Sometimes, good looks, good physique, an Oxford degree, a charmed life and a famous father-in-law are not enough. To make it in politics, you require much more and sad to say, Khairy won't be able to tell us what these qualities are! From attraction to obsession to attachment, love takes you through different stages -- and though the thrill of the obsessive stage is seductive, it is soon followed by the reassuring warmth of emotional bonding!
Khairy is also not fit to be the future prime minister as he has proved himself to be lacking in substance, outstanding traits, charisma and vision. He has failed to make the UMNO youth wing relevant and powerful, with at least some bargaining power with the UMNO supreme council.
Rafizi Ramli, the PKR director for strategy, received the official reply from UMNO Youth to his debate challenge on the RM250 million Shahrizat Jalil-NFC debacle only 3 weeks after throwing down the gauntlet.
Worse still, UMNO Youth chief Khairy Jamaludin decided to chicken out, saying he could not make the event which had been slated for December 12 as he had another engagement.
After deep thought, which critics say is surprisingly slow for an Oxford graduate, it appears that Khairy finally came to his senses and decided that not only is it a lost cause, but it could also lead to more UMNO wrong doings being exposed.
Furthermore, the UMNO top echelon have put their foot down, making it clear they want a full stop on the matter before more amongst them were implicated, resulting in themselves not being categorized as “winnable” candidates by their party.
No Rembau but maybe Kepala Batas
Now, Khairy has been exposed as the main player who pushed the buttons in the project to start a cattle livestock industry in Malaysia. However, his tight daily schedule and impatience could have led him to overlook many salient points in getting the project off the ground.
He must surely regret it now because it has come back to haunt him, jeopardising his already tattered political future and ambition to be the youngest prime minister in Malaysian history.
The 35-year-old Khairy had foolishly defended the debacle. Unfortunately, because of that he is as good as a nobody now. The UMNO grapevine is hot with talk that his comfortable seat in Rembau is also going to be given to Hassan Muhammad the present Mentri Besar of Negeri Sembilan.
It seems that the only seat available for Khairy, should he insist on contesting, would be Kepala Batas, which is currently being held by his father-in-law and former premier Abdullah Badawi.
In his political maneuvers, Khairy has made many enemies both within and outside UMNO since the early days when he was so naive as to believe that his father-in-law could stay in power until the day the post would automatically be handed over to him.
Now Khairy has to face the stark reality that he was sidelined the day Najib Razak took over as prime minister and UMNO president. Many in UMNO were even overjoyed when Khairy was not given a Cabinet post as they blamed him for the party's poor performance in the 2008 general election.
Unfocused and unwise
Despite all his advantages, Khairy is not focused and not wise enough to take advantage of all the inside information he has on UMNO and the government even during Badawi’s premiership and now under Najib. The clout he held during his heyday was not used to build a solid political foundation, but instead allegedly used for grabbing as much money as he could.
The NFC debacle could have been avoided in the classic UMNO way by pulling some strings. He should have kept quiet and pretended not to know aything about the project.
At the very least, he should get his facts right and realize how serious the debacle was, since nowadays it would be an impossible task to keep things under the lid. He could have convinced Najib that whatever misgivings that the PM may have for him, Badawi, Shahrizat or even Muhyiddin, exposing the debacle just won’t worth it.
Instead Khairy tried to be a hero, explaining the complex NFC transactions on his own but on a piece-meal basis, so that each time more blunders were exposed which Khairy did not expect or anticipate.
Eventually due to his foolishness, even UMNO delegates at the party's recent annual assembly said they were 'fed-up' with the controversies of the top leaders. Pahang Umno delegate Wan Amizan Wan Abdul Razak said that these made it difficult for the leaders at the division level to explain to the grass roots, many of whom felt uneasy about the widespread corruption allegations.
To date three UMNO strongmen have asked Shahrizat to resign namely Kinabatangan MP Bung Moktar, former premier Mahathir Mohamad and lately Abdul Ghapur Salleh, the Kalabakan MP and the number will swell bigger.
Failed to convert his advantages well
In February this year during a two-hour talk event at Imperial College in London where Khairy was a guest speaker, he was said to have been "scintillating, stimulating and substantive" when asked about the political and voting trends and when the GE-13 should be held.
This shows that he does have access to inside information. To stay relevant, he should tap the advance information to plan for his own interest. But Khairy did not. He is not as shrewd a politician as he should be. This can be taken as a sign of his political demise or that he has actually given up trying.
Instead of finding ways to use his connections and informers for his own gain and development, he is without any proper direction in his actions. He makes stupid blunders, creates controversies or makes racists remarks that are unbecoming of an Oxford graduate. No wonder, the people ridicule him for being a hypocrite.
Bleak future ahead
Khairy should have associated or aligned himself with some team or camp with strong support within UMNO. He should stop trying to be his own man like Zulkifli Nordin and Hassan Ali. Khairy doesn’t have the ability, capacity, nor the potential and whatever opportunity he had has gone. Wasted!
The future for Khairy Jamaluddin is very bleak indeed. If he decides to end his own political career before GE-13, he will be doing a service for the rakyat (populace). Firstly, he will save the rakyat from his future blunders as he has created many in the past.
Most television soaps keep the romantic lead stuck for long periods in love’s obsessive state. The camera caresses them from every angle as they stay frozen, giving each other prolonged lovelorn looks. Audience hearts stop likewise…freefalling with a collective thud as the screen couple’s loaded gazes break contact!
This is repeated with nauseating frequency, television producers fighting shy of having the couple declare their feelings, as this would result in an assured dip in TRPs. The audience waits for the climactic declaration, and then loses interest! Who is interested in happily-ever-after? The excitement and adrenaline-laden moments all happen before the couple settles down to eternal, stable, boring bliss. And TV believes in doling out the just-before moments by the ladles to a romance-starved audience.
Wouldn’t it be nice if in real life too one could stay stuck forever in love’s obsessive state -- where every footfall announces a lover’s visit, each whisper shivers down the spine, and any sound seems sweet as a nightingale’s song! A state of constant edge-of-seat excitement and suspense, not knowing what further delights the next moment will unfold!
This of course is the second stage of falling in love, as enumerated by love researcher Helen Fisher of Rutgers University in New Jersey. The first stage is the phase of attraction, when you first find yourself drawn by and interested in another. In men this is typified by lust, a sexual attraction often fueled by visual interest; in women, it is often the result of a man’s interest in them, or his intellect, power or status. This stage quickly gives way to the obsessive second stage when hormones rage uncontrollably, keeping one on a perpetual high, with senses as though ‘of hemlock… drunk’. Every thought is of the beloved, each waking moment a bated breath, and sleep just an excuse to dream some more!
Science has established the actual chemical changes that take place in the obsessive state of love. The release of Dopamine gives one the same high as being on cocaine or nicotine. Adrenaline that courses through the veins increases heartbeats and is responsible for the restless excitement. Levels of seratonin take a dip, which is what makes the initial stages of love akin to the symptoms of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder – sleeping less, eating less, obsessively thinking of the lover and a constant living in wait of the next meeting!
With such excitement-inducing chemicals, is it surprising that one would like to stay in this state forever? Maybe one should end affairs the moment they start, because the fun is actually already over by the time real romance begins; it is teetering on the edge of the precipice that gives one the highs, much more than the free fall into an abyss! And as a colleague said wistfully, if this phase just has to end, wouldn’t it be nice to quit a relationship at the stage when romance quits, and fall all over in love again with someone else?! “That would be a nice way to hoodwink the natural progression of things and remain on a romantic high forever,” he grinned cockily.
But life is about moving on, not staying perched in one place. And so, in real life, as well as on the small screen, finally comes the day when romance is declared. By now the chemically-laden activity has settled down and you are able to focus on rest of life as well, apart from each other.
And now comes the critical third stage of love. Some couples discover that there is nothing left once the chemistry is gone; others find a confident, stable love takes over from an uncertain, excited and nervous romance. Hormones settle down and one reaches the next stage of love; Oxytocin, the chemical for warm bonding, takes over. This chemical is released during orgasm and also during childbirth and helps create bonds between a couple, who now transcend from obsession into a deeper and mature partnership. It is because of this quality of Oxytocin that physical contact, if indulged in a bit too soon in a relationship, can be misleading!
All three stages of love have their own unique characteristics and each prepares us for the next, logically falling in line with Nature’s natural plan of progression and procreation. Of course for those who would rather stay with the thrills and peaks rather than follow a steadier horizontal graph, my colleague’s suggestion of staying forever in the second stage of loving by jumping from one love to another, may be worth a try!
Once upon a time in India, in the near present, there lived three entities called SOMEBODY, Everybodyand nobody. They were not exactly friends although their families had worked and lived together for centuries. Since they often crossed each other’s path, there was constant friction among the three. They argued and fought with each other, envied or pitied one another and also called each other names.
Each of the three needed the other two, but each had his own prejudices and perceptions, influenced by stereotype, enlarged by media and hardened by individual experience. There was much good in them as there was bad in all of them.
SOMEBODY belonged to the upper class. He was a person of note and importance in society. He and his family had made a name for themselves, either by heredity, enterprise, hard work, talent, sheer luck, or even in some cases by hook or crook. SOMEBODY’s family comprised a motley lot: business tycoons, politicians, artistes, philanthropists, judges, scientists, builders, social workers, do-gooders, no-gooders, lawmakers, lawbreakers and others. Most of the family had money, influence and power, and were not shy of using them.
Everybody, who also answered to the name of Anybody, was largely made up of the middle class—aka the muddled class—comprising the salaried person, the file-pusher, the farmer, the grocer, the banker, the driver, the small entrepreneur, the home-maker, the home-breaker, the bribe-seeker and the bribe-giver. His family was sometimes inaccurately referred to as the aam janata; inaccurate, because the public’s life was rarely imbued with the sweetness of a mango. Everybody was stuck in limbo, his mindset forever caught between the pulls of modernity and morality and the pressures of tradition and aspiration. Yes, he aspired to become SOMEBODY, but hit by inflation and everyday worries, the busybody didn’t have the luck or the pluck to bring it off.
Having never been to school, nobody was the classical classless person. He literally had no body, forced as he was to live in the shadows and fill his family’s belly with less than Rs 32 a day. Little wonder he had lost his voice—he always dreamt that SOMEBODY would help him, but Everybody was too busy with his own life to even cast a look at nobody. The only timenobody, who lived on the fringes of society as a tribal, a Dalit, a subsistence farmer, a nomad, a ragpicker, a construction worker, a streetdweller, a car washer, a petty thief, a drunken lout or a wheezing tout, emerged in the limelight was during elections when Everybody who was contesting wanted nobody’s vote to become SOMEBODY;SOMEBODY and Everybody also talked about him at national and international summits and conferences; at such times, there was plenty of food for thought and debate, but little came of it, at least where nobody was concerned. nobody really knew how difficult life was.
In the first year of the second decade of the 21st century, when inflation, corruption and people's frustration were running high, there rose a man who dared the government of the day, who threatened to awaken the slumbering giant of a nation. Where many before him had faded away after initial promise, he stood fast. He fed on his own convictions and ideas, although critics called them naive and impractical.
Being a son of the soil, he was aware of the growing estrangement betweenSOMEBODY, Everybody and nobody, and the danger it posed to the country. He invited them to a round table meeting and having spoken to them on the sorry state of the nation, sought their views on his movement against corruption.
Everybody spoke first: I have no time or energy to do anything. LetSOMEBODY take the lead.
SOMEBODY retorted: Does Anybody care at all? nobody gives a damn! Why can't Everybody pool in to keep the wheels of commerce moving?
nobody squeaked: Thank you for asking me to share the table with you. Can I have some food, please?
And so it went, each listing his own litany of woes, each wanting his own agenda tackled first.
The problem of the eternal class struggle seemed insurmountable. By virtue of being the head-master at the school for probity, the man who ate little finally struck upon a seemingly simplistic solution. "Quality of personal life is determined by equality in public life. Do away with your first names, adopt a common name and work unitedly."
From that day, all the three dropped their prefixes and became a single Body. Everyone was now One.
Whether they lived happily ever after is another story.
After all, the only thing you stand to lose is your sanity and credibility!
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