Michelle Yeoh Controversy

Recently Michelle Yeoh got herself into a firestorm by attending a rally in support of the ruling Coalition:

This inevitably stirred up a shit storm where a large number of vocal Malaysian citizens started cursing and swearing her over her Facebook fan page and calling her a traitor to the nation. At this stage I could only cover my face in my palm as I gazed upon one idiotic comment after another railing abuse at her.

Let me clear this from the start, I am no fan of the establishment but really Michelle Yeoh has every right as a citizen of our country to voice her opinion. It might not be a popular opinion, it might not be what you and I subscribe to but she certainly has no need to remain apolitical at all. If we are advocating democracy and freedom of association and speech then we must be prepared to swallow the bitter pill of hearing opinions that need not necessarily be in tandem with ours. If we can't accept that, then maybe we truly aren't ready for the very democracy and freedoms we are championing for.

That is not to say we can't disagree with Michelle Yeoh's stance but rather we could always put forward our disagreements in a civil and professional way without resorting to name calling and personal attacks on her character for her political beliefs. So I took a visit to her Facebook page and noticed people calling her a slut and a whore and other obscene vulgarities. Enough.

If this is the sort of level the general Malaysian public is at then this is the calibre of politicians we are going to get and the sort that we deserve. Why do you think our politicians take us for fools half the time, because if the Rakyat would rather rail and shout then these incompetent leaders would have no need to form a cogent argument when put to public scrutiny. By the looks of half of these people commenting with "cibai, traitor, witch, slut, fuck you, etc" rather than putting their disagreements in an eloquent manner, they get MP's that are a reflection of that attitude. Incompetent, incoherent and bloody stupid. Because evidently if an MP was to explain policy to an audience like this, half of them would not even begin to comprehend the matters and issues being addressed.

If anything, this showcases the failing of our education system. A large proportion of Malaysians that haven't had the luxury or means to study in an overseas environment or system have a tendency of being unable to form proper civil arguments and would rather shout and rail abuse to drown out dissent. They often times don't consider issues objectively and weigh the policies of both sides in a proper coherent manner. Both Barisan Nasional and Pakatan Rakyat are verily full of shit, the trick is finding which one is less full of shit to be honest. But the people of Malaysia are sometimes so full of biases towards either party they would rather just close their eyes and ears to any misgivings of the coalitions of their choice and scream "lalalala" at the top of their lungs.

Back to Michelle though, so what if she's campaigning for Barisan. So what if she's a public figure. I don't see Americans calling Arnold Schwarzennegar a traitor to his nation for supporting the Republican party by extension of him being an international super star. This is the same party that has brought in a number of emergency provisions into US law, fought against gay marriage and taken the US to two wars that have incurred great economical and human cost. And yet people will agree to disagree on policies, they aren't going about railing and personally attacking Arnold's character.

You wonder why Malaysia is still a Third World Nation? It's because they have a Third World mentality. Our leaders are just an extension of that Third world mentality. So really we have abit of a chicken and egg scenario, what is the cause: our incompetent population leading to incompetent leaders or our incompetent leaders driving an incompetent education policy that produces incompetent citizens? Just some food for thought. Fuckin' ell.