Masing ‘the good storyteller’ fails to defend indefensible Taib

By Apang and John Riwang

So James anak Masing was in England, accompanying his white-haired lord Taib Mahmud. Taib had been whacked during this overseas trip, and so we made an interesting discovery, via Bernama, that James Masing is a great storyteller himself.

No matter how our cynical minds work, we are sure we aren’t the only ones to expect James Masing be the first to jump to Taib’s defense, following his lord’s unceremonious entrance and exit at Oxford University.

Since Taib is someone who is often spoilt with grand entrances and exits wherever he goes, with no shortage of boys and girls with wagging tails rushing to kiss his hand, we hope that he managed to keep his blood pressure under control. Or at least that he managed to endure the slight dent to his ego.

As usual, Bernama had to put out something to counter the humiliation that Taib and his entourage must have felt in Oxford. After all, protestors had reminded him that although he could conveniently sneak out of the state, he certainly couldn’t escape his atrocious deeds.

We knew Masing would come to the fore to defend Taib. In his interview with Bernama, he tried desperately to express some rather banal rhetoric about being ready to engage with NGOs on the “Penan issue” (and as a storyteller, he tried his level best).

Unfortunately for Masing, his pathetic argument about the protestors being “influenced by commodity producers like soybean and rapeseed which compete with palm oil in the export market” turned him into an inept clown with the (dis)ability to spin great stories.

We can understand if a buffoon politician had made such a dimwitted statement. Maybe we can forgive those uneducated idiots, for they do not know any better. But just how a self-proclaimed scholar like Masing can cook up such stories is one of those unsolved mysteries we often hear about.

His scornful dismissal of the Penan being “good storytellers” during his BBC radio interview last December can now be seen as his attempt to practise being a storyteller – a very uncultured one, his PhD status notwithstanding.

Where Masing and his BN kindred are very wrong

James, allow us to share a few tips on being factual, since we don’t indulge in storytelling.

Fact #1

The history of the social struggle in Sarawak testifies how the government and its machinery have continued their draconian legacy until today. Masing himself experienced it during the heyday of the Taib-orchestrated destruction of the Dayak elite in Parti Bansa Dayak Sarawak.

Even handing in memoranda can result in police detention! In case James Masing reverts to denying this fact and morphs back into his storytelling persona, we would like to refer him to the delegation of NGOs and affected communities arrested in Petra Jaya on Malaysia Day 2009 while attempting to submit a memorandum to Taib on the damned Murum and Baram dams.

So, when James Masing told his latest, beautifully fabricated story that “the Sarawak state government is always ready to engage with NGOs”, he was basically peeing on his own feet. History has never shown the government to be willing to engage with the NGOs, especially on issues relating to the Penan communities.

This is unless, of course, Masing the great scholar has written his own thesaurus that equates “engage” to “arrest and throw into a police lock-up”.

Fact #2

The Sarawak government has always been dismissive of any issue brought up by the NGOs. This “dismissive” attitude includes not even bothering to address issues affecting governance, communities and environment. On the contrary, history reveals how the state even goes in the opposite direction!

In fact, the NGOs and communities have been punished for bringing up issues of grave social, health, educational, economic and environmental concerns. Examples include activists’ passports being withhold and blacklisted so that they are unable to travel out of the country; headmen losing recognition after rightly taking sides with their own communities; and Masing’s failed attempts to discredit communities like the Penan.

Fact #3

For some strange reason, the government officials are afraid to face the communities themselves. Those Penan and other indigenous communities whom we salute as bravely standing up for their rights, have been able to frighten the officials, from top government leaders all the way down to the district level.

Let’s use the recent example of minister Shahrizat Abdul Jalil’s visit to Sarawak last month. Shahrizat had been “instructed to personally look into the plight of the Penan people in Sarawak”. The newspapers reported that Sharizat visited the Penan community of Batu Bungan to “better understand the issues faced by the community”; to be specific, to determine the “truth” behind the allegations of rape and sexual abuse among the Penan communities.

Now, it’s not too demanding to do a little homework before embarking on such an important task. For instance, where is Batu Bungan? Batu Bungan is located in the Mulu National Park. What do the Penan of Batu Bungan do for a living? The Penan of Batu Bungan are actively involved in the tourism industry surrounding the national park. Are there any logging activities in Batu Bungan? No, there are no logging activities in Batu Bungan.

Since the reported rape and sexual abuse among the Penan were perpetrated by timber workers, then how do you fit the Batu Bungan Penans into this picture? Why is it so difficult for Shahrizat’s ministry to do some simple research on this? More importantly, why didn’t Sharizat’s ministry request the previous police reports made since the mid-1990s concerning this matter, in order to “better understand the issues faced by the community”, as they claimed?

So based on this last fact: Masing, face the communities, not the NGOs, if you dare!

Another joke on Masing

We can’t understand how pea-brained state and federal ministers can be when they harp on the issue of “jealousy”. The same story, repeated by many BN ministers, goes something like this – protestors are jealous of Malaysia’s status as a leading exporter of palm oil and are swayed by other edible-oil producers who are bent on sabotaging Malaysia’s export “success” – success story, that is.

The protesters had placards marked with letters of the normal alphabet, words that we can all read. But they said nothing like what James Masing claimed in the Bernama story. So, perhaps Masing’s view was blocked by Taib’s head (the blockhead hypothesis), or Masing suddenly became illiterate, or the protesters were using the wrong placards when they protested against Taib and his entourage.

Photos emerged, showing the placards touched on issues which Sarawakians have been voicing out loud (except that the local Sarawak voices continue to be drowned by the BN controlled mainstream media). Luckily the protesters are those with brains, and would not fault the whole of Sarawak for having a blockhead minister in James Masing.

Befitting his PhD dissertation, “The Coming of the Gods”, Masing then reiterated that the Penan had been given options, referring to an area to hunt. Is this in our mortal world? Or in a parallel mythical world, the world of his storytelling? If it is, then the gods must have landed in the wrong place, because in Sarawak, Penan hunting grounds have been decreasing rapidly, with many already wiped out.

Many communities throughout Sarawak have already lost their self-sufficient capabilities, including being able to feed themselves through hunting. The reality of “options” allowed to the Penan and other rural Dayaks is a choice between being a slave to the logging companies, or to the mono-crop palm oil industry.

This means rural Sarawakians must choose the death of a still unstudied civilisation which Masing’s anthropology can never get close to, or the continuation of the struggle of the people’s ancestors. It is obvious that the Penan and other NCR landowners have chosen to follow their ancestors’ struggle.

So Masing, and your fellow discredited political slaves to Taib, forget about engaging NGOs. Engage the communities, as they have been waiting for you, even before your coming of the gods!

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