Monday, July 28, 2008

When can I say I am proud to be Malaysian?

Last saturday, my mother received the worst possible news at 3pm. Her Korean student who had gone to Kuala Lumpur for a week long English course was found murdered, alongside an Indonesian maid, in a bungalow in Ukay Heights. There were no signs of break in and nothing was stolen. We scratched our heads wondering why anyone would want to kill a shy, timid 17 year old boy and an Indonesian maid in the wee hours of the morning.While CSI on TV might have the tagline that the "dead has spoken" through their high tech gadgetry and DNA profiling, here in Malaysia, we only have "the dead man tells no tales".

Two days prior to the news of the murder, my mother was informed of her students being mugged and robbed of their belongings in KLIA. Yes, the Kuala Lumpur- maybe-one-day-all-airports-will-be-like-this-one-international Airport. I shudder to think that one day all airports will see us travellers being mugged and robbed. Those type of airports, I can really do without.

And just before we heard that story, a friend told me that his house in Wangsa Maju was broken into in broad daylight. They ransacked the house and basically robbed them off everything of value.

Crime is so rampant nowadays, most of us have personally encountered or suffered one ourselves. If you throw a stone you're bound to hit someone who has had her handbag snatched, or have his house broken into.

And so we ask, what the hell is the police doing? And where the hell are they?

Apparently busy holding stupid roadblocks. And dressing up in balaclavas and arresting Anwar Ibrahim. Sending 9000 policemen to hold roadblocks all over the city which they termed "in order to maintain safety" because there was a rumour of a protest in front of the Parliament by Keadilan/PKR members?

While the rest of us are living in perpetual fear of being robbed/maimed/murdered when we walk the streets of Malaysia, the powers to be are busy squabbling over Anwar Ibrahim, merging of UMNO and PAS, Mercedes Benzs and Proton Perdanas, issuing statements asking Condoleeza Rice to mind her own business, disagreeing about Penang being an UNESCO Heritage Site and yelling at each other in Parliament.

Oh, how I wish I could one day say I am proud to be Malaysian and actually mean it.

2 comments:

The Zik said...

The fact that there IS a political upheaval to remove the ro(o)t of our problems, more than half of the country supporting the opposition (of course - since the opps play fair, they still loose), Mainstream Media being generally ignored, and many more... I think i'm quite proud to say i'm a Malaysian.

Bitch-on-a-rampage said...

Haha, the operative word(or two) being "I think". Every once in a while, I myself, "think" I am quite proud to be Malaysian.

But I have not reached the point of I AM proud to be Malaysian. Not just yet.