by Martin Jalleh
(MJ tries to capture the initial events leading to Umno’s power grabbing, pariah politics and pyrrhic victory in Perak)
The rakyat of Perak are robbed in broad daylight of their political right to determine the State Government they want. Their will is ridden roughshod over by a few renegades and running dogs ready to reap their reward. A day of reckoning will come.
A fraudulent state government rules Perak. It is a farcical government of a fallacious “majority”. The people are frustrated and furious. They believe that a fake legislature forced upon them will eventually face its fatal consequences.
C4 and 4Cs
The Election Commission (EC) plays politics and panders to the political (pay)master. It even portrays itself as a court of law and makes a palpably wrong decision that prevents the people from being the paramount arbitrator to overcome Perak’s political deadlock.
The new EC chairman refuses to recognise the Perak Speaker’s request to call for two by-elections after two assemblymen “prostituted” themselves. It is a duty which he is constitutionally bound to do so – a fact promptly and plainly confirmed by his predecessor.
The EC chairman sets a precedent that will perpetuate party hopping and paves the way for Umno’s power grabbing, pariah politics and pyrrhic victory. He reinforces growing public suspicion that the EC is hand-in-glove with the powers-that-be.
The mandate given to Pakatan Rakyat (PR) by the majority of Perakians is made a mockery of by the minority UMNO State Government. Umno survives on manipulative maneuverings, mysterious disappearances and money politics led by Machiavellian characters like Najib Tun Razak, who will soon assume the mantle of PM.
Soon after Umno’s defeat in the Kuala Terengganu by-election in January, its elites called for a “revamp”, a “reinstating of the ‘wow’ factor” and “radical reforms”. As proof of its unwavering resolve – it receives without any reservation two former PKR assemblymen who have been charged for corruption!
Dr M slams the Umno leadership for ‘stooping low’ in courting the two crossovers. He should know its implications. He had left behind a Cabinet of soiled reputations and an Umno full of spent characters and self-seeking sycophants. Pak Lah’s new MACC, a supposedly “serious” effort to stem out corruption, turns out to be a silly joke.
The country catches a glimpse of Najib’s “culture of change”. More powerful than C4, he will charge this country up when he wears the crown, with 4Cs – Corruption, Coercion, Crossovers and Coups. Such is his commitment to compromise our democracy – whatever the cost!
Dr M, who preferred Najib over Pak Lah as PM, very correctly captured in his blog (when he predicted that those using bribery will win in the Umno elections in March) the coming catastrophe in this country: “We will get an Umno government that is corrupt and without morals.”
The backroom politics of Umno and its backdoor takeover of the Perak State Government, forms the perfect background for Najib to lead Bolehland into a political backwater. Many believe that the bedlam created by Umno in Perak will surely bring about a backlash expressed in the ballot-box of the next General Elections.
Silver State’s Shaky Stability
Confronted by Umno’s hypocrisy, hopping highhandedness, hideous characters and hoax majority, the Menteri Besar (MB) of Perak and many Perakians turn to and place their hopes high on His Royal Highness (HRH) Sultan Azlan Shah – whom they hold in high regard.
Surely on His Silver Jubilee as Sultan of the Silver State, the exemplary sovereign who was a former Lord President, will shine like a silver lining in the sordid state of affairs. Indeed, he will safeguard the sentiments of his subjects expressed in the last General Elections.
Sadly, the Sultan’s solution makes very little sense to his subjects. HRH seems swayed by Umno’s political subterfuge and scheming. He summons the MB who sought a dissolution of the State Assembly. There will be no snap elections. The MB is told to step down, and to do so swiftly. The saddle belongs to Umno.
The popular MB of positive policies proves he is no pushover. All he wants is that the democratic procedures and process be followed properly. The Sultan’s personal discretion and his straying beyond his parameters of power is met with public disbelief and disappointment. Public perception over his impartiality plummets.
Respected retired judge N H Chan suggests that HRH has “sidestepped” provisions of the Perak constitution and made a “fatal error”. Tengku Razaleigh strongly implies that the removal of the MB by HRH was done “without regard for the rule of law”. And as Zaid Ibrahim sees it, “political questions should be resolved in the legislature and not behind closed doors in a palace”.
The Sultan returns Perak to its original stalemate. Nothing changes. Only the roles are reversed. The same razor thin majority remains. The initial political uncertainty is reinforced. Politicking in Perak – to remain in power or retain control – rages on, with each side trying to lure defectors.
The Sultan wants a “stable” State Government. Umno assures HRH that it has the majority due to the solid backing of three defecting “friendly independents” made up of two former PKR assemblymen charged for corruption – and a former DAP assemblywoman who reduces the price of democracy to cash and Camry!
In other words, the “stability” of the Silver State rests solely on three shady characters interviewed by the Sultan and whose status are now even more uncertain since the PR has filed a suit to declare their seats vacant.
Alas, the future of the people of Perak is determined by three “independents” who act independently of the people’s wishes, and an “unstable” Umno assemblyman who says that his hop from Umno to PKR and back to Umno ten days later – was for the sake of political stability!
The Sultan hands to the people of Perak a “unity government” which has a dubious majority, achieved by the most divisive means! On top of that it is overwhelmingly dominated by 27 Umno seats. There is only one MCA seat and three independent defectors’ seats. How’s that for an unique representation of multi racial unity?
Pawning the Palace
The nascent PR State Government is numbed momentarily by Najib’s nefarious tricks. It eventually bounces back with MB Nizar leading it with nerves of steel. Najib is naive to think that Nizar would wilt in the battle of wills. The MB (who is from PAS) will fight him all the way to the moon and back!
Nizar refuses to resign as MB. He believes he is lawfully the MB until he resigns of his own accord, or is removed by a vote of no-confidence in a formal sitting of the State Assembly. For Nizar and his Exco it is business as usual.
Naiib has made Nizar famous. The DAP backs him fully. The Bar Council praises him for the “many significant steps forward”. The people of all races have faith in him. He may be without an official office, car and house, but Nizar can find a place in the hearts of many Perakians!
Umno goes berserk over Nizar’s boldness. Next to buying over defections, Umno is an expert in diversions and distortion of the truth. Behold, the Umno boys are unleashed; protests are held (without police permits); police reports are lodged; and their press is ready and raring to spin.
At their hysterical best, Umno Youth chief Hishammuddin Hussein hits out at the opposition for “betraying the Rulers”, and his deputy Khairy Jamaluddin hollers for Nizar’s banishment. Surely such histrionics will be duly rewarded at the coming Umno elections.
Umno uses the royalty as pawns in their dirty political game. It is all about political expediency and nothing about being pro-royal. Najib makes use of the palace to push and protect his agenda and vested interests. The people are his least concern.
History reveals that Umno shows deference to the royalty only if it serves its political advantage. As a royal peer and Umno leader, Tengku Razaleigh sees through the hypocrisy of the Umno elite. He hammers them by implicitly suggesting that it is Umno who has harmed the Malay rulers more than anyone else! He recalls the constitutional crisis of 1993.
He describes it as “an ugly confrontation between Umno and the Rulers” during which the Umno-dominated government campaigned to remove the immunity of the rulers. He leaves a haunting question for Umno: “Was greater harm done to the sovereignty of the Rulers in 1993 through Parliament or a week ago on the streets of Perak?”
He strips bare Umno’s attempt to camouflage public opprobrium over its undemocratic takeover of the state government: “Today’s crisis in Perak is about the legitimacy of the process by which a new state government has been formed in Perak. It’s not about the status of the Rulers.”
In March last year, in a clash between Umno and the Sultan of Trengganu (who was also the King) over the appointment of the State’s MB, hostile Umno members hurled insults at the royalty and even hoisted banners headlined ”Animal King”.
All of the 22 BN assemblymen protested against the appointment and later boycotted the swearing-in ceremony of the new MB. Umno Trengganu even stripped the new MB of his (Umno) membership after he defied the party leadership and accepted the Sultan’s appointment!
Surely this was not treason. Umno protestors were not traitors. Neither were they tainting the name of the Sultan? They can’t be “rude”. They were just being Umno – “with its inconsistent adherence to the rule of law (and) its inconstant respect for the key institutions of our country” (Tengku Razaleigh).
“It is time for Umno-BN to stop using the Palace. It must now learn how to survive on its own as required by both the constitution and democracy,” is the wise advice that law professor Abdul Aziz Bari has to offer to Umno.
Meanwhile Nazir files a suit to declare illegal the government of the new MB. The Perak State Legislative Assembly Speaker suspends the newly appointed MB and his six Exco members.
Pak Lah tells the new MB to ignore the suspension and to lodge a police report against the Speaker. Dr M mocks at the ignorance of the PM. The country heaves a sigh of relief that he would be retiring soon
As for Anwar Ibrahim and the PR, they have a lot of soul searching to do. A democracy dependent on defections is a very defective process waiting to disintegrate. Crossover is not the answer for a nation at a crossroads. What has happened in Perak is a classic case in point.
Hopping does not bring hope. With money politics so rife, there is no guarantee that the hopper may not one day hop back into his/her original “hole”. The Umno assemblyman who double hopped in a space of 10 days is a perfect example.
The PR is a “people’s party”. The people’s wants, wishes and will must come first. The “tsunami” of March 2008 was a “people’s victory”. The very essence and reason for PR’s existence is – the people.
The only way for Perak to move forward is to go back to the people!
(The above article was written for the latest issue of Aliran Monthly. Subsequent to the above were significant events such as the raw courage of the MB, Speaker and PR Aduns holding the Perak State Assembly under a raintree, and scandalous events such as the jaundiced judgments of a junior judge (judicial commissioner) which made the judiciary the butt of everyone’s jokes.)
(16 March 2008)
The chief executive officer of Maika Holdings Bhd told the Coroner’s Court yesterday that his personal assistant, K. Sujatha, told him she had “unknowingly drunk” paraquat on June 19, 2007.
So Gobind should also claim that he had “unknowingly accused” the DPM of murder.
So too the 3 frogs should claim that they had “unknowingly hopped over” to BN.
And Adolf Hitler should had claimed that he had “unknowingly sent” 6 million Jews to the gas chambers.
And last but by no means least, I have “unknowingly typed” in the above comments.
And quite obviously me too also unknowingly say here that najib is following closely in his father’s footstep.
But the fat b…. knowingly says that her husband is destined to rule!!
And I knowingly farted whenever I see pics of Bn scum such as OTK or KTK!
And,of course,by extention she has knowingly implied that she is DESTINED to be YOUR FIRST LADY!
Given the choice who would you vote to be the next PM of Malaysia?
Mark X
a) Muhyidin
b) Tengku Razaleigh X
c) Ali Rustam
d) Najib.
If a political monster is allowed to roam freely in our streets, aided by the 5 tainted Institutions, all hell will break loose!
Malaysia is all ready for the entry of the ‘New Messiah’, a new gutter politics and a new breed of corrupted politicians never seen in the history of Bohonland.
What a beautiful Malaysia… charmed by the First-lady in waiting…..
Just let the UMNO goons created one mistake after another-the people are watching so too the ‘World is Watching”.
Compile it and best of all DAP Video team must be more Dynamics just like PKR’s MediaRakyat. Record it and show it on Youtube so that all Msians overseas can also view it – the key here is -To the Widest Viewer possible. It can also be recorded into your computer from Youtube and from your computer to burn these videos into VCD for distribution to the remote villages.
How come during its 1 year-long control of the Perak State Government, PR did not remove from office the pro-umno datuk bandar of Ipoh? (The one who removed the Democracy Plaque)
Oh yes peter sng. Umno is making mistake after mistake. Soon (if not now) there will be so many mistakes that our Tuan Rempit McBullys will just trip and fall all over their own mistakes. Wait for the idiots to chop off the democracy tree. Wait the idiots to jail karpal. Etc. Etc. Mistakes like that will do the rest of us a lot of good. They are like scoring own goal in a football match. The power grab in perak is one good own goal score by the captain himself. And they urging Azlan Shah to dismiss Nizar is another own goal. The harassment of karpal in parliament ground is also own goal. We ought to cheer them on.
Poor IPOH residents…..endless politics by UMNO…no need to work at all.
If UMNO have any real true sincere feelings for Malaysians…they should agree to a State Election….so democratic..so simple to settle it…once and for all.
No they are so greedy for money and power….logics cannot be applied.
They love to be elected.doping nothing ..but keep protecting UMNO….much more than before….a clear sign……UMNO BARU is not like original UMNO at all.
Why is KJ so quite .Why no pilice report on the French News Paper that wrote the article on Najib. Why no one in UMNO Youth is shouting for the blood of the reporter.
As they say silence speak louder then words.
Like i have always said, it just take 2000 Corrupted UMNO delegates to pick our PM.
Dear Monsterball,
Yes Poor Ipoh residents or more accurately poor Perakians for having to tolerate Anwar’s antic who has no morality whatso ever. He engineered the “frogging’.
Unfortunately, he forgot an old saying ” taste one own’s medicine”. If there is a person to be blasmed for all this instability, the person must be Anwar. No doubt about it.
He went on and on about toppling a legally elected govt. And you keep quiet. So did Uncle Lim. So what is the fuss now.
In this Perak state govt deadlock, PR wants to have the state assembly dissolved & return the power of choosing a new state govt back to the people, but UMNO-BN stubbornly wants to hold on to the imagined majority that it believes it has with those three ‘friendly’ ex-PR ‘independents’.
If the people of Perak could choose on how to end this deadlock, the majority would want a fresh election, but unfortunately, it’s not their call…
DEar ekans,
Yes. It is not their call. Just like when Nizar was elected as MB although PAS only has 6 seats in state Assembly. The right to choose a MB rests with the Sultan.
There is no deadlock actualkly. The problem is that Nizar refused to accept reality.
The reality is that Perakians’ choice of the governing party is PR and not BN.Nizar knows it and that is why he refuses to resign.And BN knows it too because she refuses (using EC to help) to hold a fresh state election cos if it is to be held she knows she will be thrashed good and proper this time round!
shamshul anuar posted on 17/3/2009 at 23: 33.06
“DEar ekans,
Yes. It is not their call. Just like when Nizar was elected as MB although PAS only has 6 seats in state Assembly. The right to choose a MB rests with the Sultan.
There is no deadlock actualkly. The problem is that Nizar refused to accept reality.”
Dear Shamsul,
Yes, while it’s not the people’s call to decide on whether a fresh election should be held, let’s not forget that it was the majority of the citizens of Perak whom had voted not only PAS but also DAP & PKR into power to run the Perak state government together as a coalition named Pakatan Rakyat.
It’s true that it’s constitutional duty of HRH Sultan of Perak to choose the MB, and let’s not forget that the MB is picked from the duly elected ADUNs from the party or coalition that has the majority.
However, after 3 ADUNs had left PR to become ‘independents friendly to BN’ (& also not to forget after 1 BN ADUN had first hopped across & then hopped back), officially PR & BN each has the same number of ADUNs.
Thanks to interference by the UMNO-BN led federal govt leadership, a perception was created that BN had the edge in majority with those ‘independents friendly to BN’.
However, in UMNO-BN’s rush to take over the state govt, it jumped ahead one or two steps & forgot that the state legislative assembly has to first convene a session to conduct a no-confidence vote against the MB from PR (Nizar, of course.) before having a new MB appointed.
PR & BN each has its own different interpretation of the state constitution on this subject which is now being argued & deliberated in the court of law. Thus, we have to now wait for the final verdict/outcome to break this impasse…
Now that the Sultan has appointed a new MB from BN,his decision can be challenged in court and that’s what Karpal Singh has done.Now Shamsul you tell me that action of Karpal is seditious?If so why didn’t they charge Mamak when he stripped off the immunity of the Agong and Sultans way back?
Unless the Perak Assembly is dissolved soonest, the people will have to endure the suffering for the next 4 more years under the hastily formed government through a power grab by the loosers.
Hope that the unseen hands will fair and pass its judgment on the evil and guilty.
The only resort left, it seems, is to arouse the Perakians to come out en masse to urge the sultan to dissolve the state assembly to enable a state-wide election to be held.
The sultan cannot be deaf and blind to the wishes and aspirations of his subjects.
More than 70% have made known their wishes. It is time to mobilise them that people power.
The rulers must not only be impartial and apolitical, but must be seen to be impartial and apolitical.
The people’s cries cannot be ignored for whatever reasons.