– Jahabar Sadiq
The Malaysian Insider
July 02, 2013
The classic cliche from Umno is this – if you don’t agree with us or criticise us, just get lost. Leave the country, now.
And they wonder why they lost the popular vote in Election 2013.
Barisan Nasional’s Kinabatangan MP Datuk Bung Mokhtar Radin repeated the line today when telling off AirAsia X chief executive Azran Osman-Rani for criticising Umno newspaper Utusan Malaysia over its racially-slanted articles after the May 5 general elections.
Calling Azran “Melayu Biadap” while debating the royal address in Parliament this morning, Bung Mokhtar said Azran should move if he was not happy in Malaysia.
The same line was said by Home Minister Datuk Seri Ahmad Zahid Hamidi in May when saying those unhappy with the GE13 results can also leave the country.
Is that really a solution when the Najib administration specifically set up the Talent Corporation to bring back Malaysians who can push the country to a high-income nation by 2020?
In 2011, then Deputy Foreign Minister A. Kohilan Pillay told parliament that more than 300,000 Malaysians left the country between March 2008 and August 2009, compared to nearly 140,000 in 2007/. Many work in key sectors such as finance, technology and engineering.
Do we want a talent like Azran to leave the country too?
And according to World Bank statistics, some 1.48 million Malaysians or 5.3 per cent of the population were emigrants in 2010.
Most left because of economic prospects. Do we want them to leave because they can’t criticise the government or an Umno newspaper?
Do we want to build a country of yes-men? Isn’t that then a wonder why Barisan Nasional keeps losing more seats than ever? Because the leaders listen to yes-men who have no courage to call a spade a spade.
We need constructive criticism and we need to tell off people who are racists. And we need to take criticisms for the good of the country.
Also, loyalty to the country should not be misconstrued as the need to be loyal to to the government. That we can leave to the likes of Bung Moktar and his colleagues.
What the country needs now is not for loud mouth lawmakers to tell Malaysians to get lost for pointing out faults. What it needs is a government that can run a country well to ensure it gets the people’s support.
Otherwise, the people will tell the government to get lost at the next possible opportunity.