Ramasamy provides ammunition to his detractors By Commander S THAYAPARAN (Retired) Royal Malaysian Navy

Malaysiakini : “All political parties die at last of swallowing their own lies.”

- Scottish physician, satirist and polymath John Arbuthnot.

COMMENT | By creating another party to “defend” the rights of Indians, former DAP member P Ramasamy has provided ammunition to his detractors and squandered whatever goodwill his recent political fortunes have generated.

In a nutshell, I think that political parties have been calamitous to the diverse Indian community.   The irony is, that the best thing Ramasamy did for the Indian community was first being an outlier voice in DAP before leaving the party.

Ramasamy said when his crowdfunding goals were met, even though apparatchiks were basking in their schadenfreude on social media, his words were, “I was confident that the community would help me in my moment of need. I will never forget this community.”

However, the choice of creating another party will probably be a sad coda of his political career. Ramasamy’s racial dialectic was always a problem for DAP, even though the party never had a problem supplicating to the Malay community.

However, when it came to their rights and demonising the MCA for failing to represent Chinese expectations in BN, the Indian political operatives had to play dutiful handmaidens to the power brokers in the DAP - all the while pushing the Bangsa Malaysia kool-aid.

To argue that “race” does not matter is naive, considering the decades of systemic racism and the reaction to such a reality. To argue that race should not matter is disingenuous, considering that political parties court specific racial demographics.

To assume that oppositional politics is post-racial is blatant propaganda, considering that it is pragmatism and not any sustainable philosophy that binds Harapan’s diverse religious, racial and ideological groups.

Instead of shining a spotlight on the disenfranchised Indian community, all Ramasamy has done is create another opportunity for his detractors to engage in stereotypical and racial narratives of the Indian community and the leaders who claim to represent them.

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