Uncle Isa comes a-calling!

Desperate times call for desperate deeds.

In these desperate times when the ethnic minorities in this country are getting desperate with government policies and resorting to desperate actions to get across their desperate message, the desperate government in turn has made a desperate act to charge the desperate main Hindraf people under the Internal Security Act.

I've no sympathy for the Hindraf people - they did something real wrong, something I do not agree with, so they have to face the consequences - but it's really sad that it has to end this way.


But it did not have to end this way. Is this the message that the government want to tell the whole wide world? That this is a government that is becoming increasingly intolerant of the grievances of the people? A government that prefers to sweep the dust beneath the carpet (or in this case, by throwing the perpetrators into jail without recourse to the courts) rather than to acknowledge their hurt and engage them?

Or maybe, this is a government out of touch with the realities of today, in deep denial, paralysed by fear and a real inability to do anything right or fast enough. So when everything else fails in the short term, the only excuse for them is to resort to the age-old defence that might is right.

Whatever,The government should have hauled the Hindraf people to court first before Uncle ISA was called in. Are the Hindraf people so slippery that charges cannot be made to stick on them? This latest reaction looks likely to have some serious repercussions on the country. My fear is that it's going to bring out the worst in the socio-political climate.

Will the Indians take this humiliation lying down? Will it lead to far more serious developments? And the majority Malays? Do they see the Hindraf actions as a real threat to their special privileges or is this just an irritating episode? And the Chinese? Do they feel that this is not their fight? One thing is for sure: there are lots of unhappiness in this land. Every race has its own grievances and they are all coming out into the open.

If the government is smart, they will use the brief respite that the ISA has given them to go deep into the grassroots to address the unhappiness but if the government is stupid enough, they'll simply crawl back into their shell, shut both eyes and do nothing but bluster away.

Smart government? Stupid government? We'll know in the months to come.