BN suffering from terminal confusion
COMMENT Even before it can get beaten by the opposition Pakatan Rakyat in the looming general elections, the BN government of Najib Razak may well expire of terminal confusion.
It appears that those whom the gods would destroy, the deities first confuse - with miscues, errors and compounded mistakes - till matters reach a point where voters oblige by putting them out of their misery.
The confusions that mark the onset of terminal crisis for the BN are not just seen in telltale signs like the translation error in the banners put up for the official welcome ceremony for visiting Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao; they are like termites eating into the warp and woof of policy and implementation...
COMMENT Even before it can get beaten by the opposition Pakatan Rakyat in the looming general elections, the BN government of Najib Razak may well expire of terminal confusion.
It appears that those whom the gods would destroy, the deities first confuse - with miscues, errors and compounded mistakes - till matters reach a point where voters oblige by putting them out of their misery.
The confusions that mark the onset of terminal crisis for the BN are not just seen in telltale signs like the translation error in the banners put up for the official welcome ceremony for visiting Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao; they are like termites eating into the warp and woof of policy and implementation.
Barely had the Najib administration been able to shake off the strident call of Umno's unofficial mouthpiece, Utusan Malaysia, for a ‘1Melayu, 1Bumi' than the MCA president puts his foot in the mouth with a call to PKR to abolish Malay rights and privileges as a pre-condition of his support for them.
Bad enough Prime Minister Najib has a hard time explaining his ‘1Malaysia' policy against a backdrop in which refractory aides (remember Nasir Safar) and recalcitrant deputies (not need to mention who) undermine his policy's intent, he has to contend with Freudian slips born of desperation in his coalition's ranks.
And what's more, this choppiness is not half the extent of the credibility problems Umno-BN are saddled with.
Chua's hare-brained challenge
A sex video that was supposed to be the coup de grace against BN nemesis Anwar Ibrahim strutted brazenly on the national stage before requiring a sworn oath on the Quran by a purveyor to attest for its authenticity. But it appears the informed opinion of Muslim jurists is that the oath is invalid in the circumstances in which it was professed.
With Sodomy II teetering on the brink, with an attempt to give all Malaysians a ‘1Malaysia' email address that is supposed to be free but has hidden costs, with a two-track solution to the Al-Kitab controversy that is really no solution, and with a drop in the popular vote for the BN in Sarawak coupled with more seats lost to the opposition, the Najib administration is like a storm-battered frigate trying in vain to dock at some port.
Its most telling weapon against the opposition - Pakatan Rakyat's supposed ideological incoherence - is exposed as a red herring what with Dr Chua Soi Lek's challenge to PKR to abolish what is, essentially, Article 153 of the Constitution.
The equivalent faux pas in Pakatan would be if the DAP were to ask PKR to support the removal of the special status accorded Islam in the Constitution as proof of PKR's adherence to a secular state.
Clearly, Chua is at wits' end to come up with a solution to MCA's inexorable loss of support from Chinese voters.
He may know the reason for the erosion: Chinese voters are convinced that a half-century's accretion of ineptitude in the BN has reached national life threatening proportions.
Flight of talent
They feel that the government must change hands or the country is at risk of terminal decline. This is true even without adverting to the latest reports from international monitors like the World Bank which has warned that the flight of talent from Malaysia is hazardous for its future.
Of course, it is not easy for the leader of the second largest component of the BN to concede in public what he may know in his marrow. Still, he has to find verbal devices to cut loose from the thicket in which he is enmeshed.
Emboldened by a track record for unvarnished statement and driven by desperation at his party's bleak electoral prospects, the MCA president has reached for an arrow in his quiver that will sooner puncture the BN than it would sink Pakatan.
The BN now stands exposed as confused and muddled, increasingly proceeding by virtue of its past momentum than by mastery of its current realities. Like an overdrawn bank account, it is waiting to be cashiered at the polls.
TERENCE NETTO has been a journalist for close on four decades. He likes the occupation because it puts him in contact with the eminent without being under the necessity to admire them. It is the ideal occupation for a temperament that finds power fascinating and its exercise abhorrent.
