Senseless deaths which we may want to blame God but…

When the news of the Bukit Antarabangsa landslide hit Malaysiakini online news portal, I had a sense of deja vu of the Highland Towers collapse. That desperate feelings of wanting to see more survivors, the silent moral support we offered in our hearts to those people and the overwhelming sadness of seeing our fellow Malaysians in grief over the deaths of their loved ones.

Our politicians have often times amused us with their lame excuses of ‘Act of God’ whenever bad workmanship, lousy management and maintenance, greed out of corrupt practices that lead to tragedies and the loss of lives. Sure, we can laugh at how our previous Works Minister love this act of God excuse whenever there is a leak.

But when I flipped through the newspapers this morning, I know that no one can blame act of God for the senseless deaths this time. The PM blamed development. But hey, who approved those developments? It is the Government.

I do not know about the victims, but on their behalf, I feel anger that at a time when they are most grieved, the statements we found in the papers from the PM and DPM are awfully insensitive. Nasi sudah jadi bubur, don’t rub it in. We, the rakyats, want to see more sensitive sides of our leaders. Cry when we cry. Not jumping in, with people holding umbrellas for you, people making nice walkways for you and blow your trumpet to show us you got the power. Obviously, we do not care if all these developments were approved during your tenure or the previous PM or what. We only want to see people taking responsibility. And the responsibility party here is not God. It is not those people who bought those bungalows. It is those people who allowed massive developments without respecting nature. And only the Government (again, we do not care if it is the state government or federal government) has the power to approve those developments.

My heart goes out for those who lost loved ones. Especially the parents of the young man holding the phone, the baby of the mother who perished and the children of the mom who died while trying to save her son (news on malaysiakini)

And just after I published this, I also read that another bus accident has occurred and this time, 9 were killed. The news on The Star. Again, this is another case of greed, lack of enforcement and sheer tidak-apa of our authorities.