If Tun Mahathir had been quiet during Pak Lah's administration, why is he getting
active again? What is his AGENDA now? Does UMNO really need him to revive the party's reputation when he has been the one who had been responsible to shape UMNO to be what it is to day? People's perception on UMNO and hence its beating in the last general election owed its genesis to his two decades of tutelage. In the last Bukit Gantang byelection a voter's remark was most telling. And UMNO should know this. And this is what the voter said and reported in the alternative media
"I wanted to vote for the BN candidate, but when I saw Dr, Mahathir campaigning for the BN I just decided to do otherwise and vote for Pakatan" See how much damage this man had inflicted on UMNO and yet UMNO members still have the audacity to look upon him as a "saviour" of sort. To all UMNO members, the clarion call is enough is enough. The Tun should be treated like an old "Koran" ie You cannot read it and neither can you throw it away. And that is the best way for UMNO. He knew too well that true Malays will not be "derhaka" or disrespect to their leaders, unlike him. Hence he is just exploiting on this Malay weakness
His agenda is simple. First, he wants his legacy to be preserved at all costs.Nothing should be done to bring out any of his skeletons from his past closet. And people know there are many. His mission is to let the rakyst take the attitude that let bygone be bygones, and Thou shall see no evil and hear no evil. Just remember nothing but all the goods he had done. Second, he wants the power that be to "protect" the business interests of all his siblings that that are publicly known and those held through "proxies" which we believe are huge and extensive. His worries are that the "proxy holders" who gave their "solemn" undertakings to him when he was in power to act as his "custodians" may renegate their words or promises. Particularly when he is no longer around.
Lately, there was a very strong and yet reliable rumour from overseas that some one very close to him bought a HAND BAG studded with diamonds for RM 500,000!! in Paris . No one in the world, except the wife or girfriend of a world reknown professional soccer player in UK has purchased such a hand bag. So the person became the number two in the world who can "afford" to buy such an expensive handbag!! That some one must have lots and lots of money to throw around. Question- where does the money from?? And for that huge amount just for a HAND BAG!! Can you imagine this can happen here in our country, when there are many people who are still living from hand to mouth every day
Relating to the "proxy" issue there was also another strong and reliable rumour that two of his siblings approached the power that be to seek help to compell a proxy holder to return some of the loots to them, because the Proxy holder pretended not to know anything!! as the Malays put it "Buat dak ye" when requested. But they did not get any help. In fact it is not the business of the power that be to GET INVOLVED OR DRAGGED into this sort of undercover activities.
So we hope you can read between the lines why his sudden comeback and why the Tun wants his continuing presence in public. Not for the sake of UMNO nor for the sake of the Nation.
Monday, June 29, 2009
Friday, June 26, 2009
SOME AFTER THOUGHTS ON MR LEE KUAN YEW’S RECENTVISIT TO MALAYSIA
We believe that the remarks made by Tun Mahathir on Mr. Lee Kuan Yew’s eight day visit to Malaysia recently may not go well with some people here, although there are others who cheered him for such remarks.
The Tun is well known for his frankness and will call a spade a spade. Although he has left the political scene some years now and was relatively quiet after he left UMNO, he has become active again after rejoining UMNO, getting a lot of publicity both by the main stream mass and electronic media. As a result there is now emerging a pervasive feeling of sort among the public that he is well on the way to becoming very much in the mainstream of the administration and hence indirectly involved in the running of the affairs of the country again.
Such feelings prevail following his comments on current issues and occasional sarcastic remarks (sarcasm is also his trait) at the present leadership and administration. His influence is further strengthened by the fact that the Tun still retains key positions, albeit in advisory capacity in Petronas and Proton.
He has not relinquished his positions including that of the Prime Minister’s Leadership Foundation, which he should under the new Prime Minister.
He should know when his presence is no longer relevant and should not expect the Prime Minister to tell him to do so.
We all appreciate what the Tun had done for this country during his long tenure as Prime Minister, just like what the people of Indonesia did for President Suharto at one time except towards the end of his political career. We believe the Tun means well whenever his views are sought. Indeed he had been very generous with his ideas. Be that as it may we still believe that as an ex Prime Minister his proper role should be more of an elder Statesman and should not in any way try to assume or behave as if one is still at the helm or captain of the ship. To those people who had been closely watching him since 1981 when he assumed the Premiership of the country, they say we may be entering Mahathir II era.
Most if not all ex leaders of countries in the world once “retired” usually do so in the true sprit of the word. Our first Prime Minister YTM Tunku Abdul Rahman did that after he left the Government and so was our third Prime Minister, Tun Hussein Onn. And most recent our Fifth Prime Minister Tun Abdullah Ahmad Badawi. In his case he even openly declared that once he leaves the Government he will not interfere nor give out any comment on the government and its leadership. Actually this is what should happen to leaders when they were no longer in power. They just leave the scene and give way to the new generation of leaders to manage the country after them. The only exception are those leaders who were ousted by the people or forced out by their own political parties.
We like Singapore and Indonesia have had leaders who remained in power for a long time, at least two decades or more. We hope such a phenomena will not happen again in our country and we believe our neighbors too will wish for the same whereby leaders will not remain too long in power because power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
The Tun is well known for his frankness and will call a spade a spade. Although he has left the political scene some years now and was relatively quiet after he left UMNO, he has become active again after rejoining UMNO, getting a lot of publicity both by the main stream mass and electronic media. As a result there is now emerging a pervasive feeling of sort among the public that he is well on the way to becoming very much in the mainstream of the administration and hence indirectly involved in the running of the affairs of the country again.
Such feelings prevail following his comments on current issues and occasional sarcastic remarks (sarcasm is also his trait) at the present leadership and administration. His influence is further strengthened by the fact that the Tun still retains key positions, albeit in advisory capacity in Petronas and Proton.
He has not relinquished his positions including that of the Prime Minister’s Leadership Foundation, which he should under the new Prime Minister.
He should know when his presence is no longer relevant and should not expect the Prime Minister to tell him to do so.
We all appreciate what the Tun had done for this country during his long tenure as Prime Minister, just like what the people of Indonesia did for President Suharto at one time except towards the end of his political career. We believe the Tun means well whenever his views are sought. Indeed he had been very generous with his ideas. Be that as it may we still believe that as an ex Prime Minister his proper role should be more of an elder Statesman and should not in any way try to assume or behave as if one is still at the helm or captain of the ship. To those people who had been closely watching him since 1981 when he assumed the Premiership of the country, they say we may be entering Mahathir II era.
Most if not all ex leaders of countries in the world once “retired” usually do so in the true sprit of the word. Our first Prime Minister YTM Tunku Abdul Rahman did that after he left the Government and so was our third Prime Minister, Tun Hussein Onn. And most recent our Fifth Prime Minister Tun Abdullah Ahmad Badawi. In his case he even openly declared that once he leaves the Government he will not interfere nor give out any comment on the government and its leadership. Actually this is what should happen to leaders when they were no longer in power. They just leave the scene and give way to the new generation of leaders to manage the country after them. The only exception are those leaders who were ousted by the people or forced out by their own political parties.
We like Singapore and Indonesia have had leaders who remained in power for a long time, at least two decades or more. We hope such a phenomena will not happen again in our country and we believe our neighbors too will wish for the same whereby leaders will not remain too long in power because power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
Friday, June 19, 2009
Corruption and The Anti Corruption Law
Tun Mahathir in his recent blog which was carried by the Malaysian Insider made a very pointed observation on the Anti Corruption Law in this country when he said “If the government itself is corrupt then corruption cannot be stopped. In fact corruption will spread in every direction and would become a way of life. And at this stage nothing can really be done”.
Previously he made a public apology at a political rally for his past mistakes. This time his observation on corruption is again an admission of sort that his previous administration had been plagued by corruption, in short a corrupt government.
Who could refute the fact that corruption in this country began seriously and became rampant during his administration that lasted for twenty two years?
Who can deny that corruption has permeated into almost all segments of the Malaysian society including our national institutions like the civil service, the Police and the Judiciary?
And who would disagree that to day corruption has become to large extent a way of life in this country ?
There is a famous Chinese saying:
“when a fish rots, it starts form the head and from there it spread to the rest of the body”.
This saying truly described how corruption began and developed in this country during the past two decades.
The pertinent question - is there no one who should take the full responsibility for this social disease that had inflicted the Malaysian society for that long?
Our neighbor Indonesia that went through the same experience, and even longer, is more decisive in dealing with corruption The Rakyat there were so determined to fight corruption from the lowest to the highest level of their societal hierarchy.
They even went to the extent of bringing their late President Suharto and his family members to the courts to face the law and to make them return back what rightly belonged to the Rakyat.
The rakyat knew where it all began and ended!
We should take the Tun’s observations seriously because these must have come from his inner feelings following the various financial scandals that had hit the country during his premiership in the 80’s and 90’s like the BMF, Mamimco, the Bank Negara Forex losses, the CCB, Perwaja that cost the nation billions of ringgit, not to mention the amount of wastage and excesses incurred in development projects implemented through the “direct negotiations” instead of open tender.
Just imagine if these wastage and losses did not take place we could have utilised the money for the development of our people and we could have achieved a developed nation status by now!!
All these must have begun to prick his conscience after seeing how much damage corruption had inflicted on the economy and changed people’s behaviour and values.
And yet, the effects of past corruption have by no means ended as more episodes keep on surfacing all the time even after he left the government. The Maltrade building fiasco, the Port Klang Free Zone debacle , and most recentl the Middle Ring Road scandal to name a few, went back to his time when decisions on these projects were made. And no one can deny that the root cause of all these billion ringgit of mishaps and scandals had been CORRUPTION.
We should support his proposal to amend the laws to protect whistle blowers to fight corruption.
Who knows one day the Rakyat will discover who the Father of Corruption is and be written into our history.
Previously he made a public apology at a political rally for his past mistakes. This time his observation on corruption is again an admission of sort that his previous administration had been plagued by corruption, in short a corrupt government.
Who could refute the fact that corruption in this country began seriously and became rampant during his administration that lasted for twenty two years?
Who can deny that corruption has permeated into almost all segments of the Malaysian society including our national institutions like the civil service, the Police and the Judiciary?
And who would disagree that to day corruption has become to large extent a way of life in this country ?
There is a famous Chinese saying:
“when a fish rots, it starts form the head and from there it spread to the rest of the body”.
This saying truly described how corruption began and developed in this country during the past two decades.
The pertinent question - is there no one who should take the full responsibility for this social disease that had inflicted the Malaysian society for that long?
Our neighbor Indonesia that went through the same experience, and even longer, is more decisive in dealing with corruption The Rakyat there were so determined to fight corruption from the lowest to the highest level of their societal hierarchy.
They even went to the extent of bringing their late President Suharto and his family members to the courts to face the law and to make them return back what rightly belonged to the Rakyat.
The rakyat knew where it all began and ended!
We should take the Tun’s observations seriously because these must have come from his inner feelings following the various financial scandals that had hit the country during his premiership in the 80’s and 90’s like the BMF, Mamimco, the Bank Negara Forex losses, the CCB, Perwaja that cost the nation billions of ringgit, not to mention the amount of wastage and excesses incurred in development projects implemented through the “direct negotiations” instead of open tender.
Just imagine if these wastage and losses did not take place we could have utilised the money for the development of our people and we could have achieved a developed nation status by now!!
All these must have begun to prick his conscience after seeing how much damage corruption had inflicted on the economy and changed people’s behaviour and values.
And yet, the effects of past corruption have by no means ended as more episodes keep on surfacing all the time even after he left the government. The Maltrade building fiasco, the Port Klang Free Zone debacle , and most recentl the Middle Ring Road scandal to name a few, went back to his time when decisions on these projects were made. And no one can deny that the root cause of all these billion ringgit of mishaps and scandals had been CORRUPTION.
We should support his proposal to amend the laws to protect whistle blowers to fight corruption.
Who knows one day the Rakyat will discover who the Father of Corruption is and be written into our history.
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