Hari Malaysia Ke-46: Bangkitlah Anak Sabah!

Kepada anak watan Negeri Di Bawah Bayu,

Apabila jam melimpasi pukul 12 malam ini, negeri Sabah akan meraikan Hari Malaysia yang ke-46 sempena penyertaan Sabah dan Sarawak untuk menubuhkan negara persekutuan bernama Malaysia.

Persoalaan saya kepada anda sekalian, patutkah penduduk Sabah merayakan ulang tahun acara tesebut?

Seperti mana yang saya difahamkan, Sabah dan Sarawak tidak menyertai sebuah kerajaan yang sedia wujud.

Dalam ’20 Point Agreement’ yang disediakan menjelang September 16, 1963, Sabah bukanlah semata-mata sebuah daripada 14 negeri dalam Malaysia malah bersama-sama Sarawak, Singapura dan Semenanjung Malaya, Sabah merupakan sebahagian daripada empat tonggak yang membentuk negara Malaysia.

Oleh itu, Sabah telah dijanjikan kuasa autonomi dalam pelbagai aspek.

Antaranya termasuklah pentadbiran dalam isu-isu kewarganegaraan, imigresen, pendidikan, kewangan, sumber-sumber asas, kerajaan tempatan dan perkhidmatan awam.

Cuba fikirlah anak Sabah sekalian.

Adakah kerajaan persekutuan UMNO/Barisan Nasional memenuhi janji-janji yang terkandung dalam persetujuan 20 Point Agreement tersebut?

Adakah Sabah merdeka dan berkuasa muktmad dalam isu-isu kewarganegaraan?

Lihatkah sekeliling Sabah dan hayatilah dengan mata sendiri kesan-kesan Projek IC yang dilancarkan Mahathir Mohammad.

Tidaklah saudara marah dan terkilan melihat mereka yang berbangsa Filipina, Indonesia dan Pakistan menerima kewarganegaraan dan bersama-samanya hak-hak istimewa bumiputera Sabah?

Pelancong asing dari sepelosok dunia melawat Sabah dan terpikat dengan keindahan Gunung Kinabalu dan kepelbagaian flora dan fauna laut Pulan Sipadan.

Mereka ini cukup kagum dengan pembangunan yang pesat di sekitar Kota Kinabalu di mana hotel-hotel berbintang lima berbaris di seluruh kota raya.

Akan tetapi, berapa banyakkah anak Sabah yang berpeluang untuk menikmati pembangunan dan keistimewaan semula jadi negeri mereka sendiri?

Kos yang diperlukan untuk memanjat Gunung Kinabalu ataupun menyelam di Pulau Sipadan kini melonjat sehingga satu tahap yang di luar kemampuan kebanyakan penduduk Sabah.

Banggakah sekalian semua akan hakikat ini?

Kekayaan negeri Sabah kini dinikmati croni-croni UMNO/BN serta orang asing yang berada.

Pemuda-pemudi Sabah pula terus meringkuk dalam kemiskinan malah masih banyak yang tidak berpendidikan dan berkahwin dalam umur belasan tahun.

Anak muda juga tidak berkemahiran dan kalaupun ada, sukar mencari peluang pekerjaan.

Adakah ini sesuatu pencapaian yang patut diraikan esok?

Sekolah-sekolah sekitar Sabah masih seperti zaman batu.

Banyak lagi yang tidak tidak dilengkapi kerusi meja, elektrik, air mahupun papan tulis dan tenaga pengajar.

Akibatnya, generasi Sabah yang akan datang akan tetap seperti moyang mereka yang jahil tanpa mobilti social.

Di manakah autonomi pendidikan yang dijanjikan pada September 16, 1963?

Kebodohan rakyat Sabah memilih UMNO sebagai kerajaan negeri berkali-kali telah secara tidak langsung mengetepikan anak Sabah sendiri.

Perkhidmatan awam negeri Sabah kini dikuasai mereka yang berbangsa istimewa dari seberang Laut Cina Selatan.

Pejabat-pejabat kerajaan sekitar Sabah kebanyakannya di bawah pentadbiran orang-orang Semenanjung yang tidak mengenali Sabah serta keperluan rakyatnya.

Ke mana pergikah pemimpin-pemimpin UMNO/BN yang dipilih oleh para pengundi Sabah dalam pilihanraya demi pilihanraya?

Politikus ini sudah memperbodoh rakyat Sabah dan masing-masing meragut kesempatan untuk meningkatkan kekayaan dan harta sendiri!

Ke mana perginya sumber-sumber asas negeri Sabah yang berlambak-lambak sebelum ini?

Dari balak ke minyak dan ikan ke batu karang, kekayaan negeri Sabah telah dieksploitasi dengan melampau sekali.

Si bodoh seperti Bung Mokhtar dan Pandikar Amin tidak segan mempamerkan korupsi masing-masing manakala rakyat jelata tiada hospital umum untuk mendapatkan rawatan apabila sakit tenat.

Jadi, bangga lagikah pasal kesampaian tarikh Sept 16 esok?

Saya menyeru rakyat Sabah untuk tidak lagi menuduh pengundi hantu berbangsa Filipina.

Sememangnya, parti perkauman bergelar UMNO gemar menawarkan wang dan kad pengenalan untuk membeli undi-undi orang asing.

Namun, rakyat Sabah tidak lagi dapat menafikan peranan mereka dalam politik wang.

Sekiranya ‘Sabahan’ sekalian ingin terus terkongkong dalam korupsi parti buli bernama UMNO, silakan menyambut September 16 dengan bangga hati.

Silakan mengundi UMNO pada pilihan raya akan datang.
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University Days: The Years I Slept Near A Surau

It was 5.30 am on a Sunday morning.

I was awake, not by effort or by consent but by chance.

It was the call of the azan coming from the college surau.


I had slept for less than three hours.

It was okay.

For five years I woke up intermittently up to the call to worship.

Mostly I went back to sleep.

Sometimes I could not.

Sometimes, it was the perfect way to be the early bird that catches the worm.

On Fridays, I would sometimes listen to the sermon coming from the mosque right next to University Malaya Medical Center.

There was little one else can do on a Friday afternoon.

The college rooms were stuffy and permeated with a stench of sweat-soaked socks.

Studying medical textbooks on a seething afternoon in such conditions were not possible for me.

It didn’t help too that the loudspeakers of the mosque faced my room directly.

Anyway, these were sermons delivered by UMNO-appointed imams.

I had grown accustomed to the hatred and anger in some sermons.

Among the usual Jew-bashing and anti-America overture, there were occasional reminders of how Malay and Islamic supremacy were supposedly under threat from the kafir population in Malaysia.

Anyway, I lived with five years of 200-decibel azan calls and Friday sermons teeming with xenophonic tones - just like so many non-Muslim students in public universities all over Malaysia.

It didn’t make me a lesser Christian.


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University Days: The Day I Was Declared Indecent

It was a day like any other, or so I thought.

We came back from swimming like we always did.

Our hair was still drenched and irritatingly grassy from the heavily chlorinated water of the UM swimming pool, except for Wong of course because he had no hair then.

We wasted no time and headed for the canteen.

My friends and I always had our forks and spoons in our swimming bags.

Mine was normally tucked comfortably between a worn swimming trunk and a used towel.

We made our way to the food counter in the canteen, preparing our student cards in order to collect food.


It was normally deep-fried catfish on Fridays.

The incredibly obese and bespectacled mak cik was seated as usual by the counter, halfheartedly and nonchalantly checking the students’ cards while giving a pleasant greeting.

I always appreciated her efforts to be nice and kind.

There was something different about today though.

A young Malay lass with no tudung was standing by mak cik, her arms folded across her chest in an authoritative position.

I have come to learn of this lady as a newly appointed hostel warden.

She aged no more than 24 years.

In other words, she was much younger than some of us final year students then.

She was a failed government scholar pursuing a trainee lecturer course with UM.

From afar, I could see her reprimanding some students, both Muslims and non-Muslims alike.

Some headed back to their rooms without food.

I wondered why.

We found out soon enough.

By the time our turns came to collect food, the six of us experienced Islamic hypocrisy of the highest degree.

We were chided for wearing sandals and short pants.

One of us was told off for wearing a sleeveless shirt.

We were told that our dressing was indecent and unacceptable for a Muslim nation.

Our behavior and noncompliance to the new college dressing rules was deemed unbecoming.

Our manner of dressing was allegedly promoting immoral activities within the college and posed a challenge to the Islamic faith.

We were threatened with expulsion and disciplinary action.

After a brief but lasting tongue lashing, we were sent to our rooms for a change of attire.

By then, my friends and I were already more than pissed, our appetite gone for a good reason.

We ended up eating in section 17, treating ourselves to a truly porky meal and the pleasures that came with it.

For the rest of the year, students were held and disciplined for trivial reasons like pants that hang more than two inches above the knees and sandals that do not cover enough of the feet.

All students who wanted to eat after were required to be in a ‘decent’ attire befitting of an Islamic country, even if one was soaked with sweat or feeling mighty hot after evening sports.

Meanwhile, the male wardens and their student friends continued smoking and puffing and littering cigarette buds around the hostel.

The free-hair lady warden too continued exerting her ruthless reign over students much older than her.

It was just another day in the premier university of negarakuku.
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University Days: The Day I Discovered Malaysia Has No Hope

It was initially just another Wednesday evening in 6th College, University Malaya.

I went for a swim with my friends and came back for another college dinner – fried hypothyroid chicken with sour, half-cooked vegetables.

We had a chat after our meal and made our way back to our rooms.

Along the corridor were anti-semitic posters put up by some Muslim students.

On them were the usual messages of how the Zionists were murdering innocent Palestine children and how the umat could help by boycotting Jewish products ranging from Kit Kat to Coca Cola, if these were even Jewish to begin with.

The posters did not carry any stamp to indicate approval from the university authorities.

A friend of mine wasn’t having his best days of life.

He took one brief look at the poster and tore it off the wall.

It was to be a mistake he would never forget.

Neither would I.

Later that night about 10 pm after the evening prayers, I had a visitation.

There were loud bangs on the door with shouts of 'buka pintu'.

The visitors were not Marfanoid aliens and greenish Martians or horrifying beasts with tentacles but no less terrifying anyhow.

At the doorway were a group of about seven Muslim students clad in long, flowing robes and white skull caps with six-inch beards for completion.

Apparently someone had thought that I was the one behind the removal of the anti-semitic poster.

I was led behind the hostel, where it was dark and secluded.

Thus began an orgy of racial supremacy and religious dominance.

The seven of them surrounded me and started hurling verbal abuses without prior clarification whether I was indeed the culprit.

They said I was ungrateful and unpatriotic and anti-Islam.

I was shoved back and forth and held by my collar.

One of them puffed a mouthful of kretek into my face.

Another challenged me to go back to China and India.

Somewhere between ‘pukimak’ and ‘babi Cina’, the hostel warden intervened and I was finally allowed to talk.

In the presence of the warden, the Islamists were as timid as a mouse and as gentle as a lamb.

I clarified to the warden that I was not the one they were looking for and had nothing to do with the act of removing any anti-Jewish posters.

They then turned their efforts into hunting for my friend and repeated the whole cycle of verbal harassment and threats of violence.

My friend and I were allowed to retreat to our rooms only at about 3 am.

That was the day I knew Malaysia had no hope.

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I Choose Ethics

Not too long ago, I was doing locum in a clinic in Kampung Air, Kota Kinabalu.

The deal was from 8 am till 5 pm, so RM 40 X 9 hours = RM 360.

It’s not much for a day’s work but it’s definitely more than the wage for a cashier in a KFC restaurant.

The day started like any other general practice.

Common things were common and in fact in abundance – upper respiratory tract infections, food poisoning, skin rashes, STDs and more STDs.

However, the situation became fishy when patients started turning up with medications that were not in their medical records.

A schoolgirl with recent food poisoning came back with severe bloating and constipation, her hands clutching some residual Lomotil and doxycyline.

Her clinic notes by another doctor showed that she was supposed to receive only oral rehydration salts and charcoal tablets.

A young man with common cold whom I had just discharged with symptomatic treatment came back into the room furious, asking why he was given the antibiotics.

He was dispensed Flagyl, an antibiotic usually reserved for anaerobic and protozoal infections.

An elderly Filipino lady with a fungal skin rash was outraged because she was charged an exorbitant sum for a treatment that didn’t work.

In her clinic notes one week earlier, the previous locum doctor had prescribed antifungal cream only.

However, she was sent home with the antiviral acyclovir five times daily and a potent steroid cream.

It wasn’t long before I discovered the culprit behind all this nonsense.

The clinic receptionist – she was not even a nurse proper, was dispensing poisons as she liked.

In her warped and twisted little mind, the locum doctors were less experienced as she was and the doctors’ treatment plans were not bringing sufficient profits to the clinic.

Much to my horror, I soon discovered she was handing out allopurinol for simple arthralgia and double antibiotics for a mother with possible dengue hemorrhagic fever.

Babies with mild cough were given the potent antitussives pholcodeine and dextromethorphan.

It’s not often I blow my top but on this occasion, my patience reached its limits.

I gave a stern warning that if she continued changing my medications and endangering patients at her whim and fancy, I will walk out and leave the clinic without a locum doctor.

She continued in her unrepentant ways and I walked out – less than two hours into the locum.

Between money and ethics, I choose ethics.

Better to live with less money than to suffer the knowing that one’s next meal was bought at the expense of patients’ health.

In Islamic terms, one’s earnings are haram.

The last I heard, the clinic is still continuing its wayward practices.

The clinic owner has since been charged for illegal possession and distribution of psychotropic medications but that did not discourage the doctor and his staff from a tradition of deception.

While the Ministry of Health is obsessed about the size of clinic doors and the measurements of its examination rooms, clinics like this continue to flourish from ripping off one’s hard-earned money, causing unmeasured harm and morbidity in the process.

P/S: This is not a tall tale of holier-than-thou self-righteousness. To all fellow locum doctors out there, let us all preserve whatever is left of the integrity in the medical profession. Let’s boycott damn clinics like the one I mentioned. It’s the least we could do for the society.

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