BN's crooked bridges

Since Abdullah Ahmad Badawi so spectacularly burned his bridges with Dr Mahathir Mohamad by cancelling the great builder’s pet project, the now notorious ‘crooked bridge’ planned to span the Tebrau Straits, you’d imagine that bridges might be off the BN government agenda.

But apparently not, as Deputy Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin recently offered a bridge to the good people of Manek Urai, Kelantan. Admittedly the structure he was proposing was less grandiose than Mahathir’s and billions of ringgit cheaper, but it was also arguably even more spectacularly crooked.

This is because Muhyiddin was blatantly offering the bridge as a bribe to voters in the Manek Urai by-election.

“We can build it (the bridge), insya’allah, but there is a condition”, Malaysiakini quoted him as telling a rally in the run-up to the by-election.

“It is easy. All you need to do is pangkah (mark the ballot), but you must vote for BN. If not, there will not be any new bridge. If you want the bridge, vote BN.”

Of course there’s nothing really new in this. BN so routinely employs bribery, in the form of anything from civic amenities to outright cash, to bridge the gap between its candidates and opposition opponents.

In fact BN’s routine attempt to buy elections and the Electoral Commission’s constant failure to recognise - let alone lift a finger to combat this offence - have long been scandalously obvious.

So much so that BN’s opponents now cynically urge electors to accept the cash and other crass inducements, but to vote with their conscience.

Kelantan Menteri Besar and Pas spiritual leader Nik Abdul Aziz Nik Mat urged Manek Urai constituents in anticipation of bribes like Muhyiddin’s bridge: “If given money, take it; if given sugar, stir it; if given clothing, wear it. However, come election day, vote for the moon.”

And in fact voting for the moon (PAS), the rocket (DAP) or the PKR is precisely what the majority of voters have done in four successive by-elections in Peninsular Malaysia - Kuala Terengganu, Permatang Puah, Bukit Gantang and Bukit Selambau.

Whether the voters of Manek Urai will go lunar and extend BN’s losing streak, or prove loony enough to opt for the promised new bridge is still moot at this moment. As I sit here writing this at 10:15pm Sydney time on by-election day, July 14, the poll count is still in progress.

PAS spokespersons are already claiming victory, however, and I hope that in time their optimism will be vindicated. But instead of sitting here with bated breath, let me span the interval until the official result with a discussion about another bridge.

Najib’s spectacular failure

It is not about the crooked bridge to Singapore this time, or the crooked offer of a new bridge in Kelantan, but the desperate efforts that Najib Abdul Razak, BN and Malaysia’s crooked mainstream media have been making to bridge their collective credibility gap.

More a credibility gulf or chasm, actually, than your ordinary credibility gap, as nobody in his or her right mind could possibly believe a word that Najib or his political colleagues and propagandists utter.

But that hasn’t stopped them trying to engineer some credibility. First came that ridiculous slogan, ‘1Malaysia. People First. Performance Now’. This could hardly be further from the truth, given that the BN government routinely foments racial and religious discord for its own purposes, puts the interests of the ‘masses’ behind those of itself and its cronies, and is infamous for its failure to properly perform its legal duties.

Then came Najib’s famous peramble on a public street to demonstrate his link with the people. A performance that didn’t involve a bridge, I grant you, but which was lauded so ecstatically by the BN-friendly media that you’d have thought he’d walked on water.

And now he’s celebrated his first 100 days in office by announcing a bizarre grab-bag of goodies like quantity discounts on road tolls, reduced motorcycle and vendor licence fees, more taxi permits, faster processing of citizenship applications, some long-overdue infrastructure projects in Sabah and Sarawak, a couple of minor low-cost housing initiatives, and the promise that some “drastic measures to reduce crime and corruption” would be announced at the end of the month.

As Khoo Kay Peng said in a Malaysiakini article entitled ‘Najib not going to win brownie points’, “such announcements will not make him look generous, caring or people friendly. Instead they only help expose his inability to focus on real fundamental issues facing the nation and its people”.

Khoo went on to wonder, as so many of us have repeatedly done, what happened to the reports of the two royal commissions on the judiciary and the police force. And to observe that there are many more fundamental areas and important issues which were left unaddressed in Najib’s 100th day address, including the Port Klang Free Zone scandal, suspicious deaths in police custody, land scams, the Perak power grab and the government’s continued refusal to repeal suppressive laws.

In short, Najib has spectacularly failed in his bid to build a bridge, crooked or otherwise, between himself and his detractors. Which reminds me that it must be about time to check whether BN’s managed to buy today’s by-election in Manek Urai.

And the answer, thank goodness, is no! The result announced by the Electoral Commission is a victory for Mohd Fauzi Abdullah of PAS, with 5,348 votes over Umno’s Tuan Aziz Tuan Mat (5,283 votes).

That’s a majority of just 65, or 1,287 less than the majority achieved by the late Ismail Yaacob of PAS in the 2008 general election.

As the mainstream media will doubtless point out, this looks like quite a pronounced swing towards Najib’s BN.

But as far as I’m concerned it’s another shining example of the fact that even crooked police, crooked laws, crooked media and crooked bridges can’t save you if you can’t find enough crooked voters to cross over to your crooked side.