Salient. Official Newspaper of the Victoria University of Wellington Students' Association. Vol 40. No. 7. April 13 1977
Dear Editor,
Power struggles are often the dominant scene of Malaysian politics. This time in the match were Harun faction who employed the same old tactic of accusing the people (like Samad Ismail etc who belong to the Razak faction) of being communist, subversive elements. Hence once again the McCarthy Spirit is now seriously haunting the Malaysian political arena. This evil spirit from Malaysia was brought into this land of "sheep and milk" and is trying to create white terror amongst the Malaysians. By accusing the critics of the sketch of being identical to the "Chiang Ching" sort of culture, the writer was trying to devoid the sketch of the main issue. To me he was employing the same old dirty tactics of Harun.
I personally felt that, after all what's wrong with the critics advocating the true life of hawkers in the sketch, which you as Malaysian intellectuals are quite familiar with.
I think criticism through rational reasoning is good for us, because only then can we improve our work. So by using the smearing tactics on our critics, we just simply bare ourselves behind the curtain of ignorance, which is of no use to the improvement of our work. So I hope as a rational intellectual, that next time we may argue with sense, and stop the silly, dirty smearing.
Malaysian Observer.