“We are not retreating. We are advancing in another direction.”
“It is fatal to enter any war without the will to win it.”
“Old soldiers never die; they just fade away.
“The soldier, above all other people, prays for peace,
for he must suffer and be the deepest wounds and scars of war.”
“May God have mercy upon my enemies, because I won't .” “The object of war is not to die for your country but to make the other bastard die for his.
“Nobody ever defended anything successfully, there is only attack and attack and attack some more.
“Fixed fortifications are a monument to the stupidity of man." “It is foolish and wrong to mourn the men who died. Rather we should thank God that such men lived.
If Najib returns, it will be because of Harapan’s incompetence - Commander S THAYAPARAN (Retired) Royal Malaysian Navy
Thursday, May 12, 2022
Malaysiakini : Malaysians have voted in successive corrupt regimes for decades, and
the opposition - by first breaking the two-thirds majority and winning
certain states - demonstrated that it had an alternative narrative which
resonated, especially amongst the urban and semi-urban polities.
While
the data coming out from the string of Umno/BN electoral victories in
various state elections points to the reality that Umno is either not
gaining enough new ground with Malay voters or that it is losing ground
with Malay voters means bupkis.
Elections are about the people who come out to vote.
Opposition Leader Anwar Ibrahim
Do
Pakatan Harapan political strategists really think that people who vote
Umno/BN especially in the recent state elections really did so because
it was a vote for Najib? What about the seats Harapan and the DAP lost?
Were those votes for Najib too?
The people who do come out to
vote for Umno/BN want a form of stability. We should not be cavalier
about claiming that social media disinformation and internet lies are
the stratagems of Umno only.
Harapan is not dealing with the
monolith Umno/BN of old. At this moment, Harapan is dealing with Umno
riddled with factions who are waging a very public social media war and a
bureaucracy which is in turmoil because various proxies are attempting
to use the apparatus of the state in these factional wars.
And what has the leader of the opposition Anwar Ibrahim been doing? Beyond having to deny
recorded clandestine conversations with the very kleptocrats, Harapan
has been telling its base of what is destroying Malaysia, and there is
this big tent nonsense whose sole aim is to wrest power from Umno.
The big tent, of course, is made up of the most mercenary political operatives Malaysia has to offer.
Harapan is the big tent
The
news cycle should not be dominated by items highlighting the internal
bickerings of Harapan. The narrative should not be of how Harapan is
attempting to obstruct an election or courting political frogs or how
Harapan is attempting to form another government through the backdoor.
All
these news stories do is feed into the narrative that Anwar is a
power-hungry incompetent hack and that the “Chinese” DAP will do
anything and everything to hang on to the coattails of Malay power
brokers to secure power.
And when the Bangsa Malaysia kool-aid ran into the reality of ketuanan politics, this is what happened. Mahathir said:
"We still have to give them (non-Malays), but what we gave to them was
very small (compared to what the Malays got). But we could not say it
then, because then the Chinese would be angry. That's why we didn't talk
about that. But now we have to because I have to explain this thing."
Also,
when Harapan says “kleptocrats” are not welcome, could Harapan give us a
list of kleptocrats who are not welcome in this “big tent”?
This
way, people who support Harapan would be safe and secure in the
knowledge they were not voting for kleptocrats or alleged kleptocrats,
even though in the last general election, folks who were deemed
kleptocrats were embraced by the Harapan faithful and indeed one of them
became prime minister.
Harapan has never acknowledged that the
Sheraton Move was part of the dysfunctional compact they made to secure
power – which even the old maverick did not believe they could do, hence
the system wrecking its manifesto.
Harapan seems to be making the
same mistake again by attempting to forge alliances and placate
political operatives who have no intention of supporting the kind of
reforms that Harapan claims it wants to make.
The rakyat notice
things like this and social media is not a good barometer of how people
feel about the government of the day, especially since the swing vote is
not inclined to air their views on traditional friendly opposition
media.
PKR leader Nurul Izzah Anwar caught a lot of flak for
basically belling the cat but in one of the braver moments in
oppositional politics, former deputy education minister Teo Nie Ching,
said this: “I personally won’t say (that we have done enough to
convince the rakyat). We could have been more organised and put aside
personal grievances, among many things."
Here is what people forget. Harapan has always been a big tent.
It
already had various ideological and religious tensions which were
sublimated for a common purpose and policy framework, which although not
perfect, was better than anything Umno/BN was offering.
And Harapan did win elections and various states without having to abandon everything for the sake of political power.
It is that Harapan should be going up against Umno now.