Moment of truth
Dean JohnsPublished: Sep 17, 2008 11:25 AM | Updated: Sep 17, 2008 11:54 AM
On 16 Sept 2008, now that Anwar Ibrahim has claimed, as promised, that he’s signed-up enough BN MPs to form government - Malaysia’s moment of truth is at hand.
And the timing is impeccable, if only by coincidence, as just yesterday the mendacious Mahathir’s monstrous old mate Mugabe was finally forced to sign a power-sharing agreement with Movement for Democratic Change’s Morgan Tsvangiri.
On 16 Sept 2008, now that Anwar Ibrahim has claimed, as promised, that he’s signed-up enough BN MPs to form government - Malaysia’s moment of truth is at hand.
And the timing is impeccable, if only by coincidence, as just yesterday the mendacious Mahathir’s monstrous old mate Mugabe was finally forced to sign a power-sharing agreement with Movement for Democratic Change’s Morgan Tsvangiri.
Also, as if in sympathy with Zimbabwe’s basket-case economy, equity investors around the globe received a new reality-check in the form of fresh bankruptcies resulting from the US sub-prime mortgages fiasco.
Of course Bill Clinton’s much-quoted political maxim, “It’s the economy, stupid”, has played some part in the unpopularity of Malaysia’s Barisan Nasional regime.
Its massive hike in petrol prices, plus inflation in the cost of food and other staples, has fueled unpopularity in people who might otherwise have remained supportive or at least politically apathetic.
But, much to Malaysians’ credit, a great many of the millions saying “tak nak, lah” to Pak Lah have been doing so out of principle, not self-interest.
Sick to death of the government’s unwillingness or inability to deliver the institutional reforms it’s been promising for years, more and more citizens have opted to throw-in their lot with the opposition.
BN and its cronies should have seen the writing on the wall back in March when the electorate deprived them of their long-cherished two-thirds parliamentary majority.
Or, come to think of it, they should have read the signs months earlier, in the Bersih and Hindraf rallies. But rather than face such unpalatable realities back then, they rolled-out the riot police and then threw the Hindraf Five (P. Uthayakumar, M. Manoharan, R. Kenghadharan, V. Ganabatirau and T. Vasanthakumar, to honour them individually by name) into detention under the ISA.
Since then the leaders and followers of BN have found themselves in growing disarray. Beset with a chorus of criticism from without, torn by factional in-fighting, and as always determined to demonstrate once again that the experience teaches them nothing.
Worse than ever
Instead of enacting the PM’s promised reforms, they actually acted worse than ever. Endlessly stringing-out the show-trial of the selected suspects in the Altantuya murder, harassing Raja Petra Kamarudin and others for their blogging and statutory declarations against injustice, and stirring-up racial discord.
Then, incredibly, and to virtually universal incredulity, they had the temerity to trump-up a new charge of sodomy against Anwar.
When Anwar, undaunted, still came after them, they went totally berserk, removing 49 of their MPs from temptation to join Pakatan Rakyat by flying them to Taiwan, then invoking the hated ISA against Raja Petra, MP and state assemblyperson Teresa Kok and Sin Chew Daily senior reporter Tan Hoon Cheng.
Resorting to the ISA was the last straw, not only for many of us opposed to BN and all it stands for, but also for its own reformist law minister, Zaid Ibrahim.
A few other cabinet ministers registered their disapproval too, but Zaid actually resigned and refused the PM’s curious offer of two weeks’ holiday if he’d return to “continue his reforms”.
Not that any reforms had been evident during Zaid’s six months of trying and failing to get them through the BN system.
At a press conference today he reportedly said that he could not convince his cabinet colleagues to look at things from a different perspective. “I faced a brick wall”, he added. “I can’t translate or make them understand the basic thing that we are a country that is fair to all races, (and that) we have the same rights under the federal constitution.”
But if he found his coalition peers a lost cause, he was less condemning of the prime minister, describing him as “a nice man” whose efforts to introduce reforms were “forced to take a back seat due to the internal turmoil in Umno and Barisan Nasional”.
With Zaid’s defection and Pakatan Rakyat apparently poised to achieve a parliamentary majority, of course there’s more turmoil than ever in Umno and BN, and the PM has so far not been so nice as to accept Anwar’s invitation to meet and discuss the transfer of power.
So the moment of truth looks like dragging-on for some time, and there’s no guessing what BN will come up with to try and stave-off defeat.
But if and when Pakatan prevails, it has a great deal of travail ahead if it’s to restore Malaysia to a true democracy.
Umno-owned media
Repealing iniquitous laws like the ISA, the Emergency Ordinance and the Printing, Presses and Publications Act will be easy. But repairing Malaysia’s institutions, ravaged as they are by decades of BN corruption, neglect or both, could take years of unremitting resolve and hard labour.
Restoring the respectability of the ruthlessly truthless Umno-owned media will take special legislation to enforce their sale to politically-independent proprietors.
Ridding the judiciary of all the outlaws and laws unto themselves that make Malaysian justice such a lottery and laughing-stock will require, at the very least, a genuine royal commission followed by a great many firings.
Cleaning-up the police force will take years of investigations and thousands of prosecutions, preferably starting at Inspector-General and working systematically down through the ranks.
Of course every other civil-service department is crying-out for the same top-down treatment. So the Anti-Corruption Agency, itself thoroughly reformed, will have to be massively expanded to cope with all this extra work, as well as watching Pakatan law-makers and administrators for signs of betraying the rakyat’s trust in them by straying from the straight and narrow.
In short, after this magic moment we’ve all waited so long for, Pakatan and the rest of us are faced with the monumental task of putting Malaysia to rights again. But as long as the replacement of BN goes according to plan, at least we’ll be striving in a good cause, and with the sense of satisfaction that the truth has finally set us free.
And the timing is impeccable, if only by coincidence, as just yesterday the mendacious Mahathir’s monstrous old mate Mugabe was finally forced to sign a power-sharing agreement with Movement for Democratic Change’s Morgan Tsvangiri.Also, as if in sympathy with Zimbabwe’s basket-case economy, equity investors around the globe received a new reality-check in the form of fresh bankruptcies resulting from the US sub-prime mortgages fiasco.
Of course Bill Clinton’s much-quoted political maxim, “It’s the economy, stupid”, has played some part in the unpopularity of Malaysia’s Barisan Nasional regime.
Its massive hike in petrol prices, plus inflation in the cost of food and other staples, has fueled unpopularity in people who might otherwise have remained supportive or at least politically apathetic.
But, much to Malaysians’ credit, a great many of the millions saying “tak nak, lah” to Pak Lah have been doing so out of principle, not self-interest.
Sick to death of the government’s unwillingness or inability to deliver the institutional reforms it’s been promising for years, more and more citizens have opted to throw-in their lot with the opposition.
BN and its cronies should have seen the writing on the wall back in March when the electorate deprived them of their long-cherished two-thirds parliamentary majority.
Or, come to think of it, they should have read the signs months earlier, in the Bersih and Hindraf rallies. But rather than face such unpalatable realities back then, they rolled-out the riot police and then threw the Hindraf Five (P. Uthayakumar, M. Manoharan, R. Kenghadharan, V. Ganabatirau and T. Vasanthakumar, to honour them individually by name) into detention under the ISA.Since then the leaders and followers of BN have found themselves in growing disarray. Beset with a chorus of criticism from without, torn by factional in-fighting, and as always determined to demonstrate once again that the experience teaches them nothing.
Worse than ever
Instead of enacting the PM’s promised reforms, they actually acted worse than ever. Endlessly stringing-out the show-trial of the selected suspects in the Altantuya murder, harassing Raja Petra Kamarudin and others for their blogging and statutory declarations against injustice, and stirring-up racial discord.
Then, incredibly, and to virtually universal incredulity, they had the temerity to trump-up a new charge of sodomy against Anwar.
When Anwar, undaunted, still came after them, they went totally berserk, removing 49 of their MPs from temptation to join Pakatan Rakyat by flying them to Taiwan, then invoking the hated ISA against Raja Petra, MP and state assemblyperson Teresa Kok and Sin Chew Daily senior reporter Tan Hoon Cheng.Resorting to the ISA was the last straw, not only for many of us opposed to BN and all it stands for, but also for its own reformist law minister, Zaid Ibrahim.
A few other cabinet ministers registered their disapproval too, but Zaid actually resigned and refused the PM’s curious offer of two weeks’ holiday if he’d return to “continue his reforms”.
Not that any reforms had been evident during Zaid’s six months of trying and failing to get them through the BN system.
At a press conference today he reportedly said that he could not convince his cabinet colleagues to look at things from a different perspective. “I faced a brick wall”, he added. “I can’t translate or make them understand the basic thing that we are a country that is fair to all races, (and that) we have the same rights under the federal constitution.”
But if he found his coalition peers a lost cause, he was less condemning of the prime minister, describing him as “a nice man” whose efforts to introduce reforms were “forced to take a back seat due to the internal turmoil in Umno and Barisan Nasional”.
With Zaid’s defection and Pakatan Rakyat apparently poised to achieve a parliamentary majority, of course there’s more turmoil than ever in Umno and BN, and the PM has so far not been so nice as to accept Anwar’s invitation to meet and discuss the transfer of power.
So the moment of truth looks like dragging-on for some time, and there’s no guessing what BN will come up with to try and stave-off defeat.
But if and when Pakatan prevails, it has a great deal of travail ahead if it’s to restore Malaysia to a true democracy.
Umno-owned media
Repealing iniquitous laws like the ISA, the Emergency Ordinance and the Printing, Presses and Publications Act will be easy. But repairing Malaysia’s institutions, ravaged as they are by decades of BN corruption, neglect or both, could take years of unremitting resolve and hard labour.Restoring the respectability of the ruthlessly truthless Umno-owned media will take special legislation to enforce their sale to politically-independent proprietors.
Ridding the judiciary of all the outlaws and laws unto themselves that make Malaysian justice such a lottery and laughing-stock will require, at the very least, a genuine royal commission followed by a great many firings.
Cleaning-up the police force will take years of investigations and thousands of prosecutions, preferably starting at Inspector-General and working systematically down through the ranks.
Of course every other civil-service department is crying-out for the same top-down treatment. So the Anti-Corruption Agency, itself thoroughly reformed, will have to be massively expanded to cope with all this extra work, as well as watching Pakatan law-makers and administrators for signs of betraying the rakyat’s trust in them by straying from the straight and narrow.
In short, after this magic moment we’ve all waited so long for, Pakatan and the rest of us are faced with the monumental task of putting Malaysia to rights again. But as long as the replacement of BN goes according to plan, at least we’ll be striving in a good cause, and with the sense of satisfaction that the truth has finally set us free.
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