Rudyard Kipling"
āWhen you're left wounded on Afganistan's plains and
the women come out to cut up what remains, Just roll to your rifle
and blow out your brains,
And go to your God like a soldierā
General Douglas MacArthur"
āWe are not retreating. We are advancing in another direction.ā
āIt is fatal to enter any war without the will to win it.ā āOld soldiers never die; they just fade away.
āThe soldier, above all other people, prays for peace, for he must suffer and be the deepest wounds and scars of war.ā
āMay God have mercy upon my enemies, because I won't .ā āThe object of war is not to die for your country but to make the other bastard die for his.
āNobody ever defended, there is only attack and attack and attack some more.
āIt is foolish and wrong to mourn the men who died. Rather we should thank God that such men lived.
The Soldier stood and faced God
Which must always come to pass
He hoped his shoes were shining
Just as bright as his brass
"Step forward you Soldier,
How shall I deal with you?
Have you always turned the other cheek?
To My Church have you been true?"
"No, Lord, I guess I ain't
Because those of us who carry guns
Can't always be a saint."
I've had to work on Sundays
And at times my talk was tough,
And sometimes I've been violent,
Because the world is awfully rough.
But, I never took a penny
That wasn't mine to keep.
Though I worked a lot of overtime
When the bills got just too steep,
The Soldier squared his shoulders and said
And I never passed a cry for help
Though at times I shook with fear,
And sometimes, God forgive me,
I've wept unmanly tears.
I know I don't deserve a place
Among the people here.
They never wanted me around
Except to calm their fears.
If you've a place for me here,
Lord, It needn't be so grand,
I never expected or had too much,
But if you don't, I'll understand."
There was silence all around the throne
Where the saints had often trod
As the Soldier waited quietly,
For the judgment of his God.
"Step forward now, you Soldier,
You've borne your burden well.
Walk peacefully on Heaven's streets,
You've done your time in Hell."
Take a stand and vote for change. Be on the right side of history. By Wan Qing
Sunday, April 07, 2013
I had my first political debate with a taxi driver who claimed to be an
Umno member, in Malay, on the day the dissolution of parliament was
finally announced (April 3, 2013). He stopped by the roadside
(which is supposed to be illegal) when he saw me walking in the car lane
at the warmest time of the day. He asked what my job was, and I said in
the publishing line. What kind of publication? Books and The Rocket. Ohhhh, DAP yea? And the rest of the conversation started to revolve around PKR vs BN.
He told me parliament akan bubar
today, I said thatās why I was walking all the way from my home to take
a taxi and rush to the office! We laughed, and he told me that heās an
Umno member, but all the while he was very keen to ask me questions
about DAP and PKR, as if his curiosity has been aroused for some time
but he had never been able to get any answers from his current sources
of information. At first he said he would still vote for Khalid
Ibrahim in Bandar Tun Razak, but I told him a green leaf that fell (if
only he still believed that Khalid is that pure green leaf) can never
save a whole tree that has been rotten and corrupted to the core.
Then he claimed that DAP is just another MCA that is pro-Chinese (I noted that he ended many of his statements with a ākan?ā,implying
tones of uncertainty). I replied that MCA is a retiring party that has
been playing racial politics over the years, just like Umno, and that
people nowadays donāt buy any of their monkey shows any more; whereas
DAP is actually non-racist. They have an ideology and they put
Malaysians first and before the Chinese. There are a lot of Malays in DAP and many of my colleagues in the office are Malays.
He
also asked about the Lahad Datu case and whether Tian Chua was right. I
told him that if Tian Chua was guilty, he would have been arrested and
put into prison for defamation. But now he had been released. That was
enough to prove that he was innocent. He was quiet for a while and started to admit that many of the ministers āmemang tak bergunaā, ādulu Mahathir sebenarnya juga makan banyakā. I
took the opportunity to ask whether he believed that Anwar Ibrahim was
innocent. He took a few seconds to think, and said he believed that Mohd
Saiful Bukhari Azlan was telling the truth because he swore on the
Al-Quran. āFor Muslims when you swear on the Al-Quran you can never tell
a lieā. But I told him that Saifulās father had just told the media
that his son had been used and that was it was a political conspiracy. āBetul ke?ā He didnāt know about the news.
āYou tau Altantuya?ā I said of course, what do you think about that? He said āI tak tau lah,tapi Najib semua juga makan besar. Rosmah itu cincin... hahahha!ā I said yea, if the government does not makan that much, the money that we rugi would
now lie in our banks and pockets and we wouldnāt have to work so hard
now and still not be earning enough to pay debts and live well. (āYa! insurans kereta naik lagi tahun ini tau!ā) And
I told him that private investigator P Balasubramaniam, who was
instrumental in the Altantuya Shaariibuu case had died last month of
causes people could not believe. Then one of the lawyers in the Scorpene
case was found dead in France, he had allegedly committed suicide.
People who are closely linked to Najib Abdul Razakās scandals have
disappeared one by one. His eyebrows raised higher and higher.
āKalau Najib kalah...?ā
āKalau Najib kalah, apa akan berlaku kepada dia?ā āMana tau, tapi saya rasa dia susah nak tangkap lohā, I said. And we both laughed.. I
asked whether he used the Internet at home, he said no. Then I said no
wonder la, because the mainstream media you have been consuming all
these years are all controlled by BN and cronies. He said memanglah.
I told him that The Rocket
Malay version is distributed for free, Iād like to give him one if I
have it with me. I asked him to go for ceramah if he had the interest to
know more about the information that he could never get in the
mainstream media, and give the opposition a chance to express their
ideologies in making our country a better place to live, to study, to
love and to die with. He didnāt answer, but he asked whether Iām
married. āYou pandai cakap lah.ā Laugh Out Loud (LOL). The
whole conversation might not be considered as a debate after all, but
this is surely the longest and deepest Malay conversation that I have
ever had with a Malay stranger.
What moved me the most was that
when we had almost arrived at the destination, he saw a lady holding a
lot of bags in her hands walking out from the market. He waved to her
vigorously even though I was still in the back seat, and opened the door
for her. The lady didnāt know any Malay (from her Cantonese accent
sheās probably not even a local), and apparently they couldnāt
communicate. The lady was hesitant, but he was so passionate
that he called up his friends to ask the location of the place the lady
wanted to go to, with the assistance of my translation.
Iām so
glad to have met an open-minded Umno member who was willing to admit
that the country is indeed in need of reformation, transformation,
revolution and be corruption-free for a better living. I donāt think I
was persuasive enough to convince him to change his vote, but at least I
think he would now like to know more about the chances and
possibilities of change. As an ordinary citizen working in an urban area (although I forgot to ask where he lived) who doesnāt read Facebook and
online news, what he doesnāt know is exactly what many other citizens
with similar background are innocent of, and those are the news and
information the government would like to hide, twist and distort as much
and as hard as they could.
I have been ranting to my friends
that Iām so gonna migrate if we canāt change this government in the
coming election. But I know deep down in my heart I love this country
more than I could imagine. We all are. The blaze of success and
prosperity in every country has always been a struggle demanded and
fought for generation over generation, with the price that no one could
have estimated. And the struggle for Malaysia is now. We say we
want peace, we want prosperity, we want a high quality of life. But how
can we gain peace when we risk being terrified, risk losing our
belongings and even lives for only walking on the road? How can we get
prosperity and a high quality of life if the public transport system is
so hopeless that everyone has to waste his or her life that could have
been spent productively elsewhere than in a traffic jam?
How can
we Malaysians achieve mutual understanding if we continue to hear only
one-sided stories from the controlled media (and textbooks in schools)
without having absolute freedom to speak, to question, to see each
other, and to stand together for what is right? For friends who
always say they are not into politics, I assure you neither do we love
politics. Because itās not even about politics, but the life that would
affect us in every single way, and the fundamental social
responsibilities that we are bound to that made us care and take action
to spark the change.
Five years from now Malaysia will be the
same country as today except for two things: the decision you make, and
the future you vote for. Take a stand and vote for change. Be on the
right side of history. Malaysiakini
