Malaysia’s 14th general election has been truly surprising and not only have Malaysians been affected by the results, but other countries were inspired by us as well!
One of these countries is our neighbour, Thailand, which has been ruled by military power since 2014 after they launched a coup.
A cartoon that was published in a Thai newspaper and shared by a Malaysian Facebook page was circulating around. In the post, it shows two different men who are chopping down the root of “corruption”. While it seems to be insignificant to Malaysians, it is actually inspired by our recent GE14!
The left panel which shows a discouraged man holding a tiny axe and barely making a dent on the “corruption” root.
He is labelled as a 64-year-old Thai while on the right, the man is labelled as a 92-year-old Malaysian. No prizes for guessing who! The right panel depicts the man holding a big axe and energetically chopping down the “corruption” root which looks like it is going to break anytime soon.
In case it wasn’t clear enough, a Thai netizen kindly explained it to the majority of us who does not understand the language. He said,
“This cartoon compares the Thai Prime Minister (on the left side) and Tun Mahathir (on the right side) in terms of how they deal with corruption problems. In Thailand, Malaysia’s GE14 made many people surprised and we want to change like Malaysia. However, we have to wait for our PM to announce the election date first.”
Thailand is set to hold their general elections in November 2018. Many netizens encouraged Thai netizens and said, “If we can do it, you can too!” Of course, Malaysians were proud of our Prime Minister being depicted in such a cool and badass manner. They said that they were proud of Tun Dr Mahathir for working hard to eradicate the root of corruption.
Tun M has certainly been making waves all over the world!
Also read: Najib Razak Depicted as ‘Pinocchio’ in Thai News Portal, Malaysians Feel Insulted