Time to separate govt and political party

By Mohd Ariff Sabri Aziz | April 18, 2012

A political party does not own the government. A political party may legislate but the implementation is carried out by civil servants who are beholden to the constitutional ruler.

We should be able to separate government and political party.

Development is not something unique to Umno. Every party that has power can carry out development.

As such, Umno can’t go around claiming only they can bring on development. The governments in Penang, Kelantan, Selangor, and Kedah also carry out development, indeed the development there has been achieved on more meritorious grounds.

These states have better reserves, operated and achieved surplus budgets and have been able to avoid wasteful spending. Those are sterling qualities of good governments.

Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak recently lectured the people not to repeat their mistake.

What mistake is he talking about? Is he alluding that the people’s decision in the historic elections in 2008 was a mistake?

The only mistake which people are now realising is that Umno and Barisan Nasional have fleeced the country. This is a government that subsidises its falsehoods on mounting debt.

The public debt in relation to our GDP is almost reaching the breaking point.

Yet the country’s incompetent and ignorant leaders are proclaiming it’s all right. And we have not even counted the value of guarantees given by this government to incompetent government-linked companies (GLCs) which, if they default, places all the questionable loans given to questionable people with questionable business proposals, on the shoulders of the people.

Umno has lost legitimacy

Don’t forget RM1.3 trillion of ill-gotten money has been spirited out of the country over a period of 10 years. A small percentage, RM130 billion, of which could have been injected into the national budget to finance development.

Also, we have the RM20 billion a year lost on leakages – an euphemism for corruption. Let us kick out the deceivers.

The fact is Umno has lost its legitimacy. It has forfeited all the powers it inherited since 1957 to accomplish what it set out to do, which was to uplift the Malays.

Why? Because it started on the wrong premise and that premise wasn’t adapted and evolved into the engine to uplift Malays first and then country.

This now, is the overriding fear of Umno because it can no longer defend its legitimacy and therefore its reason to continue to be in power.

The only reason why Umno is coming to its inglorious end is because its myths are no longer sustainable.

Umno has survived on several myths spun and drilled into the Malay subconscious over generations.

It has survived on the myth that Malays and Umno are inextricably linked. The myths we mean include: the fate of Malays rests on the fate of Umno; the fate of Malay rulers is linked to the fate of Umno; and the fate of Islam depends on the fate of Umno.

This is Umno’s trinity of falsehoods which formed the foundation of Umno’s legitimacy with the Malays.

A party that survives on myths and falsehoods and not sustained by principles, can never endure. And so it is that Umno has reached its end.

We can neither hasten nor postpone its demise.

The writer is a former Umno state assemblyman but joined DAP earlier this year. He is a FMT columnist.

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19 Replies to “Time to separate govt and political party”

  1. Now Tamrin…Gaffar Baba’s son and still and UMNO member for 50 years..who have never spoken for years came out to tell Malaysians to support change of Government,
    He said the present UMNO politicians are not like they were before.
    The post merely points out what we all know…a band of robbers and thieves trying to buy up the whole country with stolen billions.
    Focus to vote UMNO b out.
    That’s all.
    Don’t anyone want to vomit seeing and reading these rouges and thieves keep trying so hard to fool all?

  2. Dear Datuk,

    “..A party that survives on myths and falsehoods and not sustained by principles, can never endure. And so it is that Umno has reached its end…”

    Well said. And you might add ” ….and not sustained by principles and uses its mandate to steal, cheat, rob and pillage from the very people it is supposed to help, ..can never endure….”

    And it is sad that there are many (maybe majority) of civil servants and members of the enforcement agencies and armed forces who cannot distinguish between party and the Govt or nation. These very people who should be made aware that they are serving King and country instead have the mentality that they must serve UMNO only. I can understand why some of the top people behave as such. Their positions were obtained not on merit but on how well connected they were to the top UMNO leadership. This kind of “bodek” culture” breeds the widescale mediocrity and incompetence that we see everywhere in this country. As Mahathir himself has lamented, the smart ones has shied away from UMNO and maybe even those organizations linked to Govt or UMNO unless there is some easy pickings that the less ethical are tempted to exploit.

  3. Fusion of umno and gobermen. That again is a legacy of dr mamak. The gobermen is suppose to be an institution that can go on and on regardless of which political party is now ruling the nation. But dr mamak decided to introduce two changes. (1) only malays can be appointed to senior positions and (2) only umno malays can be considered for appointment. So there lies the problem. A large number of people esp the less educated ones actually see the country’s wealth ad that of umno. I hv seen comments like opposition party’s got no money to develop the nation unlike umno! This is so sad.

    Yes time for change.

    ABU

  4. ///Time to separate govt and political party///

    I doubt whether the above can be done as the ruling party is proud of the government it sets up and the government is proud of the political party which it belongs.

  5. For over 50 years the civil service has been brainwashed to be beholden to UMNO. They too have been brainwashed to believe that UMNO equals “The Government” & vice versa. It is sad to see boot polishers raising up the civil service ladder, who do not contribute & worse of all, (allegedly) are on the take.

    But in our Constitutional Monarchy Government, the civil service is separate from the ruling party. They have their Standing Orders (ala Standard Operating Procedure) to carry out, irrespective of who the ruling part is.

    The civil service acts is akin to the operations dept. of the country, serving the rakyat, NOT UMNO nor the leaders nor cronies of UMNO.

  6. Separate govt and politics?????

    Those in the know, know that in most ministries politicians are but puppets who come and go….the real power brokers are civil servants especially the DGs and KSUs…..

    In fact anyone at Pengarah level would be running their own ops and making life intolerable to the average Joe out on the street without the Minister even knowing about it..

  7. With bad and ineffective ” leaders “, Civil servants are the biggest problem to real and urgent reform.

    These people don’t care and they know the government could not touch them as a group.

    They have talked about reform for decades leading to nowhere….but corruption and wastage continue to increase.

  8. Talk about being fair. Talk about transformasi / transformation.Talk about ubah / change. The human mentality is that they will support somebody. So there is no such a thing as whether they know what is a government or what is politics. Whether public or private, they will support somebody and the somebody they support, they will help. This is a real fact.

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