Fixing the fixers Powerplay and dance around democracy

 Khalid. You are officially a one-of-a-kind politician. You have been sacked from your political party, are unwanted by two of the three component parties in Pakatan Rakyat, do not seem to enjoy the support of the State Exco but yet believe that you should remain as the Menteri Besar. The only chaps who are wholeheartedly supporting you belong to UMNO-Barisan Nasional. Surely that is telling. Datuk Seri Dr Wan Azizah Wan Ismail  continued by saying, "One widely held hypothesis is that our country suffers from want of a 'few good men' in politics. This view is unfair to the many upstanding people in politics. But even assuming it is true, every so often we see the emergence of a group, usually upper middle class professionals, who want to clean up politics. But when these 'good' people stand for election, they tend to lose their deposits. Does the electorate really not want squeaky clean government Apart from the conceit that high morals lie only with the upper middle class, the error in this hypothesis may be in believing that problems stem from individual ethics rather than the system we have the tolerance for the venal politician is because he is the crutch that helps the poor and underprivileged navigate a system that gives them so little access. This may be why Abdul Khalid Ibrahim  survives.

 

Datuk Seri Dr Wan Azizah Wan Ismail  continued by saying, "One widely held hypothesis is that our country suffers from want of a 'few good men' in politics. This view is unfair to the many upstanding people in politics. But even assuming it is true, every so often we see the emergence of a group, usually upper middle class professionals, who want to clean up politics. But when these 'good' people stand for election, they tend to lose their deposits. Does the electorate really not want squeaky clean government Apart from the conceit that high morals lie only with the upper middle class, the error in this hypothesis may be in believing that problems stem from individual ethics rather than the system we have the tolerance for the venal politician is because he is the crutch that helps the poor and underprivileged navigate a system that gives them so little access. This may be why Abdul Khalid Ibrahim  survives." 

In electoral science, statistics are illustrative, interpretation is critical and everything is fluid. Politics is evolutionary, and evolution - even Darwin’s - is a theory, not a fact. No election is an echo of the past, let alone a mirror of the future

Machiavellian games –PAS hangs in limbo as UMNO tries to starve PAS of oxygenPowerplay and  dance around democracy Opportunists masquerading as Enemies  come together in Selangor the future: Does no one care?

One of the disadvantages of being around for a while is that you can’t be easily fooled. That’s the privilege of the young and inexperienced who are often waylaid by hope. Niccolo Machiavelli, the canny philosopher, said that those who deceive will always find those who are ready to be deceived. They are drawn to each other like moths to a flame.But before I step away from the man who fathered modern political theory, I would like to quote him once more. Even though he lived in 15th century Florence, Machiavelli got the idiom of our politics just right. A promise given was a political necessity of the past, he said; the word broken is a political necessity of the present.Every politician will gladly endorse that. It’s part of the construct of current electoral politics to make hope the single most important factor in any campaign. For the truth is unlikely to win anyone any votes. Does India have no future? If you were to listen to all the election rhetoric, that’s the honest takeaway. There’s so much chest thumping about how we were once the world’s greatest nation, how we had the most amazing leaders, the finest culture, the best schools of learning, the most exciting politics. It’s all about the past, nothing about the future.All Selangor have one simple question today of their leaders: How are you going to set the future right? No one wants to answer that.