Mat Rempit and Umno rempit

In this country, where the masses are passive and apathetic, where the media are cowed in investigating or challenging the powerful, where immigrant workers are treated like slaves, where the police can strip-search anyone, where rich old men grunt along on their Harley Davidsons on weekends - Mat Rempit, a group of uneducated, disposessed young men on small 100cc motobikes challenge our society's norms.

The usually apathetic masses shake their heads as they watch their favorite news bulletin showing the antics of these daredevils, running races at full speed, sometimes facing oncoming traffic, pulling stunts on their motorbikes. Nothing seems to faze them, much like the apathetic masses except that for these Mat Rempits, each time they compete, it could be their last race.

Death or Glory.

It's not so much the purported prized bohsia that they can have should they win, but the risk of death that injects the adrenaline at a speed that no rich old men on a Harley Davidson will ever get to experience, not even close!

Such a feeling of reckless abandonment is only possible when one does not have much to lose. When life is cheap. The Mat Rempit phenomenon here is similar to many similarly alienated youth from poor backgrounds throughout the world. When opportunity and the riches of the world passes them by, many find the only way of expressing themselves and their pain is through anti-social behaviour of various types.

In the destitute and hopelessness of a Palestinian refugee camp, the only way out may be suicide bombing, in Papua New Guineas where there are 10 times more youth getting out of schools each year than there are jobs, many young people graduate from school straight into a life of crime as raskols, and in France children of poor migrants, mostly black African Muslims, rioted, burning cars and looting shops after years of life drifting in dehumanising conditions.

There are conflicting reports of the numbers of Mat Rempit. Some say there are as many as 50,000; some say more. In truth, there are way too many young Malaysians who live in despair in the squalor of dilapidated low cost housing, with nothing much - and hence nothing much to lose. Mat Rempit or not.

There are two ways to deal with what is undoubtedly anti-social behaviour that is dangerous not only to themselves but to innocent motorists. The most obvious way, the knee-jerk reaction, is to condemn the behaviour and seek to repress it, without looking to find out what may be causing it. In other words, treat the symptom, not the disease. This is made worse if coloured by ideology.

Putra UMNO courts Mat Rempit participants obviously as a good supply of cheap voters - after all the qualities of bravados and anak jantaness suit the cause. Other quarters seem to think the answer is religion. Or could the answer be as simple as building a cheap racing circuit?

Alas, all of these efforts, well-meaning though they may be, ignore the root causes of anti-social behaviour (whatever its form) in young people. All over the world, it has been conclusively demonstrated that you can't eliminate the symptoms without treating its causes.

So what really lies behind Mat Rempit? What sort of nurture and nature produces a generation of young men who think that they have nothing to lose and that each race may be their last? That death and disability are risks worth taking?

What makes our young generations having the psyche of disposessed refugee children, the raskols of New Guinea and the poor migrants of France? For many non-UMNOPutra young Malaysians, life is not much different from the refugee camps and Parisian ghettos.

Many of these young people are jobless. They lack trade skills; they lack life skills; they lack dignity and self-worth. In a bleak world where everything seems to be in the control of some UMNOputra and his friends, where compassion is near non-existent, the complete social isolation that comes with poverty makes their world very similar to that of refugees.

Crowded low cost houses, with ten siblings or more, mums and dads trying to make ends meet, they'd be lucky to sleep on a mattress, let alone a bed. It would be good fortune indeed to get some food in the rumbling tummy. Most low cost housing developments have no playing fields, playgrounds or trees to shade from the sun. Simple pleasures like fresh air are gone - pollution is the only thing that they and we know. The boredom of having the time but absolutely no opportunity due to poverty is much like living in captivity.

In many ways, Mat Rempit is an articulation of breaking out from living in that captivity - the captivity and trappings of neglected life in Malaysia. It is our young giving the finger to the life created by corrupt values, where the rich get richer and the poor get nothing. When there is little social justice, how can we expect anything from these young people?

They are saying we don't give a damn - the ADUNs can have their RM5 milliion mansion in the ghettos of low cost housing, the air can be thick with pollution, the climate of impunity on corrupt politicians and their cronies can stay, lock up as many people under ISA as you wish - we don't give a damn.

So they say farewell, in a fatalistic way, racing each race like their last - for isn't everyone meant to die?

The lack of social justice is the core of the Mat Rempit issue. The massive gap between the haves and have-nots, the lack of services and the non-delivery of vital services for the poor. Poverty encourages de-individualisation, depersonalisation, disorientation, and despair - and the lack of a safety net in Malaysia means that the poor live in hopelessness. There is no balance of power between the authority and the individual. The authority can do no wrong and the poor live in neglect.

Why can't the Government ensure that all developments, no matter how low cost, include plenty of open spaces, perhaps with two goal posts so that children can kick a ball, some trees, facilities for children and youth like playgrounds, skateboard ramps, sports fields, youth centre, library, an oasis for the mind?

Is it really too much to ask for planned facilities for our young (rather than knee jerk reaction by building one low cost racing circuit) to develop their growing muscles and expanding mind and a place to get the pent up energy out of their raging hormones? If there are no facilities, our young will find some other outlet - like riding their motorbikes. But if there is no hope that your life can ever improve, you will ride that motorbike recklessly, without regard to life or limb.

Nenek Kebayan