Walla’s response on why remain in UMNO.

I want every UMNO member who can think to read this wonderful riposte from a commentator whom I have known since I started blogging. This is the kind of thinking and reasoning deserving the highest of respects. Read what Walla has to say in response to my last article, why remain in UMNO.

 

The challenge is how to represent one's race and yet not end up being racialist.

It's a thin line. Too many times that line was crossed. And it was crossed mainly by those inside Umno which then attracted similar response by others. Umno first, others only in response.

The rakyat have become tired of that. They are tired of being forced to be racialist. They are tired of the politics and the lies and the denials, they are tired of the commissions and the omissions, they are tired of waking up to find yet another package of spin at their doorsteps, another bill in their mailbox, another scandal on the front page, another theft in the corridor of power that overwhelms in size and severity those on the streets that they walk in trepidation of their lives while the government under Umno plants more cctv's paid with taxpayers money in its over-priced and under-populated federal administrative enclave than in the places where the real rakyat live.

The rakyat are tired and angry that the end of their days will be bleak. They are equally tired and angry that the beginning of the days of their young will be even bleaker.

Meanwhile, to greet them with such bad prospects, they have been asked to change their lifestyle when costs have gone up but incomes have gone down in an economy that has shrunk in its ability to remain relevant to the world.

They are asked to be more productive by using their knowledge and skills but none of it can be applied because political leaders and little napoleons have wrought havoc with the education system from the way and things taught to the way and things issued.

The very people whose mindsets must first change are trying to change the minds of those who are telling them to change their mindsets. How corny can one get?

It must therefore be to the credit of the rakyat that although tired of politics, they have bounced back on their own to their natural selves. They have on their own said no to extremism and chauvinism. They have gone back to the core values and behavior that had defined the original spirit of this country. The centre that defines what being a Malaysian truly means.

Pas and DAP have moved to the centre. And ever since they have moved towards moderation, they have discovered that they are more comfortable with the new position - because it reflects the inner nature of Malaysians - to be practical and to be fair. They have found that they have lost nothing. By some magic, they have found that their own manifesto's have instead been enhanced.

And the rakyat who are Malays have found again their good nature and sense of fairness. They have found that they really don't lose anything by being accommodative to others, by not playing the zero-sum game, by caring for others as they want others to care for them.

After all, what rights and privileges have they lost in the Opposition states that they had gained, if any, in the Proposition states? Except for the cronies and the elites of Umno, how can one lose what one never had?

And because the Malays themselves have pierced the veil that sought to cover-up the sandiwara's and the ponzi schemes, likewise the others.

It's a tectonic shift by the masses away from trying to defend their rights along racial grounds to trying to defend their rights by muhibbah. Incidentally, that's a term coined by Barisan but lost in the wilderness of its own political machinations.

And the rakyat have found that when they defend their rights by muhibbah, all rights automatically fall into the domain of being pragmatic about things which in turn sustains more capability to benefit from better policies and actions which in turn serves the enterprise to in turn serve the dispossessed and the needy - in this country which fifty years of so-called nation-building under Barisan had only ended up creating the biggest income disparity in the whole of Asia.

The future belong to our young. But what have we bequeathed them under Barisan?

Thirty-four percent of the rakyat earn less than seven hundred ringgit, below the poverty line of seven hundred and twenty ringgit. But how can even RM720 be considered a reasonable sum today to define livable standard? If the poverty line is more realistically raised to RM1,200, then even more rakyat will fall into the poverty group. The official situation is thus spin and nothing but an artful artificial construct to try and pull wool over the eyes of the rakyat. As if that can ever be of any real comfort.

You know that's true because the insolvency department says one hundred and ninety six thousand Malaysians are insolvent. A small number on percentage basis? What about those thousands who are insolvent and running from private financiers, the ones who smear red paint on their doors?

When people say Umno, who do they think of? They think of Toyo, hero of the anti-sand theft. Is he doing it to cover-up his own past or to guarantee there be enough sand to build the extension to his mansion? What has he done when he was MB in the tradition of the past Umno MBs of Selangor? Win a hundred thousand ringgit wristwatch? Go to Florida to study canal management? Denude another hill? Launder money? Screw a relative? May 13, perhaps?

When people say Umno, who do they think of? They think of Taib. How will he explain his wealth overseas on the salary he gets as CM of Sarawak? From the japanese timber buyers who had to pay to the timber cronies whose staff defiled the Penans whose development has to be associated with his plans or else they will suffer him calling them orang-utans?

When people say Umno, who do they think of? They think of Thamby Chik, exonerated by the court over and above a DAP politician who went to jail for bringing up the matter in defense of an underaged Malay girl who finally had to be rescued by the grandmother.

When people say Umno, who do they think of? Megat Junid of Project M infamy? Adam Adib of Mindef procurements? Harun Idris, Umno Youth's Suhaimi, Ahmad Ismail, Ibrahim Ali the mouth, Rahman Yaacob MOE DG who unilaterally changed main medium of instruction to sole medium of instruction? The Ezam's and others who kiss the prince of storyland and perhaps the Umno treasurer? Or could it possibly be our own Placido Domingo himself, patron to Shahrizat for the two hundred and fifty million cow farm project for her husband, and tenderizer of Desaru investors? Or perhaps it's really the twenty two Umno branches who filed police reports against the Opposition for suggesting that the seven percent discount be canceled for properties that would be only afforded by those already rich enough to buy Porsche SUVs so that the discounts can instead be given to poor Malays, and weren't they prodded on by two Umno leaders, one using the word 'rights' in addition to 'privileges', as if doing so would make it more legal tender than what the Constitution assigns if in the first place that instrument even stoops to mention a discount? What is this country built on? A help-you-help-me with your money jomheboh?

This comment box is too small for all of them.

Name one, single, unitary, identifiable, thing, that Umno has done for the nation which doesn't have debatable positive result.

Felda? Sued by the settlers themselves. Sime? Underbidded until twice bitten but still not shy. Taking Perak against the better judgment of the rakyat? Bakun Dam? Angkasawan and Petronas Sauber? Buying F18's that can't fire? Losing islands despite large arbitration fees? Crooked bridges? Collapsing roofs and arches? Phallic symbols of progress? Overpriced DIY and parliamentary hardware? Or a three hundred million ringgit dam in a place without water?

Are there more? This comment box is too small for all of them.

Read Shafee Yahya's book to get an insight of how it really has been by those who had used the name of Umno to immortalize themselves only to deal Malaysia a mortal blow.

People have repeated that under Umno, a hundred billion had been blown. It's not a hundred billion ringgit. The analysts concerned had written it was a hundred billion US dollars.

Now with Malaysia to be a net oil importer by next year and a net gas importer in five years time, where is the Government under Umno to find the money to satisfy the horny callings of Ibrahim Ali of Perkasa and Mahathir Mohamad of The Loaf in order to deliver the 'rights and privileges' so guaranteed by Umno to the Malays when if you go to PJTC's JHDN, you will only find one race as customers at the counter paying taxes and that's the race those leaders are lambasting to make innocent Malay folks think it's still alright to pretend that the other races are the cause of their miseries? Would that also explain why Umno youths still fly to London to rah-rah the Malay scholars that they must always remember the special position of the Malays - despite the 1Malaysia calling of the seventy five million ringgit PR program by the President of Umno? Is it now where Biro Tatacara fails, Umno Youth must succeed in the interest of 1Malaysia to give way to 2Malay?

So, is Malaysia a failed democracy? Only half-right, here. Failed, yes. Democracy? What does anyone think anymore? Isn't this country the only one where one has to bring torch lights to a polling station because, sure enough, there will be an officialized power failure during vote counting? You know that has a ring of truth to it for how else can one explain why the Barisan Sibu candidate declined a recount on such a close call - because he saw the same method applied as in Hulu Selangor? You know that ring grows to a bellow when all of a sudden there is an anti-ISA group. Since when do the rakyat suddenly believe so strongly for imprisonment without trial that our blues can turn an eye from them but nab people who hold candle virgils? Because they know power failures are fakes?

So, is Malaysia even a democracy when there is a fatal MO in its political governance where a political party can assume supremacy over the operational interpretation of constitutional clauses in such a way as to reinforce its own position through divisive policies, by which method it can spice up its airs with shitx3 juxtaposed with racistx8? So how is it that under Umno, we have to ask whether Malaysia is a failed democracy? Because we have reason to doubt the integrity of our judiciary and enforcement institutions? Because corporate and public governance shaped by Umno is a benchmark of excellence? Because this nation still has plenty of time and resources to print money to avert financial collapse, failing which to gerrymander the election system to win yet another five years of political triumph? Because politicians can look themselves in the mirror at the end of every day and grin their grins instead of grimace their grimaces, for the tingling sensation from hearing their retirement cash registers ringing?

Shall we all have to ask our AG for answers?

Perhaps then the rakyat can finally understand how is it that the fate of this nation is now gloriously dependent on whether a college dropout has been anally assaulted.

correction:
'anti anti-ISA'And nice to have the ol' ye-faithfuls around. What have they done to stop the thirty years of squandering and plundering, suppressing and depressing?

This kind of argument is breathtaking.