(The below is an excerpt from my novel, Jampi, available from Smashwords)
I don’t know why I fired at an innocent person, but on election day our heads memang kecoh.
It was the evening of May 9th, 2018.
The fourteenth general elections of Malaysia. Yeah, yeah, we all got it, the people wanted a ‘change’, Najib was a thief-cum-master fundraiser and his wife was just ugly, Barisan Nasional was crushing the nation, and Malaysia still hadn’t managed to get into the World Cup.
Many people believe that the police and other civil servants are pro-government. They don’t get it. We’re “pro” whoever gives us enough to feed our families.
The ‘Royal Malaysia Police’, of which I’m an indifferent member, pays one of the lowest crime-fighting salaries in the ASEAN region. We’re living hand to mouth even as we try to get traffic unstuck, catch robbers, escort big-shots, and on occasion, kidnap pick up undesirable people.
Why do you think we’re always hiding beneath flyovers and around traffic junctions? You think we enjoy playing hide-and-peek at cars? I don’t like flagging down motorists who haven’t renewed their road tax any more than the next guy but, sigh, you have better ideas for a policeman to get more income?
Some Malaysians buy houses or condos to get rent. Not us, who stay in shitty quarters which even thieves wouldn’t bother to visit if the door was left opened.
Some Malaysians write or do consulting projects part-time. Not us, unless you’d like to run a tutorial on how to write boring-ass police reports which, by the way, remind me of those humanoid clones in Westworld being interviewed by their makers — in both cases, we have to ‘limit our emotional affect’.
Police reports are exactly that: robot-like sentences stripped of emotion. I for one have been so tempted to spice shit up just a bit, you know, like add a, “Then the car came out of bloody NOWHERE and completely decimated the bike! Oh my Goodddddd!!”
Speaking of cars doing terrifying shit, there was this time we flagged down a car because the asshole driver wasn’t wearing his seatbelt. Sigh, these jokers must understand that it’s not just about us cops getting richer out of their reluctance to pay the official fine; we’re also saving their silly miserable lives from future accidents which may throw them the hell out their windscreens.
So anyway, our team’s ‘spotter’ catches the belt-less dude, then gives the license plates to the ‘catcher’ who, within two seconds (because you don’t have more time than this) proceeds to point and look directly at the driver, signalling him to pull over.
Now, normally, the driver complies, pulls over and a ‘negotiation’ session begins, one which usually ends with the driver handing over a RM50 bill (together with his driver’s license) to the cop writing down the summons.
Some losers on the force accept even RM10 but that’s spoiling the market. Plus, if we’re gonna take bribes, we gotta make ’em big.
(Which, incidentally, is what I respect about Najib. He was an asshole who dreamed big. He wasn’t keen on merely ripping a ‘few million’ off the country, he was going for billions and billions. Some us think maybe he was jealous of Queen Elizabeth. That Mat Salleh lady is a billionaire who got her billions by not doing anything; so maybe Rosmah decided why not do more than nothing and grab more than a queen’s ransom.)
But back to this crazy driver.
Instead of stopping and grovelling as usual, the pundek just steps on the gas, almost runs down another policeman on the road, and speeds away like Vin Diesel on speed. It didn’t hurt that he was driving one of those zero-to-120km/h-in-two-seconds machines.
Did we give chase? Nope.
Would we ever? Nope.
It’s not just because it takes time for us cops to run to our bikes and do a CHiPS on the dude. It’s also because there is simply no downside to us losing him. There is always more fish to fry (or, uh, get RM50 bills from).
You know the easiest victims to make withdrawals from? Young drivers who’ve just gotten their license.
You can practically smell the fear on them. It flows out through their eyes.
This kind doesn’t know how to negotiate; they look like they’re imagining the worst (because they probably are), they’re usually well-mannered (which, in my book, is a reflection of how sheltered these punks are), and they look like they’ve never faced a crisis in their entire life. These are the people you hope to get at least RM80 if not RM100 from.
Simply milk the fear machine like, oh, your car can be impounded, your license suspended, your parents contacted, your ass bitch-slapped.
I’ve received many a nice Raya bonus from drivers like this. And it’s really their fault. Who told them not to wear their seatbelt or make that dubious turn?
It’s all on them. I’m just making their offences work for me.
Because, again, we uphold law and order, we risk our lives trading bullets with criminals, we serve as Ghost-Rider escorts for our big-shot, big-shit ministers who ride in big black cars and don’t like to wait at traffic lights, and what do we get paid? Barely enough not to starve.
That’s not right.
Which is why when the call came to bring those additional ballot papers to the school — on the evening of May 9th, 2018 — I took it.
*
It’s an open secret Malaysia’s elections are rigged.
When you have constituencies with barely 18,000 voters and also those with more than 130,000 voters you know something’s not right.
When the TV and radio sing the praises of Barisan every evening and even a water-shortage is exploited to show ‘helpers’ wearing Barisan t-shirts, you’d have to be an idiot to believe everything’s fair and square. And when none of the Barisan big-shots ever get into serious trouble with the law and never get any time in jail (unlike the Opposition leaders), it’s obvious Malaysian democracy is some kind of sham.
Look, I’m just a policeman, I’m no political scientist and yes, I’m officially sworn to protect these corrupt politicians, but I know stuff, okay?
I may be complicit somehow, but I’m not stupid. I know my country — up until May 2018 anyway — was governed by stupid despots who couldn’t even give a sensible press conference, and I know my big boss, the IGP, sucked these tyrants’ dicks every now and then.
Did I like it? No.
Was I ever going to do something radical about it? Hell, no.
Was I even going to vote against Barisan? Sorry, not even that.
It’s not that I don’t want to vote these monsters out, it’s that the chances of them losing the simple majority in parliament are always slim, and don’t tell me you believe that after their victory they’ll be nice to civil servants who voted for the Opposition?
I know what you’re thinking: How could they know who voted for whom, right? I’ll just give you two words here: they know.
Maybe there are hidden cams.
Maybe it’s estimation by elimination.
Maybe they have bugs.
Maybe those papers are scanned for fingerprints.
Maybe there are evil spirits who communicate with the Election Commission.
Maybe it’s “big data” or some similar hi-tech nonsense.
Dik, oppressive governments always know who’s on their side and who’s not. And as long as I didn’t tick the ‘wrong’ box on election day every four or five years, I could always maintain deniability (whether this was plausible or not was anybody’s guess).
Because should I vote non-Barisan even if the government doesn’t know, guess what? I would still know, wouldn’t I?
And that knowledge would eat me from inside — the knowledge that at any time I could be transferred to Kamunting or some shithole station and my family made to suffer or something similar.
That’s why I always vote Barisan every half-decade or so.
Even today when I received a call to help them cheat.
*
As every Malaysian suspects (rightly), some members of the police force and, of course, the Election Commission, help to swing constituency numbers the way of the ruling regime. These would be those places where the competition is tight and the result could be decided by merely, say, a thousand votes either way.
Of course, nobody even cares about hot Opposition zones like Seputeh, Segambut or Kepong; you could throw in fifty thousand fake Barisan ballot papers in these areas and the ruling alliance would still lose.
The areas where fake swings would be more effective, instead, would be places like Ayer Hitam, Langkawi, Kuala Pilah, and the place where I was asked to ‘help out’ at: Kapar.
Kapar was in Klang. I’ll tell you later about the psychotically sumptuous bak kut teh in that place (and ya tentu lah the dish is tak halal for me but why over-react?).
Anyway, I got the call around 3pm.
A voice I recognised told me to drive to this address by myself. I was supposed to collect a bag and bring it to the polling centre.
I didn’t need to be told that the bag would contain more than twenty thousand stamped ballot papers all of which ticked a certain box — the box that represented my employers.
All I cared to be reminded of was the fact that in less than a week’s time my Maybank account would be credited with RM10,000 cash from an unknown source.
How are the ‘drop-off’ locations of the bags selected? As I said, the only locations which matter are those where the Opposition isn’t out of sight or where Barisan will likely win. In this case, Kapar was a touch and go case, hence they needed an ‘illegal vote mule’ to square the odds more.
And here’s where it all went south.
In previous years (especially in the 90s), it wasn’t that hard to drive up to the polling centre, flash a badge, act all authoritative, and such. But this time, I (and many other police ‘mules’, I’m guessing) realized we were out of our league.
When I arrived at SMK Sungai Kapar Indah, smack at the school gate — completely unexpected and unprecedented in this location — were about fifty, sixty, or maybe seventy guys.
Inside my car, I honked at them and waved them to move aside. Normally, they would move.
But these guys just stood there.
Quietly. Motionless.
They reminded me of the zombies in Will Smith’s I Am Legend, those undead creatures standing around in a circle, breathing heavily. I wasn’t sure if I was in a woke moment or just dreaming or maybe I’d driven into the Malaysian version of the Twilight Zone.
I kept honking.
I rolled down my window, put my head out and shouted at them, “Oi! Pergi la! Aku nak masuk!”
Nothing. Silence.
An extended and multi-pronged football freekick wall in front of me.
I drove slightly nearer to the gate, hoping that would send the message through.
Then it happened.
In the blink of an eye, about a third of the guys in front of me suddenly moved towards me, like some Michael Jackson line dance, in unison. They paced fast and hard and in about three seconds my car was surrounded by these people, most of whom looked to be in their twenties. I could tell the bulk of them were Chinese but there was clearly a sprinkling of Indians and Malays among them.
No women, though. Which convinces me even more that everything was planned out in advance, way before I arrived.
I managed to lock my door, just in time. My car was fenced in by human bodies. They were knocking at my windows, shouting and chanting, “Tiiii — -pu! Tiiiiii — -pu! Tiiiiii — -PU!”
I stupidly thought to myself, how did they know what was in my boot? Have I been framed? Was it my boss? Maybe he hated me and decided to make a ‘corrupt cop’ his scapegoat — ‘corrupt cop’ probably being the most redundant phrase in a country where the police protect the biggest criminals in the land.
The weird thing is that even my back was blocked, so I couldn’t reverse and drive the hell away if I wanted to.
But why should I have wanted to? Why should I have not attempted to complete my mission?
I wasn’t panicking at all. I was simply getting madder and madder by the second.
Hey, I was the poh-lice. These people were just ordinary citizens who, from the looks of it, were morphing into thugs. I was the law, they just lived there.
I opened the door and pushed a few guys away, shouting “Belakang! Belakang!”
There was some inevitable shoving and pushing from the crowd — which, by now, was trying to crack open the boot, screaming “Buka! Buka!” — and so I threw my weight, too.
I swear I felt a punch, but when you have two dozen people hogging you like a rugby ball almost everything feels like a blow.
That’s when I drew my Walther P99.
Like most policemen, I’d never felt the rush of actually wielding it — let alone firing it — in an actual crime situation.
Nobody could more appreciate the irony of me brandishing my sidearm now at a time when I was the one committing the crime.
Of course, the crowd immediately stepped back. Nobody rushed me, nobody charged me, although from the looks in their eyes everybody wanted to (or was hoping someone else would).
I pointed my weapon at them, shouting at them to move back. I even used a few Chinese ‘bad words’ too (hey, I’m a true Malaysian) to get the message fully across.
By the time my gun was out, I was clear and ‘centered’ and shit, and I knew what I wanted to do. I was going to drive my car through those gates and pass those yellow bags to — What?! Dammit, they closed the gates, too?!
Shit, shit, shit! Celaka!
Now this was gonna get messy.
How was I going to a) disperse the crowd sufficiently so I could b) open the gates, then c) get back into my car without getting lynched and drive in?
I was paralysed. There were about four dozen people in front of me, I had my gun out, and I didn’t know how to proceed with my corruption. No, of course they didn’t cover these situations at RMPCKL.
Things got worse.
After I drew my gun, I managed to subdue the crowd for all of thirty seconds. But afterwards, they went from docile to hostile in less than half that time.
My Walther P99 was like a red cape at a bullfight. One guy then shouted out, “You polis jangan tipu! Nak bawa fake ballot! Tipu tipu!” Then another guy bellowed something similar, then another and another and another.
My arm was hit with a Spritzer water bottle which almost knocked my weapon away.
I turned and pointed towards who I thought was the source of the assault. But it could’ve been any of them.
Less than two minutes after I’d drawn my gun, the crowd was back to its pre-gun frenzy, albeit still wary about my gun.
Already, three guys had stopped giving a shit about possibly getting shot, and they began hitting my car bonnet in the hope of springing it open. At the rate they were banging it, it would’ve popped soon, no doubt about it.
So I fired a shot into the sky.
The bullet rocked the air. Everybody gasped and instinctively shielded their heads with their hands whilst bending down a bit.
How stupid and irrational, but yeah okay that’s what I would’ve done too. I made a gesture to say that I planned to fire again.
That’ll show ’em. Mah chow hai semua lu!
It could’ve been seven seconds later or maybe seven hours, you really couldn’t tell, but one guy began walking up to me.
Malay chap. In his thirties, normal build, not very tall, not very short, biasa jer.
But he walked up to me slowly. You could tell he was afraid of my gun, but he still kept walking until he was about three feet in front of me.
He said that everybody knew I was carrying fake ballot papers in the boot. If not, then I should’ve just opened the boot and proven them wrong. Also, he continued, that I should know that what I was doing was un-democratic, unjust, plain wrong. Then he spoke really slow:
“You boleh tembak aku, tapi kami tak kan bagi you masuk… inilah negara kita, jangan memusnahkan demokrasi, memusnahkan apa yang baik, you buat ni khianat, bang. Jangan la…”
He went on for another half a minute.
About justice, about love for the country, about clean elections, about how the police must uphold the law, not abuse their power, about —
That’s when I took aim at his chest and pulled the trigger.
