On returning royal awards

By Hafidz Baharom

For those of us with Netflix accounts, what Dr Mahathir Mohamad has done sounds vaguely similar to the storyline in one of its up-and-coming series. In the latest season of “The Crown”, an episode describes the actions of Lord Altrincham, who lambasts the British royal family for what he perceives as their inability to get with the times.

The end of the episode says that the British lord let go of his title later on and reverted to his common name, even after the royal family implemented all of his recommendations in order to remain relevant.

Not that I am suggesting the same of our Selangor royal family, of course.

For the British, declining a royal honour is not entirely unheard of, especially when you see the likes of Rudyard Kipling, Peter O Toole, John Cleese, and even Nigella Lawson on this list.

Thus, this raises the question of how returning royal awards here in Malaysia can be deemed an insolent move worthy of investigation. And I hope the police who receive such reports, while duty-bound to investigate, will spend some time rolling their eyes at this absurdity while focusing on more pressing matters – perhaps even investigating the house fire that was set to cover up a murder.

I will admit I am no die-hard fan of Mahathir. You can whack him for the hypocrisy he embodies in all his current stances versus his 22 years of running the government.

The flip-flops include imprisoning his deputy for sodomy and now calling him a “prisoner of conscience”, his complaints over welfare plans while now in a coalition which advocates continuing BR1M payments, and even the continued insistence on a costly subsidy mentality from which we have been trying to wean people off.

But returning his awards from the ruler, after clearly getting into an argument with His Royal Highness the Sultan of Selangor, is far from insolence. If anything, it is a sign of respect for the royal house.

To such an end, I viewed this issue as resolved once the palace issued a statement accepting the return of the awards. Anything afterwards is pure politicking.

Umno members would do well to focus more on trying to unite their voter base based on the incompetence of Pakatan Harapan rather than looking to play on emotions and using the monarchy as their scapegoat.

As a registered voter in Shah Alam and a person who has taken up residence there for 33 years, I believe our Selangor royal family is made of sterner stuff than to allow the words of any individual to impact them in such a fashion.

And this is what Umno is doing wrong: to believe that they can somehow gain sympathy by scapegoating themselves as protectors of royalty, the voice of the common man against artistes voicing out against the increased cost of living, and even claiming once again that somehow DAP will take over the country and make us Malays a less equitable people.

Of course, not all of Umno are such daft emotional propaganda people. Thank God for individuals like Kuala Selangor MP Irmohizam Ibrahim who can feel the pulse of his district and act accordingly.

This is what Umno needs to do, and what Wanita Umno has had the advantage of doing for ages, which is to go down to the ground, find out what is amiss, and translate this into policies.

The problem Umno is now bogged down with is using wrongful topics for their propaganda and forgetting their primary goal and function to look at strengthening political and economic equity for the Malay community. They instead focus on shadow puppetry and sidewinder topics to deflect attention from their misgivings.

The Malaysian people aren’t that dumb, and the people of Selangor aren’t that dumb. In fact, Shah Alam has enough experience with roundabouts to see right through this stupidity.

Thus, I would like to ask politely that Umno move on if they still want to win back Selangor. The royal family has, and Mahathir has. To continue harping on this issue will be to the detriment of your own campaign.

Hafidz Baharom is an FMT reader.