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Monday May 6, 2013

The morning after

Sambal On The Side
By BRENDA BENEDICT


An open letter to the newly minted winners of GE13.

Dear Newly Elected Individual,

Congratulations on having won. I will assume you won fair and square. This means without:

a) bribery;

b) scare tactics;

c) engaging non-Malaysians to vote for you;

d) administrative hiccups (like tainted ballot papers or indelible ink bottle not shaken properly);

e) dan lain-lain.

It’s now too late to ask you two simple questions namely, “What are your motivations for entering politics?” and “Will you apologise and exit gracefully if you fail to keep your promises within a reasonable period of time in office?”

Therefore I’m going to assume that you sincerely want to tackle issues like corruption, security, civil liberties and education, and that your positions on them come from the heart and not the teleprompter.

Perhaps you might now be asking why am I being so sibuk when I’m not even physically in the country.

Well, I spent close to 30 years of my life in Malaysia and I still have family and many friends there who have chosen not to uproot themselves for greener pastures. Therefore anything that affects them, affects me.

For instance, I feel extremely sorry for my Dad whenever I read of elected representatives telling segments of their electorate to “go back” or “you have not assimilated”. After all, Dad forsook his native India whilst in his 20s for what he then saw as a land of bounteous opportunities. And I know he toiled in a rubber plantation till he was 55 and I’d like to think that he was one of the many, many Malaysians who helped put Malaysia’s latex on the map.

A sincere “thank you” would have fared much better, don’t you think? But I digress.

So, have you decided on your key actions? I’d say don’t be too ambitious. Focus instead on one or two areas to which you can dedicate time, research and action that would hopefully translate to improvement.

Going by the groundswell of anger against perceived corruption, I think you’ll score major brownie points if you moved to make your statement of assets public. This will also put you in the enviable position of being able to question peers, who after a few years are able to own mansions in European cities and offshore bank accounts.

Some may argue that they started saving since they were foetuses or that they are simply blessed with smarts, but basic Maths will tell you that sometimes it just doesn’t add up.

Google “How to open a Swiss Bank account” and the information there will give you something to chew on if a colleague were to cruise up the Dewan Rakyat in a Rolls Royce.

You’ll also be a hero to many grateful Malaysians if you push for the shake-up and tightening of security in big cities and once-peaceful neighbourhoods.

I read with utter disbelief the recent senseless slaying of that poor lady at Bukit Gasing. I shuddered as I, too, used to do the cross-country circuit there almost every day after work while I lived in PJ! What once happened only to “other people” is now hitting uncomfortably too close to home.

And the more I read of “smash-and-grabs” the more I’m reminded of my time living in Pretoria, South Africa, where I drove around with my handbag in the boot and my wedding ring at home, in a safe. There was a grille leading to our bedroom, which we locked ourselves into every night and we each carried panic alarms. I do not wish this for anyone – more so the very people our tourism ads portray to be full of joie de vivre.

I could go on but I understand that you need to go back to celebrating your win. I look forward to reading about whatever changes you’ve promised your voters.

Otherwise, there are always hidden cameras that have a way of coming back and biting you in the behind if you slip up.

Brenda Benedict is a Malaysian living in Frankfurt, Germany.

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