Ibrahim Ali's 300

Technorati tags: Penang Protest, Ibrahim Ali, Race Politics, UMNO, PERKOSA, Sedaq

For tonight, we dine… in KOMTAR!

Or “today”, as the case may be.

Walski couldn’t help but think about exactly that phrase when he read the Malaysiakini report (from which the picture above was taken).

Some 300 angry protesters from various Malay non-governmental organisations torched an effigy of Penang Chief Minister Lim Guan Eng near the state government office in Komtar this afternoon.
(source: Malaysiakini - subscription required)

And what were the 300 “Malays” – not Spartans – so pissed off about?

Among other things, what they claim as the discriminative demolition of Malay-owned stalls, which incidentally were unlicensed.

The following YouTube comes from a pro-Malay rights / pro-UMNO blog, called Pisau.net, which reported on the protest.

What better way to spend a Friday afternoon, after congregational prayers, than to raise some hell in Georgetown, eh?

Welcome to city life boys… DBKL demolishes unlicensed stalls all the time. Care to come to KL and raise some hell?  
(more misadventures of Froggy & his 300, and more, in the full post)

Oh, and guess who was in attendance? None other than Malay ultra right-wing, neither here, nor there Ibrahim “Froggy” Ali, president of PERKOSA PERKASA, as reported by The Malaysian Insider.

Finding out about which, Walski’s mind immediately conjured the image you see on the right.

Not as menacing as the Gerard Butler’s King Leonidas, but not exactly a pretty sight either. Neither is Ibrahim Ali quite as fit, in all likelihood, despite promoting himself as a warrior. Walski won’t even think of him as a Warrior Princess – that would be an insult to Xena.

Not too long ago, Ibrahim Ali blasted his disgust against DAP for stepping on the poster of Perak state legislators who’d jumped ship from Pakatan Rakyat to become independents, paving the way for the political fiasco in Perak.

Froggy said that such behavior, exhibited by “disrespectful non-Malay leaders”, was insolent.

Well, Walski supposes it’s okay if his own people do it. Worse, the effigy of Lim Guan Eng was set ablaze – and then stepped upon.

In most reasonable people’s books, this is called “double-standards”. In Walski’s book (being not very reasonable right now), he simply calls it hypocrisy. Or, by other terminology, more familiar to these jokers – munafik.

Equally as munafik-y was the police’s attitude towards the protest (which obtained a permit, incidentally) – extremely tolerant. Too bad they don’t practice the same tolerance when it comes to peaceful protests perceived to not be in favor of UMNO/BN. But that’s Malaysia for ya.

Walski’s not exactly sure what they intend to achieve by such a rowdy display. It certainly doesn’t do their cause any favors, as it reinforces the stereotype that Malays are emotionally fragile and volatile – like, don’t piss off the Malays, ‘cos they’re very likely to go ballistic on you.

Yeah, yeah… Walski knows that it’s all about this ketuanan…

But consider this – what kind of superiority are you claiming when you insist that the rest of the world treats you as “special”? And that, while you’re “superior”, you’re in constant need of assistance, hand-outs, protectionist quotas, and what not, because you’re so bloody superior, you can’t compete with other Malaysians?

It just doesn’t make any sense whatsoever. At least, not to Walski. And it certainly doesn’t lend any positivity to the concept of 1Malaysia.

All he can say is that perhaps it’s high time these warriors of race realize that what they’re doing is not doing them any favors at all. Championing a stereotype, that is.

Walski firmly believes that he, just like most Malaysians, belongs to the human race, and really wonders what race Ibrahim Ali and his 300 think they belong to…