Pearls & Gem : The Dawn Of A New Era

Friends ,

The recent by-election result from Kuala Terengganu was no surprise to me .You ask any Malays now below 35 whether they would vote for UMNO in any election and almost 100 % of them would say they would vote a frog instead !You ask those Malays with tertiary degrees ,indirect product of UMNO's affirmative policy ,a great majority will vote the opposition ,except those few who live on lucrative government contracts and handout and the Pemuda's and Puteri's looking for easy life as government's hangers on .

This is a sad state of affair .A party that once was so proud of it's election record and always the bastion of the Malaysian government now having to swallow humble pie and continue to whistle in the dark .Still impervious to change and insensitive to criticism ,with built in mechanism that tend to promote the unashamedly corrupt ,the inept and the political missfits.With all these UMNO is like that robot they sent together with the astronauts in the film Red Planet: It has been switched on a self destruct 'military mode' !

With Najib Tun Razak definitely taking over at the helm in March the scenario for self destruct would almost be complete and beyond 'reconfiguration' .With the Altantuya baggage on his shoulder and his wife's previous excesses ,in these years and age of information, his would be an uphill task

Let us look at the other side of the equation :Anuar Ibrahim .Anuar's achilles tendon at least to the Malays [ and no one gets to power in Malaysia without overwhelming Malay support ]is that his Party Keadilan lacks Malay content .Look more HINDRAF if anything else .The marriage of convenience between PAS and DAP in Pakatan is neccesary and make no mistake about it ,both Lim Kit Siang and that old man Karpal can make all the animal noise they want about hudud but PAS is the senior partner in Anuar's Pakatan .Without PAS ,Anuar might as well be the President for HINDRAFF .Lim Kit Siang knows fully well that the Chinese ,as represented by DAP ,would never be in a position to share some semblance of power in a 100 years without piggy bagging on Anuar 's Pakatan ,and Anuar know without PAS he might as well get back to the relative safety of having free lunch for the rest of his life in the vicinity of Sungei Buloh .

Look at it this way : If Dr M did not offer that parachute jump for Anuar some 20 years back where would Anuar be ?My guess is that he would probably join PAS but since he was a young man in a hurry and PAS then was all 'kopiah and no content',UMNO became his obvious choice .

What would I do if I am one of the think tank for PAS now that 'UMNO is in its death throes and there would be a vacumn soon enough .I would advice PAS to get a 1st class PR firm specializing in massive 're-branding exercise' .Islam from time immemorial stood for excellence in this 'duniya' and excellence in the 'akhirat': when Florence ,Madrid and Rome were still bathed in darkness ,ignorance and plague ,Cordoba was a city of light and centre of knowledge and the arts .Now these former 'barbarians' have the audacity to want to teach the Muslims all over the world how to live and govern .

PAS should get away from the present stigmata of just being seen as champions only for the meek and the mediocre .PAS ,like Islam ,must aim and 'sell' itself as a party that stand for 'universality' of man and should not be weighted down for being 'Malay' .Islam is about the 'Universal man ' with excellence in thought ,actions and word .PAS should go for more 'Erdogans' amongst it's fold .

In 2009 ,NEP and Nationalism are outmoded concepts .Equality ,egality and fraternity are in . They are also the rallying cry in Islam .They just need to be repackaged !Malay dilemma is no longer a relevant issue .This vacumn in leadership is a Malaysian dilemma ,and all issues must be looked from an overall Malaysian perspective ,not Malay ,Chinese or Indian .In the eye of God ,all of us are equal except for our level of piety .

Enough of the bullshits ,I better go to sleep !