A Hindu temple in Ampang was demolished recently by the Ampang Jaya Municipal Council.
Of course, it has caused a furore. The MIC yesterday handed a memorandum to the Selangor Mentri Besar in protest.
My views on places of worship are simple; regardless of the religion, they must be respected. Even if they are illegally built, one cannot simply demolish them arbitrarily.
Pakatan Rakyat’s capture of Selangor was helped in no small part by the previous temple demolition episode under the Barisan Nasional government. If I was Pakatan Rakyat, the one thing I will NOT do is to repeat what the BN did with temples.
Thus, it was very suspicious to say the least when this latest temple demolition episode erupted. Pakatan doubters will point this as proof that Pakatan is no different from Barisan. Short sighted and easily excited people will get angry and perhaps turn on the coalition (to re-embrace Barisan?).
It serves the MIC and Barisan Nasional very well, actually.
It is no secret that the Selangor government, under Mr. Khalid, has not gone on a ‘detoxification’ exercise of the government departments and municipal councils. Mr. Khalid prefers to ‘cajole’ the current crop of civil servants to work with the Pakatan government. A commendable effort, I must say.
But such an approach assumes that the previous government is an honorable loser. It assumes that the previous government is comfortable in its role as state opposition. It assumes that the civil servants are now wholeheartedly behind Pakatan.
Maybe the Selangor government should not have assumed such virtues in humans.
The previous government still has ‘fingers’ within the Selangor civil service. It’s quite easy to ‘prompt’ certain high ranking officers to order something with an aim to sabotage the Pakatan government.
Like ordering the demolition of a temple, for example, directly contravening a state directive. A person who ordered something like that either does not know of the state directive, or is paid handsomely well to ‘forget’ the said directive.
Politics is always played by fuelling discontent in multi cultural societies ….. that is a bitter truth …