Kunta Kinte Mahathir's roots Kerala God’s Own Country much passion as the fissures in the district Palakkad is rightfully known as the Gateway of Kerala

MIC deputy president G Palanivel told off Tun Dr. Mahathir Mohamad "to remember his own (Indian/Mamak) roots".Read here for more
Palanivel is referring to the fact that Mahathir's forefathers are from South India in Kerala state. 

Mahathir was born and named as Mahathir s/o Iskandar Kutty@Mahathir Mohamed (read here). Mahathir's father, (Iskandar Kutty) was a school teacher of Indian origin, specificallyMalayalee (people who speak Malayalam, not to be confused with Malay), having migrated from the southern state of Kerala, while his mother was a Malay.

Record numbers of people today are researching their family origins. The popular interest in genealogy - the recording of descendents from some ancestor - is Palakkad is rightfully known as the Gateway of Kerala, giving the rest of India access to the State. Its other name is Palghat was contributed by British Raj.

Kerala comes across as a paradox. The God’s Own Country has human development indices matching some of the most developed nations in the world. There are neither vast stretches of barren land nor clusters of villages. Basic health and education infrastructure are available even in remote areas that are accessible by public transport. A state where people discuss and debate post-Chavez Venezuela with as much passion as the fissures in the district unit of the Communist party or the prospects of the BJP in 2014
 Dr Mahathir Mohamad, the patron of Perkasa, keeps on confirming and reconfirming his Umno colleague Nazri Abdul Aziz's description of him as thefather of racism.  All the despicable, false and ridiculous racist utterances should not come as a surprise from the patron of Malaysia's Ku Klux Klan.

This increasingly vile and shrill racist rhetoric strongly indicates that Mahathir is really worried that many Malays have wised up to the massive plundering of the country by Umno and hence are likely to vote for Pakatan Rakyat and bring it to power.

If this happens he and his other criminal cohorts would have to answer for their many crimes and could possibly end up in jail.

So Mahathir now is giving his very best racist performance, at which he is a known expert, to try and influence the Malays so that they would not desert Umno.
It’s a state where an average middle class family would consider it a shame if children were not postgraduates. A good guess would be that many bus drivers and conductors are graduates, if not postgraduates; so too many auto-rickshaw drivers and blue collar workers.

But the most startling aberration that comes in conflict with these feel-good parameters is what is popularly called hartal that has sadly become synonymous with Kerala’s lifestyle. Why a state that is populated with people qualified to think and act progressively should be subjected to intermittent periods of stasis in the form of non-productive and disruptive shutdowns is beyond comprehension.

While on a recent visit to North Parur, a small central Kerala municipality that lies between the commercial capital of Kochi and the cultural capital of Thrissur, I got to see how the possibility of hartal is factored into the daily calendar of every Keralite. Last Tuesday evening, news flashed on the local cable television channel and word spread on mobile phones that a local political leader had been attacked and in retaliation there would be a hartal the next day in the municipal limits.

The word hartal has such a disconcerting resonance that no one tries to find out who attacked whom or how serious the incident was. All the time and energy are channelled into undoing the damage the hartal would cause the next day. So, my cousin reaches for her mobile and calls up her friends and colleagues, and reschedules all that had been planned. 

She wonders if public transport will be off the next day, and how she would reach her office that is outside the municipality limits and wouldn’t be affected by the shutdown. The family discusses if it would be prudent to take the car or hire an auto-rickshaw. Finally, she calls the regular auto-rickshaw driver, leaves home for office 5 am to beat the 6 am hartal (normally she leaves at 9 am) and spends the extra hours at a friend’s house near her office. Her daughter misses classes at school. 

And finally, it turns out that there was an all-party meeting and the hartal was cancelled. Life was near normal that day. But the talk of hartal rents the air always. Most of it are rumours, but very often it does materialize, and the disruption it causes has become a part of a Keralite’s lifestyle. 

Hartal makes for easy conversation with strangers, like the weather in Britain. So I tossed the topic to the man standing near me at the bus stand. “Today was supposed to hartal... “ He echoed the normal sense of resignation that everyone has. “O, that has become a part of the culture here. Who is ready to stand up against it? No one wants to take the risk. No one even thinks about it.” 

Why, I ask. He thought he had the answer: “So what if there is hartal, everyone has enough money, they all lead a comfortable life. Why invite trouble by trying to change the status quo.” He said his name was Anish and he taught Mathematics at a local school. 

Does he support the hartal culture? “No”. I surmised that most people think like him. I wondered why had this culture caught on, if no one wanted it? His guess was that people who call the hartal had their own means to livelihood and they were insensitive to common people’s problems.

As we talked, he rightly inferred that I wasn’t a resident of Kerala. When I said I stay in Bangalore, his first question was about the Metro Rail. How good it is, how many kilometres it is, how comfortable it is, how long does it take to travel from one place to another, etc. His question disguised in vain not only a sense of amazement but also his aspiration to get out of the shackles of the daily routine. He didn’t forget to rhetorically ask if progressive Bangalore had hartals.

And out tumbled his frustration, “God knows when Kochi will get its Metro. Work is going on. They say three years, but don’t expect it in the next 10 years.” I tried calming him down saying all such big projects aren’t easy to execute and do get delayed, but not to the extent he thinks. I pointed to the elegant, wide-bodied, low-floor, sparkling city buses -- a metaphor as it were for the changes the society was seeing.

But, for now though, Anish, and probably many like him, have merely dreams, punctuated by hartals, to live with.

Mahathir’s statement a red herring designed to mislead RCI

Mahathir’s recent statement that illegal immigrants in Sabah who have stayed a very long time in the state and can speak Bahasa Malaysia are entitled to citizenship may be a red herring.

It’s not possible to issue citizenship certificates – naturalization for example – to illegal immigrants. If the illegals re-entered the state legally, it would be a different matter.

Again, they would not be able to qualify for citizenship by naturalization as a matter of right.

They would need to hold an Entry Permit from the Immigration Department, work permits, and run the gauntlet of clearance by the Special Branch, police clearance by their home countries, temporary residence MyKads, permanent resident MyKads, apply for naturalization, pass the Bahasa Malaysia test, collect their citizenship by naturalization certificate and produce this to obtain a MyKad issued to citizens.

Citizens by registration are the children of naturalized citizens born in Malaysia but they too, like their parents, would have to apply for a citizenship certificate, failing which they would considered citizens of the home countries of their parents and issued a permanent resident MyKad.

The EC, it’s said, has two kinds of voters on its electoral rolls i.e. the first whose MyKads, whether the holder is eligible to hold or ineligible, are listed in the JPN databank; and the second with MyKads which don’t exist in the JPN databank. The EC, the last time that it issued a statement on MyKads, admitted that it was not online with the JPN and was not in a position to check whether the MyKads of those on its electoral rolls are in the JPN databank.

Sabahans will bay for blood if the RCI turns out to be another dud

The EC doesn’t even remove the deceased on its electoral rolls unless a death certificate is presented to it. In the past, it had been alleged that the MyKads of the dead were being used to vote by phantom voters hired for the job from among illegal immigrants.

Uncollected MyKads, if not destroyed, can similarly be used by phantoms to vote.

The RCI can in fact begin its work by putting the cart-before-the-horse i.e. ensure that the EC is online to JPN to do a verification exercise of its electoral rolls.

It can also begin its work by persuading the Federal Government to offer a general amnesty to those holding MyKads to which they are not eligible under the Federal Constitution and those complicit in the commission of acts of treason.

If Sabahans get what they expect from the RCI i.e. leaner, meaner electoral rolls, among others, Najib can expect to win the state at the forthcoming 13^th General Election which has to be held by April/May next year. But no one is holding their breath.

Needless to say, the GE has to be delayed until the work of the RCI has been completed in six months and subsequently translated into action and the electoral rolls cleaned up. But will it?

The fact is most Malaysians expect Najib to call for GE-13 before the conclusion of the RCI and the shit hits the fan. Irate Sabahans will surely bay for blood at having been made fools of yet again by the BN federal government.

Many have asked me why we cannot do without race-based politics in Malaysia.

The short answer is that we all want to remember and be recognised according to our racial origins, the countries of our ancestors came from, the languages we speak, the cultures we belong to.

We really don’t want to say we are just Malaysians and nothing else.

Selective comparison, Dr M style!

If it is pointed out to us that in many countries where people of different racial origins live, there is no racial politics, no identification of the citizens with the countries of their origin; we will say that we are different. You cannot compare them with us. Yet on most other issues we compare ourselves with them.

But are we so different from them. There are actually a lot of people of foreign origins in Malaysia who seem to have forgotten their origins. These are the people of Indian, Arab, Indonesian and even Turkish and European origins who are accepted as indigenous people by all of us.

They have been so accepted because they identified themselves fully with the indigenous people. They speak the language of the indigenous people habitually, practice the customs and traditions of the people they have been assimilated into and incidentally they are Muslim.

According to the Federal Constitution these people are Malays and are therefore indigenous and not foreign in origin.

Row in Sabah

There is a row in Sabah because of the number of people who have been made citizens. Some of those people had been expatriated although many returned illegally.

But most of these people qualify to be citizens. They have been staying in Malaysia (Sabah) for decades. They and their children speak Malay, the national language.

On the basis of length of stay and mastering of the national language, they qualify to be citizens of this country. And so the acquired citizenship.

By comparison we have many citizens who cannot speak the national language who were accepted as citizens. And we are still giving citizenship to foreigners who wish to be Malaysians on condition they have been living in this country for 10 out of the last 12 years, speak the national language and take the oath of allegiance to the country.

Political, and hence racial: But does it have to be so?

So why cannot the migrants to Sabah who have all these qualifications be accepted as citizens? The objections for them being accepted seem to be political.

And so the racial factor crops up again. There was a time in the distant past when parties based on ideology contested in elections. They were all rejected in favour of race-based parties.

If we don’t want our politics to be race-based, then we must forget our racial origins, speak the national language as our mother tongue and swear allegiance only to this country. We can retain our religion however.

Maybe one day this will happen. But for the present our politics will be race-based despite our protestations that we are not. We must not even say we are multi-racial as this implies consciousness of our racial differences.Mahathir Mohamad’s claim that he did not go crawling to the World Bank in 1997-1998 for aid appears to be the result of a deliberate confusion, on his part, about the separate and distinct roles of this great institution and the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

The former Malaysian Prime Minister will probably claim another temporary bout of amnesia, as he once did in Court, in mistaking one for the other. Being already 86 since Dec 20, he will soon be able to claim not only amnesia but dementia and Alzheimer’s disease besides his usual paranoia.

When Mahathir was denying about having anything to do with the World Bank, he was actually talking about the IMF. No one seems to have noticed this so far.

It’s no big secret that in publicly rejecting IMF aid in 1998, the papers also quietly reported then that the rejection did not extend to the World Bank. Opposition Leader Anwar Ibrahim was not saying anything new but highlighting the facts when he mentioned World Bank aid to Malaysia.

The Mother of All Lies

So, there’s really no need for Mahathir to swear on the Quran and defile the Holy Book with his lies. It seems Mahathir will swear to anything to save his skin. Each time he swears, it will be just to cover up another big lie. A proverb in Malayalam from Kerala, from where Mahathir’s roots can be traced, goes as follows: “One will have to tell a thousand lies to cover up the first lie.”

To his critics, Mahathir’s entire life has been one big lie lived shamelessly and without a tinge of conscience or humanitarian considerations for others. Mahathir’s reason for rejecting IMF aid – the return of colonialism as he claimed – was another great self-serving lie.

Mahathir was thereby able to dip into our EPF monies among others to bail out his family, nominees, and cronies without instituting real reforms. He should be charged with abuse of power, corruption, economic sabotage and treason. The IMF would have never stood for aid packages merely designed to bail out a small group of his people at the expense of an entire nation.

Ruthless coup d’etat and blatant cheating

This is not the first time that Mahathir has made a mess of the economy. Put it down to his inexperience in public administration and economic and financial management. This did not prevent him anyway from easing out his predecessor, Hussein Onn, from office and seizing the reins of power in what has turned out to be a coup d’ etat in hindsight.

Mahathir was also single-handedly responsible for the 1986-1987 recession in Malaysia which ended in Umno being declared unlawful by a Judge, who obviously favoured him. Judge Harun Hashim could have ruled that the votes from the 30 illegal branches should not be taken into consideration and, accordingly, handed the 1987 Umno presidency to Tengku Razaleigh. The rest is history.

Gambling without compunction, losing billions of the people’s money

The recession of 1986-1987, one entirely of Mahathir’s own making within five years of him becoming Prime Minister, was driven by two of his policies viz austerity drive; and bersih, cekap and amanah – clean, efficient, trustworthy – administration. The clean, efficient and trustworthy theme threw up the explosive BMF Scandal in Hong Kong. Those familiar with the case know it is linked to Mahathir as Bank Bumiputra reported to the Prime Minister’s Department and not the Finance Minister or Bank Negara.

Bank Negara lost RM15 billion playing with fire in the foreign exchange market until warned by the US Government to pull out. Mahathir directed this attempt to make free money in the foreign exchange market and the Bank Negara underling who carried out his hare-brained directive is today a Federal Cabinet Minister in the Najib Government. His name is Nor Mohamed Yakcop.

Not content with big-time forex gambling, Mahathir the incorrigible casino king also attempted to corner the International Tin Market in London, losing billions of EPF money in the 1985 Maminco scandal.

The dip in Government spending, thanks to the hare-brained austerity drive, coupled with a dip in foreign investments following the Buy British Last Policy, and the racist anti-Malaysian Chinese Look East Policy were all enough to drive the last nail into Mahathir’s coffin until Harun Hashim saved him.

Economic mismanagement

Mahathir’s economic mismanagement was the theme of the 1987 campaign that Razaleigh and Musa Hitam, Deputy Prime Minister, ran to oust him from power.

Mahathir came close to being trounced. But during the break for Friday prayers and a break in the counting of votes for the Umno presidency, legend has it that RM 4.5 million was withdrawn from the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank to buy up the votes of the remaining delegates. In addition, people posing as Special Branch officers allegedly “kidnapped” Najib and held him hostage until he gave the signal to his father’s and uncle’s supporters to vote for Mahathir instead of Razaleigh as he had earlier pledged.

Mahathir’s two closest economic advisors during the dark economic days of 1987 were former MIC President S Samy Vellu and Daim Zainuddin who went on to replace Razaleigh as Umno Treasurer and Finance Minister.

Samy advised savings through the downsizing of the government workforce, and increase in revenues, through the corporatisation and privatization of various government departments. The result was that the government workforce fell from one million to below 800,000. But today, the civil service has topped the 1.2 million mark, a 50 per cent jump on the 800,000, and still bloating.

Daim’s contribution was an accounting of the old Umno assets and to supervise the implementation of the creation of as many Malay paper millionaires as possible to keep company with the number of Chinese millionaires in the country. In the end, it was easy come, easy go. All these so-called Daim’s Boys have gone bankrupt and those that survived were bailed out in 1998 by Danaharta and other Special Purpose Vehicles (SPVs).

Carnage and lies continue

Today, the state and federal GLC – government-linked companies – are being shamelessly touted to the masses as Malay companies and not state-owned vehicles which is what they are in reality. This is another legacy of Mahathir’s hare-brained economic policies. If you don’t achieve anything, just lie and keep lying until people believe you.

Daim could never give Mahathir a proper accounting of the old Umno assets and was soon bundled out of the Federal Cabinet. Some reports suggest that Daim was unceremoniously “sacked” after being threatened with detention under the Internal Security Act (ISA) and also being under “house arrest”.

Mahathir became Finance Minister, a practice followed by his successors Abdullah Ahmad Badawi and Najib.

The economic carnage continues. The lying continues.

One proof: Neighbouring Thailand could afford to announce a minimum wage of RM 1,500.00 per month recently for all sectors of the economy.

Human Resources Minister S Subramaniam, always so full of himself, earlier this month announced that Malaysia’s minimum wage would be between RM 700 per month and RM 1,200.00 per month implemented on a sector by sector basis. In short some sectors would get RM 700.00 per month while other sectors would, at the same time get RM 1,200.00 per month. He made no reference to other countries.

This is a result of Mahathir’s economic legacies based on the theory “don’t share the cake”, “beggar thy neighbour”, “heads I win, tails you lose”.

Publicly, Mahathir always talked about win-win partnerships, smart partnerships, and prosper thy neighbour. Mahathir, ignoramus in economics, has never learnt lessons.

MIC deputy president G Palanivel told off Tun Dr. Mahathir Mohamad "to remember his own (Indian/Mamak) roots".Read here for more
Palanivel is referring to the fact that Mahathir's forefathers are from South India in Kerala state. 

Mahathir was born and named as Mahathir s/o Iskandar Kutty@Mahathir Mohamed (read here). Mahathir's father, (Iskandar Kutty) was a school teacher of Indian origin, specificallyMalayalee (people who speak Malayalam, not to be confused with Malay), having migrated from the southern state of Kerala, while his mother was a Malay.


Kerala, India
Homeland of Dr. Mahathir's fore-fathers
In his blog, Dr Mahathir Mohamad had accused MIC chief S Samy Vellu of being a racist.

Mahathir wrote:

"In sympathising with Hindraf, Samy (Vellu) exposes his deep racist sentiments.

... Hindraf represents Tamil racists who still look to their old masters, the British, to protect them. They don’t believe in Malaysian institutions.

And they speak not just of Indians but of Tamils as a separate race. They and their apologists are racist to the core."

Palanivel said that the former prime minister's comments on Hindraf were inaccurate and insensitive to the sentiment of Indians in the country. He said that Hindraf is not only made of Tamil people but includes many non-Tamil and even non-Hindus.

He then told Mahathir "to remember his own (Mamak) roots" before making such statements.

Despite his Indian origins, Mahathir generally considers himself to be more Malay. He had used fiery rhetoric to propagate Ketuanan Melayu, or "Malay Supremacy/Lordship" to argue that the Malays were losing out to the minority Chinese and Indian races after the Barisan Nasional coalition's relatively poor showing in Malaysia's 12th general election.

Following the race riots of 13 May 1969, he wrote a letter, which was widely distributed, to the then Prime Minister Tunku Abdul Rahman, criticising the manner in which Tunku Abdul Rahman had handled the country's administration favouring the ethnic Chinese.

In 1983 and 1991, Mahathir took on the Malay Rulers by ramming through an amendment to the Constitution to remove their royal veto and royal immunity om prosecution.

Prior to this amendment of the law, royal assent was required in order for any bill to pass into law. With effect of this amendment, approval by parliament could be legally considered as royal assent after a period of 30 days, notwithstanding the views of the Malay Rulers. The amendment only applied to secular laws.

The Malay Rulers continued to enjoy their constitutional right to make Islamic law in their own jurisdictions.

In 1988 Mahathir engineered the dismissal of the Lord President of the Supreme Court, Salleh Abas, and three other supreme court justices, whicy led to the widely held view as the beginning of end of the Malaysian judiciary's independence from the executive.

In 1998, the government brought charges of sexual misconduct and abuse of power charges against the former finance minister and deputy prime minister, Anwar Ibrahim

While the trial was still underway, Mahathir went on television to declare Anwar guilty of sodomy and homosexual acts.

Commentary
Open Letter to Mahathir dated 20th May 2008 from "Sathia"Read here on Malaysia-Today 

Quote:
"You did not acknowledge your birth being born to a man of Indian descent who was a Muslim as a result of colonial Muslim power. You must have felt ashamed of your Indian bloodline. "- Sathia

Excerpts: 

" Dear Dr. Mahathir,

The Malaysian public in general and in specific the Indians must be glad to hear that you have left UMNO.

You would deny your Indian ancestry. You would cast yourself as a Malay in desperation to win their acceptance.

You did not acknowledge your birth being born to a man of Indian descent who was a Muslim as a result of colonial Muslim power. You must have felt ashamed of your Indian bloodline.

You painted yourself as a perfect Malay, a super Malay and became one of the most vociferous proponents of Ketuanan Melayu along with the likes of Tun Abdul Razak.

In the process, you turned the peaceful and friendly Malays into religious bigots, lazy and greedy.

In your haste to transform them from a rural mindset, by your actions, you taught them that the taking the money from the Non-Muslims and amassing the wealth in ill-gotten ways and spending it lavishly is the fastest and easiest way towards bliss.

Hurting the non-Malay progress is the way towards enhancing the progress of Malay. Unsupported by research data, you just prided yourself in seeing Malays are positioned everywhere.

You failed to inculcate in Malays about the fundamental time honored principles that call for sound knowledge, tolerance, and skills and putting them to good use. It might take the form of and courageous to be able to stand on own feet despite what may come, and seek out peaceful and harmonious living with others in the country and around the world.

You destroyed the education system in turning out morons as graduates who are ill fit to do anything meaningful. You have let brilliant minds among them not to flourish on account of race and religion.

That resulted in an adverse cycle causing almost irreparable damage to Malaysian public especially the Malays.

You tampered with the judiciary, you tampered with the rights of Sultans, you tampered with the goings on in other country on account of religion and you made many countries hate Malaysia and Malaysians.

For a change, you can be an Indian for a while so that you can appreciate how it feels like to be an Indian living under the legacy of your government.

Be a Chinese for a while, and try to understand how the Chinese are treated by the legacy of your government.

Regards.

Sathia "