Rudyard Kipling"
“When you're left wounded on Afganistan's plains and
the women come out to cut up what remains, Just roll to your rifle
and blow out your brains,
And go to your God like a soldier”
General Douglas MacArthur"
“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, there is only attack and attack and attack some more.
“It is foolish and wrong to mourn the men who died. Rather we should thank God that such men lived.
The Soldier stood and faced God
Which must always come to pass
He hoped his shoes were shining
Just as bright as his brass
"Step forward you Soldier,
How shall I deal with you?
Have you always turned the other cheek?
To My Church have you been true?"
"No, Lord, I guess I ain't
Because those of us who carry guns
Can't always be a saint."
I've had to work on Sundays
And at times my talk was tough,
And sometimes I've been violent,
Because the world is awfully rough.
But, I never took a penny
That wasn't mine to keep.
Though I worked a lot of overtime
When the bills got just too steep,
The Soldier squared his shoulders and said
And I never passed a cry for help
Though at times I shook with fear,
And sometimes, God forgive me,
I've wept unmanly tears.
I know I don't deserve a place
Among the people here.
They never wanted me around
Except to calm their fears.
If you've a place for me here,
Lord, It needn't be so grand,
I never expected or had too much,
But if you don't, I'll understand."
There was silence all around the throne
Where the saints had often trod
As the Soldier waited quietly,
For the judgment of his God.
"Step forward now, you Soldier,
You've borne your burden well.
Walk peacefully on Heaven's streets,
You've done your time in Hell."
Sabah scandal a Madani blueprint for successive govts By Commander S THAYAPARAN (Retired) Royal Malaysian Navy
Monday, March 17, 2025
Malaysiakini : Latheefa Koya, the former MACC chief, has claimed that someone high up
threatened the whistleblower. Let us assume that there is a conspiracy
to silence the whistleblower and cover up this corruption scandal.
The
politically strategic thing for Madani to do is to announce that the
government takes these allegations extremely seriously and an
investigation would be carried out.
The whistleblower would be afforded protection by the state, and the graftbusting body would have carried out an investigation.
This
way, Madani could have stage-managed everything, mitigated the damage
and generated optics that would make it seem that Madani was tackling
corruption seriously.
Instead, what we witnessed was a manure show
of epic proportions. This, to me at least, demonstrated that Madani
does not even care what the rakyat thinks.
Instead,
the participants in this sordid drama are issuing laughable denials,
the MACC by perception is seen to be either abetting or enabling their
denials and the political class remains silent.
The way things are and willcontinue to be
Why,
for instance, is the opposition not making this an issue? Well, because
they understand that this is the way they are going to handle things
when they assume power.
In fact, by remaining silent, they allow
Madani to be the corrupt party in this, and what they say will not come
back to bite their behinds when they assume power and do the same thing.
Prime
Minister Anwar Ibrahim, whose platform on the campaign trail was
governmental corruption and malfeasance, has now become the poster boy
for enabling the kleptocratic class.
Anwar claimed the charges against his number two, Deputy Prime Minister Ahmad Zahid Hamidi, were politically motivated.
Deputy Prime Minister Ahmad Zahid Hamidi (left) and Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim
He
has defended convicted felon and former prime minister Najib Abdul
Razak’s reduced sentence. His home minister apparently has the power to
define any location as a prison.
And
now, of course, his number two publicly hopes that another former prime
minister gets the “justice” he did when it comes to the latter’s
corruption investigation.
If this is not a “wink, wink”, I do not know what is.
All part of complex, corrupt system
Let
us be honest here. We can talk about “big fishes” when it comes to
corruption, but recall when Pakatan Harapan was in power for the first
time.
Remember when the investigation into former Sarawak governor
Abdul Taib Mahmud - perhaps the white whale of oppositional talking
points when it came to corruption - came to a standstill?
Then de facto law minister Liew Vui Keong said: “They were not new evidence that would allow MACC to open a new investigation paper.”
At
the time, Latheefa said of the status of high-profile cases: “However,
not all complaints ended up being investigated, especially those with
evidence which were just printouts from the internet.”
Former MACC chief commissioner Latheefa Koya
This
was a really queer thing to say because Harapan made its case against
corruption from printouts from the internet or at the very least had no
problem making such cases against their political adversaries.
Now,
do not get me wrong. I think that Latheefa and Lawyers For Liberty are
doing good work here, but ultimately, what they are doing is exposing
the corruption of the system in place, one which has been sustained
because of the will of the political class and its factotums.
The
entire political system of this country is part of a complex ecosystem
of private and public interests that seek not only political hegemony
but also religious hegemony.
We are not dealing with corrupt individuals within a system but rather a system of corruption with a few honest men and women.
Rotten to the core, for decades
Corruption
is not a recent phenomenon, but rather it is part of the DNA of the
organism fueled by racial and religious imperatives and a compromised
electoral system.
Umno/BN designed the system, and Madani is
attempting to replicate it, so any attempt at corrective measures is met
by a deluge of propaganda or the spectre of the “Green Wave”.
Let
us not forget that when we talk of corruption we are not only talking
about the corruption of the political elites but also of institutions
which are considered sacred cows to the bangsa (race) and agama (religion) crowd.
So
you see, even though I believe that there are many honest political
operatives in Harapan, they are outnumbered by people who are willing to
make compromises and sustain the system either for political gain or
because they are so narcotised by their political party that to make
waves would be detrimental to their political survival.
The tragedy here is that Madani is doing something about corruption, albeit nothing that would reform the system.
This
is something that PN is not even capable of doing. When it comes to
corruption in this country, it truly is the devil’s alternative.
