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."
COMMENT | Bravo, Guan Eng and Pua By Commander S THAYAPARAN (Retired) Royal Malaysian Navy
Monday, July 06, 2026
Malaysiakini : I have no idea why Lim and Pua would be singled out
now, which should have been a time for inclusive political optics since
the rakyat obviously approve of the completion of the LRT3 project.
The
quote that opens this piece is evidence that there was nothing done by
Lim and Pua which was not approved by former prime minister Dr Mahathir
Mohamad.
Former prime minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad
Keep
in mind that it does not matter whether this was a cabinet decision or
not, because the old maverick has publicly said that Lim could not and would not do anything without his approval.
“So, how come he is said to be the one with the power? He had no power,” the former prime minister said.
Furthermore,
when it comes to the benefit of the rakyat, the old maverick has said
it was Lim “... who proposed for the federal government to give a
one-off payment of RM400 million to Kelantan, which was facing financial
trouble. Terengganu and Kedah, two other Malay-majority states, were
also given RM200 million each.”
“These two states were not even
Harapan states. They were the opposition, and they were Malay states.
But he (Lim) knew that there were many financial problems there,”
Mahathir had said.
No one stops the gravy train
Now
what we have to remember is that these kinds of dynamics always play
out because the system is predicated on rewarding the sometimes-criminal
behaviour of the crony class, as the old maverick reminds us.
Former prime minister Najib Abdul Razak
“You
can’t do that (terminate contracts under former prime minister Najib
Abdul Razak’s administration) easily; you have to make considerations.
“Although the contractors may have bribed the (then) prime minister, he had given up a portion of his profit,” Mahathir said.
The
problem with our tax ringgit is that its uses, which are supposed to be
for the rakyat, rarely work out that way because of the so-called
“drainage”.
Bureaucrats
are oftentimes indifferent or complicit in these leakages. Former prime
minister Ismail Sabri Yaakob admitted that nobody in the vast
bureaucracy had any idea about the effectiveness of the government’s many poverty alleviation programmes.
“Many
ministries had programmes on poverty alleviation, but there was no
specific monitoring of their effectiveness,” Ismail said.
Former prime minister Ismail Sabri Yaakob
Monitoring
these programmes does not mean there would automatically be
transparency. This is because many of these programmes are part of the
gravy train driven by bureaucrats, political operatives, and their
various proxies.
Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim also recently
lamented the abuse of bumiputera loans, which tells rational Malaysians
everything we need to know about the average majority of rakyat who are
screwed over by the system, which has nothing to do with non-Malay
political operatives.
And let us be very clear, not only did the old maverick threaten to fire Lim a couple of times, but he also got into a public spat with Pua, labelling him (in a roundabout way) as arrogant.
The
response from these two men demonstrates that there were tensions
between the crony class and public servants who believed it was their
job to safeguard the public interest.
Theplutocratic class
Meanwhile,
PKR rabble rouser Hassan Abdul Karim has said that not only has there
been a return of the crony class, but now we have the Mahakaya.
You can discover the types of Remora capitalists (as I refer to them) in Hassan’s warning, but pay attention to the third type: “These people seem to enjoy immunity and cannot be touched due to the 3R ban.”
The Pasir Gudang MP also noted their business dealings, even though this was expressly forbidden by the Federal Constitution.
Pasir Gudang MP Hassan Abdul Karim
And Mahathir did have his scraps with this type of class back in the day. As reported by The Independent, “In the meantime, the government is waging all-out war on the rulers.”
“Civil
servants have been told to seek the prime minister’s permission before
seeing the king; state governments are under orders to refuse business
favours to their rulers.
“Religious teachers have been encouraged to comment on the un-Islamic behaviour of the supposed guardians of Islam.”
I want to be very clear. I am not saying that the party Lim and Pua represent is not linked in any way to the plutocratic class.
Indeed, it would be disingenuous to make that claim. It is no accident that the DAP got its moniker “Development Action Party”.
But
the reality is that, from public records and their responses, it is
evident that both men operating under the system they were under chose
to safeguard public interests, or at the very least attempted to do so.
We
can have a discussion about the numbers behind these kinds of projects,
but to further a specific type of narrative by singling out these two
is beyond the pale.
Najib gets his reputation laundered while Lim
and Pua get smeared as people who do not have the interests of the
rakyat at heart.
By not responding to these types of
criticisms, the only thing the DAP is doing is normalising narratives
that will damage its credibility with its base.
