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Amnesty and Gotong-Royong

23.5.2010
Amnesty and Gotong-Royong
What amnesty has got to do with gotong royong, you would say. Amnesty usually refers to affairs between countries whilst gotong-royong involves things at the village level. If you have a criminally cynical and critical mind like mine, then you would probably correlate these two phenomenon and skewer them together in the same BBQ pit in a negative light.
Amnesty here refers to the recurrent government amnesty (grace period) to allow illegal immigrants to go back to their countries of origin before the long arm of the law goes on a blitz to nap illegal immigrants. This will predictably start a slowdown in nation’s economic activities as all our nitty gritty work of cleaning our homes to building mansions are manned by immigrants (legal and otherwise). Pressure groups in the form of politicians and businessmen, like a knee jerk reaction, will start pressing the enforcers to go lenient on the wrongdoers who in turn will temporarily slow down the whole wheel of enforcement, yet to start churning again sometime in the future.
Gotong royong is a cultural entity among the Malay community where after one whole year of dirtying their village and not bothering about cleanliness and hygiene, a wake-up call will come in the form morbidity or mortality due to communicable disease. Villagers will then get together to embark on a spring cleaning drive.
The striking similarity between these two scenarios is that, in both instances, after months of malaise and lacksadical attitude (of lax enforcement and not taking care of own backyard), efforts are made to right the wrong. When the load gets too heavy and dangerous, they call for everyone else to do their dirty jobs. If the Immigration Department officials were not sleeping on their jobs, the number of Indonesians in this country would not have skyrocketed to levels that make Malaysian Indians (who had toiled their blood and sweat to prosper early Malaya) a minor minority! If the villagers had taken care of their own backyard, the need for gotong royong would not arise at all.
Giving amnesty to illegal immigrants and performing large scale gotong royong is not something to be proud of. Neighbouring countries from where these illegals originate from is not going to be eternally grateful for not charging their citizens. Instead, they will be sneering at our inefficiencies. Just like the gotong royong which just reveal our malaise and of the people in power.

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