Wednesday, August 27, 2008

Permatang Pauh: Badawi Must Be Accountable

As far as UMNO is concerned, August 26th, 2008 is a day that will live in infamy. It marks Anwar ibrahim’s return to Parliament. The sodomist will make life really difficult for UMNO from here on end.

But More importantly August 26tth marks UMNO’s humiliating defeat in a Malay majority constituency barely four months after it suffered debilitating losses in the 12th General Elections on March 8th.

Of course UMNO’s defeat in Permatang Pauh is expected. After all UMNO acknowledged that it went into the by-election as the underdog. Permatang Pauh is the strong hold of Anwar and his wife for the past 26 years. But the thumping victory which the people of Permatang Pauh delivered to Anwar raises serious questions for UMNO.

The NST’s Zubaidah Abu Bakar wrote that UMNO and will have to go back to the drawing board and do a post-mortem on what went wrong. Was it strategy? Was it the Machinery?. Other analysts have said that the defeat of UMNO was caused by the overkill of the sodomy issue and the polemics of swearing by the Quran.

From all this chatter, one can draw a simple conclusion: UMNO IS STILL MISSING THE POINT.

This defeat is not about the sodomy allegation. It’s about UMNO being told to bugger off in the Malay heartland. It’s a fair bit about Anwar yes, but looking at the bigger picture, it is about the people’s outright rejection of UMNO. There must be a reason why even UMNO members voted against the party (The number of votes for UMNO were less than the number of UMNO members who are voters in Permatang Pauh).

Let’s look at the facts:

  1. Permatang Pauh is a Malay majority constituency which has rejected the predominant Malay Party UMNO.

  1. The UMNO state liaison chief of Penang is Abdullah Badawi. Hence the Malays have rejected the Abdullah Badawi led UMNO in Penang.

  1. Penang is the home state of Abdullah Badawi, which he lost in a spectacular fashion on March 8th, making him the first ever Prime Minister, ‘without’ a home state. Permatang Pauh is the first by-election after March 8th and should serve as a barometer of whether the people think that the PM has got the message they tried to tell him at the 12th GE. The answer is a resounding NO. His so-called reforms have failed and people still reject his leadership.

  1. Pak Lah no longer has any credibility because with the loss of Permatang Pauh, he hasn’t lost Penang once, but twice in four months. He cannot even make headway in a Malay majority area, adjacent to Kepala Batas, where the demographics of the people are identical!

  1. Even though Najib led the charge in Permatang Pauh, the fact remains that it is Bedawi’s home state. The battle was always between a Prime Minister in waiting and a sitting Prime Minister. The Prime Minister in waiting has beaten the crap out of the sitting lame duck Prime Minister.

  1. By all accounts, the Prime Minister’s son in law did more harm than good by shooting his mouth off, claiming to want to bury Anwar and bringing a whole entourage of hooligans and tough guys with him down to Permatang Pauh. SIL made it so easy for people to decide that, yep, they still hate Abdullah and his family, and they still will vote the opposition, sodomist or not.


Pak Lah must take responsibility for the loss of Permatang Pauh and resign. What is he going to do? say that UMNO still got 10,000 votes and therefore “UMNO masih kuat??” Nobody bought that crap the first time (after the GE), and nobody will buy it now.

Even if the defeat is expected, the fact that it was by such a big majority really means that the people were quite decisive in not wanting UMNO. Do they not want UMNO because UMNO is a bad party? Or because UMNO is dominated by individuals who are perceived to be bad? I think Tengku Razaleigh said it well in his statement here that the people “have rejected our (UMNO’s) leadership”. (I only disagree that the Deputy should also be blamed.)


Several leaders of the Chinese and Indian community have said that while the Malay community may have voted on sentiment and on the Anwar factor, the non-malay community voted on the basis of practicality. They don’t necessarily like Anwar and the hooliganistic tendencies of the PKR, but they just hated Badawi and his family more. And to them UMNO is now the Party of Badawi and his family, so they will never vote BN as long as Bedawi remains at the helm of UMNO and BN. It's a simple as that.

As long as Abdullah Badawi remains the PM, The President of UMNo and the Barisan Nasional Chairman, the current government will grow weaker and weaker before imploding and collapsing altogether.

Abdullah Badawi must be accountable for the eroding fortunes of UMNO & BN. To use today’s parlance, UMNO’s got to “lose” Badawi, before Badawi causes UMNO to lose everything.

Tuesday, August 12, 2008

Whither UMNO?

I was really hoping that DS Najib Tun Razak (NTR) would go head to head against Dolah Bedawi and get rid of that buffoon once and for all. Unfortunately NTR decided against a challenge and accepted a protracted transition deal for Dolah to hand over in 2010. So that's that.
I was angry and frustrated at first, but when I heard NTR's explanation as he told them to his loyalists and supporters, I realized that he really had no choice but to accept the deal because of the way things are in UMNO.
Who can blame him? It is a well known fact that Bedawi has resorted to meeting division leaders one-to-one and after such meetings those division chiefs take a complete u-turn and do the "Saya Sokong" dance. Consider, for instance, the alleged UMNO Maverick from Cheras, Syed Ali Al Habshee. The man was vitriolic in calling for a change in leadership after the March 8th General Elections. In April, he loudly said he wanted Dolah to go by December and not later. He wanted to change the quota system in UMNO so that UMNO members can force a leadership change, and he wanted to hold an Extraordinary General Meeting to affect those changes.
One month later, in May, this very same person who appeared almost daily in the newspapers calling for Dollah to go, suddenly says people should stop calling for the PM to resign.
Huh??... What happened? Sudah tukar ka? It couldn't have anything to do with his extension as (GLC) CTRM Chairman by the MOF could it? Or is it the result of a hush-hush meeting rumoured to have taken place between him and Dolah?
Well I don't want to dwell on Syed Ali , because this posting is not about him. But it's about the proliferation of people like him throughout UMNO. Syed Ali is just one example. There are many many more. In fact I think 99% of the delegation to the UMNO GA will be of the Syed Ali ilk or worse. From the lowest levels to the highest, UMNO is crawling with unprincipled politicians, ready to sell their souls to the highest bidder. Is it any surprise therefore that a seasoned UMNO man like NTR refuses to place his political fortunes on the flimsy pledge of support from UMNO ketua Bahagians? Honestly, how can he hope to win against Bedawi, the most corrupt UMNO President ever, when the old fart is not above doling out government money to shore up his own political position?
Remember 2006? That was when Tun Dr. Mahathir had launched his first round of attacks against Dolah Bedawi. At the UMNO General Assembly that year, the Ketua Bahagians who were hitherto still fond of Tun Mahathir were quite furious with the manner of disrespect with which the old lion had been treated by certain UMNO leaders (read: Nazri Rottweiler, Mat Taib and Tajol Rosli). They were determined to make a whole lot of noise about it during the 4 day convention. They simply will not allow anyone to treat Tun this way!! (kononnya...)
Then what happened? At the Taklimat Khas Presiden the day before the Assembly began, Dollah announced that every Bahagian will receive RM 3 Million to spend before the end of the year. Watching the tape of Bedolah announcing this abuse of public funds, you hear someone trying to correct him by saying "Setiap kawasan Parlimen". But the the genius that is Dollah would not accept this correction. "No" he said. "Setiap Bahagian". Applause applause. RM3 million from Treasury to each ketua bahagian to spend on his kawasan (yeah. right.) in a span of about two months! Damn it's like winning the lottery!
Surprise surprise, all the fire that was raging in anger at the abuse of their once revered former President went out like a light. No more. Not a peep from any of the Ketua bahagians ... their tune was now sokong sokong sokong....They could only manage a loud round of applause at the mention of Tun Mahathir's name. Nothing more than that.
So there you go... UMNO's middle management can be bought, and Bedollah bedawi has proven this point very very well. The President of UMNO himself became an icon of money politics on that fateful day in 2006. And from then on, for UMNO, it has been a steady slide to the pits of hell...
Today UMNO has no credibility at all. At the mere mention of UMNO, people feel disgusted. they are sickened by the dirty and manipulative ways of UMNO stalwarts. The promising ones like Mukhriz Mahathir will probably not get ahead. Mukhriz has said as much, pointing out that he may not even get enough nominations to contest the Ketua Pemuda post although at one point in April, he was by far the leading contender. Now, in August, many millions of dollars having been spread amongst the Ketua Pemuda bahagians by certain parties eyeing the post, Mukhriz's chance looks slim at best. It's likely he'll be forced to try his luck for a seat on the Majlis Tertinggi, although even that is a challenge for him because he refuses to play the pay-out game. Which proves my point again: in UMNO, no money, no talk. So how can you expect anyone to respect such a party? it's like when you are a card carrying member of UMNO, you are a person not averse to corruption! You may not outrightly indulge in it, but you know it happens and you let it happen and you just turn a blind eye, because, hell, you might just benefit from it!
UMNO VP (and until very recently a Deputy President hopeful) Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin also knows this and feels that UMNO is fast sinking. One suspects it is also the reason why he has decided not to challenge any top position in UMNO and just defend his Veep post. He, like Najib, knows only too well that the expressions of support and loyalty in UMNO mean diddly-squat and that in the end, to the Division Chiefs and the power brokers in UMNO, it all comes to the question of dollars and cents. And as such you can never beat the power of the Incumbent President, especially a President well proven to be not above buying support directly and indirectly.
So whither UMNO? Is it really now just a party of pirates and thugs, of people caring only for themselves and their bank accounts? Is it a party that is still slavageable if indeed Dollah Bedawi hands the reigns over to NTR come mid 2010? Will it still be worth saving by then? UMNO members... no... the UMNO Perwakilan to the coming GA must ask themselves these questions about the Party they supposedly love. Will they try and save it or will they just make hay while the sun shines?
Maybe they should just think about this: Since March 8th 2007, UMNO has not moved forward one tiny bit. UMNO has not shown that it has learnt its lesson, and things are exactly the same as it was before March 8th, with the endless mistakes and stupid moves by Paklah, shamelessly supported by UMNO stalwarts even when they know it's not right. UMNO and BN lost 6 (SIX) states on March 8th 2008. If the elections were held again tomorrow, how manyof those states does UMNO think it can seriously hope to regain? Or perhaps, the more realistic question is how many more states is BN likely to lose?

Thursday, August 7, 2008

Between a sitting PM and a PM in waiting

And so it begins....

Anwar was today charged in court for sodomy and this marks the begining of what I'm sure will be another circus, because Anwar is Anwar and he's not about to let the law take it's ordinary course. No. Having shouted conspiracy here, there and everywhere; having subjected the nation to much grief and trauma after the Turkish Embassy debacle and the Balasundram fake Statutory Declarations in the name of trying to create a diversion; Having cast aspersions and doubt against the police and the Attorney General, Anwar is not about to let this be an ordinary court case. He WILL make it a circus and he WILL make the government side look like fools. If he could sway public opinion in 1998 with his neckbrace and wheelchair drama and all sorts of accusations agains the government then, just imagine the kind of things he can pull off with this government today: a government that can't tell it's ass from its mouth.
And so Anwar has trained his guns now on Dollah Bedawi. It started as soon as he was informed of an impending charge. In a press statement faxed to the media he immediately said that this was a move by a Prime Minister desperate to cling on to power. Here's an excerpt:

"Today the prime minister faces a crisis of confidence. His approval ratings have plummeted since the March elections and senior members of the Barisan Nasional have joined Pakatan Rakyat in droves. The economy under his abysmal management has reached its lowest ebb in decades and all signs point to further weakening.
And just yesterday prominent Umno members have initiated an investigation into his own involvement in corruption and money politics. This is a man under siege - and he sees no way out but to deflect the attention of the Malaysian people with a sham trial against me. He is now burning the forest to save his own tree! I have thus far constrained my criticism of the prime minister to his failed policies and general incompetence in leading the nation. But now it is clear that his vendetta against those who would seek his early dismissal from office knows no boundaries and will transgress all limits of the rule of law. I hold the prime minister personally responsible for the damage that is about to be done to the nation and to the integrity and dignity of the Malays. "

This statement is really quite interesting. First, typically Anwar-esque, it is bloody arrogant. This convicted criminal is saying that a case against Anwar is a case against the people. How is this so? This is not about some social issue. It is not about things we share like the environment or public property or even about anything of public relevance. And please don't say that this case is against the people because it undermines justice and the rule of law. The police have bent over backwards (no pun intended) to ensure that Anwar gets every leverage. Remember that sodomy is an arrestable offence. The suspect can be detained after a report is made against him and remanded pending investigation. But Anwar gets to roam around scot free although he is a suspected sodomite. So if justice and fairness is compromised in this case, it is done so in favour of Anwar.

The fact is this case is about Anwar and the unlawful thing he allegedly did. This case is PERSONAL full stop. It is like any other crime. Anwar's prosecution is not a prosecution of the people. Who the hell died and made him that important? Who made Anwar the representative of the people? Last I checked Permatang Pauh hasn't happened and he hasn't been elected.
But let me not dwell too much on that. He can say whatever he wants to say about how great he thinks he is.

The other interesting thing i find about the article is Anwar's admission that he has thus far laid off Bedawi. Could it be that there was some sort of deal? I think this confirms most political observers' suspicions that a deal was struck between Bedawi and Anwar: That Anwar lays off of Bedawi and his family and instead goes after Najib, and in exchange Bedawi ensures that Anwar gets to prance around freely basically saying anything he damn well pleases to smear Najib. Now that Bedawi has reneged on his promise and allowed the charge to take place, all bets are off, it seems. Why else would Anwar hold the Prime Minister 'personally responsible'? Why not Syed Hamid the Minister in charge of the Police? Why not Najib whom Anwar first lamely attempted to link to the case with just a photo of his accuser at the DPM's office with the Najib's officer? Yes Anwar's guns have certainly shifted. The question is, why?
Third interesting point: Anwar alluded to certain person(s) in the Prime Minister's Office having a direct hand in the decision to charge and prosecute him for sodomy. He said:

"We are also informed that some individuals within the prime minister's
close circles are adamant about pursuing this case. Their involvement further
undermines the credibility of the case and proves that the entire conspiracy
hatched against me is politically motivated. ...This travesty of justice will take place. It will happen with the active support and the criminal involvement of the highest echelons of the police and politicians - including the office of the prime minister."


He made special mention of the Prime Minister's close circle's and the Prime Minister's OFFICE. If this is true, who could those people be? Surely it isn't the person who went over to give him his passport back in 1998? Surely it's not the man who seems to have a direct hand in his release? What angle is Anwar playing at, or as they say in America, where is he going with this?
Whatever it is I'm sure that all will be unveiled as we race towards the great battle of Permatang Pauh. Well maybe the so-called battle is not that great lah. We know, after all, Anwar's odds of winning are huge. But it would be interesting to watch, because I believe for the first time the opposition, led by Anwar, seems to have decided that they are going after Abdullah.
And this is where for the first time ever, I find myself in agreement with Anwar's move. It is right that Permatang Pauh be about Pak Lah Vs. Anwar. It is right that Permatang Pauh should be a referendum of the people of Penang on Abdullah Badawi... for isn't this his home state? isn't Permatang Pauh just next to Kepala Batas? Isn't Pak Lah the UMNO Liaison chief of Penang? Shouldn't he lead the charge in Permatang Pauh to show that he still commands some respect in his home state which he shamefully lost on March 8th 2008? Isn't it only right that this battle is a battle between to giants of Malay poilitics from Penang? Blogger BigDog has a take on this here.
In all probability, the coward that is Bedawi will hide behind tradition and convention (like he did when asking for a peaceful transition of power when it is in fact a ruse to avoid a contest at the UMNO GA) and he will ask DPM Najib to lead the charge as Director of the By -Elections for BN. But even so, even if Najib leads, the issue must remain whether or not the people want Abdullah or they want a new Prime Minister. This is only right. For, indeed, going by what Anwar keeps saying, isn't this a battle between the sitting Prime Minister and and a Prime Minister In Waiting?

Wednesday, August 6, 2008

Spooky's Back!!!!

Almost a year since my last posting. And boy what a year it has been. In that period Dolah Bedawi has made a mess of the country (not news), has brought UMNO to the brink of collapse, has sold his own government out by bowing to pressures from opposition and accepting populist (although potentially disastrous) policies, has appointed an idiotic drunkard money-politics-convict as a Minister and has tried to hoodwink the Malaysian public to accept a sham transition plan for the handing over of power to Najib. Meanwhile Anwar the Convict is back with a vengeance (literally) making life hell for the government, and then making life hell for all Malaysians with his shenanigans immediately after being accused of sodomy by his former aide Saiful Bukhari Azlan. At around the same time, DPM Najib and wife Rosmah also had their share of hellish days when lunatic blogger Raja Petra Kamaruddin forgot to take his pills one day and decided to make a statutory declaration about something he was never witness nor party to. Then of course there was that Balasundram declaration nonsense and the even more nonsensical retraction. Adoi.... just rehashing it all is giving me a headache. So those are some of the things that's happened in the past year. Basically Malaysian politics seem to have gone completely barking mad.

On a more positive side, Tun Mahathir started his blog on May 1st 2008, and today, 3 months and two days after chedet.com was born, that blog has charted 4, 820, 202 (as at 6.44pm, 6th August). A world record I'm sure, as most blogs take years to even get close to 3 million, let alone five. What it means is that this Greatest Malaysian Alive still has a large following, is still respected and is much loved by millions of Malaysians. Tun's voice seems the only voice of reason left in malaysia, and surprise surprise, Dollah and his monkeys have tried and are still continuing to systematically shut down this voice. Madness and stupidity trying to shut out sanity and reason.

So that's that.

but where has Spooky Been?... why the hiatus? Well to be honest, it was just a general sense of "putus asa" with the Bedawi government, with the stupidity and ball-less-ness of UMNo and with the general state of things ["give up" doesn't quite translate the sentiment of "Putus Asa" so I have to use the malay phrase. i just wanted to travel far far away and forget that the country I once loved is now in ruins. Also, I harboured a secret hope against hopes that when i returned, malaysia will have changed for the better, that Dollah Gila would be just a black part of our history and we would be working towards undoing his legacy of destruction.

Didn't happen.

So after a while, i decided, ok lah. i will start to write again. Maybe not as often as before. maybe not exclusively on politics... who knows. see how it goes la. But one thing I know, I'm just gonna say what i feel lah. It may not make any difference to anyone, but at least i get to let it out. And hopefully by doing so, i can continue to keep sane, in a country gone mad.