Using politics to gain sympathy

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It seems to be a trend these days for aggrieved parties to turn to politicians to highlight their grouses in the media.

It is a symbiotic partnership which works for all the parties – the people get their grievances heard while the politicians get the limelight and the media lives up to its role as voices of the people.

As a result politicising an issue is one of the surest ways to get a complaint addressed.

The people naturally turn to politicians, especially elected representatives, to air their grievances as that is their responsibility and they should not be faulted for bringing up their cases.

However, politics could also be abused to subvert efforts in implementing the law and the onus is on politicians to discern genuine cases from those which make use of them to justify their illegal deeds.

The recent case of the demolition of houses being built on state land by the Land and Survey Department at Kampung Tanah Merah Samariang is an example of guilty parties turning to politics to gain sympathy from the public.

The owners of the structures, erected on the state land, claimed they were victimised because they supported an opposition party.

The ploy was to pressure the government into allowing them to occupy the land or face a backlash from voters.

To the credit of the opposition in this case, although they sent their representatives to check on the situation they did not take up the case.

It was obvious that the people involved were not genuine squatters but people who staked claims on state land by building flimsy structures that were supposed to be their homes.

What they built was not even fit to live in and tellingly none of them was occupied when the enforcement officers moved in.

Politicians from both sides of the divide must transcend their political boundaries in stamping out such blatant abuse of politics.

Sometimes politicians were equally guilty of wielding the power of politics for their own ends as some of them jumped into controversies to gain political mileage regardless of the circumstances of the situation.

Some have gone to the extreme of fomenting racial and religious discord to gain popularity and support from certain section of the voters.

Thankfully this has not happened in our state and we must guard against politics where the ends justify the means. It is a responsibility borne by both the ruling party and the opposition.