Bersih 3.0 • Your actions reflect your breeding

“The future belongs to those who show up” - a pointed quote by Mark Steyn, but the mother of signages is one that is felt in everyone's gut - "Your actions reflect your breeding". The five words on a signage is apt for the door of the humble public toilet to the entrance of the glamourous UN, not to mention the hotspots where masters and servants alike gathered in Kuala Lumpur for Bersih's 3.0 event.

To add to the sentiment of Steyn's revolutionary quote, it is not ‘freedom from inconvenience’ that makes people huddle in their comfort zone but ‘freedom from fear’ that prevents them from touring the Serengeti. Most have excised the ‘inconvenience’ of the vehicular gridlock but for some the millstone of ‘fear’ of their own paid servants, on the verge of mutating from business to beast, is still a personal battle.

A friend was taken in on Saturday’s Bersih 3.0 event after being roughed up by such servants whose due reversal from beast to business was complete by Sunday. He took measured kicks in the gut, body blows and a punch in the eye, but brushed it off when I asked him if he would press charges. "Some beers would do" he said - "We'll sort this out at 4.0"

On one hand, I scrubbed past the fact that he recently chose to have his lager in the unpredictable Pyongyang rather than hip-hop Seoul; on the other, a gist of his mental constitution is being formed. We clarified ‘Intimidation’ and ‘Repression’ but overlooked ‘Contempt’, the insidious deal-breaker in any relationship. In free-society, is not Repression or Intimidation that breaks a contract but Contempt, whose penultimate moment is raw in the public belittling of physical injuries caused upon the people, not to mention my friend.

Your actions reflect your breeding. Period. 

Words – Tommy Peters

Afterword: 1. The video is proprietary of Al-Jazzera and is used without express permission. 2. The post is dedicated to the friend mentioned above and to those who bore witness; in particular, to those who were not able to gape face-to-face at the mutation from business to beast of their paid servants on that eventful Saturday April 28 2012 - but whose spirit and essence were nevertheless present.