FMT LETTER: From Dr David KL Quek, vie e-mail
Having just recently completed my two-year term as president of the Malaysian Medical Association, I could not refrain any longer from expressing my personal outrage and that of many among my profession. I am inclined to believe that many ordinary right-thinking Malaysians share this outrage, and even that intensifying sense of foreboding and anguish.
We are deeply saddened, hurt and disillusioned! What has become of our beloved country? Are we unraveling like all those despotic Middle Eastern countries – Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Yemen, Syria, Bahrain even? It certainly is beginning to look that way, sadly…
Bersih 2.0 is outlawed, although this is a loose coalition of some 65 NGOs, all of which are convinced about the need, nay the imperative, to improve our electoral processes and strengthen our stunted democracy!
Instead of recognising the inherent correctness of our citizens’ aspiration towards a better, more accountable, less corruptible system of electoral reform, the authorities have chosen to denigrate and persecute this burgeoning swathe of enlightened social activists as politically biased and opposition-influenced!
There can be no denying that there are political overtones – all social and public life are political! But a wiser government must choose on the side of righteousness and not simply react with knee-jerk political paranoia and high-handed cowardice!
Why, many people are asking, cannot the authorities rise above their partisan prickliness, and join in with the rakyat to ensure that the fairest and most just system works for all Malaysians? Why cannot the government choose that nobler path, instead of its dodgy attempt to protect clearly untenable positions of barefaced wrongs!?
julynine2011 