Is there still hope for MCA?

Stanley Koh | June 10, 2013

Free Malaysia Today

The consensus seems to be that the rot has gone too deep to be removed, at least in the foreseeable future.

COMMENT

Is it at all possible to arrest the rot in MCA so that it can begin nursing itself back to health in order to regain its standing as a political organisation capable of representing the interests of Malaysian Chinese?

As things stand today, there is little reason to be optimistic.

Even as it licks the wounds from the worst electoral beating it has suffered in its 64-year history, MCA appears to be inviting embarrassing questions about the quality of its current leadership. Of course, pundits were already asking similar questions long before the recent general election, but developments after the polls have intensified doubts about the leadership’s political maturity and its courage to institute reforms.

Commenting on deputy president Liow Tiong Lai’s announcement last week that the party was preparing a blueprint for reforms, internal critics told FMT it could be an attempt to whitewash a reversal of the pledge to reject appointments at all levels of the BN government.

They said such a U-turn seemed more and more likely now, with its proponents arguing that the party must heed the public call for it to abandon such a politically unwise pledge.

Cognate to that pledge is the recent talk from some MCA figures that the party should “re-think” its role in BN and its relationship with its political master, Umno. But many observers, including party insiders, have dismissed this as another dishonest attempt to generate a public perception that MCA has its ears to the ground and is serious about addressing its weaknesses.

They say it takes more than mere talk to dispel the widespread belief that MCA will always be a parasite in BN. They point to other recent statements by party leaders which indicate that their supposed determination to address political realities are dimmed by their addiction to the double role of being Umno’s whipping boy and BN’s apologist.

Indeed, hundreds of grassroots members are openly accusing party boss Chua Soi Lek of endorsing BN as a refuge for the incompetent, the corrupt and the cowardly.

 That is not all of Dr Chua’s troubles. Party elections are impending, and his rivals have started accusing him of endangering the party’s future by implementing ill-advised campaign strategies for the recent election and making other moves indicative of poor leadership.

A group of party veterans have even pleaded for his immediate resignation.

But the pessimism among some insiders is so deep that they do not see MCA finding a way out of its dark tunnel even with a change of leadership.  They say the current leaders are too naive or ignorant to handle challenges posed by the new generation of politically conscious Malaysians.

The internal elections are expected to begin with branch-level polls in the middle of next month.

Word is spreading that the election will be a fight between factions aligned to Dr Chua, Ong Ka Ting and Ong Tee Keat. However, some pundits, noting the fluidity of the current scenario, do not rule out an eventual alignment of two of the factions, resulting in a straight fight for the presidency.

Insiders have told FMT that deputy president Liow recently broke ranks with Dr Chua following the failure of a deal to inject cash and other assets from Matang Holdings into the publicly listed Scope Industries. Many believe Dr Chua was behind the push for the reverse takeover.

Flimsy partnership

Few are surprised that the Chua-Liow partnership has not lasted long. It was a flimsy partnership to begin with, based only on their common objective to oust former president Ong Tee Keat.

Liow is said to be the new head of a faction previously led by Ong Ka Ting, another former president. His lieutenants include Ong Ka Chuan, Wee Ka Siong and Wee Jeck Seng, all of whom won the parliament seats they contested for recently.

Pundits say it is probably inevitable that Liow’s faction will be the main contender against the pro-Chua faction for party posts.

Is Liow capable of leading MCA? Many within the party ranks are asking this question and regretting that the answer is probably “No.” One party veteran told FMT he did not see any of the current leaders as capable of restoring MCA to its former glory.

Lately Liow seems to be assuming the role of party spokesman on many issues. In announcing the reform blueprint, he said would be drafted following public feedback on the party’s structural weaknesses and perceived political impotence.

Insiders say the tone of some of his recent remarks—in public as well as in private—indicate that he blames the party president for those weaknesses.

Perhaps, Liow should heed an old Chinese saying to the effect that a good leader should take more blame for failures and less credit for successes.

 By putting the blame squarely on the Chua’s shoulders, Liow and his faction are ignoring the fact that he is deputy president and therefore guilty of ignoring his conscience when he agreed to every one of his boss’ foolish decisions.

Will a new leadership be good enough for MCA to win back support from Chinese voters?

A Chinese proverb suggests that in an ideal leadership succession, veteran leaders should groom their subordinates for power. Party insiders say there have been no such programme worthy of the name. They doubt that the current second echelon leaders are capable of turning the party around or are up to the task of re-inventing it.

MCA veterans told FMT they found the second echelon as pathetically lacking in political courage and wisdom as their elders.

“MCA is caught between a rock and a hard place,” said one veteran. “Its current leaders are failures and there is little hope any new line-up will bring back credibility to the party.”

                This entry was posted on Monday, 10 June 2013, 7:47 pm and is filed under
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Just 16.7% to win simple majority in Parliament

Andrew Sagayam

The Sun

9 June 2013

PETALING JAYA (June 9, 2013): Astonishing as it may seem, it is technically possible for a political party to win a simple majority in Parliament and form the government by garnering a mere 2.21 million votes (or 16.7%) of the total electorate.

Because of the imbalance of registered voters in the 222 parliamentary constituencies, there are currently only 4,408,975 voters or 33.22% of the total electorate of 13,268,110 in the 112 seats with smaller numbers of registered voters.

The 112 constituencies have a very much smaller number of registered voters, ranging from 15,791 (Putrajaya) to 56,280 (Kuantan), in contrast with the remaining 110 constituencies with more voters, some in excess of 100,000, with the highest being Kapar with 144,159 registered voters.

As such, a political party needs to just win by one vote in these 112 seats – a third of which are in Sabah and Sarawak – to obtain a simple majority and form the federal government.

Calculations by theSun show that if a party were to win 50.1% in each of these 112 seats, it would only need to get about 2,209,000 votes (or about 16.65% of the total electorate).

The actual calculation based on half the total voters plus 1 in each of the constituencies, puts the actual number at 2,208,353, which is a mere 16.64 % of the total number of voters in the electoral roll during the recently concluded 13th general election.

And if one were to consider voter turnout on polling day to be around 80%, it would mean the actual number of votes needed to win the 112 seats would be even less, at around 1,767,117 or a mere 13.4% of the total electorate.

Hence, the numbers are very compelling reasons for the Election Commission (EC) to ensure that each vote should, as much as possible, be accorded equal value or weight in all parliamentary constituencies.

On Saturday, the EC denied claims of inequality among constituencies, claiming that critics had not considered the increase in voter population over the last decade.

EC deputy chairman Datuk Wan Ahmad Wan Omar claimed the voter population had increased and there had been much urban migration since.

“The inequality among the constituencies was not that large when it was drawn up in 2002,” said Wan Ahmad, adding it is unfair to compare the number of voters like Kapar (144,159) to Putrajaya (15,791).

“When people talk about ‘malapportionment’, they refer to the 2002 numbers. It is not fair to compare the present figures to the 2002 numbers,” he said at a public forum themed “Constituency Delineation – Knowing where to draw the lines”, organised by the Bar Council.

Wan Ahmad said the EC would consider the 15% voter variance rule for seats in the same category namely urban, semi-urban and rural seats when conducting the next review.

If this rule is applied, the difference in the number of voters between two urban constituencies or two rural constituencies would be less than 15%.

Wan Ahmad said there have been many complaints over the high variance percentage of voters between constituencies, adding that he agreed that there were areas like Baling which were “hard to justify”.

Baling, which is considered a rural seat, has 93,376 voters compared to Alor Star, an urban seat in the same state with 69,189 voters.

The EC had last month announced it will study all proposals thoroughly when it conducts the redelineation process.

Opposition leaders have also called for the “one man, one vote, one value” ideal to be practised in light of the recent election, where Pakatan Rakyat won 51% of popular vote, but only secured 89 of the 222 parliamentary seats.

Under Article 113(2)(ii) of the Federal Constitution, a redelineation exercise should be conducted between eight and 10 years from the last one. The last time the EC conducted the redelineation exercise was in 2003.

                This entry was posted on Monday, 10 June 2013, 6:38 am and is filed under
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Muhyiddin’s  should stop his  “double-speak” as his  open threat of 47% minority government penalizing 51% majority of voters is the latest subversion and not defence of national institutions of the country

Deputy Prime Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin should stop his “double-speak” as his open threat on Saturday of 47% minority government penalizing 51% majority of voters is the latest subversion and not defence of national institutions in the country.

It is surprising that Muhyiddin could be guilty or such  “double speak”  uttering totally contradictory sentiments at the same function, i.e. the BN thanksgiving function in Kundang Ulu, Johor.

Although Muhyiddin claimed that Malaysian voters have conveyed a clear message in the 13GE that they want the government to be more stern and bold in defending the important institutions in the country, “enforcing the law, upholding the country’s Constitution, and fighting crime effectively as well  as eradicating corruption”, Muhyiddin has completely nullified these high-sounding sentiments with his threat to discriminate and penalize 51% of the popular vote who supported Pakatan Rakyat and Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim in contrast to the 47% of the voters who supported Barisan Nasional and Datuk Seri Najib Razak.

Surely, Muhyiddin’s declaration that the BN administration will direct “greater assistance” towards the communities that backed it during the general election, implying a punitive policy of neglect and discrimination for the 51% majority of the popular vote,  is the most powerful proof that Najib has a long way to go to prove that he is Prime Minister of all Malaysians and not just 47% of Malaysians!

Or do we have a situation where we have Najib who wants to be Prime Minister of all Malaysians but Muhyiddin only wants to the Deputy Prime Minister for 47% of Malaysians?

When Muhyddin talked about  the people’s “clear message” in wanting the government to defend the important institutions in the country, he has missed the Elephant in the Room as it is UMNO/BN who must bear the full responsibility in the past three decades for undermining and  subverting the key national institutions in the country.

Who subverted and undermined the independence, impartiality and integrity of the Judiciary which had earned international plaudits until the Judiciary Crisis of 1988?

Who subverted and undermined the high quality of the independence, impartiality and professionalism of the Malaysian civil service, whether the Attorney-General’s Chambers, the Police, the Election Commission, the Anti-Corruption agency, causing the Malaysian public to lose confidence in their credibility, integrity and authority?

Who subverted the undermined the high standards of Malaysia’s educational system, from primary, secondary to tertiary, from having a university with acknowledged world standards to the deplorable state today where none of the the Malaysian universities are regarded as even among the world’s top 400 to 500 universities?

Even Najib’s present Cabinet is a poor example of the government’s commitment to uphold the Constitution, and it is the height of irony that we have a  Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department in charge of integrity and good governance who is an illegal member of the Cabinet as he has not been sworn in as a Senator and properly taken the oath of office as a Minister for close to a month – Paul Low!

Now the Deputy Prime Minister is making the unabashed threat to penalize and discriminate against 51% of the voters who had voted for Pakatan Rakyat against Barisan Nasional!

Is this what the Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak meant when he said he want Malaysia to become the world’s best democracy, where Malaysian voters are only allowed to exercise their democratic right to vote provided they vote in support of the Umno/BN coalition?

Muhyiddin is not a democrat when he could threaten  the 51% majority of voters on behalf of a 47% minority government to discriminate and penalize against the majority who had exercised their democratic and constitutional right to support the Pakatan Rakyat instead of Barisan Nasional.

Let all the Cabinet Ministers as well as the Barisan Nasional parties, whether in Cabinet or otherwise, declare their stand whether this is the type of parliamentary democracy they are promoting and defending  – that the people’s right to vote will only be respected if they vote for Barisan Nasional and not for Pakatan Rakyat?

                This entry was posted on Monday, 10 June 2013, 8:09 am and is filed under
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Prize for “Political Gaffe of the Month” or “Putting one’s  foot in the mouth” will be a toss-up among three competitors, Wan Ahmad, Muhyiddin and Mahathir

The prize for “Political Gaffe of the Month” or “Putting one’s foot in the mouth” will be a toss-up among three competitors this month –  Datuk Wan Ahmad Wan Omar, Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin and Tun Mahathir, viz:

•	Election Commission deputy chairman Datuk Wan Ahmad Wan Omar in asking why he and the Election Commission Chairman Tan Sri Abdul Aziz Mohd Yusof should resign when they have done their job of running an election, completely blissful of the national and international uproar over 13GE for failing to meet the  most basic criteria of being a clean, free and fair elections as to cause for the first time in the nation’s 56-year history widespread doubt about the legitimacy of Datuk Seri Najib Razak as the Prime Minister.

•	Deputy Prime Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin’s threat that the 47% BN minority government will  penalize and discriminate against 51% majority of popular vote  for supporting Pakatan Rakyat and Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim in contrast to the 47% popular vote for Barisan Nasional and Datuk Seri Najib Razak – starkly raising the question whether Najib and the BN Government are  Prime Minister and Government for only 47% of Malaysians or for all Malaysians.

•	Former Prime Minister Tun Dr. Mahathir Mohamad’s latest racist vituperation alleging that the 2013GE outcome is proof that the Chinese in Malaysia are out to oust the political power of the Malays and to dominate Malaysian politics highlighting the falsehoods and  moral turpitude he is prepared to indulge in to perpetrate his racist objectives .

The jury is still out which one of them, Wan Ahmad, Muhyiddin and Mahathir, deserves the prize for “Political Gaffe of the Month” or “Putting one’s foot in the mouth” for all the three statements are equally outrageous and scandalous in their disregard of the truth, contemptuous of the popular  prevailing sentiments among rational and patriotic Malaysians as well as dismissive of the common Malaysian Dream uniting patriotic Malaysians, particularly young generation of Malaysians.

The prize last month for “Political Gaffe of the Month” or “Putting one’s foot in the mouth” had no challenge for the undisputed winner was the new Home Minister, Datuk Seri Zahid Hamidi who told Malaysians not satisfied with the country’s electoral system to “migrate elsewhere” – imagine a Minister in a government with 47% popular vote having the cheek and temerity to tell the majority 51% of the popular voters in the country to “migrate elsewhere”! Shouldn’t Zahid be the one to do the “migrating”?

                This entry was posted on Monday, 10 June 2013, 12:16 pm and is filed under
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A Living Nation

By Allan CF Goh

A nation cannot live

With its people truncated,

Like the dried fallen leaf,

Crushed and emasculated.

A people cannot thrive,

Under any tyranny,

Be it of racist strife,

Or undeserved agony.

A state cannot progress

If she rejects the truly best,

And goes on to transgress

Her people’s talented quest.

A country will degrade,

When swamped full of corruption.

It cannot maintain grade,

Based on discrimination.

When the country’s future

Rests on men of arrogance,

With talents not nurtured,

We face only ignorance.

There is only one choice:

To nurture virtues valiant,

Listen to progress’s voice,

And sideline all the villains.

                This entry was posted on Tuesday, 11 June 2013, 12:01 pm and is filed under
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Mahathir and Utusan should stop Chinese bashing before Najib’s claim as Prime Minister of all Malaysians become totally discredited

Both before and after the 13th General Elections on May 5, both the former Prime Minister Tun Dr. Mahathir Mohamad and the Umno official mouthpiece Utusan Malaysia have proved to be the most racist and unMalaysian voices in the country, resorting to lies and falsehoods to pit the Malays against the Chinese.

In his latest blog, his accusation that  the Chinese in Malaysia were  out in the 13GE to oust the political power of the Malays and to dominate Malaysian politics must rate as one of his most irresponsible, reckless and baseless allegations in his long political career – which is only matched by another of his irresponsible and reckless allegation during the 13GE, that I contested in Gelang Patah constituency to create a “racial confrontation” and that I incited the Chinese to hate the Malays.

There is not an ounce of truth in these outrageous  allegations by the former Prime Minister and he has not been able to offer any evidence to substantiate his reckless allegations.

For instance, has he been able to offer any evidence to substantiate his allegation that I had incited the Chinese in Gelang Patah to hate the Malays, when in fact, in all my speeches in Gelang Patah as well as elsewhere during the 13GE, I had stressed the importance of all Malaysians regardless of race religion or region to be  united in pursuit of a common Malaysian Dream to build a just, free, democratic, clean, prosperous and competitive Malaysia.

I was at first apprehensive as to what divisive and destructive effects Mahathir’s lies and racist vituperation could have on the Malays in Gelang Patah in particular and in Malaysia in general.

But I  am glad and more hopeful about the future of Malaysia because I find that Mahathir’s racist lies and falsehoods have little market even among the Malays – and wherever I go after the 13th General Elections, Malays regardless of background and age have come forward to congratulate me for my victory in Gelang Patah.

Clearly, the Malays are not only forsaking UMNO, they are forsaking Mahathir even more – showing that the former Prime Minister is facing the law of diminishing returns in his political influence.

May be this is why Mahathir is sounding more and more desperate in coming out with more and more reckless and irresponsible racist allegations.

Mahathir and Utusan should stop their Chinese bashing before Najib’s claim as Prime Minister of all Malaysians become totally discredited.

If any Chinese politician or Chinese press had indulged in 10 per cent of  Malay bashing in what Mahathir and Utusan had done in Chinese bashing  all these months, the Chinese politicians would have been charged and jailed  in court for sedition and the Chinese newspapers closed down without ado.

Why then is Mahathir and Utusan getting special treatment, immunity and impunity?

In fact, Mahathir is putting Najib to the test, whether Najib is going to be a stronger Prime Minister  after the 13GE who will “walk the talk” of his 1Malaysia signature policy, or whether he is going to be a weaker and more ineffective Prime Minister with Mahathir and Utusan Malaysia daily undermining and destroying his 1Malaysia policy with their irresponsible, reckless and baseless racist allegations.

(Media Conference Statement in Kota Bharu on Tuesday, June 11, 2013 at 11.30 am)

                This entry was posted on Tuesday, 11 June 2013, 12:26 pm and is filed under
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Malaysia’s ‘Berlin Wall’

by Mariam Mokhtar

Malaysiakini

Jun 10, 2013

Dataran Merdeka is symbolic. It is our metaphorical Berlin Wall and its significance cannot be exaggerated.

Umno Baru leaders and the police have refused to allow the use of Dataran Merdeka for the ‘Black 505’ rally in Kuala Lumpur on June 15.

Etched in the memories of older Malaysians is the lowering of the Union Jack and the raising of the Malayan flag at midnight, at the Selangor Club padang as Dataran Merdeka was then known. The younger generation would have learnt about its historical role.

When the 154.5km Berlin Wall – a concrete structure built by the East Germans to divide the east from the west – came down, the city of Berlin was reunited, communist rule in eastern Europe fell and the process of re-unification of East and West Germany started.

If the opposition coalition were to hold this rally at Dataran Merdeka, it would score a great moral victory, just as Bersih did. The violence during the Bersih 3.0 rally was perpetrated by the police. A weak regime is one which does not know how to use arguments and discussion as weapons, but resorts to violence.

If the place that is connected with Merdeka and the Tunku were to become the focal point for the ‘Black 505’ rally, attention would be focused on the reasons for the rally, and Umno-Baru would be forever linked with cheating in elections. Umno-Baru is desperate to deny the opposition the publicity.

A common tactic of Umno-Baru is to give the rally organisers the runaround. Even when Umno-Baru lies, it fails to do it with a concerted effort. When the opposition coalition applied to use Padang Merbok as an alternative venue, the Dang Wangi district police chief Zainuddin Ahmad claimed that another event was scheduled to take place there.

Police chief Khalid Abu Bakar claimed that the opposition’s application was incomplete, while Federal Territories Minister Tengku Adnan Tengku Mansor claimed that indoor venues and closed spaces, like stadiums, would be more suitable.

He said: “…..But to me, Padang Merbok is an open space… when it comes to open spaces, we will not give (our permission) because we know the law and abide by it.”

If Tengku Adnan claims to be well-versed with the law and would happily abide by it, what explanations can he give for alleged widespread electoral fraud and cheating during GE13?

How does he explain the money politics which is synonymous with his party Umno-Baru? Can he account for the increasing acts of police brutality which suggest that police personnel are breaking the law and getting away with murder?

Don’t expect reform

Some of you may disagree with street protests but only the naïve would think that GE14 could be the solution. The electoral boundaries are being skewed in Umno Baru’s favour by the Election Commission (EC), even as you read this. Umno Baru and the EC will never negotiate or reform.

How much longer have the marginalised Indians to suffer? How many more election promises will their self-appointed leaders be taken in by? This minority government promised that they would implement many reforms before GE13 if elected; but after the election, they say the implementation will take five years.

azlanIn GE11, the EC made a last minute claim that the indelible ink would prevent Muslims from performing their prayers.

In GE12, the EC claimed that there was a national security scare and certain parties were planning to sabotage the elections by marking the fingers of people before they could vote. It was claimed that several people had been arrested while trying to smuggle election ink into Malaysia.

In GE13, the EC diluted the ink, saying it could be harmful.

In GE14, the EC will be just as creative.

It is ironic that, in 2010, Najib Abdul Razak had warned delegates at the BN convention, held in Wisma MCA, that the opposition coalition was attempting to take over Putrajaya and that the federal government had to be protected from the greedy and the power crazy.

He said: “BN is a responsible coalition. You can place your hopes and trust in us. The people can trust us to do not only what is right, but what is in their best interests.”

Around the world, repressive regimes have been toppled by non-violent civil resistance movements – Chile, Poland, South Africa, the Philippines. Armed resistance is not the answer, as military training and the supply of weapons is expensive. Nor should we expect foreign countries to intervene; they have to protect their own interests.

Only we can help ourselves. This sham Malaysian democracy can expect more marches and more resistance from the rakyat.

If Najib continues to exploit the rakyat, it is possible that even the police and security personnel will shift their allegiance and loyalty, as happened in Egypt.

In the current economic climate, the rakyat is forced to tighten its belt further. Graduates are finding it more difficult to get jobs, unlike politicians’ children who are given choice appointments or who become directors of companies with a paid-up capital of RM2, which receive multi-million ringgit government contracts.

Young adults cannot afford to live away from home. Skilled workers are refused employment, as foreign workers, both legal and illegal, are cheaper.

Symbols of oppression

As living conditions become more intolerable, NGOs, human rights activists, students, opposition politicians, religious organisations and the rakyat will unite as one movement against oppression.

Najib can arrest a few such as Adam Adli, Haris Ibrahim, Tian Chua, Safwan Anang or Tamrin Ghafar, but more leaders will emerge.

Thirty-nine years ago, the education minister who gagged our academia and students with the Universities and University Colleges Act was Dr Mahathir Mohamad. Today, Najib will attempt to do the same.

In the Tunisian uprising, Mohammed Bouazizi immolated himself, when the police stopped him from making a living as a street pedlar to feed his family. He became the symbol of the Jasmine revolution.

In the recent protests in Turkey, ‘The Woman in Red’ whose face was sprayed with tear-gas has become a global symbol of police brutality and oppression. The demonstrations, which began as a protest against the redevelopment of a park, have escalated into public fury against the creeping Islamicisation and the increasing authoritarian rule of the government.

In Malaysia, we are not short of symbols of oppression. Two National Union of Bank Employee (Nube) officials, vice-president Abdul Jamil Jalaludeen from Pulau Tikus, Penang and general treasurer Chen Ka Fatt, from Ipoh Garden in Ipoh, were sacked from Maybank because they made a stand against its treatment of workers.

In the late 1970s, as Minister for Trade and Industry, Mahathir clipped the power of unions.

Today, Najib honours Abdul Wahid Omar (left), who was CEO of Maybank, by making him a minister in the PM’s Department.

Home Minister Ahmad Zahid Hamidi may order a crackdown on activists and opposition leaders. In doing so, he will only unleash a more determined rakyat who will retaliate with more marches, boycotts and strikes.

Najib may try to prevent the rakyat and the ‘Black 505′ rally from entering Dataran Merdeka, but he cannot curb our resolve to fight oppression. Perhaps, we should occupy Dataran Merdeka, our metaphorical Berlin Wall.

Najib may surround Dataran Merdeka with razor wire, but he cannot imprison our minds.

MARIAM MOKHTAR is a non-conformist traditionalist from Perak, a bucket chemist and an armchair eco-warrior. In ‘real-speak’, this translates into that she comes from Ipoh, values change but respects culture, is a petroleum chemist and also an environmental pollution-control scientist.

                This entry was posted on Tuesday, 11 June 2013, 8:00 am and is filed under
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Perceptions and cybertroopers

— conspiracytheor1st

The Malaysian Insider

June 09, 2013

JUNE 9 — “Cybertroopers” is a term I suppose originated from Malaysia. I would rank it as the next best Malaysian invention after err… belacan (did belacan originate from Malaysia?). A short search of “cybertroopers” on Google would yield hundreds of results, all related to Malaysian politics. However, there is no one exact definition of the term from any dictionary or on Wikipedia. Back to the main topic, one might not notice that there is a very inconspicuous but interesting relationship between the term “cybertroopers” and “perception” in Malaysia, both of which have been aggressively propagated by the mainstream media of late.

In Malaysia, everything is due to the problem of perception. The crime rate of the country is low. If you think it is high, then it is the problem of your perception. The police are doing great — so well in fact that our ex-IGP’s KPI score in 2009 was 113.8 per cent, as announced by Koh Tsu Koon in Parliament. A lot of us were wondering how it was possible statistically. Did that mean that the police had solved more cases involving crime than actually existed? Or that they had caught more people compared to the number of times when the law was actually violated like cases of candle vigils (ahem…)? Then again, if you still are scratching your head over how the numbers add up, then it has to be the problem of your perception.

Here, we have the powers-that-be telling us that Malaysia is one of the best governed countries in the world with the best education system that even exceeds the high standards of the US and Germany; the best democratic system; and the cleanest electoral system! The government claimed that corruption in the country is a mere perception and the MACC claimed that their tarnished reputation of being inefficient and inaction against the big shots was also perception. Now, even the EC has jumped onto the perception bandwagon in the midst of the post-election furore. If you still don’t agree with them, heck, you know what again? It is your bloody perception!

Humans are naturally inquisitive. Just like in the classic chicken-or-egg conundrum, humans tend to look a bit further and dig a bit deeper to trace the origin of everything. Thus, when everything good is the government and everything bad is perception, the next natural question that comes to mind would be how all these perceptions came to exist in the first place? That is when the cybertroopers come into picture — it is bogeymen time!

We used to have many bogeymen in the past, i.e. the Jews, the colonists, the imperialists, the Christians, Singapore, the US and the Chinese and of course, Anwar Ibrahim who is supposed to be the super-agent working for all the aforementioned influences. As the country advanced into the information age, the Cold War-style rhetoric no longer found an audience, thus cybertroopers have now assumed the role of the new super-villains. Nevertheless, we were made aware that not all cybertroopers are bad. Officially, we have the 1 Malaysia Cyber Movement and some bloggers like Papagoma who are supposed to be noble. One of our current deputy ministers even attended a workshop to teach these noble cybertroopers how to avoid lawsuits in cyberspace by “ending your sentences with a question mark”. By taking his cue, do Malaysians get prosecuted for telling the truth?

Of course, the not-so-noble cybertroopers have to come from Pakatan Rakyat. They are the ones who shaped the opinions of the gullible urban dwellers who are intoxicated by education. The rural folks (with no disrespect) know better because what they think is the truth as disseminated by the mainstream media, not the false perceptions from the Internet. The most notorious cybertroopers of all is the Red Bean Army, allegedly a local imitation of “Mao’s Red Guard’ which is allegedly linked to DAP. But then again, the only “shred of evidence” of their existence, not surprisingly, originated from some disgruntled ex-DAP supporter apparently vying for 15 seconds of fame. Nevertheless, it has to be the truth if it was repeated many times in the mainstream media.

A quick Google brought me to this website called the Pakatan Cybertroopers (http://www.pakatancybertroopers.com). It is a very simple website with suspiciously cheesy declarations like “…to bring down any establishment like in Arab Spring.” and “…to bring the Government down by promoting the negative buzz online.” The site even has a recruitment page that states “…we can afford to pay you for your effort. Please do not worry, we know where to find the money for you.”

For all the shortcomings of Malaysians, you have to give credit to our brutal honesty to ourselves. If we are bad or promoting something negative, we’ll label ourselves just that. Remember KMM, a supposedly organised terrorist group in Malaysia whose members were detained under the ISA about a decade ago? Initially, KMM stoode for Kumpulan Muhajidin Malaysia but because they were promoting terrorism, they changed their name to Kumpulan Militant Malaysia in matter of weeks after they were exposed. Just like those old James Bond movies, super-villains were ironically super-honest with themselves and prone to having very distasteful names like Auric Goldfinger, Gustav Graves, Dr. No, Elektra King etc.

Thus, now we have the Red Bean Army and the Pakatan Cybertroopers. Therefore, I am looking forward to the day when all Malaysians espouse such noble values of honesty. For burglars out there, instead of giving yourselves a fancy gang name, you should consider naming your gang as the “Petaling Jaya Kapchai Snatch Handbags Gang” or the “Puchong Robbing and Thieving Gang”. For those who intend to make a quick buck from bogus businesses, kindly consider names such as “Ah Chong Unhygienic Contaminated Food Sdn. Bhd.” or “Muthu Ponzi Gold Investment Scheme Sdn. Bhd.” It will make my day when some local carmaker finally rebrands itself as the “Faulty Window Rip-off Automobile”. Lastly, I would welcome any payment for my cybertrooping effort here that might have successfully shaped your perception.

                This entry was posted on Tuesday, 11 June 2013, 5:53 am and is filed under
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What Malaysians want is not an empty “declaration of war against crime”, the most “political” IGP and most “political” Home Minister, but a new  and serious culture of “zero tolerance to crime” at all levels of government

The Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak declared a war on crime three days ago, late by four years and a resounding vindication of the verdict of the 13GE on May 5 expressing grave voter  dissatisfaction and displeasure at the failure of the four-year Najib premiership to deal with the problem of crime and the fear of crime.

It is no use the Barisan Nasional and police leadership claiming that the crime rate has been coming down under the Government Transformation Programme when over the past four  years  the spectre of the fear of crime have been hounding and haunting Malaysians.

There is no public confidence in the police statistics about crime reduction so long as Malaysians avoid lodging police reports even though they are victims of crime because of the hassle as well as the futility of lodging police reports.

As a result, contrary of police statistics, Malaysians are convinced that the crime rate and the fear of crime have been increasing by leaps and bounds in the past few years.

Najib’s declaration of war against crime suffered bodily blows by recent blatant and flagrant incidence of crime.

In Taman Taynton View in Cheras, criminals have acted openly by robbing customers and owners of a seafood restaurant, getting away with RM4,000 from the cash register and RM16,000 in cash and valuables from the customers.

Two women was robbed of their car in Petaling Jaya and one of them was fortunate to escape rape, while even in Kelantan, the people do not feel safe from the  rising incidence of crime.

What Malaysians want is not an empty “declaration of war against crime” by the Prime Minister, the most “political” Inspector-General of Police (IGP) and the most “political” Home Minister, but a new culture of “zero tolerance to crime” at all levels of government.

The question is whether the Prime Minister, the Home Minister and Inspector-General of Police are capable of communicating a new and serious  sense of “zero tolerance of  crime”  both  to the public and to criminals, as this is  first important step to win the war against crime and the fear of crime.

[Media Conference Statement (2) in Kota Bharu on Tuesday, 11th June 2013 at 12 noon]

                This entry was posted on Tuesday, 11 June 2013, 4:20 pm and is filed under
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12 Questions about the biggest corporate catastrophe in nation’s 56-year history – the RM2.34 billion UEM-Renong deal in 1997 – which still cry out for answer after 16 years

The mega-billion-ringgit suit filed by Umno-created tycoon Tan Sri Halim Saad against the government three days before the 13GE Nomination Day on April 20, 2013 to demand full settlement of an over RM2 billion deal that forced him to relinquish his controlling stake in Renong Bhd more than a decade ago has re-opened questions about the nations’ biggest corporate catastrophe in the nation’s 56-year history.

This was the RM2.34 billion UEM-Renong deal in 1997 which precipitated the biggest crash in the Kuala Lumpur stockmarket in the 1997 financial crisis, causing the Kuala Lumpur Composite Index to fall by 19.58 per cent, from 667.29 to 536.62 points in three days, wiping out RM70 billion of the investors’ funds in the stock exchange.

In his mega-billion-ringgit suit, Halim, once the sole corporate nominee of the ruling Umno, was offered RM1.3 billion in cash and property as well as control of a private waste management company, roughly valued at RM2 billion, in exchange for his disposal of Renong in the 2001 agreement.

But Halim had since only received RM165 million despite giving up his business empire and will be demanding the remainder.

The Edge Malaysia
 reported that Halim attempted to pressure the government into full settlement, but in 2010, former Prime Minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad told him the agreement would not be honoured.

The Edge Malaysia
 article wrote: “Halim held numerous meetings with Dr Mahathir — even after the latter quit as premier in November 2003 — and Nor Mohamed to push for a full settlement but he was repeatedly fobbed off.

“Some time in April 2010, Halim met with Dr Mahathir to try to seek a resolution to the matter but was told that the government would not be honouring the agreement.

“Businessmen familiar with the situation say that Dr Mahathir told Halim that he had been informed by Nor Mohamed that the assets taken over by Khazanah belonged to Umno.”

The article said Halim then met with Tan Sri Nor Mohamed Yakcop, then a minister in the Prime Minister’s Department in charge of the Economic Planning Unit, who confirmed Dr Mahathir’s words.

The suit, set to be one if the biggest corporate battle in the country, will expose for the first time the “behind-the-scenes dealings in several multibillion dollar transactions and contract awards that shaped corporate Malaysia between the mid-1980s and the early part of this decade” – including “insights into how Umno created a political money-making machine around Renong and its associated concern, United Engineers Malaysia Bhd (UEM).

“It will offer Halim’s account of how he ceased to be a business nominee of Umno and also provide a personal confession of the gruelling years the businessman went through as he battled to keep debt-laden Renong afloat,” the magazine wrote.

In November/December 1997, both in and out of Parliament, I had posed questions about the multi-billion ringgit UEM-Renong corporate catastrophe, but none of answers have been forthcoming.

The time has come for these questions to be answered.

On 26th November 1997, I posed four questions, viz:

“Firstly, Renong executive chairman Halim Saad had said that the UEM purchase of 723 million Renong shares was made in a series of transactions on the open market.

“However, in the past month, the trading volume of Renong shares on the open market amounts to some 112 million shares, which represents only about 15 per cent of UEM’s deal even if every share was bought up by UEM. This would mean that some 611 million Renong shares (or 85 per cent ) were bought through off market trading.

“Secondly, UEM announced that it had acquired 723 million Renong shares, representing a 32.6 per cent stake, from the open market for RM2.4 billion or an average of RM3.24 per Renong share. However, in the month before November 17, when the deal was announced, the price of Renong never reached RM3.24 per share – the highest being RM3.22 per share on 15th October and the lowest being RM3 per share on 14th November and RM2.90 on November 17.

“Thirdly, who are the seller or sellers for which UEM paid a premium price of RM3.24 a share, when Renong was last traded for RM2.90 before the announcement of the UEM-Renong deal, and was traded last Friday at RM1.80 per share before suspension of the counter yesterday.

“Fourthly, what are the bank or banks which lent UEM the RM2.4 billion to pay for the 723 million Renong shares.

“Can the UEM management give full and satisfactory answers on these four issues to establish the accountability and transparency of the UEM-Renong deal, which had been the single corporate decision which had precipitated the biggest crash in the Kuala Lumpur stock market in the four-month economic crisis, causing the KLSE Composite Index to fall by 19.58 per cent, from 667.29 to 536.62 points in three days, wiping out RM70 billion of the investors’ funds in the stock exchange.

“When the market reacted in outrage as well as panic to the UEM-Renong deal, which was seen as a UEM bail-out of Renong to the detriment of the UEM minority shareholders, it was Halim Saad who, as Renong executive chairman, gave a press conference where he emotionally refuted speculation that it was a bail-out attempt, and asked: ‘Isn’t that a good deal for UEM? Why do you say it is a bail-out for Halim Saad and Renong?’”

In Parliament on 11th December 1997, I posed ten questions on the UEM-Renong deal, viz:

“Yesterday, I had specifically raised five questions:

whether it is true that the RM2.34 billion UEM-Renong deal is actually a bail-out for Tan Sri Halim Saad in his US$800 million purchase of Philippines’ National Steel Corporation (NSC) from Wing Tiek Holdings Bhd, through his proxy, Abdul Rashid Manaf, through the shell company Hong Kong-based Hottick Investment Ltd as well as take over the liabilities.

whether it is true that four banks, namely Maybank, Rashid Hussein Bank, Bank Bumiputra and Bank of Commerce shared equally in the syndicated US$800 million loan, given to Abdul Rashid Manaf in December last year, guaranted by Halim with Renong shares;

whether the four banks had breached the rule on single customer limit which, I understand is RM450 million for Maybank, RM250 million for Bank Bumiputra and Rashid Hussain Bank and RM150 million for Bank of Commerce – all exceeded by the four banks when they each give Abdul Rashid Manaf a loan of US$200 million (or RM500 million at the time).

Whether it is true that the UEM-Renong deal was necessitated by the drastic fall in the price of Renong shares which were used as collateral for the personal guarantee by Halim Saad for the US$800 million loan, as in January, the price per share of Renong was RM4.58, but it fell to RM2.90 per share on 17th November, the date of the announcement of the UEM-Renong deal, which is a fall of 36.68 per cent. If the entire collateral is in Renong shares, it would mean a top up of 37 per cent of US$800 million, which comes to about US$300 million, and at current exchange rate, this would work out to over RM1 billion.

whether these four banks were also the banks which have given UEM the RM2.34 bill loan for the acquisition of 723 million Renong shares.

“Today, I want to pose five further questions:

Whether it is true that Abdul Rashid Manaf, who is a lawyer practising in Kuala Lumpur, to whom the US$800 million loan was given, did not have the creditworthiness for such a colossal loan.

Whether Halim Saad was the beneficial owner of the 32.6 per cent stake in Renong which was bought by UEM from eight nominees. According to Form29A dated Nov. 26 to Renong, a copy of which was furnished to KLSE and which was reported in the Sun of November 29, 1997, UEM said it bought eight tranches of Renong shares registered under various holders totalling 722.883 million shares on Nov. 17. The first tranche, for 340.2 million shares, was registered under BOC Nominees (Tempatan) Sdn. Bhd., the second for 285.715 million shares was registered under HLB Nominees (Tempatan) Sdn. Bhd while the third under Rashid & Lee Nominees (Tempatan) Sdn. Bhd. was for 67.407 million shares. Other blocks were 18.06 million shares (Lintasan Savana Sdn. Bhd), 9 million shares (RHB Nominees), 1.5 million shares (Multi-Purpose Bank Nominees), 1 million shares (BHLB Nominees) and 5 million shares registered under Pengkalan Nominees (Tempatan) Sdn. Bhd.

Furthermore, if Halim Saad was the beneficial owner of the eight tranches of Renong shares totalling 722.883 shares, whether he had committed offences under the Companies Act for not filing a declaration as well as under the Code on Take-Over and Merger in failing to make a mandatory general offer to minority shareholders, as together with 23.3% personal stake in Renong (which he admitted in a press conference on November 19), he would have owned 55.9 per cent of Renong shares – well beyond the 33% trigger point.

The government has been calling on banks to be prudent to tide over the banking crisis by giving priority in allocating credit to borrowers engaged in productive activities in high-technology, foreign exchange earnings industries such as tourism and export-oriented sectors of the economy. How can US$800 million loan to acquire a foreign firm or RM2.4 billion to enable UEM to acquire 32.6 per cent stake in Renong from the eight nominees come under such a category of prudential loans?

If the four banks could breach the single customer limit by giving mega-loans which violate the government’s guidelines on bank loans, what is the magnitude of the such unproductive mega-loans in the banking and financial sector in the country.

Can Malaysians expect answers to these 12 Questions in the first meeting of the 13th Parliament, 16 years after the multi-billion ringgit UEM-Renong catastrophe?

                This entry was posted on Wednesday, 12 June 2013, 12:07 pm and is filed under
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GE13: What happened? And what now? (Part 1)

By
Clive Kessler
 | JUNE 12, 2013

The Malaysian Insider

JUNE 12 ― In a brief commentary elsewhere (“Malaysia’s election result — no surprise to the knowledgeable,” Asian Currents, June 2013), I have noted one paradoxical but hugely important consequence of Malaysia’s recent national elections held on 5 May.

A paradox: anomalous domination

The remarkable, perhaps “counter-intuitive”, fact is that, while the election result itself ― namely, a fairly close but nonetheless comfortable victory of the Umno-centred Barisan Nasional side over the Pakatan Rakyat opposition ― came as no great surprise, that unremarkable result nonetheless had one quite surprising, even paradoxical, consequence.

From GE13 an electorally weakened Umno emerged politically even more dominant than it had been before. While still embattled in the broader political arena, Umno was delivered a dominant position within the parliament, ruling coalition and government.

By bestowing it with that now dominant parliamentary position, GE13 had delivered into Umno’s hands an ascendancy over the governing BN coalition, government policy, Parliament’s agenda and parliamentary process, and thereby over national political life ― over the nation’s affairs and direction ― of a quite unprecedented and perhaps irresistible kind.

What are the relevant facts here?

The immediate challenge facing Najib Razak, it had been said in the run-up to GE13, was at best to win back the two-thirds majority (or 148 of the 222 seats in the Dewan Rakyat), or at least to improve on the 2008 yield of 140.

More modest and realistic than demanding recovery of the two-thirds majority, some suggested that even 145 would have been a “good result”, good enough to ensure his immediate political survival against critics, adversaries and doubters in his own camp.

In the event, worse even than at GE12 in 2008, Umno/BN won only 133 seats. For those who might be satisfied with nothing less than assured domination ― a constitutionally unassailable and impregnable position ― a shortfall of eight seats had now almost doubled to 15.

Yet ― as I noted in my summary review ― behind all its archaizing ceremonialism and cultural nostalgia, politics and political thinking within Umno is nothing other than Realpolitik of the most ruthlessly pragmatic kind. And realistically, Umno (if its interests, and nothing else, are to be the focus of analysis, as the party “hard men” insist) did not do at all badly.

Why?

Because, paradoxically, its political domination was enhanced, not diminished, by the election result ― despite the further decline in the government’s parliamentary numbers and the opposition’s advances.

Drawing a contrast between the post-election situation of Umno/BN and its Pakatan Rakyat (PKR) adversary is instructive here.

The PKR coalition won a total of 89 seats. The opposition coalition’s parliamentary numbers are reasonably balanced. All three of its constituent parties have a sizeable and, if not an equal then a comparable, presence in the Dewan Rakyat (DAP holds 38 seats, PKR 30, PAS 21). The smallest of the three, PAS, contributes about a quarter of the opposition’s parliamentary numbers, while the largest, DAP, more than two-fifths but less than a half.

Contrast that with the situation on the government side.

Of BN’s 133 seats, Umno now holds 88 (up from 79 in 2008). Its MPs amount to two-thirds of the total BN parliamentary representation.

Umno alone has a parliamentary presence that is virtually the same as that of the combined opposition. Its shortfall of a single seat, if that troubles anybody who matters, is one that might be readily reversed through a by-election victory, the timely defection of an “unhappy” opposition MP, or even a successful appeal against the result in, say, Bachok or some other constituency where the Umno candidate had fallen narrowly short of victory in the election night count.

Now compare Umno’s situation among its governing BN partners with the more balanced situation in the opposition coalition’s parliamentary numbers.

After Umno, the next largest party on that side of the house holds only 14 seats. The Umno’s customary “primary partners” going back to Alliance Party times even preceding independence, the Chinese MCA and the Indian MIC, now together hold only 11 (7 and 4 respectively) and its newer ally Gerakan, 1 ― the decline in their public plausibility and electoral viability coming as the result of, and signifying, the increasing Umno dominance over its old BN partners in deciding national policy over the last decade.

After GE13, more even than before, the Umno’s ability to head a government, and rule over the nation’s core in peninsular Malaysia, now rests disproportionately upon the seats that its fractious East Malaysian partners hold in Sarawak and Sabah (34 seats, together held by 8 different parties, many of them loose, unstable personal alliances of mercurial, opportunistic and “gymnastic” leaders.)

Umno’s task will be to satisfy, appease and manage its increasingly assertive, and at times even restive, East Malaysian partners who now so heavily underwrite BN’s, and hence Umno’s, ability to rule.

But provided it can do that, in numerical and political terms Umno now dominates ― perhaps as never before ― the national government.

Provided it can decide without internal strife what it wants to do, provided it “knows its own mind”, it will be in a powerful position in the years ahead to have its way on all significant political and policy issues, so long as its Sabah and Sarawak allies can be kept “in line”.

In national government, an era of unprecedented Umno domination may now be in the offing.

Umno’s oddly empowering victory

Some indication of the nature and sources of the Umno’s success ― of how it stands to grow greatly in effective power from its diminished parliamentary base ― is suggested by the relative size of the three components within the opposition’s parliamentary delegation.

The Pakatan delegation is reasonably balanced, but not entirely so. It displays one anomalous feature. What is in many ways the most substantial member of the opposition coalition, the Islamic Party PAS, has the smallest parliamentary representation.

This is because, in Malaysia’s imbalanced and “malapportioned” electoral system, PAS unlike its coalition partners competes directly against Umno for “bulk” Malay votes: that is, for support from the core, more traditionally-minded and less cosmopolitan Malay voters in the rural Malay heartlands. They are direct rivals for the support of the core part of the nation’s Malay political core component, the core of the core.

Those rural Malay areas are hugely favoured in the drawing of electoral boundaries ― which is to say in their size, meaning the smaller number of votes that is necessary for them to elect an MP. It is in those parts of the country, in those electorates, that Malay domination of national political life is grounded.

And, of the opposition parties, only PAS competes directly against Umno for those votes.

Their struggle is a “zero-sum game”. It is an “up and down” thing, a constant long-term oscillation. When Umno does badly, PAS numbers increase and PAS political influence grows (and vice versa).

That has always been the basis of PAS’s political strength and long-term strategy. By its ability to win popular Malay support, and so to deprive Umno of the credibility and legitimacy that substantial Malay support ensures, PAS can at times exercise enormous influence over Umno, over its policies and direction, from outside.

But when Umno does well, PAS numbers and its immediate influence upon Umno thinking are diminished. When Umno does well electorally, it denies PAS this important leverage. PAS’s ability to force itself upon its rival’s thinking in the setting of national priorities and direction ― even to set terms that Umno cannot resist ―  declines.

When it succeeds in this way in freeing itself to some degree from the constraints imposed by PAS ― from the strategic stranglehold that in its “good years” results from PAS’s political success and ensuing Malay “moral credibility” ― Umno wins for itself some significantly increased political “room for manoeuvre”.

That is what happened at the recent GE13. The question to ask is why? How was it done?

The winning campaign

The key to the election result, and to Umno’s improbable feat of drawing increased political strength from reduced parliamentary numbers and a weakened parliamentary position, was Umno’s success in its head-on clash with PAS for Malay votes in the Malay heartlands ― for the “core  Malay vote”.

Much has been made of the fact that the two members of the Malay ethno-supremacist pressure group Perkasa whom Umno directly or indirectly endorsed ― Zulkifli Noordin in the Klang Valley “beltway” seat of Sham Alam and Ibrahim Ali in PAS “crown jewels” seat of Pasir Mas ― lost to their adversaries. There was no comfort for Umno in those two results.

This has prompted some commentators to suggest that the GE13 results signal a clear repudiation by the national electorate as a whole, Malay as well as non-Malay, of Perkasa, its approach and what it stands for.

But the matter is not so simple or clear.

The nature of the winning campaign has to be more closely considered.

(i)  The international level

The government’s GE13 campaign operated at several levels. For international consumption, notably the foreign investment and diplomatic communities, one story was developed.

This was the beguiling story of Prime Minister Najib as the heroic but still shackled economic reformer, the eager and available driver of administrative transformation ― and also of taxation reform, in the form of reduced corporate and personal taxation, all to be made good by the reasonably prompt post-election introduction of a goods and services tax (GST).

Glued onto this portrait was another. This was the picture of Najib as the self-proclaimed, and internationally acclaimed, “global moderate”, the champion of interfaith conciliation and the determined enemy of all forms of political extremism, but especially that driven by religious militants and fanatics.

This “international campaign” projecting Najib as a soon to be unbound economic Prometheus and also a fastidious moderate who would “have no truck” with any crude, populist extremism was offered with a clear objective.

Its purpose was to win for the prime minister and his party a sympathetic hearing overseas and, with it, the indulgence of a free hand at home to wage the other parts of their multilevel campaign.

Overseas, that portrait of Najib was reassuring, and people there would be satisfied with it. Nothing more to be asked for. Its plausibility had simply to be upheld. For example, against the free-lance meddling of a rogue Australian senator.

(ii)  The domestic pantomime

While this “image campaign” was offered internationally, the Najib who was seen for months on the campaign trail at home was something different. At home the prime minister cut a benign and ever-avuncular figure as he campaigned up and down the country by recourse to a kind of “Santa Claus politics” (as some called it). Its simplicity was that of a holiday pantomime. Or perhaps a travelling circus: “Every few minutes something new, something different, something dramatic! Something for everybody!”

There was something, something new, for somebody every day, a new inducement or “softener” for yet another interest group or finely drawn demographic category.

This was a campaign to the nation’s socially disaggregated parts, to its separate disarticulated elements, not to the nation as a whole.

It was not a campaign that projected any distinctive concept that the prime minister may have had, and wished to promote, of the Malaysian nation and its evolving destiny.

It was instead a campaign directed to every individual voter and every special interest-group or social element. It was one that encouraged them all to ask “What is in this for me? For us?” ― and which then provided an answer. Concretely and immediately, tangibly. An answer not in words or ideas but in palpable material benefits and ― “just for you and people like you, in your same situation or predicament” ― specified provisions.

Prime Minister Najib offered vast menu of hand-outs and rewards ― at prospectively huge cost to public expenditure, to the national accounts and the government’s coffers ― in the hope of attaching ever more securely to himself his own side’s loyal political followers, and of attracting the undecided to join them in supporting him and his cause.

This was hardly the kind of campaign that international investors, eager to see clear evidence of some sort of advance pre-election commitment to fiscal austerity and economic responsibility, can have been hoping to see  Umno run. Not what they had in mind!

But, though it involved huge public expenditures and costly promises, those promises had been accompanied by assurances of reduced corporate tax levels. So, overall, it may have pleased those foreign bystanders anyway: as a strategy that would make prompt Malaysian adoption of a GST to pay for it all inevitable.

It may have appealed to them as a neat way to make the fickle, imprudent and gullible people pay for all the offered benefits and promises that they had so unwisely and unaffordably chosen to accept. (Significantly, mention of the impending introduction of a GST was no part of the election campaign, neither Umno/BN’s nor the opposition’s.)

So allied to Najib “the great transformer in waiting” and Najib the global moderate was Najib “the great dispenser of treats and inducements” ― who was also, or so it was hoped by some, “the canny, crafty promoter of a GST”, the masterful maker of traps and ambushes who was making the GST’s introduction necessary and laying the grounds for its general acceptance.

“Of course we may all have these benefits. We Malaysians are entitled to nothing less. But we Malaysians too ― who else? ― must pay for them. In doing so we will not only reward ourselves and ensure our government’s fiscal viability from which every citizen benefits. We can make Malaysia, more even than before, the up-to-date model of a developing nation and the envy of the entire postcolonial world”. It is not hard to script the arguments that will need to be made and invoked.

(iii)  The real campaign

Umno/BN’s was a multi-level campaign.

The first level projected Najib’s image internationally as an economic reformer and religious moderate. Here he was portrayed as an intelligent and polished progressive in a land where progressives were not conspicuously plentiful in official circles.

The second was a campaign that kept Najib ― not so much Najib himself as his “simulacrum”, his carefully constructed image ― prominent in the public eye. But only through very controlled and tightly managed situations. It projected him as a man less with a mission than with a wonderful “magic pudding” that might continually, without ever becoming exhausted, be parcelled out and distributed to the people for their enjoyable and cost-free consumption.

This second campaign, in many ways a media construct or artefact, was largely a diversion and a distraction. It was devised to create a plausible appearance of dynamism and momentum to what had become, among the world’s notable political parties, an ungainly, lumbering and sclerotic dinosaur. It was staged to divert unwelcome attention from the real campaign.

It was, of course, those two “show campaigns” that occupied and entirely seized the attention of the international media. Meanwhile, the real campaign was conducted with unremitting determination, even ruthlessness, beneath the “foreign radar”, out of view of most overseas reporters and commentators.

What was the “real” campaign?

The nature of Umno/BN election strategy was clear. Like all intelligent political analysts, those in the party’s “brains trust” and campaign “engine room” could see that the vast bulk of Chinese voters were lost to BN and were unlikely to be won back, no matter what the old ruling party bloc did or promised.

Much of the Indian vote too was lost, but not all of it was entirely beyond recall. Part of it might be won back with some dramatic gestures (most remarkable of which was the Hindraf rapprochement). But while winning back that partial Indian support might do Umno/BN’s political image some much needed good by providing some symbolic rehabilitation for its claims of intercultural accommodation, those Indian votes that might be won over would never be enough to secure an Umno/BN victory.

So the strategy of the real campaign was focused elsewhere.

It was a battle for Malay votes.

Umno/BN saw, as some who were not part of its campaign also understood, that the key to the election was Malay votes. In comparison, nothing else really mattered much at all.

The key question was whether Umno/BN, and especially Umno itself, could win enough peninsular Malay votes, and enough of them in the right places ― meaning in the right local constituencies ― for Umno, in association with its Sarawak and Sabah allies, to secure a clear parliamentary majority.

So the campaign was focused and conducted where it mattered.

It was conducted in Malay terms and directed to a Malay audience. Meaning, the campaign was projected above all in the daily Malay-language press, notably the Umno’s own Utusan Malaysia, and via the Malay-language programming of the television channels with the greatest Malay reach, principally TV3 and RTM.

It was a campaign conducted for the votes of Malays, mainly for those of the great bulk of the more “traditionally-minded” Malays, in the Malay rural heartland areas.

The Umno campaign was simple: “all is at risk!” There is no protection, it kept hammering away, for you and your family, for all Malays, for the Malay stake in the country, for Islam or for the Malay rulers who are the ultimate bastion of our Malay-Islamic identity and national primacy ― other than us here in Umno.

It was a campaign that appealed to their sense of themselves ― to their sense of Malay identity and of Malay centrality to national life. It was a campaign that sought to suggest how tenuous the basis of Malay identity had now become in national life, how insecure the Malay grip upon the Malay stake in the nation had become. Everything that was distinctively Malay about Malaysia, it was suggested, was now under threat.

It was a campaign that both cultivated and then also appealed to a Malay sense of political and cultural peril, even crisis. It was a campaign that consisted of a managed panic: that the Malays were now beleaguered in their own land, the Tanah Melayu. Their historic stake in the nation was being whittled away and was now in jeopardy.

It was a campaign that sought to suggest that, as political currents were now running, it was not fanciful but realistic to imagine that Malays might one day soon “hilang di dunia” (in the words of the classical formulation), that they might disappear from the face of the earth.

It was a campaign of controlled communal panic. Malays and their way of life are beleaguered, and, central to their way of life, Islam was in jeopardy. Malay historical primacy and political leadership, the religious ascendancy of Islam, and the constitutional position of the Malay state rulers as their “untrumpable” guarantors had become the sacred trinity of the Umno campaign.

Everything that mattered to the Malay majority and its conventional loyalties was now at risk, it was suggested. It was threatened by the opposition Pakatan Rakyat coalition ― of which of course, the Islamic Party PAS was a key component. In the division of political labour between the Pakatan partners, it fell to PAS to wage the direct contest against Umno for votes in the nation’s Malay heartlands core.

So, above all else, the national election ― an election that would decide the prime minister’s and his party’s future ― turned upon a contest for “the national Malay soul” between Umno and PAS.

That was the real campaign.

It was the campaign that won the election for Umno/BN.

And it was a campaign that the many overseas reporters and commentators who flocked to Kuala Lumpur for a week or two simply did not see or “read” or understand.

It went beneath their radar, it was beyond their social, professional and imaginative reach. It was outside their range of cultural accessibility ― and also that, to be fair to them, of the vast majority of “like-minded” and “sympathetic” young urban Malaysians whom they were delighted to meet: who captured their attention, won their sympathy, and shaped their view of Malaysian society and politics.

For many of those intelligent, persuasive and globally-networked young Kuala Lumpur cosmopolitans, the Malay heartlands and those who live there are just as foreign and remote a world as they certainly were to the visiting journalists. The young sophisticates with their congenial “discourse” and “narratives” were nice people, but a very poor guide to what the election was really about ― how it was being conducted where it really mattered.

But, to those who were running the “real” campaign, that inattention was no problem. On the contrary. Let the foreign press write the stories that might please them, that seemed to centre upon the overseas journalists’ own effete concerns, not those of the rural Malay voters. Let them chase after stories that led them away from the real story, the main action.

After all, the “real campaign” for Malay votes in the heartlands ― for a firm place within and a hold upon the Malay soul ― would prosper best if it went unrecognized and unreported by the meddling and opinionated visitors of the international press. Let them meddle instead where their own interests and sympathies were engaged, not where their intruding curiosity might prove inconvenient, even embarrassing.

(To be continued in Part 2). — New Mandala

* Clive Kessler is Emeritus Professor of Sociology & Anthropology at the University of New South Wales, Sydney.

* This is the personal opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of The Malaysian Insider.

                This entry was posted on Wednesday, 12 June 2013, 5:36 pm and is filed under
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Zahid should take leave as Home Minister until two cases causing major embarrassment to the BN government had been settled

Datuk Seri Dr. Ahmad Zahid Hamidi should go on leave as Home Minister until two cases causing major embarrassment to the Barisan Nasional government had been settled.

Firstly, the case where Zahid was accused of causing hurt to Amir Abdullah Bazli in January 2006.

I agree with the former  Kuala Lumpur CID director Mat Zain Ismail who said in a  recent Open Letter that the fact that the Appeal Court had in a civil action unanimously ordered Zahid to answer the charges by Amir Abdullah means that Amir’s accusation is solid, raising the question why the police had failed to take action against Zahid for his offence of hurting Amir.

Mat Zain had rightly said in his Open Letter:

“PDRM will not be able to convince the people that it is acting fairly and adhering to the law if it fails to haul Zahid to court, especially when its former chief (former IGP Tan Sri Rahim Noor) was charged for the same offence.

“In fact, PDRM will lose moral ground as it cannot justify taking action against any lawbreaker, if it cannot even take action against its own Minister who has been judged a criminal by the courts.”

Secondly, the serious allegation that Zahid had violated election laws spending more than 10 times the RM200,000 expense limit for his parliamentary seat campaign in the 13th general election, to the tune of over RM2 million.

Zahid had in videos posted by himself on his official website that he had recruited 24,000 Bagan Datoh Barisan Nasional supporters, who are also local voters, as campaign workers in his run for the seat.

He also admitted, on video, to giving them RM100 and 5kg of rice each.

Apart from the election offence of  money politics, it is  ridiculously outrageous that Zahid should be employing 24000 “election workers” when the total electorate in Bagan Datoh parliamentary constituency  is 34,670 voters and the total  polled by Zahid himself is 17,176 votes –  which works out to more than one “election worker” for one vote polled by Zahid, which must be a record by itself in Malaysian electoral politics.

(Media Conference Statement in Plentong, Johor Baru on Thursday, 13th June 2013 at 9 am)

                This entry was posted on Thursday, 13 June 2013, 6:58 pm and is filed under
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GE13: What happened? And what now? (Part 2)

 — Clive Kessler

The Malaysian Insider

Jun 13, 2013

JUNE 13 — The first part of this commentary analysed the paradoxical outcome of GE13. It traced how the election of a reduced Barisan Nasional (BN) presence and increased opposition numbers in Parliament has amplified, not diminished, Umno’s power — here meaning specifically its power within the nation’s government and over the formation of national policy. It then examined the nature of the election campaign that yielded this paradoxical outcome.

A rejection of Perkasa?

GE13 was a less than explicit, and often inchoate, engagement, or contestation, between two rival views of the Malaysian nation, of what it is and where it was, or might be, headed.

On the one side, Umno/BN, and especially in its appeals to its own power base in the core Malay electorate, maintained incessantly that the country is and has always been tanah Melayu — Malay land and the land of the Malays — and that the country’s defining Malay identity would now have to be upheld by a reaffirmation and, if necessary, even an expansion beyond previously existing understandings of what that characterisation as tanah Melayu might mean.

On the other side, the Pakatan Rakyat coalition stuck to the terms of the agreement binding together its three partners. In a less than fully worked-out way they insisted that Malaysia was, or must become, a land of and for all Malaysians, and was now ready to do so. Or at least to make a common start on that journey — that quest for a shared future based upon a new national understanding and, under the existing Constitution, a new principled foundation.

That was the choice that was placed on offer to the voters. If it was the campaign that was waged by Umno/BN that won the day, can it be said that the overall election result represented a rejection of Perkasa by the nation, especially the Malay electorate?

Hardly. That is simply not so.

Yes, two Perkasa men who received Umno/BN backing were defeated. But 88 Umno candidates won. And that is more important, that is what matters.

They won on the “Malays in danger, Islam under threat” campaign waged in the Malay media that, as its main election effort, Umno directed at the nation’s Malay voters.

The Perkasa position is in effect, as some put it, “Malays on top, now and forever. That is Malaysia, love it or leave it!”

It is a hard, uncompromising position. But that, too, if in slightly more polite and modulated terms, was the essence of the Umno campaign that was projected daily, with ever increasing determination and with increasingly disquieting effect, by Utusan and its media consociates to the ever more fearful Malay voters in the rural heartlands.

Two outright, upfront card-carrying Perkasa candidates lost, even though they enjoyed Umno support.

But Umno ran, and won handsomely upon, a campaign which can simply be described as “Perkasa Mild”. A Perkasa-type campaign detached from the perhaps dubious or extreme reputation of Perkasa itself. A Perkasa-line not, like the original, angry but one for the somewhat more polite and genteel, and for those gripped by a fearful, and artfully cultivated, collective cultural and political anxiety.

A Perkasa line, it might perhaps be said, for those who might hesitate, not out of fear but even out of basic decency and in good conscience, to be publicly identified with Perkasa.

On the contrary. Perkasa, they might well feel, may be extremists. But Umno is mainstream. And if that is what Umno is saying, if that is the campaign that it is running, well, that line and that campaign, being Umno’s, cannot be extreme. That, for some, was the psychology of supporting “Perkasa Mild”.

It proved a winning campaign.

A winning campaign, certainly, for Umno. And also, though in a different way, a winning campaign for Perkasa as well.

A winning campaign for Perkasa despite the loss of the two high-profile Perkasa members whose candidacy Umno was supporting.

How so?

In Umno’s 88 victories, Perkasa and its stance were lent an official respectability and “normalised” — and in that way given a kind of vindication. Or at least political and moral absolution.

That is how what some political scientists used to call “ginger groups” — or radical pressure groups operating from outside a party upon like-minded “true believers” and sympathisers within it — operate and succeed.

In France in the 1950s one such group — the forerunner of the Le Pen movement of recent years and today — for a while rode high. The Poujadist movement influenced and infiltrated the ruling Gaullists. As they did, as they succeeded in doing so, their strength declined. Challenged by a journalist that his movement had failed, one Poujadist leader powerfully responded: “Not so! We have not failed, we have succeeded! We have succeeded in ‘Poujad-ising’ the moderates!”

Perkasa, too, may soon be able to make the same rejoinder, the same boast.

With that tune borrowed from Perkasa but played in a minor key, the Umno in very difficult times did not just hold on to what it had but significantly increased its number of parliamentary seats. The costs of its doing so were paid by the plummeting plausibility of its main long-term non-Malay partner parties in BN. They may never recover.

But for Umno it worked well. Umno’s number of seats is up by nine, a number not far short of what is now the combined MCA, MIC and Gerakan parliamentary presence of 12.

BN representation from the nation’s primary zone in Peninsular Malaysia is overwhelmingly an Umno parliamentary presence: 88 of 100. The old partner parties — the MCA, MIC and Gerakan — are now in no position to restrain Umno or to resist its demands. To have its way, Umno has merely to “square things off” with its Sarawak and Sabah allies, operating not as a solid bloc but as a collection of mutually wary contenders who can, if need be, be played off against one another.

From the viewpoint of the practitioners of Umno Realpolitik it is a very satisfactory outcome — even if the party’s “hard men” did not exactly envisage this outcome and plan it down to the last detail.

It is, for them, a very satisfactory outcome that was delivered by the success of their “Perkasa Mild” strategy.

A “Chinese tsunami”?

Recourse to that strategy came, as indicated, with a cost.

It entailed a substantial “writing off in advance” of much of “the Chinese vote” — of the votes of the vast majority of Malaysian citizens of Chinese origins and cultural background. It deprived the leaders of the Chinese partner parties MCA and Gerakan of “face” and credibility and stripped their parties of what was left of their political plausibility.

Yet the movement of voters away from Umno/BN was not, as some have suggested, simply a “Chinese phenomenon”.

The same trend seems to have been characteristic, in greater or lesser degree, of a significant number of Malaysians of all backgrounds who reside in and around the main cities, and in their adjoining semi-urban zones.

It was displayed, that is, by most of those whose lives are grounded outside of the electorally “over-represented” rural Malay heartlands and whose cultural orientations are focused upon concerns that lie beyond where the Umno and Utusan “Malay anxiety campaign” had great cultural reach and political “traction”.

The results of GE12 in 2008 had come as a great surprise to some. While some people had seen it coming, others, including those who then ran the Umno/BN campaign, did not. And, as if it had come suddenly from nowhere, they dubbed it a “tsunami”.

Things were different this time. The Umno/BN side knew that they were in “the fight of their lives”, a fight for political survival. Anti-Umno/BN currents were running strong in 2013. When they showed up in the election results, it could have been a surprise to nobody.

But in politics there are few things harder to resist than a convenient cliché. When the massive falling away of government support became clear, and BN in the peninsula was left looking very much like a club with only one member attended by a few bemused janitors, the official response, orchestrated by Umno and Utusan, was that what had happened was a “Chinese tsunami”.

The Chinese had defected, it was claimed, they had abandoned Umno/BN. The Chinese were to blame. “What more can the Chinese possibly want [beyond what they already enjoy under Umno/BN]” was Utusan’s furious banner headline.

One thing needs to be made clear here.

The expression “Chinese tsunami” is a polite — meaning inexplicit, since it does not use those words directly — way of saying that kaum Cina kita sudah memberontak dan menderhaka, that our Chinese community has rebelled and committed treason.

That is what people who use the expression “Chinese tsunami” mean.

So the issue to be discussed is not whether this second “tsunami” of 2013 was a “Chinese” or a more general and widespread “storm”.

What is needed is to bring into the clear and explicit light of day the underlying meaning of that coded expression and to call to account — for what they mean to say, and what political objective they intend to accomplish by saying it — those who are trading subliminally in this notion of Chinese treason (derhaka Cina).

To react by shouting in exasperation, “how dare they, how dare the Chinese presume to behave disloyally, to indulge in treason!” ignores the fact that those who voted in ways that Umno and Utusan may not have liked were, as Malaysian citizens, fully entitled to cast their votes as they pleased, and to use their votes to say that they did not like what they were seeing — that they did not like the direction in which Umno now seemed determined to drag the country.

The attitude and response displayed by Umno and Utusan are those of a different situation. They are those of the Ottoman Empire. There, every millet (meaning every “encapsulated” national or cultural or religious minority) had the right to manage its own internal affairs autonomously, free from outside interference — so long as they remained monolithically loyal under their own leaders to the sultan and his government.

But Malaysia in Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak’s time is not the Ottoman Empire in the age of Suleyman the Magnificent or Abdul Majid I.

The point is obvious, but its implications are difficult for some to grasp.

The expression “Chinese tsunami” may be rhetorically evocative. But it is logically and empirically dubious, and its use is politically and morally inexcusable.

What was GE13 really about?

If, as was plainly the case, the Umno/BN campaign pitched to the key, or core, Malay heartland electorate was the “Perkasa Mild” message, how should the Pakatan opposition have responded? What should its central campaign message have been?

If Umno/BN was content to run in effect on the Perkasa stance of “Malays on top, now and forever. That’s Malaysia, love it or leave it!”, then Pakatan should have offered a clear response, a compelling alternative, and a challenge to the Umno/BN line.

It might have said: “Historically and culturally, Malaysia is and of course remains a Malay-centred society. We do not question that. But at the same time we are all Malaysians, Malaysia is all of us. Malaysia as a nation is the common, shared inheritance of the children of all of its citizens, regardless of the path which they took towards citizenship. Malaysia is a state that is made up of all of its citizens and which belongs alike to all of them.”

That was, in effect, the position taken and promoted by Pakatan when campaigning among voters outside the Malay heartlands. But it had to take that position “across the board”, everywhere, as the central plank of its platform.

Certainly, it would not have been easy. It is a more complex position than the Perkasa mantra. And, in these matters, simplicity is what works, while complexity invites misunderstanding, both unintended and wilful. And it would also have been risky.

Running with this formulation would have required Pakatan, and especially the DAP, to make clear that this position was very different from the old “Malaysian Malaysia” notion — an accusation that Umno/BN strategists would certainly have levelled and tried to pin on it as a damning label.

But, hard as it was, that was what had to be done, what needed to be said. For all the dangers, there was no alternative to that kind of courageous political self-definition and self-affirmation.

Instead, Pakatan seemed to hope that by sticking with its familiar themes, it might somehow just get enough votes in the right places and so “fall over the line” to victory. That was unlikely, and even if it had succeeded in getting the basic numbers, it would not have been a convincing victory. Not a basis for assuming authoritatively the reins of national power.

Pakatan needed to put this clear challenge to Umno/BN — on well-prepared ground, as a prospective so-called “game-changer” — in the last week of the campaign. It should have tried in that way to put Umno/BN on the back foot, presented it with a challenge that its people would have had to scramble to address.

Doing that would not have been easy. How might Umno/BN have responded to that challenge?

Either they would have had to say, “yes, we agree with you, that it our position too” — in which case they would have had to distance themselves from Perkasa and dissociate themselves from their own and Utusan’s “Perkasa Mild” line. But if that is now your claim, it might then have been put, why are you not acting consistent with your principled position? Why have you so long failed to do so? Either you have been sincere but have failed, or else you have never meant it, then or now.

Or else they would have had to say, “No, we do not accept that view” and then they would have been forced to live with the consequences. Many Malays, urban and rural, might have been happy to see them do exactly that. But, equally, and most awkwardly for Umno, many of them along with many non-Malays would not have been. These people would have considered it the last straw, if Umno had pulled back from the formulation offered by Pakatan or tried to fudge and bluff their way around it.

Doing so would perhaps have cut their core Malay base off, and even morally isolated the Umno itself, from the rest of the country. That was not a price that Umno would have been wise to risk having to pay.

A courageous opposition that was ready to present a clear alternative and which, by offering it, was able to show that it was ready to govern would have put that clear challenge to Umno/BN.

At GE13 in 2013 the Pakatan opposition did not.

It did not even try. Which was strange.

After all, the entire Pakatan campaign embodied and implicitly sent that message anyway.

Their rallies not only said that, in principle, another Malaysia was possible. They were in effect saying in action, by how they chose to campaign, that Pakatan itself was the proof that that other Malaysia was now coming into being; that they themselves and their campaign were tangible evidence that its time had come.

Yet they did not dare say it directly, clearly, explicitly, in plain words. A strange choice.

In sum

In the final analysis, the Umno/BN side, despite the stupendous expense of its campaign and all its related activities, failed to present any clear argument why it deserved to be re-elected, nor any new vision of common national purpose and direction.

It did everything but that. For some it must have been great fun. For some it must have been very rewarding and profitable. But, even though the election was in the end won, the staggeringly expensive campaign simply did not do the job.

Meanwhile, for its part, the Pakatan opposition gave no sign that it was yet ready to govern: that it was sufficiently cohesive and was of a sufficiently clear and coherent common mind to lead the nation.

The outcome of GE13 sent a clear message to both sides. To Umno/BN, the message was that it will have to do better next time, possibly with far less money and spectacle but far more thought and insight, as well as a deeper appreciation of the good sense of the voters and increased respect for their judgment.

And the Pakatan opposition, or whatever opposition may next take up the baton, will have to demonstrate that it is capable not simply of cobbling together an improvised “no contests, no enemies, amongst ourselves on polling day” agreement that in many ways is no better than the long-tested Alliance/Barisan Nasional model, but of doing more and better.

Which means: generating a new kind of inclusive, democratic Malaysian politics, creating an effective political vehicle to promote it, and devising new policies (and approaches to policy-making) that might give some plausible and substantive reality, were they ever to be elected, to that “new Malaysian politics”.

That is the challenge to the Malaysian opposition. Will it be addressed? Will it ever be mastered? And under whose aegis? Under the leadership of Lim Kit Siang and Anwar Ibrahim? Or under new leaders, some whose faces are already familiar and some who are yet to emerge between now and the next great Malaysian contest for government?

Meanwhile, as after past elections, Umno will just get back to the business of governing, in its own distinctive and (so some would say) increasingly anachronistic way. But, this time after GE13, it is now placed to do so freshly unleashed from some old constraints and able — whether for good or ill remains to be seen — to do far more readily what and as it pleases.

How will Umno use its latest and ambiguous victory? How will it use its suddenly, and perhaps unexpectedly, augmented domination of the nation’s political life?

There are grounds for both fear and hope. As always, the challenge will be to resist opting for the easy thing in order, on principled grounds, to choose to do the right thing.

That is not something that Umno has always found it easy to do. That way of acting has often not seemed to come naturally to its tough-minded strategists. Whatever chances may offer themselves, the hard-headed pragmatists in Umno do not often refuse the dubious ones when they are attractive, seem capable of realisation, and look likely to prove politically rewarding.

In the final analysis, if something appealing can be done, they usually say, let us do it! The ability to get it done itself provides — nothing more! — all the legitimation and justification that may be needed in order to go ahead and do it.

When the opportunities that may present themselves are likely to involve some long-standing objectives and aspirations grounded in the mindset of the exclusionary early and mid-twentieth Malay nationalism, the case for prudent reflection, rather than the hurried seizing of the moment and of whatever easy prizes it may have to offer, will not be easy to make.

Let us hope that it will be made and also heard. — New Mandala

An afterword

Some readers have already asked why I have not mentioned alleged “vote rigging”, manipulation of the election process and the like in my discussion. They add that the analysis that I have provided will be incomplete, defective and misleading if it fails to address those questions.

My account given here of GE13 does not go into those matters.

It does not because so much of the immediate post-election analysis has been about, and indeed has been largely pre-occupied with, precisely those questions.

I saw no need, and see no reason, to go over all that same ground once again here.

More, I chose to omit any discussion of that aspect because, after the continuing focus upon those issues in so much of the post-election commentary and analysis so far, it is now important, in my view, to shift attention to some other matters and some more deeply-seated dimensions of the complex GE13 experience.

But I am not insensitive to the importance of those matters.

For the record, I therefore append here to this discussion two paragraphs from the brief commentary on GE13 (“Malaysia’s election result — no surprise to the knowledgeable”) that I wrote for “Asian Currents”:

“ .. .. .. International press comment often seeks to highlight instances of government skulduggery on election day. Sharp practice clearly occurs, far too often. But Malaysian elections have never been a ‘level-playing field’. And, despite the growth of ‘new media’ that mitigate the government’s long-standing domination of the official media, in other ways things are now less level than ever.

“Yet attention needs to focus not on election-day malpractice but on the nature of the electoral system itself: on the delineation of boundaries and the distortions entailed by the ‘first past the post system’. More, it is not what the Election Commission may or may not do during the course of the election, whether it acts impartially or in a partisan fashion, that is of concern. Before it even begins to swing into action to arrange the polls, the EC is an inherently compromised and flawed body. It is a contradictory beast with a dual nature. It is the statutory body appointed to stage elections with due propriety; but it also operates — by requiring citizens to vote in specific ‘streams’ by age and ethnicity within every polling station — as the producer of a massive ‘national political demography’ database whose findings are not made available to the public or other political parties but which is developed as the primary strategic instrument of the ruling Umno party and its partners. So long as this remains the case, the EC will never be universally seen as impartial and will never enjoy sufficient public trust. It needs not simply to be reformed but replaced, root and branch.”

* Clive Kessler is Emeritus Professor of Sociology & Anthropology at the University of New South Wales, Sydney.

                This entry was posted on Friday, 14 June 2013, 6:43 am and is filed under
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