AM

aku dapat ni dari email..kalau dah ada delete...je lah...

         Are there no more peace-minded and rational M'sian
            By Nilakrisna James
Malaysia is a fascinating country. Tourists see nothing more than whatTourism Malaysia would sell to them - the islands, the mountain, thecapital city, the wildlife, the kites, the culture and all those fancymaterialistic details that will satisfy a two-week visit.
Our media, the blogs, thepolitics, our news channels are hardly relevant and so for the mostpart our problems are pretty much localised with Malaysians looking nofurther than their front doors and their opinions confined to a closecircle of friends.
Hardly anyone really bothers to debate the situation as long as the wages keep them going at the end of the month.
It's just a cultural thing. By nature, we're less critical because that is our adat.
And this is where we fail. Welimit our own abilities to think laterally, accepting practically everypolitical dogmatic garbage as truth and living in a world where weimagine Malaysia having greater relevance than it actually has.
Rather than allowing ourselves tofit into the mould of global change, our philosophies are developedaround the notion that Malaysia is a sphere with the world as our core.That's why our politicians are deeply arrogant, so full of their ownimportance and crediting themselves with more hype than is necessary.
Yet, barely three hours away in a neighbouring country, they are nobodies.
If our elite are prepared toaccept this, we will begin to see a world where Malaysia is but asubset that should play its part and not a nation where everyone isembroiled in some debate on affirmative policy, et al.
So, when we talk of Vision 2020,we live by a legacy left behind by the last PM, a vision hardly citedby the present PM. We are made to believe that by 2020 we would be onpar with developed nations in many areas of our basic lives fromeducation to the economy.
But that vision took no accountof setbacks of fuel hikes and certainly no one would expect activistsor bloggers to set the pace for a major political revolution ashappened in the March 8 elections.
Our Vision 2020 will, sadly, bedwarfed by the reality that on a global scale Vision 2020 is actually aworldwide initiative for the elimination of avoidable blindnesslaunched jointly by World Health Organisation and the InternationalAgency for the Prevention of Blindness with an international membershipof various interested parties and NGOs. In 2020, at the same time as BNwill celebrate its vision for the country's development, the world willsee only the issue of Blindness. There lies the irony.
Malaysia's own myopia and avoidable blindness 12 years from now will reach its political peak.

I may sound like a skeptic. Butclearly many other issues in recent weeks could spare me the agony ofhaving to justify this unpalatable truth. In 2005, the Umno GeneralAssembly saw Education Minister Dato Hishammuddin waving the keris. Itdidn't go down well and Hishammuddin himself apologised if the debaclesuffered by BN, was in part also due to this action and rhetoric thatfollowed.

But who would have thought thatsomebody would also lend this symbolism to an international beautypageant. Our Miss Malaysia/Universe contestant in Vietnam two weeks agowas dressed in traditional Malay costume and was allowed to brandishthe Keris on stage.
How the Keris made it through theairport scanners in KL and Ho Chi Minh City itself is mind-bogglingwhen the IATA imposed strict rules on such weapons ever since Osama binLaden's cohorts crashed the planes into the Twin Towers using cardboardcutters ala 911.
I wonder what exactly was in themind of our contestant when she unsheathed the keris on stage before aworld audience. Was she suggesting that she would not hesitate to useit on anyone who would win the title?
If that was so, then contestants from war-torn nations might as well have brandished pistols and machine guns.
What's the difference because they are all weapons associated with violence and bloodshed.
Or perhaps a Ms Lebanon or MsGaza might want to go on stage with her body strapped with wires anddummy explosives if their intention is to make a political statementabout Israeli aggression.
We are trying hard to tell the world that we are a peace-loving society.
Besides, the Miss Universepageant is all about grace, charm, serenity and beauty. Waving a daggeris an affront to all these values.
There is also another thing to besaid about the kind of people we proclaim as our leaders. If they arenot insulting us women by making references to menstruation inParliament, they also have no compunction about uttering degradingremarks about us outside.
Take for instance the TerengganuMenteri Besar who defended his preference for a Mercedes rather than aProton Perdana by saying "there's no need to change your wife if she'sstill good looking."
Malaysia is, after all,intolerant of anything ugly. That be the underlying message. That ourvision limits itself to only such things as are palatable to YBs inParliament because ageism, sexism, violence, lack of equalopportunities, discrimination, etc, is the spinal fluid that makes ourcountry a globe in its own right, with the rest of the world at ourcore.

http://dailyexpress.com.my/