Kg Medan: Lancing the boil with a machete

CHIAROSCURO 
MGG Pillai 

Rumours spread quickest in the vacuum between what we are told and what is. People for their safety instinctively assume the worst. Rumours flourish best when what happened is falsified, and those who should know drop their guard to suggest what happened is worse. The government cannot stop that by fiat, as it now tries to.

So, when the deputy prime minister, Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, on Monday visited the scene of last week's communal clashes in Petaling Jaya, the cynicism spread faster than the rumours. He delivered the usual homilies on why diverse races must live in multiracial amity, what he would address, at the drop of a hat, to an international forum of multicultural living.

The warmth and concern was just not there. The newspapers, radio and television stations gave him the wide banal coverage he normally gets, with no news or information that could counter the rumours or make one assess what happened. Newspapers went on their high horse to infuse nationalism and unity, to address the noble ideals of nationhood that those in power and around them tote out when challenged or, as in this case, cornered.

He would have been better received if he had addressed the issues head on. The MIC president and works minister, S Samy Vellu, did not come earlier than he did because his security could not be guaranteed. So he said, when the government insisted it was always under control and safe for people to move about.

His cabinet colleague and the MP for Lembah Pantai in Kuala Lumpur, makes house calls in her constituency for it appears the violence spread, however well-contained, to her constituency, which begins a kilometre away from the Kuala Lumpur railway station.

Squalid sprawl

So, is Abdullah saying what is or what should be? How does he explain why some 600 uniformed and armed policemen surround the area? Why has he not taken action against the state assemblywoman who said it was Indians who attacked the Malays, when he insists what happened is not a communal clash? Why is the police issuing a racial breakdown of those arrested, wounded, killed? Why is the media encouraged to report them?

As the secretary of the National Operations Council, formed after the May 13,1969 riots, Abdullah should have known the power of getting even amongst the communities under siege. So, why does he, as home minister now, all it? Why is there this indescribable feeling that there is more to what happened than we are told?

I can understand the government's nervousness. After all, the Keadilan youth chief and the son of an Umno branch leader, Ezam Mohamed Noor, now under arrest for sedition, hails from Kampung Medan. Is the government's response arising from this? Is this why the police is out there in full force? Does the government believe the rough welcome the residents gave the Selangor mentri besar, Mohd Khir Toyo, has a political focus, and not just that the government had neglected this squalid urban sprawl amidst plenty?

Cancerous boil

For years, as The Star says, the area bounded by Old Klang Road, Taman Dato' Harun and Kampung Lindungan, a total of 47 separate communities in which 160,000 live, have had to put up with garbage-strewn narrow roads, clogged drains, inclement electricity, official neglect, gangsters, drug addiction, violence as a way of life, hopelessness.

This cannot be resolved by Mohamed Khir hosting a dinner for 200 from the area at his official residence in Shah Alam. Why was this not at the scene of the conflict? It would have had a greater impact. But he could not.

They have questions to ask of him that they could when he left in a hurry after he was heckled badly after the clashes occurred. The government left it too late to act, and then it was piece-meal and with a tired yawn. Life went on as usual.

Cabinet ministers reacted as if interrupted from their more important indolent activities. What happened was treated as a boil that must be lanced - not with a scalpel, but a machete. But the boil was a cancer that metastasised.

The rumours spread like wildfire. A six-month-old baby fights for his life, the victim of this senseless carnage that took a life of its own. There is still no sense yet of government actions but Samy Vellu promises low-cost houses for those injured.

He means, of course, the Indians in the area, for they are the worst affected. This cannot but send word, especially amongst the Indians, that they have to take the law into their own hands to get what they should have in the normal course of events.

The Indians in the area have long been denied low-cost homes because of MIC near-fratricidal infighting.

Wrong message

In disasters like these, preaching national unity without taking steps to ensure it, is meaningless. The government should have called in the opposition parties to use their good offices as well as to reduce tension. It did not. It never has.

Like in Lunas, the population moves away from the government. And it could even get the Malays in the area to unite around it. Why should it, when the assemblywoman elected with solid Indian support - the seat would have gone to the opposition otherwise - now blames the Indians for Malay ills in the area, and the Selangor government forgot the promises it made during past elections for their vote?

This cannot be resolved by not spreading rumours: there must be someone on the ground at all times putting right the wrongs of the past. There is none. And it is probably too late to begin.

Unfortunately, Abdullah's proconsular visit sent a wrong message. Rumours had nothing to do with it.