Sabah Once Stricken By 6.2 Richter Earthquake

This evening I was trembled by the fact that I found while aviating on the Sabah skyline through Google Earth. A 6.2 in Richter Scale earthquake with 33 km depth had once shook somewhere near Lahad Datu in July 26, 1976, a day before the deadly Tangshan earthquake that resulted in the loss of life of over 650,000 persons in northeast China.

The 6.2 earthquake with such depth should cause mass destruction as similar as the Yogjakarta 2005. But the main reason of this event had not taken into our geographic history is, there is no casualty reported and maybe the tremor hits an uninhabitant region or the destruction is minor due to the rural and underdeveloped environs.

The bothersome fact is that Sabah, is counting days on the next earthquake and the impact on the occurrence then shall be difference with the 1976 earthquake due to the recent development of new structures and facilities. By now, the Ministry of Education should stop shoving down the pupil’s throat with the deceiving fact of “Malaysia is not exposed to the tectonic activities”.

Malay Supremacy ?

Supremacy! What kind of load does this word carries. When all the non-Malay community talking on ‘Malay Supremacy’ which is actually an idiom for ‘Malay as the largest portion of race pie in this country’, a lot of ultra-Malay citizen feel disturbed. The point to ponder on is always the fact that most of non-Malay citizen are not well versed with Malay idioms. This phrase is actually assumed to be figures of speech that contradict the principle of compositionality. Why they did not get it? No thanks to vernacular system adapted.

How about having 90% of Chinese section programs in Cantonese here in this country! We have Hakka, Teochew, Hinghwa, Hainan, Hokkien, Hockchew and we know that the Mandarin is the official Chinese language in Malaysia. Cantonese is widely used at sites, important and prolific meetings of Chinese company, on TV, at pasar malam, at Petaling Street and enforcing all Chinese getting to know Cantonese. It should be noted that although Cantonese is among the oldest language in China, the people of Kwangtung are actually the latter coming to the Peninsula and to date, only represent 23% of the Chinese population. What if we highlight it as “Cantonese Supremacy”?

Also the “Tamil Supremacy” on Indian people in this country. As Punjabi, Malayalam, Hindi, Telugu, Ceylonese was also Indian, do they feel that they are forced to accept the Tamil language is the language of the Indian? If they did not, maybe they are not brave enough to query the reason why Tamil education system is chosen to represent the Indian community. Furthermore, India itself is having Hindustani as the official language. Why don’t the Tamil people give up their ‘supremacy’ that overshadowing the all-Indian rights and start having Hindustani as the language of Indian community?

The answer is simple. The majority is actually brings together the rest into a post-result of racial assemblage which is definitely favoring the largest part of the people. Like Kedah give up the Siamese language, Bugis is not having Bugisian news on telly, Banjar people never have their own newspaper and Javanese are not entitled their own radio station and each of ethnic of East Hindi in this country is answering the call for unity and used Malay Language as their inter-ethnic language. Nothing such Javanese is superior than the Minangkabau or Johor-Riau is better to Kedah. The Malay Language is chosen after Indonesia choosing it and called it Bahasa Indonesia. No ethnic is supreme above the others.

So, when will the “Tamilization” and “Cantonization” will ever end? If that was not a superiority of one over the others, what it was actually is? Instead of dancing on the rhythm of the politic polemics, why don’t they spend more time learning the Malay Language and get their comprehension right on the nature of the language itself that having idioms as the precedence of beautifying the way to address.-END-