Citizen Soldier # 5 JH Soo, a socialist and environmentalist

I have known Soo for a few years. Although he has a degree from the states and have worked overseas before, he escaped the trap of a stereotyped rat race.

Soo is a socialist at heart and a concerned environmentalist. He cares about global warming and devours books that put me to sleep after half a page but he can articulate his philosophies and belief to me in a few simple words. He has a few articles published in Malaysiakini and the respectable internet news portal called him “an engineer who came back to Malaysia to fight for the good cause” or words to that effect. He has joined Parti Sosialis Malaysia to further realize his beliefs.

“Before the 12th GE, I got increasingly uncomfortable with where Malaysia was heading. I was motivated by the Bersih campaign where people started to act.” He told me.

He took a day off from work to vote. So what? I heard you say. It is a bit different if one needs to take a ferry from Hong Kong to Macau, then an Air Asia flight to KL, then another mad rush to Kuantan to cast a vote then repeating the same itinerary immediately. I got tired just listening to him describing it. Not to consider the amount of money he has to spend on that.

“Malaysians do not appreciate our democratic institution. Living in a democracy today is a privilege we have taken for granted. People just don’t realize in the old days, in a feudal society, we had no voting power, no system to work for people’s cause. A lot of people just seem to be always complaining but nobody is doing anything. We must participate and fulfill our obligations.”

What is remarkable to me is that as a professional engineer he could easily belong to the typical white collar, nice living rat race demography yet he chooses to join PSM who essentially identifies with the blue collar mass so why did he choose Parti Sosialis Malaysia?

“PSM has a strong ideology, clear vision of the socialist state that they want to achieve. DAP has departed from a wholly socialist standing and have a ‘corruption’ of capitalism in them.” < for the benefit of the literal school of interpretation, ‘corruption’ here means a departure from original philosophy; not that thing that some parties in Malaysia do it very well, too well in fact >

Soo explained that the excessive credit creation, among other things, that have led to the current world economic woes.

Soo’s lovely wife is supportive of her husband’s stand. She takes more than a fleeting interest in what he advocates and joined in as we discussed about political development over Seremban’s pork satey and beer. Soo’s younger sister and her boyfriend recently signed up as DAP members as well.

“I hope somehow, the messages can get to the rural Malay heart land. Let us not be like Thailand where there is huge discrepancy in terms of information flow between the urban and rural population.”