MAY 16 — I wish to refer to the report, “Group performs ‘butt
exercises’ in front of Ambiga’s home” that appeared in The Star (Nation)
today as written by Yuen Meikeng.
As a former army officer, I feel grossly ashamed by the antics of
those who have conducted themselves unbecomingly by performing “butt
exercises” in front of Bersih co-chairman Datuk S. Ambiga’s house in
Bukit Damansara yesterday (May 15, 2012). What they did was not just
‘crude’, it was very rude.
They held the bizarre and ‘very low-class’ protest in retaliation for
her organising the Bersih 3.0 rally on April 28, which they claimed had
given the country a bad name.
It was reported that in the incident yesterday morning, about 15
ex-servicemen were seen stretching and shaking their buttocks in front
of her house.
As an officer, like all officers of the Malaysian Armed Forces from
the Army, Navy and the Air Force, we were trained as officers as well as
gentlemen and we were and are still expected to conduct ourselves in an
exemplary manner at all times, even after we have retired or have left
the service. However, the group of army veterans led by the Malay Armed
Forces Veterans Association president Mohd Ali Baharom, who held the
protest, I believe, is from the ‘non-officers rank’ and while not
expected, it is not surprising that they behaved in such a way.
Do they think that their approach would gain them supporters, admirers or bouquets? No, I definitely don’t think so.
Many soldiers who are not officers are troubled with a stigma that we
term as ‘other rank mentality’ which make them unable to apply or use
rationale in many instances and one of our duties as officers during our
active service was to correct them whenever they misbehaved either
individually or as a group but nevertheless, while some are able to
shake off that stigma after being corrected, many are still stuck with
it even after the leave.
If such a thing were to happen while I was still in service and if I
were the officer-in-charge, or for that matter any officer who was in
charge at the time, we would have disciplined all of them and we would
have put all of them through a rehabilitation programme but, since they
are all now veterans, they do not have any ‘officers’ to correct them
anymore.
There are many acceptable ways to conduct a protest and to do so in a
civil manner and one of which is to use the courts. The other ways may
be to hold a dialogue or send a protest letter.
I wish to categorically place the action of that group as not
representative of the Corp of Army Veterans, officers or other ranks
regardless, and that we detest their action.
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