Every law can be strengthened, but that is not the urgent problem. The present law is good enough for the existing crooks. Why? To muffle the sound of skeletons rattling from cashstacked cupboards? Adulation and sensational levels of money are a heady cocktail, and if some young men get inebriated, it is only a temptation waiting to explode. But the dirt is controlled by older men wearing the heavy make-up of lies. When Delhi police broke the story, they sought to limit the scandal to three idiots For the people, sleaze has become a blur, with politicians visible in every crime, There is no ideology yet which cleanses the stables, and there will be none until the dregs of current thought have become irrelevant. Nevertheless, another 1990 moment has arrived. Things cannot continue with just a bit of tinkering along the way.Needs a radical and rational platform of ideas that recognizes how dysfunctional this system has become, and finds the courage to sweep below the carpet. The nerve points of the nation have shifted to the young. They do not want merely a different government; they want a new course that will take India out of this jungle of greed in which governance has become synonymous with greed, and the street a playground for lechery. If nothing is done, their patience will turn into rage.
Najib with his low level intelligence can ever become a P.M. He does not even know what he should and what he should not do in order to win over the rakyat’s votes. No one in his right mind would have fielded Zulklifli and Ibrahim. But he committyed political suicide by fielding this two racialist Malays and expect Indians and Chinese to support him. Little does he knows that even the Malays abandoned him Ever since ideology committed suicide in the early 1990s, those in power have sought to fill the vacuum with ideas. Most ideas were perceptive and prescriptive; some were even brilliant. The flexibility was exhilarating after too many decades of doctrine born in an open mind but killed by a closed one.
Pragmatism became politically correct. But a serious problem was soon evident: it was difficult to make ideas work without a framework. The patterns of democracy encouraged spasmodic birth but hindered growth. Politics eroded the time necessary for nurture. A five-year term in office began with loads of self-congratulation. Then eager eggheads sat down to set policy into language that could buy advocacy from media and support from the legislature. But if the process entered the third, or worse fourth, it was overtaken by uncertainty, spluttered and shuffled before the withdrawal symptoms arrived.
How on earth does having condoms and sex vigour tablets indict someone of spot-fixing or endorse any such intent? If at all, it may only be indicative of sexual activity or the lack of it but nothing else. But, talk of depravity and ‘findings’ bordering on sex, make for popular reading and equally-ribald headlines even besmirch someone’s character but don’t quite attribute guilt or stand as evidence – direct or otherwise – in any court of law examining a case for spot-fixing. Still, the Delhi police chose to find and make public the same.
There’s a deafening silence on the Najib issue. After wild conjectures by the media and experts alike, from police sources too, the talk has been reduced to a predictable hush. A host of new names sprung up and rosmah reduced to the past, castigated and labeled for life. Every few years, a similar drama unfolds, over and over once again. And, by the end of things, nobody’s any wiser. Not that anyone cares either.
After years of squandering public money on trying to buy popularity for himself, and paying allegedly adoring crowds to wave ‘I love PM’ placards at his every orchestrated appearance, Najib Abdul Razak finds himself not so much a prime minister, as a fit subject for a political post-mortem.Now, everyone loves a story. And, nothing sells better than a tale sprinkled with sex, intrigue, crime and…the underworld. So, the police chased his partner in crime to pin him down with the offence, across the streets of in Kuala Lumpur the night till his hotel room where they found…“condoms and sex vigour tablets” and a ‘personal diary where he swore to stay cool, and not get angry or have a confrontation.”
He’s clearly mentally, morally and reputationally dead, but still kept – at least apparently – alive by the BN support system of electoral manipulators, professional liars and scurrilous spin doctors.Neither are the ‘findings’ suggestive of the commission of a crime or punishable per se, yet manage to titillate all. Everyone loves to grab a peep at someone’s personal diary, however uncouth and rude it may be. And, everyone loves to share gory bits on another’s sexual life and preferences, which is why sex advice columns land up topping the list of publications’ most read.
Najib’s losing of the popular vote despite ‘owning’ the overwhelming support of the police, judiciary, civil services, the Election Commission (EC) and the nation’s entire array of print and air media, was an absolute death-blow to him and his entire illegitimate, corrupt and criminal regime.
Also, the examination of his personal diary would have been the obvious procedure to support the allegations of his involvement in spot-fixing. For the police to make public its findings through the media is only populist, opportunistic and makes for fancy reading but defeats the very purpose and intent of investigation. For one, it indicates the intent to befuddle and generate faux basis for allegation, however weak, on the part of the investigating authorities.
And about time too, as BN has for decades clung to power by killing democracy, justice, civil liberties and human rights, and thus metaphorically ruling over Malaysians’ dead bodies.
Literally, too, over the dead bodies of the hundreds who have died at the hands and in the custody of BN’s perennial partners-in-crime, the police and the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC).
The latest of these killings, that of N Dharmendran, a ‘suspect’ who was clearly the victim of beatings and other tortures – including, bizarrely, the stapling of his ears – came less than a fortnight after BN’s near-fatal performance in the general election.
Yet Najib and his regime have been so busy scrambling to reincarnate themselves that they have treated this crime with their customary deathly silence.
Also, the examination of his personal diary would have been the obvious procedure to support the allegations of his involvement in spot-fixing. For the police to make public its findings through the media is only populist, opportunistic and makes for fancy reading but defeats the very purpose and intent of investigation. For one, it indicates the intent to befuddle and generate faux basis for allegation, however weak, on the part of the investigating authorities.
Voting in cold blood?
Also, the examination of his personal diary would have been the obvious procedure to support the allegations of his involvement in G13. For the police to make public its findings through the media is only populist, opportunistic and makes for fancy reading but defeats the very purpose and intent of investigation. For one, it indicates the intent to befuddle and generate faux basis for allegation, however weak, on the part of the investigating authorities.
A response that always leaves me wondering what motivates millions of Malaysians – albeit a minority as of this recent and comprehensively rigged election – to actually go out and vote in cold blood for murderers and accessories to murder.
Surely every Malaysian citizen knows by now that there have been countless killings by BN’s forces of so-called ‘law and order’ and that most have gone outrageously uninvestigated or utterly unreported.
Or that in other cases have involved clear perversions of justice, as in such high-profile homicides as that of Mongolian translator Altantuya Shaariibuu, who was involved in the Scorpene submarines deal while Najib was defence minister, and of Teoh Beng Hock who notoriously ‘fell’ from a high window at MACC headquarters.
And who can forget the atrocious case of A Kugananthan, pictures of whose mutilated corpse on the Internet shocked the nation if not the world, but resulted in the charging of just one police suspect – and an Indian at that – with “causing hurt”?
Certainly, the MIC and other misleaders of the Indian Malaysian community don’t appear to care too much about what a toll the BN regime has been taking of their fellows.
So it was heartening to see recently that DAP’s Ipoh Barat MP M Kulasegaran has condemned Hindraf chairperson and now deputy minister in the new BN cabinet, P Waythamoorthy, for his “deafening silence” over this latest death in police custody.
Calling Waythamoorthy “bad-intentioned” for dropping demands for cessation of custodial deaths from its demands in making his pre-election pact with BN, Kulasegaran flayed him for selling out the interests of the Indian community “in return for the material rewards of ministerial office”.
But of course this criticism applies to BN ministers and members of all races – they’re in it for the power to steal from Malaysians of any or all races, and those who don’t like it can go drop dead.
Or, as newly-minted Home Minister Ahmad Zahid Hamidi alternatively put it in an article he wrote for the gutter BN daily Utusan Malaysia in criticism of the public rallies protesting fraudulent conduct of the recent general election: If they don’t like it, they can “migrate elsewhere”.
This, quickly seconded by Selangor BN deputy chief Noh Omar’s (right) message to malcontents that they should “go live in the forest”, was the first shot in a campaign – the duo have since been joined by Umno information chief Ahmad Maslan, Umno Youth chief and new Youth and Sports Minister Khairy Jamaluddin, along with PM Najib himself – to deny any impropriety in the conduct of the general election.
The ‘con’ in ‘constitution’
The agreed story goes, apparently, that the polls was conducted according to the provisions of the constitution. Najib – who has proven himself such a persistent, indeed pathological liar that he might as well have put the “con” in “constitution” – declared that “the claim that we stole victory from the opposition is a falsehood because we did not cheat in the recent GE13″.
According to Bernama, the news agency that plays the dummy to him and other BN ventriloquists, Najib said that “the supremacy and loftiness of the constitution is the main pillar of the nation, but the people have avenues to voice their opinions in line with parliamentary democracy”.
What Najib and his collaborators in this evidently well-rehearsed fairytale ‘forgot’ to mention, of course, was that during all the years in which BN enjoyed the two-thirds parliamentary majority required for any amendment of the constitution, the regime then turned its dead hand to robbing this formerly supreme and lofty document of most of its democratic provisions.
For example, there is their move to pass the Printing Presses and Publications Act 1984 for the specific purpose of denying the people their constitutional right to free news media. In addition, BN’s retaining of the Internal Security Act (ISA) – and more recently replaced with the Peaceful Assembly Act 2012 (PAA) – to override the constitutional right of peaceful assembly.
As for constitutional provisions designed to ensure free and fair elections – like the specification that no electorate should contain 20 percent more or less voters than any other, or that the EC be independent – they seem to have been simply ignored by BN in its obscene enthusiasm for gerrymandering, roll-stacking and other such undemocratic stunts.
Stunts like the latest one of declaring peaceful public rallies and candlelight vigils illegal, and charging speakers at these events such as student activist Adam Adli Abdul Halim, Anything But Umno (ABU) chief Haris Ibrahim and other opposition figures with sedition while giving free rein to purveyors of poisonous BN propaganda.
In short, far from convincing anybody but themselves and their craven cronies that democracy is alive and well in Malaysia, and that the 13th general was a model example of the Westminster system in action, all Najib and his accomplices have achieved thus far is to demonstrate that their credibility, like their reputation, is dead.
And that for the next five years, or however long it takes for the people to wrest power back from this gang of cheating crooks, the premiership of Najib – or any other stooge that the lying, dying BN manages to find to replace him – will be nothing but one endless post-mortem
Fielding Perkasa vice-president Zulkifli Noordin as the Shah Alam candidate in the May 5 general election was a poor strategy, said a BN panelist at a talk show last night.
.‘Blame’ is the name of the game…and it’s as old as the birds and the bees! That said, Sreesanth’s image has taken a bashing…and for all the wrong reasons. The police may not have procured clinching proof of his complicity in G13-fixing but did manage to make public details of his sexual behavior, preferred preference of contraception and a concurrent need for help in execution. Hit below the belt, right?
BN component party leaders started doing their wayang kulit oredy. Trying to potray that they r not keen n unhappy some sort with BN’s decisions n leadership, in case PR comes into power it will be easy for them to run n seeking for anwar’s hand to kiss. Podah MIC buggers Haven’t one of them told us directly that they don’t need Chinese and Indian votes. They can win on their own. Then a few monkeys/apes from MCA/MIC/PPP couldn’t understand simple speech. But when the votes swing then they blame everyone except themselves. Go back to where you come from ..; go live in the jungle, malay backlash, etc…etc. They couldn’t see from other perspectives beside race … Najib still think this is the twentieth century
MIC leader’s comment is right . The PM made mighty blunder for fielding Perkasa Vice President in Shah Alam; and also to allow Perkasa President to contest in Pasir Mas. Both have been known for racist remarks, which is contrary to PM’s “1 Malaysia ” slogan. Probably he was urged by ex-PM to field the candidates! In other words his hands were forced upon by Tun M! In short he was not his own man; but a puppet.Tun Daim’s remarks of wrong strategy is correct .The PM is just like a headless chicken, not knowing where to turn.He used public funds to literally BUY votes!Those who received BONUSES must have laughed all the way to the bank; and gave him a tight slap for missing public funds for political purposes. Had this happened in India, not to mention America, he would be hauled up for using taxpayers’s money for his personal purposes! What was the EC doing for nopy t doing its job professionally? Where the EC, the MACC, the Police?Where was their impartiality? Ver sad.The 13 G.E did proved that indians votes was quite irrelevant. All along we tot indian votes was vital for both PKR and B.N But this was far from the truth. Indian votes in 2008 and 2013 was not really important. The 13 GE prove that. Indian votes are so dispersed that it has very little effect whereas the chinese votes are en bloc. How can indian votes be significant when they have Hindraf, MIC, PPP, Gerakan IPF and also DAP
Adam Adli. Tian Chua. Haris Ibrahim. Tamrin Ghafar. Safwan Anang. And now Hishammuddin Rais. One by one, these politicians and activists have been hauled up by the authorities in a crackdown reminiscent of 1988’s Operation Lalang.
The real question of course, is why. Now this may seem like an obvious answer to you; after all, they all probably have played a part in calling on people to go to street rallies, or have had a hand or two in organising them. The simple logic now is that the authorities are simply clamping down to ensure no more rallies will take place.
I must disagree. Let us take the rally reason at face value. Tamrin Ghafar, Hishammuddin Rais and Tian Chua have had very little to do with organising rallies. In terms of calling on people to rise and take to the streets to protest, they are only part of a growing chorus of NGO activists, politicians and ordinary citizens.
In any case, rallies have gone on for a very long time now, from BERSIH in 2007 all the way to the recent Suara Rakyat 505 Padang Amcorp rally. Barisan Nasional (BN) has managed to largely ignore them with the administration going on as normal, and have learnt valuable lessons that any crackdowns can only result in a terrible political backlash.
And if indeed there was to be a crackdown to prevent rallies, why the selective persecution? Why not hit out at the big players? Blogger Chegubard has made his stance and involvement in the Amcorp Mall rally very clear by his presence on the stage, yet has not been arrested.
Yet a crackdown still happened. And is still happening. Why? Has the government simply not learned? Have they grown a sudden fear to rallies?
I believe the situation needs a closer examination. Not all arrested so far called upon the rakyat to rise and take the fight to the streets. Not all were involved in organizing rallies. Yet the Home Ministry went right ahead knowing full well there would be a huge political backlash in arresting the above names. Again, the crucial question is why?
All those arrested thus far do, however, have something in common: they all spoke out against racism at a May 13 forum at the Selangor Chinese Assembly Hall. Adam Adli called the May 13 riots a result of sedition by UMNO members and said they were used as an excuse to hold on to power in the aftermath of the devastating 1969 election results. Tian Chua boldly stated that unity has never been a real problem in Malaysia, but disunity is actively caused by UMNO itself.
Again, he labeled May 13 as a means to hold onto power, calling it a “toyol” to scare people. Most revealing is Tamrin Ghafar’s speech, where he revealed in his capacity as an ex-UMNO insider that the May 13 riots were part of a coup d’état to overthrow Tunku Abdul Rahman. He even implicated Mahathir Mohammad as one of the key players. Similar exhortations to relook at history were made by Haris Ibrahim and Safwan Anang.
I believe it is not rallies UMNO fears but a growing trend of historical revisionism. Should the spectre of May 13 be torn apart as an UMNO-orchestrated plot, Barisan Nasional would lose its status as a bringer of “stability” and a preserver of “delicate race relations”. Previously such thoughts were restricted to the minds of academics such as Kua Kia Soong, but recently such reflections upon history have gained traction in popular imagination.
As George Orwell once said: “He who controls the present, controls the past. And he who controls the past, controls the future.”
The real fear of UMNO is not rallies. They have dealt with them aplenty before, from 1988’s protests, 1998’s Reformasi to 2007’s BERSIH. The real fear of UMNO is the revision of the “gospel truth” they have taught people as the history of the nation. Once the May 13 spectre loses ground, what would happen to the older voters who previously may have feared a change in government based on concerns over racial clashes? What would it say about BN’s smear campaign on Lim Kit Siang, who was not even in the Peninsula at the time of the riots?
And what other hidden histories will be revealed? Perhaps the next issue to catch people’s attention will be the struggle of the left-wing parties under PUTERA-AMCJA against the British (see Fahmi Redza’s documentary Sepuluh Tahun Sebelum Merdeka), which would then portray UMNO not as independence fighters but as British sycophants and collaborators. With such a huge blow to BN’s prestige as the Fathers of Independence, what sort of impact might that have on Malaysians?
No doubt such thoughts are haunting the minds of the authorities. As another quote from George Orwell goes: “In times of universal deceit, the telling of the truth is a revolutionary act.”To put it simply, UMNO fears the truth.
