Tommy Peters' Bicycles

Denzel Washington transcends racial barriers. He is unable to ‘blacken’ his script no matter how hard he tries resulting in roles being swappable with every Cruise, Pitt, Chou and Chan. He did not create the ethnic-neutral genre through acting lessons. It is an inherent character flaw that enables him to turn his wonderful character into a subliminal teaching device.  Lim Kit Siang transcends racial barriers. He simply does because the longest serving politician in the Malaysian Parliament has a similar character flaw. He did not evolve into an ethnically-neutral Malaysian by rote. He was born one. Period. The quintessential politician is a walking Chinese, Indian, Malay and other race-combines, rolled into one.  In essence, he is Malaysia’s ubiquitous teaching device in the true sense of the word and being his job description, he simply does not have an option. Chance upon him on the street and say something - anything. He responds gregariously with his trademark s...

He would agree with the ‘principle of damage’ devised by a 19 th century philosopher, who argued that no person should suffer as a result of someone else’s exercise of freedom. Cast your mind two decades ago when he responded to a Member of Parliament who willed Malaysia an Islamic state. He applied the ‘principle of damage’ then as he does now. The issue is not 'consistency' but rather a ‘formality’ in his thought process, the way a lawyer is trained to think. It is clear that as much as he is a politician for the man on the street, he does not discern the concept of power . He does not condone the horizontal power-spread of his partners lest it jeopardizes the vertical relationship between the individual and government. He relates party hopping to usurpation of an individual’s freedom in favour of the usurper. A straight line connects a party hopper to a serial polygamist - where desire trumps fidelity - where a vile practice trumps a sound pr...

309 years ago a religionist in India said, " Over my dead body" in response to the ongoing Islamisation of the continent. He represented a 15 th century doctrine which stands to this day. His battle cry galvanized a movement that acted as a bulwark that stemmed the ‘Mughal' steamroller at the time. It is said that the current multicultural and multi-religious fabric of India remains secular, largely due to the advent of his movement. 18 years ago, in a more civilized setting, a politician in Malaysia said " Over my dead body" in response to a notion that Islamisation of Malaysia was imminent. It is not a coincidence the politician echoed the battle cry of the religionist. The politician is asking that we draw lessons from history that teach us that Islam in the public domain is incompatible with a multicultural and multi-religious fabric. The overtures of PAS towards UMNO revived the unifying sentiment of the ‘ummah’ within two opposing fa...