Former prime minister Mahathir Mohamad, who still wields a significant influence in Umno, is the latest leader to offer his views on the health of the party ahead of its much-watched annual assembly slated for early December.
While the 85-year-old Mahathir was careful to sheath his claws, it was clear he managed to say what he wanted to about Prime Minister Najib Razak's leadership of the party for the edification of all members.
Najib is not the man to transform Umno. He doesn't even have enough time to do so, though no one knows what he is spending his time on since taking office in April 2009 from Abdullah Badawi. This appeared to be the gist of Mahathir's remarks in an interview with the Umno-owned Utusan newspaper.
“Umno became badly damaged when Tun Abdullah Badawi took over. Because he prioritised his family and there were so many corruption allegations. And everyone knew about his son-in-law’s involvement,” Utusan reported Mahathir as saying on Sunday.
“This damaged Umno has been inherited by Datuk Seri Najib Razak for him to fix. Umno needs time before it can become stronger. But Najib is busy and does not have enough time."
All over the world except for his own country and party
Indeed, Najib has come under heavy fire for going off on one expensive overseas trip after another instead of tending to the fast-fading economy, government matters and least of all Umno matters.
Party watchers said it was 'understandable' given that Najib could not make headway with the numerous warlords and chieftains in Umno's feudal system. Himself corruption and scandal-tainted, Najib has not been able to command their respect or get them to move in the direction he planned. The latest signals are that he has given up and already accepted a deal to cede power to his deputy, Muhyiddin Yassin, when party polls are held next year.
A large part of the Umno warlords' disdain and disrespect for him stems from his perceived cowardice in calling for snap general elections earlier. He is the first Malaysian PM to not have his own mandate, having been appointed Prime Minister after taking over the Umno presidency from Badawi, who was ousted by an internal coup that was engineered by Najib himself and Muhyiddin.
Ironically, Najib now faces being pushed out by Muhyiddin, who is believed to have won Mahathir's support for the party's top job. By convention, the Umno president is also the head of the ruling BN coalition and prime minister of the country.
In Mahathir's comments to Utusan, he had alluded to Khairy Jamaluddin, the son-in-law of Badawi, two men whom he detests for having dismantled many of his mega programs.
Losing credibility
Mahathir also warned that a lack of credibility at the Umno top leadership and divisional levels could prove to be the party's undoing. Not only has Umno's image been badly tarnished but infighting has begun for seats to contest in snap general polls widely expected to be held soon.
Mahathir did not specify what was diluting Umno's credibility but a clear-cut and current example is the alleged corruption involving the family of Wanita chief Shahrizat Jalil over the RM250 million NFC financial debacle.
Mahathir also said that some Umno leaders were only interested in holding on to a particular post within the party, or wanted to contest in the next general election and did not care about strengthening the party. He doubted that party leaders would use the annual assembly as a platform to resolve outstanding issues.
“Each person is only looking after his own. What’s important should not be the individual but the party. If this goes on Umno will lose, Umno will not rule and all of us will not gain anything,” said Mahathir.
"We won narrowly in the 2008 GE, that makes Umno weak. When someone is weak is it easy for other people to attack. If we can respond it is fine but it becomes a problem when we cannot respond."
Umno now dependent on the Chinese, insists Dr M
Long accused of being a racist, Mahathir also did not fail to repeat his frequent warning against the encroaching power of the Chinese in the country.
He has been using this as a bogey-man to scare the Malays into supporting Umno, a cancerous form psychology that only Umno could suppress and stop the non-Malays from overtaking the Malays.
"I had said 10 years ago we will be losing power but we are now losing power. For almost anything we have to ask the Chinese to support or else we are finished. So in actuality we are the minority, anything we want to do, we will be asked, what will the Chinese get? If it is like this it will be difficult,” he said.
WRITTEN BY CHEDET
1. Masyarakat mana-mana pun tahu adanya orang yang dilahirkan dengan jantina tidak menentu. Ada yang memiliki tubuh badan lelaki tetapi bahagian-bahagian tertentu lebih mirip kepada perempuan. Mereka dikenali sebagai pondan atau ponen dan ada yang sebaliknya, iaitu tubuh badan perempuan tetapi mirip lelaki.
2. Mereka diterima oleh masyarakat sejak dahulukala lagi tanpa banyak masalah.
3. Tetapi di Barat, kerana gerakan bagi mendaulatkan kebebasan (freedom), mereka ini digesa untuk menuntut hak supaya diiktiraf sebagai sejenis yang berlainan. Mereka juga manusia dan manusia mesti diberi kebebasan untuk melakukan apa sahaja.
4. Yang menjadi masalah ialah mereka yang tidak ada apa-apa kecacatan tetapi menuntut supaya larangan agama dan undang-undang terhadap perbuatan seks di luar tabii seperti meliwat dihalalkan.
5. Dari sini tuntutan diteruskan untuk bukan sahaja dihalalkan seks songsang tetapi juga perkahwinan sejenis, lelaki dengan lelaki, perempuan dengan perempuan. Akhirnya perlakuan seks dibebaskan di Barat sehingga apa sahaja diterima oleh masyarakat sebagai hak seseorang manusia. Anak perempuan dan anak lelaki belasan tahun pun boleh tidur dengan siapa sahaja, melakukan apa jenis seks sesuka hati mereka. Tidak ada lagi anak dara atau teruna semasa berkahwin.
6. Kita banyak terpengaruh dan menerima pendapat dan nilai hidup serta adat resam Barat. Kita hidup dalam dunia yang berpusat kepada Eropah (Eurocentric). Kita terima sistem pemerintahan demokrasi umpamanya.
7. Tetapi perlukah kita turut dan terima segala-galanya yang dilakukan di Barat? Sebenarnya budaya dan nilai hidup Barat sudah runtuh, runtuh kerana terlangsung taksub dengan kebebasan (freedom). Apa sahaja yang hendak dilakukan oleh seseorang individu tidak boleh dilarang kerana larangan bermakna menidakkan hak asasi individu atau kumpulan.
8. Sesuatu yang dilarang oleh agama memang mempunyai sebabnya. Mungkin kita tidak kenal atau tahu sebabnya. Tetapi kita harus ingat penyakit HIV Aids dahulu tidak ada. Ia mula dikenali dikalangan mereka yang mengamalkan seks songsang di California, Amerika Syarikat, secara pilihan walaupun tidak ada kecacatan apa-apa. Sehingga kini tidak ada ubat yang boleh menyembuh penyakit HIV Aids. Mereka yang mengidap penyakit ini bukan sahaja akan musnahkan diri sendiri tetapi juga isteri, suami dan anak cucu. Mereka tidak akan hidup sempurna.
9. Manusia yang bertamadun tidak menurut nafsu semata-mata. Budaya Barat menggalakkan manusia mengikut nafsu. Kebebasan bagi mereka bermakna apa sahaja yang didorong oleh nafsu tidak boleh ditegah oleh agama atau undang-undang manusia.
10. Sifat ini adalah sifat haiwan. Manusia memiliki akal fikiran. Orang yang bertamadun menggunakan akal fikiran untuk menghalang diri dari terikut-ikut dengan nafsu. Sebabnya nafsu perlu dibendung ialah sesuatu yang tidak baik akan menimpa mereka yang mengikut nafsu. Tamadun yang utamakan nafsu akan runtuh akhirnya.
11. Kita sedang melihat keruntuhan akhlak dalam masyarakat Barat. Sementara agama mereka melarang seks songsang, paderi mereka secara terbuka mengamalkan seks songsang. Mereka ditugaskan untuk mengahwini sepasang lelaki dan perempuan. Apakah maknanya apabila mereka menasihati pasangan itu supaya setia kepada masing-masing. Sesungguhnya institusi perkahwinan dan kekeluargaan sudah luput dalam masyarakat Barat. Ramai daripada mereka tidak tahu siapa bapa mereka. Kemungkinan besar akan berlaku perkahwinan atau hubungan seks antara adik dengan abang, kakak dengan adik, bapa dengan anak, anak dengan ibu.
12. Mereka yang taksub dengan kebebasan akan berkata apa salahnya jika ini berlaku. Percayalah, masyarakat selepas ini akan dipenuhi dengan manusia yang cacat tubuh-badan, cacat akal fikiran dan besar kemungkinan aneka jenis penyakit baru akan menyerang msyarakat itu.
13. Sementara kita akui ada manusia yang jantina mereka tidak jelas, janganlah kerana ingin tidak memencilkan mereka, kita terima amalan Seksualiti Merdeka atau Free Seks dalam masyarakat kita. Amalan ini bukan sahaja berdosa tetapi akan runtuhkan masyarakat kita.
As India goes full steam into an anti-corruption blitz, another Malaysian tycoon with connections to the highest places has been named.
Mirzan Mahathir, the son of former Malaysian prime minister Mahathir Mohamad, is the second prominent tycoon from the Southeast Asian country to be implicated in an Indian deal gone awry - this time with the Kakinada Port development.
He follows hot on the heels of Maxis chief Ananda Krishnan, who was accused of having corruptly secured a stake in India's telecoms operator, Aircel.
The Ananda case had sparked talk that Malaysia's ruling BN regime was now sowing the fruits of its overly gung-ho business forays, depending on 'who they know' rather than 'what they knew' to secure huge foreign contracts.
Along with several other Malaysian tycoons including Vincent Tan, Francis Yeoh and Syed Mokhtar Albukhari, Ananda is regarded as being one of Mahathir's inner coterie of cronies.
Huge losses
The 2,424-paged document revealed that a Mirzan-led international shipping consortium won the deep water seaport expansion venture in 1999.
The affidavit revealed that the project was awarded on a Develop-Operate-Transfer basis and the consortium was given 18 months to build two more berths in Kakinada Port, the second largest port in Andhra Pradesh.
“But the consortium failed to fulfill its commitment and the construction work on another berth only started five years later in 2004,” Bernama reported the affidavit as stating.
Due to the delay, the state exchequer was alleged to have lost about RM33mil between 1999 and 2007.
Adding colour and gossip to the scandal is that the affidavit had been filed by the late Andhra Pradesh chief minister YS Rajasekhar Reddy's wife, YS Vijayalakshmi, in the state's High Court last month.
Rajasekhar was killed in a mysterious helicopter crash in 2009.
Sex is as much a part of politics as of life. So sex scandals never bother me. You see them everywhere. Sometimes, open and brazen, as in the case of Silvio. Most times, they are sneaky and covert as in Narain Dutt Tiwari's case. But whatever they are, these sex scandals expose our own hypocrisy. Why on earth would we expect our leaders to be saints and, if not saints, celibates? Are they pursuing a profession or a religious order? If they are our representatives, they will have all our faults and foibles as well.
The truth is: People today have illicit sex all the time, and many among us have it among our own gender. No one quite knows how this promiscuity came about. Some blame popular culture. Others say, our popular culture merely mirrors the way we actually are. It's stupid to expect that our politicians will be any different from us. If they were, it will only make them worse. If you ask me, it's their sexual pursuits that make them human. Take that out and all you are left with is just greed: An obsessive greed for money and power. Grabbed, not earned.
So what bothers me is not sex. Not even sleaze. For one man's sleaze is another's pleasure. What bothers me is where many of these sexual encounters eventually lead. They seldom remain just encounters between consenting adults, as all sex ought to be, licit or illicit. They spiral down into a dark hell of depravity, violence and crime. Crime so brutal that the sexual part of it seems like just a minor distraction.
The abduction and possible murder of Bhanwri Devi, a small town nurse who was having an affair with a minister, recently caused so much upheaval that the Rajasthan Chief Minister had to dump his entire cabinet. The Gehlot ministry was never much known for its rectitude and efficiency. But what dropped it wasn't its corruption or its ineptitude. What dropped it was a horrible story of deceit, extortion, abduction, and (in all likelihood) murder. For Bhanwri Devi, who was in the eye of the storm, is now missing and was last seen abducted by hired goons with a contract to kill.
It's not just Bhanwri Devi. Every day you read about many such cases. The starting point may be sex. Or sexual attraction. But where it leads to is unspeakable hell. Acid attacks. Slashing. Abductions. Brutal violence. Khap incited murders. It is one endless spiral of horror with each story worse than the other. At the heart of it all is just one obsession: Sexual dominance. Power.
What disturbs me is the fact that sex, one of the most wonderful things India taught the world to celebrate, is now just another instrument of power men keep using to harass, intimidate, dominate, and commit violence on women. So girls wearing jeans are attacked outside their colleges. So are girls drinking in bars. Or out on dates. When the men accompanying them try to resist, they are stabbed, murdered. Mumbai is still reeling under the impact of the ghastly killing of two young men, Keenan and Reuben, who tried to protect their girlfriends from being molested by a bunch of local hoods. There is that horrible case of a policeman who picked up a college girl on Marine Drive where she was sitting with one of her classmates and raped her in the police chowky right there, in broad daylight.
No, it has nothing to do with sex. This is about power. Sex is only a pretext. The obsession with power leads to such disgusting, violent crime. It shows how perverse our notion of manhood is, how emasculated we are as men that we seek to prove our manhood by attacking helpless women. Or try to disempower them by idiotic laws that seek to prevent them from working in bars beyond 9 pm. As the demand for greater representation in politics from women's groups grows, so does the violence. You see it even in the virtual world these days. Women are constantly harassed, intimidated, stalked on the net.
But don't discredit sex for this. Discredit the genes that make us men believe every woman is easy game. And when she says no, she must be taught a lesson. No, it's never about sex. It's only about power. And the abuse of power is what politics is all about.
"Hey come on, I didn’t really lie! Just a small holding back of facts about such an innocuous matter. I just wanted to avoid a discussion…that’s hardly a lie!”
And yet you feel betrayed, hurt and upset… Sounds familiar?
“Are you crazy? I am NOT having an affair…we just exchanged a few flirtatious messages…how can that be wrong!”
And yet you feel wronged, betrayed and hurt…
For it is these little lies and betrayals that make a big difference to one’s credibility and to the quality of a relationship, whether personal or professional. The bigger lies that have the potential of blowing up in the face could remain unknown and hidden forever, thus not really causing any harm. The smaller lies that you unthinkingly and carelessly blurt out, not just get caught all the time, but also lay the foundation of how dependable or trustworthy a person or relationship is!
It was Adolf Hitler who coined the expression “Big Lie”, distinguishing it from the small lies. He used the Big Lie as a propaganda technique. As he said inMein Kampf, “… in the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily; and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods…”
This is the principle adopted today by marketing agencies and propaganda machines when they furnish us with Big Lies on a regular basis with the help of mass media. However, the big lie is not something most of us would be familiar with in our daily lives. Sure, all of us would have indulged in some falsehood or the other sometime in life, but these are the small, everyday lies that either help us through a situation, or may have become a chronic habit!
Some people tell a small lie to avoid confrontation; others do so to avoid hurting someone, or so as not to rock the boat in a relationship. Some may lie to live up to fantasies they have about themselves, such as the size of their bungalow, the make of their car or the wealth they own. Still other chronic liars may have entrapped themselves so much into small lies that their entire life may have become a Big Lie that they have to willynilly live up to now! One wonders how these people feel about themselves. For instance, we have cases of people who have wrongly claimed to be POWs of World War II and spent a lifetime claiming compensation for the same and being finally caught out! Surely what must have started off as a small lie one day for such a person, and took over his entire life slowly, must have throttled him in private? Surely somewhere his conscience would have felt some relief when he was caught and finally could stop lying? A lie is a lie; there are no big or small ones. Similarly, a betrayal is a betrayal; it doesn’t have varying degrees of acceptability!
Likewise, a theft doesn’t gain any more acceptability if the amount stolen is less. The point is that if you have been able to convince yourself to indulge in what you consider a smaller evil, the bigger one follows in good time. Lying, stealing, cheating is first an act of betrayal to you yourself, then to anyone else. You are the one who draws the lines and defines the limits for yourself and for your relationship. Certainly how true you are to yourself and to your loved one decides the quality and strength of your relationship. At a workshop conducted by Shobhaa De, when she asked a group of women to answer the question, ‘Who am I?’ to the amazement of all one woman stood up and proclaimed, “I am a thief, a cheat and a liar!” Shobhaa goes on to quote the woman, “I cheat on my husband by feigning interest in his conversation at the end of a long day, when all I want to do is put my feet up and relax. I lie to my bosses and pretend to be sick when I want to spend time with my baby daughter. And I call myself a thief for stealing time which does not belong to me to pursue my personal interests during work hours.” The woman is a rare example of transparent honesty, such as most of us would hesitate to admit even to our ownselves! But it is true, isn’t it? At some level, we are all dishonest. Now call this a small dishonesty, or a big one — it is all about how you want to make yourself feel! We all have ways of making ourselves feel good. So, yes of course, these are all small lies.
But, are they really? Why then do you need to tell yourself yet another lie in order to feel better?
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