I'm no pundit or seasoned armchair pollie by any stretch of the imagination but if you've read my remarks about our tragic country, you'll notice one theme. While everyone's busy pointing a finger at the evil politician and greedy tycoon, I'm quite alone in asking people to reflect on the 4 fingers pointing back at them.
Hate the narrow-minded politician that's spewing nonsense? Well, guess who put him there? No, not the party members. The millions of people who cast their votes for him.
Hate the guy who bagged the gambling license? Well, guess how he came into the picture? No, not his political chums. The Rm 1.7 billion Malaysians spend gambling EVERY DAY, that's what he's after. If nobody gambles, do you think he would even bother?
Hate the Ah Long who roughs people up? Well, guess how he came to be? No, not because he's rich and powerful. Its because there's millions of us out there who want to borrow to finance lives we cannot afford but cannot bear to live without.
As long as there's demand, the opportunist will supply. Its almost like a law of nature.
This latest gambling thing would be funny if it wasn't so tragic. Apparently thousands of people have hit the streets to protest against the guy who got the license. I've yet to hear one bloke ask out loud, "Hey wait a minute, why do we Malaysians like to gamble so much? If we stopped gambling, would this monster disappear?"
Yes there's a lot of bad things in our country. We got lawlessness on the roads, crazy ass inflation, open corruption and now another avenue to bet your life savings on games of chance. Everyone's up in arms. Amazingly very few people see how they may have been feeding the very monster whose blood they now cry for.
I think we've been asking the wrong question all this while. Its not, "Why did A get the license and not B?" Its, "Why are we so addicted to doing X until it inspired A to go for the license?"
Similarly, its not, "Why do we have this stupid policy and that stupid policy?" Its, "Why is the majority so in love with people who believe in those stupid policies?"
I always say that before we complain about the flies, we should ask ourselves why did we let the garbage pile up so high outside our door? As far as I can tell, we still have free will. The whole country makes a collective choice every 4 years. And it is the collective choices of 26 million of us that give us our sad story today. With our passions, our prejudices and our greed, we collectively breathed life into the monsters in our story. They are but creatures of our will. So tell me, how to destroy the monsters out there with street protests when the real monters are living inside us?
What people don't seem to talk about is, for every licensed gambling outlet there are about 10 illegal ones operating under the very noses of the law. We legalize them, the revenue goes to the govt. What alarms us is when we found out the govt is an even bigger pirate... sigh.
ReplyDeleteYup, and they call this an Islamic country, lol. Its amazing what one can get away with with a sleight of hand when the public is busy struggling to survive.
ReplyDeleteI agree about the gambling but not about the Ah Longs. When people are desperate, those Ah Longs seem to be their only way out. Problem is that they don't know it is from the frying pan into the fire.
ReplyDeleteI think it isn't so much a case of turning to the Ah Longs and making them rich because the poor people simply had no recourse. Not everyone who borrows from the Ah Long does so because of wanting to finance a high-flying life. Granted there are many like that. However, some actually turn to the Ah Longs because they have astronomical medical bills to cover and had no choice. Okay, there's always a choice but sometimes the judgment gets clouded by worries and anxieties.
Hi Lita, yes I actually relate with what you said. I just shelled out a small fortune for my dad's cancer treatment and can imagine those who don't have insurance or cash reserves to do it. Actually I'm not worried about those who can pay back their borrowings. Its the ones who struggle to pay back that I pity and apparently they form the bulk of loan shark borrowers. I personally know an 80 year old man saddled with a shark debt of more than Rm200k. He's too old to run so he ends up being a slave, working 15 hours a day to pay it off, probably until he drops dead. Whatever physical health he enjoyed from that borrowing is devastated by the mental torture of daily slavery. That's my biggest concern about debt.
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