Trembling between harsh realities

KUALA LUMPUR: It is admittedly difficult to run a country, especially one with diverse ethnicities, religions, sociopolitical groups or just plain armed interests. As the exercise of power over one another has proven over time to be crucial to the survival or existence of various such entities, they would often not hesitate to go at each other’s throats if left unchecked or, more mildly speaking, unregulated. It’s just a harsh fact of life in an often cruel world.

So, at some point in time, there arose in these countries the notion of at least authoritarian, if not outright dictatorial, rule by, well, dictators, either individually, as in the case of despots, or as a collective as in military juntas. These dictatorial regimes often exercise cold-blooded control over their countries with any insurrection against the regime or even just chicaneries among the various groupings above often being ruthlessly suppressed, sometimes even resulting in bloody massacres. The otherwise ferocious confrontations among the various groupings are ironically and perversely kept at bay by the dictatorial regimes which are themselves equally if not more ferocious.