Why Are You Here?: VCDs, guns and <dfn lang = "Malay">dangdut tempatan</dfn>.

Check it out. Shit hitting the fan.

Actually, if you check out Jeff Ooi's blog entries, it looks like more than one piece of excrement¹ hitting more than one electrical contrivance for moving air for ventilation via rapid rotation of rigid vanes using an electrical motor².

I guess it isn't a good time to be a cop in Malaysia right now. Or is it?

If I have to be cynical³, I could be saying, “Cops fuck up! Innocent people get hurt! Film at 11!”. Seriously, how is this anything other than ‘business as usual’?

I'd really be exaggerating if I said that Malaysians live in fear of the police. But I wouldn't be exaggerating that far. We don't trust the police. Not with our lives. Which seems a terribly wrong thing, but what're you going to do about it?

The land of the knee-jerks

Amusingly, Malaysians reacted to the whole scene the way they usually do: with moral indignation over what was seen as the abuse of power by the powerful⁴, and cries of radical change that is sorely needed to rectify the Great Wrong That Has Already Happened.

Except that banning cops from using guns, as some people have already suggested, is impractical, not to mention predictably knee-jerk. That's what we do when we Malaysians see something that threatens us, and our way of life. We move to eliminate it.

It's the same with long hair in television, movies that portray The Enemy in a sympathetic light, groups of people who deviate from the Great Norm. We try to stamp it out. Well, actualy, the Government tries to stamp it out.

We're just very good students.

Ban it 'til it glows

We've learnt to deal with things that scare or unnerve or frighten us that way. We try to edit it out of our lives. Sure, a certain amount of denial is healthy — certainly to mend bridges, to forget past hurts — but this isn't a healthy amount of denial. Police-men need guns. Enforcement officials of Ministries and municipal councils don't. Certainly not against VCD sellers.

On the extremely insensitive but humorous point, though, you could really say that we're dealing with the piracy problem in a strict manner. What's next, roadside executions for copyright violators?

Man, there goes the Malaysian tertiary education community.

Making things right, Malaysian style

Of course, the Innocent Bystander now has to pay 15,000 ringgit to get a bullet off his back. A bullet, mind you, that got fired because an enforcement officer fucked up. People are urging the ministry to do something, and so far, all they've offered is their profuse apologies. Which is obviously not enough, so people are telling the ministry to pay the guy's bills, to demonstrate our how loving and caring we are.

Load of crap. The Ministry should pay the surgical fees before the factory worker decides to get Ideas Beyond His Station and sue.

Of course, the Ministry has a great chance of winning — our justice system is far from perfect, and we're not as litigation-happy as, say, the Americans. But seriously, the guy has everything to gain, and the Ministry has everything to lose — even if the Ministry wins.

I'm sure Lim Kit Siang and Karpal Singh are cackling away, at Opposition Headquarters…

Lim Kit Siang: Ha, ha, Comrade Karpal, an opportunity to make those idiots at BN look like fools!
Karpal Singh: Why yes, Comrade Lim. And I can look extra good doing (quotation mark gesture) ‘pro-bono work’!
LKS: Mwahahahahaha!
KS: Mwahahahaha!

Settle out of court, and get the guy back on his feet. It's better than getting your ass hauled into the fire with the press. Or with bloggers. Who aren't ethical, as a rule⁵.