E Contrario

I was on Astro with Ong Tee Keat and Jamuluddin Ibrahim last night (3 December). It was a Chinese life talk show and the topic last night was “Bangsa Malaysia”. It was aired from 20:30hr to 21:30hr on AEC.

Jamal or Jamaluddin Ibrahim was an interesting character. He is the CEO of Paradise Group, an education consultancy company. He speaks fluent standard Putonghua (Mandarin)—perfect Beijing Chinese. He told me that he studied in the prestigious University of Beijing. He worked and lived in Beijing for 7 years; returned to Malaysia only in 1994. He probably would be qualified as the Melayu ‘Glokal’ described by DPM Najib.

Datuk Ong Tee Keat, the deputy minister for higher education, was a hard nut to crack. His argument was always crafty, always trying to shift away from criticism aiming at the government. He consistently agreed with me or call-in audiences whenever we criticize the government. Then he dissociated himself, launched attack on irresponsible politicians/bureaucrats/media/etc. He sounded similar to opposition and hence eluded the blame of being in the government.
Ong was one of the targets fiercely attacked by delegates in the Assembly. I am sure he wasn’t very pleased with the racial overtone expressed within Umno.

Towards the end of the program, Ong called on the voters to use their votes wisely, to choose the candidates who represent the people interests.

I joked: Datuk, are you calling the people to vote against BN? He smiled: you want me to get into more trouble?
Isn’t it obvious? Umno is not interested to retain support from multi-ethnic society. Their primary concerns are demanding goodies/projects for themselves, and couldn’t careless about the feeling of others—least their coalition partners.