Official Malaysian Dictionary Meaning Of "Grateful": Vote Barisan Or Be Damned, Period!

Please don't laugh!

In BolehLand, there is altogether a different meaning to the word "grateful".

That special meaning probably had its etymological origin in Kerala, India.

It originally had to do with expensive highways that crisscrossed the country, from North to South and East to West, and here and there, and in between, like a giant convoluted serpent that had become giddy and fuzzy and lost its way and did not know where its head began and its tail ended.

Ungrateful Malaysians had complained about the high toll rates and were duly reminded to be grateful that the Barisan government had deigned to build us undeserving  hoi polloi expressways to transverse.

That nobody was forcing anybody to use them, for goodness' sake!. There were the trunk roads, you ingrates!

One should just be grateful to the Barisan government, period.

So, the traditional meaning of "grateful" became supplanted in the Malaysian context to mean: "vote and be thankful to Barisan for it whatever it does, period, or be damned"

This thankful definition has since been cited as irrefutable authority by the ever eager Barisan beavers to define and tar anyone who does not kiss their hands in fawning appreciation of the things they do (including, very often, very puzzling and logic defying ones that utterly make no sense) as undeserving ingrates.

In carrying on this honorable tradition, MIC has it ardent grateful practitioners no less in numbers than its other Barisan brothers.

So, Saravanan, thou are a good disciple for chiding the Chinese for being ungrateful to the government for not voting Barisan.

Except that we Malaysians want to remind you that in a democracy (and the best one in the world your taiko big boss would have us believe), we have the right to vote for anyone or party we want and it has nothing to do with being grateful or not.

Besides, it is not as if Barisan has a congenital prerogative to perpetual rule.

Let us further remind you etymological inepts, that it is the bounded duty of any government to serve its citizens well and not the other way round.

You misguided etymologists are the ones who ought to be grateful to us rakyat for entrusting to you  (very stupidly, I should say) to continue to serve us. But this time, of course, we dispute the results.

Jangan tidak bersyukur (Please don't be ungrateful) for the trust we have misguidedly placed on you all these eons!