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Datuk Zaid Ibrahim, for instance, decried Umno's "double standards" in sacking him for consorting with the enemy but not, say, Datuk Arif Shah Omar Shah, recently miffed with his division for ostracising him after he met quietly with opposition leaders. REHMAN RASHID, New Straits Times
DATUK Mukhriz Mahathir's suggestion of dissolving all Malaysian schools into a single education system was indeed, as Datuk Seri Hishammuddin Hussein said, "misunderstood". But it appeared to be wilfully misunderstood, and there lies the rub.
Anyone who listened to Mukhriz's original statement, in the circumstances and context of its delivery, should have realised that he was speaking of an ideal: a single, unitary alternative to the several realities of our education system.
Mukhriz proposed demolishing our Tower of Babel and fashioning the rubble into a single mansion of many rooms.
It's not even a new idea, as his father was among the first to note amid the ensuing brouhaha. Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad reminded us of the "Sekolah Wawasan" concept of grouping separate vernacular schools around common facilities. Even that hadn't caught on, he ruefully observed. No, the right of Malaysians to be schooled in their mother tongues was enshrined in the Constitution, forsooth, and was not a right lightly to forsake.
Hence, when Mukhriz wistfully envisioned all Malaysian schools being dumped out of their boxes into one big mixing bowl, the Chinese and Tamil ingredients of his spicy pasembur protested again that he was calling for the closure of vernacular schools.
Well, yes. But not the eradication of Mandarin or Tamil education. He only meant that vernacular education should also be enfolded into a single national school system, enabling all schoolkids to learn everything in all languages.
There was a time when such an idea would have been hailed as positively Utopian, if tragically naive.
But, of course, such a mixed salad would bear scant resemblance to what we swallow today, so YB Lim Kit Siang accuses Mukhriz of sedition, Datuk Seri S. Samy Vellu assures the Indian community that "the MIC will continue to safeguard and fight for the Tamil school", and Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim notes that such Malay chauvinism may boost Mukhriz's bid for captaincy of Umno Youth.
And on it goes into Parliament, where YB Teresa Kok demands to know why Mukhriz hasn't been hauled up by the police, like Datuk Seri Dr Chua Soi Lek was for saying he could abide by the phrase "special rights" better than he could "ketuanan Melayu".
That may yet happen, if the police think Mukhriz has something to answer for. Personally, I don't.
To be fair, I didn't think Dr Chua had much to answer for either. He was merely the latest to stumble into the tar pits steaming and bubbling around the phrase ketuanan Melayu.
So here was a double misunderstanding. First, Dr Chua misunderstood ketuanan Melayu and "special rights" as signifying the same thing. They don't, because the former remains a nebulosity defying national consensus, while the latter is as constitutionally precise as the right to vernacular education.
There ensued, therefore, the misunderstanding that Dr Chua was calling for the Malays to be denied whatever was presumably embedded in "Ketuanan Melayu", as misunderstood by everyone else.
When viewpoints are this diametrically opposed, "double standards" are a statistical certainty.
Datuk Zaid Ibrahim, for instance, decried Umno's "double standards" in sacking him for consorting with the enemy but not, say, Datuk Arif Shah Omar Shah, recently miffed with his division for ostracising him after he met quietly with opposition leaders.
The distinction between these two cases is that Zaid did it on TV. At Parti Keadilan Rakyat's congress. As an honoured guest. In the front row. Next to Datuk Yong Teck Lee. Who had pulled out of Barisan Nasional.
While Arif Shah remains plaintively loyal to Umno, Zaid has long made it abundantly clear that his first and perhaps only political loyalty is to himself -- or (so as not to misunderstand him) his principles.
So Umno sacked him. No double standards there: only the single standard of loyalty. Whatever you may think of "my country right or wrong", Umno is only alive today because of it. Without loyalty above all else, that party would have died a dozen deaths by now.
Umno survives because it was founded not for political dominance, which would require ambition, but cultural survival, which requires loyalty. Hang Jebat was a foolish romantic; the kris that killed him is on the party flag.
Yes, that kris, the iconic Tamingsari; the symbol Hishammuddin was misunderstood for unsheathing at the Umno Youth assembly in 2005. He had intended the act, somewhat self-consciously, as a theatrical reminder to the Malays that they weren't bereft of spirit, courage, strength, etc, but the nation's non-Malays saw it as a warning and a threat aimed directly at them.
Symbols mean different things in different languages; idioms, metaphors and allegories are lost in translation.
We used to be better at this. Indeed, considering how well we used to understand each other, the only explanation for everyone now choosing to see everything in the worst possible light is that it's deliberate. Conscious, wilful misunderstanding.
This dreadful eagerness to deny the benefit of the doubt, to take offence where none was intended, to impute malice to innocence, has turned once thoughtful Malaysians into the fulminating Red Queen of Alice in Wonderland, believing six impossible things before breakfast and crying "off with their heads!"
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