Laughing to numb the pain

HERE’S a sick joke. If Covid-19 doesn’t kill us, we can still die laughing. And it’s thanks to our dear politicians who have been providing plenty of fodder for witty Malaysians to make fun of.

As a fellow Malaysian, I truly appreciate the puns, dark humour and sarcasm in the form of memes, GIFs and jokes that allow me to laugh instead of scream at the idiocies emanating from people claiming to represent public interests.

Our Health Minister Datuk Seri Dr Adham Baba is the latest figure of fun and ridicule for calling the 1918 flu pandemic the “Spanish fly”, not just once but twice, at a talk at Universiti Putra Malaysia.

I have no idea who he was addressing, but he was comparing the Covid-19 statistics with those of the Spanish flu.

What makes the gaffe even more laughable was that he didn’t seem to know what he got wrong so he quickly switched to wabak, the Malay word for epidemic, before calling it “Spanish virus”.

And that wasn’t the only mistake he made. He said the two-year Spanish “fly” happened in 1919, before incorrectly correcting himself to say “1916”.

Reaction from netizens was swift and brutal with the hashtag #Spanishfly trending on Twitter.

While former education minister Dr Maszlee Malik chose to identify the “Spanish Fly” as a dangerous wrestling move, others gleefully went to town with its more well-known reference to a sex stimulant made from an emerald green beetle.

I can only say Dr Adham brought it on himself. He tried to be clever but didn’t seem to have done his homework. For a medical doctor to confuse “fly” with “flu” is simply unbelievable.

Sadly, that is what we keep getting from our politicians: flubs, gaffes, ill-conceived movement control decisions and rules that confuse and frustrate the people and businesses, scaring foreign investors and, worst of all, relentlessly jostling to keep or take Putrajaya by luring elected representatives to jump ship (our famous frogs) allegedly with promises of huge ang pow, GLC positions and/or contracts.

Such selfishness and obsessive grabbing for power have not gone unnoticed. One photo in particular that popped up on my social media captured these antics perfectly.

It shows a bunch of monkeys all over a car. Some are on the roof, the bonnet, hanging on the doors; others are in it, grabbing the steering wheel or examining the controls. Whoever came up with the caption was spot-on, and really cracked me up: “Different bands of monkeys trying to take control of a car that they don’t know how to drive.”

Granted, since taking power in March 2020, the Perikatan Nasional government has had the really tough job of managing this unprecedented health and economic crisis.

But with its super-sized Cabinet, Perikatan stumbled and fumbled its way through the last 17 months in power. Through it all, Malaysians stayed patient while gritting our teeth because we really had no choice.

We had to put our trust somewhere even when many decisions were clearly politically motivated, in particular the declaration of a state of Emergency.

The King approved it as a “proactive move to control and flatten daily Covid-19 positive cases that have breached four figures continuously since December”. Our country was recording more than 2,000 new coronavirus cases daily then.

The premise was that the government would have the power to take over private healthcare facilities to relieve the strain on public hospitals. And Parliament, state assembly sittings and elections are not allowed.

Seven months on, we are worse off than ever. Our infection cases are way higher than the 2,000 that justified the need for an Emergency.

And, as far as we know, no private hospital or facility has been commandeered to relieve the pressure on government hospitals that are close to breaking point.

Videos and photos of crowded intensive care units and the YouTube video Frontliners reveals the truth about the Covid-19 crisis in the Klang Valley. Recorded on July 9, the video shows what a terrifying and desperate state our Klang Valley government hospitals are in, much like how overwhelmed India’s healthcare facilities were a couple of months ago.

Our shuttered economy is shattered with thousands without jobs and income. Suicide rates have shot up with 336 cases reported to police for the first three months of the year. That’s an average of four suicides every day.

What fragile trust and confidence Malaysians have in the government is fast evaporating and being replaced by boiling anger, cynicism and desperation. And we are lashing out in the only way possible these days – venting and ranting on social media.

That’s why there was scant sympathy for Prime Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin when his office announced he had been hospitalised for diarrhoea. It made international headlines and Malaysians went into overdrive with memes and toilet jokes.

Neither were they in any mood to applaud International Trade and Industry Minister Datuk Seri Mohamed Azmin Ali’s visit to Austria – even if it was to woo new investors.

The flood of vitriolic comments from Malaysians directed at Azmin on Austrian Digital and Economic Affairs Minister Margarete Schrambock’s Facebook, where she posted a photo of the two meeting over the weekend, was shocking to say the least.

Dripping with sarcasm and black humour, many netizens urged Schrambock to keep him.

“We want to trade Azmin Ali with anything convenient to you, a loaf a stone, doesn’t matter. We’ll take anything for him to stay there. Please consider this trade, thank you,” said one.

In the eyes of Malaysians, Azmin was a prime mover in the collapse of the previous Pakatan Harapan government. Many also hold his ministry responsible for several poor decisions affecting the economy, including allowing factories to operate, which became huge clusters of infection.

Malaysians are suffering from Covid-19 ennui and sinking into a deep blue funk. Laughing at our sorry lot helps even if it is tinged with a touch of hysteria.

That’s because while we may not be a failed state yet, it does feel as if our beloved country is a bus that is careening down a steep mountain road.

So far the brakes are working, but if that should fail or the driver loses control, the bus and all on board will plunge over the cliff.

Former deputy prime minister Tun Musa Hitam had said Malaysian politics had become a joke because of the political frogs and lack of guiding philosophy or ideologies.

He’s right, but rather than philosophy or ideologies, just plain integrity, less politicking and a willingness to consult the best minds, even from the Opposition, to come up with a really sound recovery plan like Singapore’s are what is needed to save Malaysia.

But knowing our politicians, that sounds like a really bad joke, right? That’s why I’m laughing at this bit of biting humour that rings so true: Our government has our best interests at heart and other hilarious jokes you can tell yourself.

Muhyiddin and Perikatan are at the steering wheel now and we can only pray they get us safely to a place where we can repair and refuel our bus. Whether we get a replacement driver remains to be seen.

The views expressed here are the writer’s own.