Tuesday, September 16, 2008

Not So Pearl & Gem :Change Is Imminent and Inevitable ....

Tan Sri ,

'Nearly all man can stand adversity ,but if you want to test a man ,give him POWER' .

When I look at the Malay Mail yesterday ,1st staring at you was Pak Lah , pale ,tired ,beaten and confused .Opposite was his nemesis ,young ,vibrant and arrogant .Next page was Zaid Ibrahim's ' I do not agree with the ISA arrest '.Elsewhere in the Sun and Straits Times ,some ministers echoing the same song as Najib's ,'Muhyiddin has overstepped his bound ,but leave it to the UMNO grassroots ' . As if the grassroots can think .What the UMNO grassroots ever think about is 'how and when is the next makan ! 'Democracy in UMNO is very much alive .Leadership :Dead !

As much as I did not like Dr M ,he probably would have handled it differently .From Day 1 ,he would probably called Koh Tsu Koon and throw him a file for him to read in 2 minutes and told him to shut up or he would be thrown to Batu Gajah by evening .He would call Ahmad to immediately make 'some animal' noise' in the form of an indirect apology .One can call a sparrow by any other name ,it is still a sparrow .That was leadership Dr M style ..

To govern Malaysia you must be much better than good ,super tough minded ,wise and 'gedebe' all at the same time.Dr M was .No 2 ways about it otherwise people like Samy Vellu ,Ong Ka Tiig and Tsu Koon forget about their places in the 'scheme of things' and 'naik tonchang' ... ..{We have had too much of that lately} .

A pity towards the end of his tenure he surrounded himself with corporate figures that disappoint him and let down Bumi aspirations { no need to name names ,too many of them ,all Abdul D's boys }, and left UMNO in a huff ,leaderless , with a 2nd in command who is too feeble and too nice to be numero uno.

Now come December what do we have down the line in UMNO ?An overweight ,slow moving Muhyiddin Yasin that look like he need some boost from Tongkat Ali plus some thyroxine to peep up the brain function .Or a well tried Najib Tun Razak up to his nose with scandals ,and carrying an excess baggage in the form of Rusmah .Yes ,Rusmah !All unproven of course .Are we going to have to go another 8 years of slow economic growth and general malaise and lethargy ?These 2 candidates I mean ,both do not look wholesome .Do we have a choice ?

Is Ku Li still up to it after so many years of just being 1st there in line starting the 'suap pulut' semangat at important marriages ? Can he be the bridge ,that important bridge , before younger and more dynamic individuals grow up from the UMNO 's melting pot ?Does he still has the clout and the money .UMNO election is very much about money .

Is people like Rais Yatim ,Shabery Chik etc etc not there yet to takeover the helm ?Is UMNO' pelapis' mechanism so feudalistic ,so immovable and so 'politic wang' that real leaders cannot come up from the crevices and be noticed .Let us look beyond Tan Sri Muhd 'I do not know English' of course .

Above all does UMNO has the time ?Election is in December ,Pak Lah and his cabinet are looking very very shaky by the days .'Lost' is the right word .

This is what Dr M has left us .In his haste to remain the unchallenged numero uno ,he has weeded out all the strong challenge and personalities that could have put UMNO on a stronger foothold ,and introduced mechanism that would make an initial wrong choice in leader difficult to disengage , in short a very feudal system .

Weak leadership in UMNO and an impossible system to weed out the wrong persuasive 'mutants' that survive the initial elections .Dr M is a great man but his legacy he has left behind was not .Malaysia can support a 'weak' sultan or 2 ,since there are 9 of them to choose from ,but not a weak PM :we have to endure him until his 2nd or 3rd bypass !

On the other side of the coin ,we have Anwar of Keadilan .Anwar is Keadilan and Keadilan is Anwar .From the outside it look more 'MIC' which begs the question :Are the Malays ready for Anwar ?The Indians and Chinese are but are the Malays really ready for him ?

The ongoing perception is ,in supporting Keadilan ,the Malays will be paying too high a price .HINDRAF and Chinese support for Anwar come at a hefty price !Just perception .Of course there is PAS in Pakatan but PAS now stand for Islamic universalism and going big on this .Will the Malays ,currently disapointed with the relative immobility of UMNO , to pay too dearly in supporting Keadilan .Karpal Singh and Lim Kit Siang can appear angelic and Malaysian Malaysia can sound and look ideal but we all know who MrLim and Karpal are ,right through to their heart .

Will Malay interest be further diluted ? Put more bluntly ,is Anwar going to sell the Malays just to satisfy his ambition to be PM ?How strong is PAS as a balancing power in Anwar's fractious Pakatan ?

But again let us Malays be not too harsh on Anwar .5 years of solitary confinement under ISA either break a man or make his resolve even stronger .Iman ,ilm and amal .Anwar and his family does not look like one who would perhaps in years to come be likely to 'hoard' millions from the public domain .Unless his daughter or daughters got married to another 'KJ' clone .We hope ,for the sake of survival of our ummah he has come out a better man ,from those years of confinement and self examination ,to usher Malaysia to a new beginning .

Is this going to be the end of UMNOputraism and the beginning of a new Malaysia ?DAP ,despite it's overwhelming Chinese chauvinism knows they cannot go any where in a thousand years near Power in Malaysia .They have to piggy bag on the Malays .Despite the rhetorics ,Karpal Singh and Lim kit Siang know this power dynamics ,and I think they know , otherwise Anwar has to make them both know about this in no uncertain terms !.

"You guys want to piggy back with me ,OK ,but you better know your place and my turf '".PAS will need time to sell the concept that Islam is for everybody ,especially for the non Muslims .They need time to change their parochial image and be seen to be adept to both the next world and the present .

Hail to the new Chief .We are living in interesting time !

Dr Nik Howk

PS :Perhaps on the subject of 'anak and menantus' it would be good to incorporate in our 'new' political culture some mechanism for stronger abhorrence of 'big business' related to the 1st and 2nd political family .We have seen the downfall of 2 previous PM mainly related to this issue .

We are not asking all PM's 'anak and menantus' to be dancers like Ronald Reagan's son or to have to migrate like Mark Thatcher ,but I am sure certain lines can be drawn so that conflict of interest would not recur .If anyone aspires to be PM ,there are certain price his family has to pay for such 'historical' priveledge .Their 'anak menantus' can be great doctors ,bankers ,performing arts ,excellent engineers or 1st class architects but once they dabble into big business and failed at it miserably and get 'daddy ' or daddy influence daddy's colleagues to help ,conflict of interest invariably creeps in .

You cannot have the cake and eat it as well .This is 1st world culture and if we aspire to be 1st world we have to behave like one !

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