Saturday, January 3, 2015

Is UMNO going to pieces?When it’s right to be wrong: Political attractions of regularising the irregular

 Mahathir's boys have  come out with gun blazing at Najib. Well, we'll just sit back and enjoy the fireworks. Zam (Zainuddin Maidin),


Kadir, what makes you so sure that the next leader will be better than Najib? Who do you think is capable of reversing the tide of Umno's declining popularity?It has long been said that, thanks to an ingrained parochialism, Umno is now standing between the devil and the deep blue sea. Either way it is doomed. The so-called golf diplomacy is the last nail in BN’s coffin. let Najib die a slow death before the opposition takes over the government by letting him carry on his bungling ways. We can hasten it by demanding that he calls for a general election earlier rather than wait until BN term expires.
 
All the hundreds of millions of our money spent on Najib's PR were totally wasted. Even if Najib is booted out, who can save Umno? The other vice-presidents (VPs) and senior ministers who are eyeing the post are no better.
 
Or is Umno's popularity really declining? If so, do you even bother to find out why? I am sure there are good leaders in Umno as there are in the opposition.

This Mahathir agent is spewing nonsense regarding PM Najib Razak. We know Najib has failed as PM, but not for the reasons that veteran editor A Kadir Jasin has in mind.Najib has failed because he has conceded too much to what former PM Dr Mahathir Mohamad wants, but Kadir wants Najib to quit because the latter has not conceded enough.Kadir, you can ask your master to go to scoot off if he wants to replace Najib with a Mahathir puppet, for that would only hastened the destruction of our beloved Malaysia.The real solution is to get rid of this Umno hegemony that has brought all these miseries to this country, and with no hope of a silver lining.

What the scribbler left unsaid is the meme that Najib is weak because he did not or cannot take "strong measures". Behind Kadir Jasin’s diatribe is a concerted move to return the country to draconian authoritarianism.
 
Unfortunately the extreme rightwing (of which this scribbler is chief apologist) cannot see beyond the tip of their ideological nose.
 
Their chief dogma is still the total hegemony of the Malays and whatever the means justify the ends (never mind, that the 'sandbanks' have moved and that an injustice however ameliorated over time is still an injustice).
 
Should his group succeed, another era of authoritarianism will result. However the morality and sustainability of their ideology (ethnic hegemony bordering on the fascistic) is so bankrupt that (in my humble opinion) it will prove to be even more devastating to the Peninsular Malays than any other existential challenges.
 
And one more term of such authoritarianism will pretty much destroy the nation as we know it.

To err is human, but to keep erring is smart. This, at least, is the way it works in Malaysia. All known political parties are in a scramble today to take credit for regularising irregular colonies in politics. But how did these structures come up in the first place? As neither Rome nor slums can be built in a day, our politicians are obviously highly trained, and fully geared, to look the other way.
 There is a difference between Abdullah Ahmad Badawi and Najib. It is easier for Mahathir through his cronies to get rid of Abdullah than Najib.Therefore, another Indian jingle: to not err is downright foolish. Those who obeyed the law and built nothing illegal are crying all the way to the voters..Umno has an advantage, it has the experience in running the country for more than 50 years and if what you said is true that Umno is losing popularity, then it can only be because it is pursuing the wrong policies.What then is the moral of the story? Simple, two, or more, wrongs always make a right! 
Otherwise, why should the rakyat, who have embraced Umno for so long, have a ‘change of heart’ now? And what makes you so sure that unless there is a new PM, Umno will lose Putrajaya in the next election? Don’t worry then if you are about to do something illegal; give it a little time and the law will obligingly self-destruct.In order to get public support, Najib will throw money, BR1M after BR1M, especially to the rural Malay, his power base. Never mind the country goes bankrupt as long as he controls the gravy train.
 
Opening the secret files of Umno warlords and warladies may not work because Najib has a firm grip on the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC), the judiciary, the Special Branch, the army, etc. Remember he has the Sedition Act too.
 
If he knows he is going to get a technical knockout or suffer an internal coup d’etat, he may adopt a scorched earth policy. There is a saying, “Enemy of my enemy is my friend.”
 
In the case of Abdullah, most of the Umno warlords do not support him. But Najib is no easy meat. Today he has the support of most of the warlords and also the warladies in Umno  Kadir is 100 percent right about Najib but this is something known to 52 percent of the voters and they have responded accordingly in the last GE.

 
Can Kadir give three names in Umno as replacement for Najib? But there are no capable leaders in corrupted Umno.
 
All the capable names are already out of Umno. The best that Kadir can do for the Malays and Malaysia is to kick Umno out.

It’s been a year of stacking the positives against the pile of dirty laundry

It would be nice to imagine, as so many otherwise seemingly sensible people clearly do, that some omniscient, omnipotent and omnibenevolent being might be prayed, or otherwise, persuaded into to saving Malaysia from the string of disasters it continues to suffer.
Unfortunately, however, Malaysia’s most destructive and never-ending disaster, the ever-misgoverning and corrupt BN regime, has apparently or at least allegedly enlisted God on its side.
The one and only Smart Malaysian
This has been evident since as far back as 1993, when the Highland Towers collapse that killed 48 Ulu Klang residents was quickly declared an “act of God” by the then Dr Mahathir Mohamad-led BN misgovernment to save its members and cronies from the civil damages suits and criminal charges they should have faced for corruptly permitting condominium construction on hill slopes.
And the success of this ploy back then has since so emboldened BN in its project to press God into its profane service as a combination of accomplice and alibi, that today it even presumes the power to decree what name(s) the Almighty can be known by.
Meanwhile, they have come to regard accidents like air crashes and natural disasters like the current floods, as heaven-sent opportunities for sanctimonious displays of ersatz sympathy for the victims of their corrupt and incompetent misrule.
Even to the extent of displaying their graven images in disgracefully un-Islamic fashion, as BN Machang MP Ahmad Jazlan Yaakub, Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak and Deputy Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin did on bags of rice delivered as aid to flood victims. And at the same time commandeering so many government helicopters to take them on self-aggrandising photo-opportunities as to put the lives of dangerously-ill hospital evacuees at risk.
najib-rosmah400Having a Good Time while Malaysia sinks
Perceived ‘acts of God’
Meanwhile, Malaysia’s opposing repositories of allegedly divine revelation, the ulamas and supporters of PAS, perceive accidents like air crashes and natural disasters like floods as signs of heavenly disapproval of anything from the service of alcohol on flights or the immodesty of female cabin attendants’ uniforms to the BN regime’s denial of their God-given right to amputate wrongdoers’ hands.
When in fact, the reality is that such gruesomely misguided God-botherers as PAS and such hyper-hypocrites as BN – along with its complicit ‘religious’ authorities and its paid racio-religionist pressure groups like PERKASA and ISMA – should be cut off forthwith from Malaysia’s body politic.
Adherence to any of the countless available gods and religions claiming to be in their names is a personal affair, not a pretext for wielding power over others. Especially when, as in the case of BN, the power is illicit in having been ‘won’ in rigged elections in 2013 and is used for criminal, rather than civic purposes.
There is no place in Malaysia or any other multi-cultural country for mono-racial and mono-religious political parties like UMNO, PAS or others of their ilk posing as present or potential impartial representatives of the people.
And any hope of achieving “developed” status by the year 2020 under the currently deeply divisive system is, by definition, doomed to failure.
Doomed, in fact, to disaster, as Malaysia has been ever since race and religion were used by the father of our current Prime Minister, Abdul Razak Hussein, to allegedly foment the May 13, 1969 riots that led to him replacing Tunku Abdul Rahman.
Since then, especially during the 22-year premiership of the messianic Dr Mahathir, UMNO-dominated BN has cost Malaysia and Malaysians far more dearly than any number of air crashes, floods, landslides and other accidents, natural disasters or indeed so-called ‘acts of God’ have done.
Another BN Disaster in Waiting
Far more money, for a start, in the countless billions squandered, siphoned-off and outright stolen in a series of massive financial scandals that continues unabated to this day, as evidenced by Malaysia’s disgraceful level of illicit capital outflow, and the looming threat of 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB) debt.
The BN disaster has taken – and continues to take – a terrible human toll, too. Hundreds of people, from high-profile casualties of BN criminality like Mongolian translator Altantuya Shaariibuu and Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) ‘witness’ Teoh Beng Hock to the lamentably largely nameless and forgotten ‘suspects’ killed in police ‘shoot-outs’ and in custody.
Victims of the BN disaster
Most dire of all, however, is the fact that through all the decades during which the BN disaster has been unfolding, it has cost the victims of BN thievery, homicide and sundry other injustices, and indeed every Malaysian, all possible chance of rescue or redress.
The police, supposedly the protectors of the people’s lives and property, are not just hopelessly and otherwise outright criminal, but have been co-opted by the God-forsaken BN regime as its security guards and stand-over men.
The judiciary, whose purpose is purportedly to defend people’s rights and dispense justice, is riddled with political appointees paid to do the regime’s bidding.
The mainstream media, whose sacred mission is to report the news without fear or favour, and hold governments, civil institutions and businesses to account on the people’s behalf, has been utterly prostituted by BN for the purpose of keeping its corruptions and other crimes secret, if possible, or putting positive spins on those that inconveniently become public knowledge.
And these days, the regime even hires cybertroopers – with honest Malaysians’ own money, of course – to peddle its pernicious propaganda in the independent online media, as is disgustingly obvious in the comments sections of Malaysiakini, especially on stories critical of the useless, lying, RM1 chicken, part-time prime minister and his shopping-addicted consort.
Bridget Welsh
In short, every Malaysian – whether he or she is aware of it or chooses for his or her mental health’s sake not to be – is in one way or another, if not many ways at once, a victim of the BN disaster and has nowhere to turn for rescue.
Some commentators who are arguably more knowledgeable than I am, take a somewhat less pessimistic view than this, as in the New Year observation by Dr Bridget Welsh (above) that “it is vital not to be blinded by negativity”.
Though with all respect to Dr Welsh and other cautious optimists, I find myself more in tune with my old cartoonist friend Zunar, who portrays Malaysians as terrifyingly poised above the gaping mouth of a ‘2015’ crocodile.
And with Gua Musang MP Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah, aka Ku Li, who as that rarest of species – an honest, straight-talking BN insider – writes that despite heading into a new year, Malaysia has “deviated from the path of progress” and in fact is “going backwards… particularly because of worsening racial and religious politics”.
To which, all I can think of to say is “amen”. Though, as I’ve said often before, there’s really no point in praying as long as God doesn’t care or isn’t there, and as long as the BN regime is as disastrously hell-bent as ever on keeping right on with its preying.

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