Ku Li And The Opposition

Veteran politician Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah, from my point of view, is suffering from a mental condition called nostalgia, so to speak. He said recently that he remained loyal towards the party struggles despite his many criticisms leveled at the government.

I empathise with him, as only he knows how painful it's having spent his whole lifetime contributing to UMNO and it's struggle, sacrificing a lot of things along the way, only to see the party deviates from it's original struggle when the party was formed in 1946.

Despite offers for him to join the opposition rank, he refused, believing that UMNO might one day change and be the UMNO it once was, so he stuck his believe with the party despite incredible odds stacked against his believe. First let me say here and now, the old UMNO is not coming back. The old UMNO for the average Malays, the farmers, teachers and other noble but underpaid and under respected jobs have been replaced by the new UMNO, the professionals UMNO, more notably elite Malays UMNO.

The desire to serve the Malay interests that is the main reason for the party formation, are gone, exchanging such interest is monetary gain and so on. What's left is the symbols and their slogans about Malay struggle and so on, but the true meaning of such symbols and slogans are long gone inside the hearts and minds of many of UMNO's party members.

So, for Ku Li, who wanted a party to serve the average Malays, the best equivalent is PKR or PAS, although they don't chant Ketuanan Melayu or other similar Malay struggle chants, they are helping ordinary Malays and Malaysians in their struggle by giving them a voice that they lost. For example, PKR social welfare programmes such as the giving of monetary aides to university students and so on are proof of my claim.

While BN and UMNO are busy enriching their cronies with tenders and projects, it's this two party that's going down to the people and giving their rightful stake towards the richness of the the country and state which benefit the majority Malays without sacrificing the rights of other races. Case in point the privatisation of SYABAS in Selangor, where only a few cronies benefit from it, PKR together with PAS and DAP are correcting this inequity by subsidising the water and even offering to nationalise SYABAS so that the people of all races in the state can enjoy lower water price. The average Malays benefited from low water price without affecting the non-Malays, not to mention even the non-Malays are enjoying such benefit.

Aside from that, the Malays are now not the same Malays pre-Malayan Union that warranted the establishment of UMNO, Malaysia is not the same as Malaya then too. Many of the problems facing our country require for all the races to sit down together and reach common ground. The old way of separating like that of BN will not work anymore as such practice will only be a fertile ground for race and religious extremist as such system will surely reward them compared to a multi-racial party like PKR and DAP.

Simply giving the Malays more help and aide won't work anymore, rather it will only bring the Malays down into a state of complacency and entitlement like where the Malays are right now, while the Malays deprive the non-Malays of an opportunity to further advance themselves. UMNO forte along the years was just that, give the Malays more help and more aides which in the economic sector primarily benefited their cronies, but know it requires a different more comprehensive kind of a solution.So Ku Li should know that for him to serve the Malay and Malaysian interests simultaneously, the opposition is the right platform for him.

Finally, in addition to that, as a modern society, we Malays and Malaysians alike require more openness and freedom that UMNO, due to it's conservative stand, may not be willing to give. Such freedom like the freedom of speech and association have been long been deprived by the government in order that their political ideology remains the ruling and accepted ideology.

Rules such as ISA had been misused to make sure such freedom is curtailed. Malaysians want to be included in the shaping and creating of our national agenda, thus we must be allowed to speak up and associate ourselves with groups in order to better advance their views and beliefs although it may go against the government agenda and political stand.

Pakatan Rakyat seemed more incline to give us such rights, but UMNO so far have been supporting for restriction of them. So it is wise for Ku Li to adhere to this societal demand and to do so means him joining the Pakatan fold.

In conclusion, would like to join in the fray of many opposition supporters in reinviting Ku Li to the opposition side where his ideals and that of Malays and Malaysians can be better served so that his experience and values will further strenghten the opposition in their ability to serve the people and nation, and hopefully form the government and undue the many wrongs of the current government for the sake of all Malaysians, past, present and future generations.

Illusions and Politics.

Of late, the BN camp had use the large turnout of the people to the open houses that the party organize as a barometer that the people have return to their fold. As a personal observation, this may or may not be true but one thing for sure the turnout cannot be a trustworthy indication of public support as many factors could be concluded for the turnout, one being that Malaysians love food, especially free ones( hahahahaha).

Trying to create a parallel between public support of the government and number of people attending such open houses will only create an illusion that will bring not only the government into a state of disillusion, the people too are also beginning to be disillusioned by this and more.

Besides the open houses, the mainstream media had feed us with among others, the tea party with the PM which including to NST attracted more than 1500 people, creating a state of illusion that the PM is popular and is close to the Rakyat.

Well nothing wrong with the invitation I guess, but assuming that the PM is popular and is listening to us will only be known by future events like the General Election or in a smaller scale, by-elections and whether he's truly close to the rakyat will be determine by the subsequent policies he will introduce, whether or not it is people or political friendly. By policies, I mean real policies not mere slogans like 1Malaysia which is not back thus far by a real change in policies governing our country.

Then we have the invitation to write a letter to the PM on racial unity in these country which again might create the illusion that the PM is actually listening to us and value our feed back.

Again, we can only find out whether or not the PM truly treasure our opinions if there's a significant shift in our policy concerning racial unity as one can truly speculate the contents of such letters will surely include the need to reduce or stop completely racial politicking which is an essential element of UMNO poltical amno, the need to curtail the misuse of religion to political mileage which as recent development clearly shows, another UMNO modus operandi when it's Youth Wing organise protests nationwide on the use of the word Allah by non-Muslims to paint itself as the true fighter and protector of Islam and to stop mainstream media such as Utusan to incite racial hatred of the Malays towards their non-Malays countrymen.

Only when the PM actually put a stop towards all these practices or at least try to incorporate some of our more realistic feedback in these practices, then he's listening to us as if not, then the PM action in inviting us to write to him is only a public relations practice aimed at giving the impression that he's listening to us, when in actual fact he's not, deceiving us all the way.

Finally, with the PR coalition in shambles due to infighting, misunderstanding and disrespect towards each other, some UMNO and BN supporters have assumed that the people are tired of these and will automatically go back in supporting the BN, it might be true but not to the extent that they believe as most of opposition supporters are staying put and claim that such infighting is part and parcel of politics and that will not effect their determination to see a more democratic, inclusive,racial blind Malaysia that is govern by corrupt-free, transparent and accountable government as advocated by the opposition if they are elected to govern Malaysia with some state governments run by opposition showing just that.

In the end of the day, what counts is the performance of BN against Pakatan Rakyat, that will be the deciding factor by the people on who to vote for.

In conclusion, it's wise for the government to learn form the Pak Lah administration failure of separating between the reality and the illusion created by Pak Lah political team that used the media to create such an illusion that it tricked the creator of the illusion themselves into believing that their own illusion aimed at deceiving the public was indeed the reality when in fact it was mere news spinning and media propaganda all the way. They woke up in March8 the hard way, they say history repeats, well I'm banking on that adage to be true so that BN and UMNO will wake up from their dreams to shockingly find out that they're in Pakatan Rakyat ruled Malaysia.

Justice For Everyone And Everywhere Is The Responsibility Of All

As the tittle stated above clearly shows, this article is about justice, not the typical notion of justice which involves courts, jurisdiction, laws and so on but it refers to justice in itself. Justice is beyond courts,jurisdiction and laws although they have a role to play in the delivering justice to the people.

Having said that however, we Malaysians must be aware that in the process of delivering justice, the system that ensure such delivery takes place is often tampered with by invisible hands that have their own agenda. Past cases can back my claim such as the unfair sacking of the then Chief Justice Tun Salleh Abas and the Linggam scandal that our judicial system is a mess and cannot be relied upon to deliver justice.

So, we as Malaysians should take heed on the admonition of the Chairman of The US Senate Foreign Committee, Senator John Kerry that Malaysia must ensure a fair trial for Anwar which he is entitled to as a Malaysians and a human being. The same goes with the issue of 50 Australian MPs who decried that Anwars trial is a mere political ploy to bring about his downfall, a sentiment shared by many including Malaysians, me myself included.

However the opposite happened when a group of people led by Khairy BN Youth and Ibrahim Ali Perkasa when amok infront of the Australian High Commissioner, telling them to respect our laws and not interfere with Malaysians internal matters.

In should be reminded as "Melayu Mudah Lupa'', that Malaysia had partake in many issues outside of our internal sphere like the Palestinian cause, Myanmar Military Junta atrocities and even cut diplomatic ties with South Africa due to their Apartheid policy. We did it because we want to have a foreign policy that are based on good conscience and moral values that we hope to spread in the international community whether or not the role we played was big or small nor did it brought the desired outcome or not.

We aspire to be a good member of the international community so when we see injustice, we act in whatever way possible to mitigate the injustice suffered by our fellow man and woman despite it being in some other country outside of our border as it is the right thing to do as a fellow human being.

So, Malaysians shouldn't buy into the argument that this foreign countries are meddling in our internal affairs, trying to challenge our sovereignty and if one is jingoistic trying to colonise us, rather we should evaluate the logic of their move as a concerned global citizen and put ourselves in their shoes as their action towards us is also our action towards other nation suffering from injustice. We should know that their action was simply a friendly advice.

We should protect our sovereignty however we must first know what is sovereignty in the first place and do not mix them up with international community playing a role in the spread of justice for everyone everywhere.

In conclusion, Malaysians must ensure that our government give a fair trial towards Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim and that the court is impartial to the fact that he is the opposition leader. At stake is not only our international stature in the world eyes, but more importantly the already damaged credibility of our justice system that many Malaysians believed is bias and is a weapon used by the government to ensure that their rule continues by hook or by crook that in their of the day will only deny Malaysians their entitlement towards justice and fairness that are necessities for a society to function in a civilised manner that we Malaysians deserve to have. It's a basic right and not a privilege, thus we are denied that right, it's within our rights as humans to fight for it at all cause until that right is given, not only for the present but also future generation.