The Trials and Tribulations of PM Najib

One thing you can’t take away from Dr Mahathir is his mastery over a subject matter. He reads a lot and delivers his message as a matter of factly. His reading habit was etched early in his life. Reading is second nature to him. He writes his own speeches.

On overseas trips he would take notes and photos. When he comes back he will instruct those responsible to implement what he thinks is good. Whether it’s the construction of a building, installing lightings or a particular way of planting trees. There was hardly anyone in his cabinet who could hold a candle against Mahathir’s mastery over a subject matter.

Liong Sik cringes every time while brother Samy will get ready with tosai and idlee. He carries a notebook always. Perhaps not the 555 type.

Most important he is made of strong constitution. He is decisive. Something which Najib can never emulate- hence the rationalising in defence of Najib. Unfortunately those who come forward to defend Najib are not stout intellectual personalities. Things are different during Najib’s time than Mahathir’s. Mahathir will laugh at this kind of defence.

This fragile defence cannot hide the fact that Najib is a will-o'-the-wisp political character. He allures the public with supposedly big ideas but cannot explain them to common folks. Mahathir on the other hand can make big ideas understandable by the common people.

Even Mahathir cannot go on forever diffusing the frustration of the people towards Najib. No amount of public display of profound grief over the brutal murder of Malaysians on board of MH17 can cover up Najib’s incompetence. Without taking away anything from those grieving families, Najib has decided to make a big spectacle with the homecoming of the murdered Malaysians, because with MH17, Najib has someone who can be held accountable and blameable. Indeed he has quickly claimed that Malaysia’s neutrality on Ukraine has paid dividends.

 Also, the world is watching and Najib is anxious to play on a bigger stage. With MH370, the blame is squarely on Najib;s administration. His incompetence was glaringly exposed for all to see.

But people are already making comparisons. Our finest died in the Sulu invasion. No flags were flown half-mast. A pantomime was staged during national day parade but even that was leveraged politically to denounce opposition politicians for asking uncomfortable questions on Lahad Datu.

Najib is really, much thunder, little rain. Describing Najib as being cool and collected and not prone to knee-jerk reaction is laughable.

So, let us allow the BN friendly media operatives fool themselves. We must not allow ourselves to be fooled by them. The people coming to Najib’s defence are tweedle-dum to Najib’s tweedle-dee.

Outside mainstream media, Najib has been crucified – because the term criticised would be an understatement. Don’t read mainstream media- it’s devoid of substance and sense of reality. The world that Najib wants us to believe we lived in is a manufactured world of imagined prosperity and justice and fairness and of good governance. All bright promises, but dismal in their performance.

The real story is out there, most often transmitted by media operatives and soldiers of conscience outside mainstream media.

Some of us feel like laughing out cynically when people asked why haven’t mainstream media and others attacked Najib? The papers owned by Media Prima which is owned by the government want to criticise Najib? Can we imagine Johan Jaafar becoming suddenly moved by his long lost conscience, to come out actually saying, Najib Sir- your policies have all failed?

They are asking the question, and then they pretend to provide the answers.  I would encourage readers not to listen to these people. They are the very ones manipulating the issues that needed to be popularised. Most of them are masters at the art of misinforming.

The ‘us’ outside need not be reminded that Malaysia is a failed state. The institutions safeguarding democracy, security of this country, the very institutions committed to solemnly uphold justice and fairness, the institutions and policies shaping economic justice and fairness have all failed under Najib’s administration.

When Mahathir says that Najib is no better than Pak Lah, it means Najib is worse than Pak Lah. Mahathir does not have to say it; it means Najib has to go. It will now be a matter of time, when the world the Najib has created, will all cave in. because it was a world built on mere rhetoric and false premises.

The people- the ‘us’ outside are no longer watching television. We would rather watch the Hindi Movies on Astro because they provide much relief and reprieve from the harsh realities. The petty traders I met and asked in Raub no longer watch TV because they felt cheated each time the government announces our economy is getting stronger, growth is better  and alll that bullshit. Money is simply not in the hands of the people. Demand is not healthy and we all know, the economy is not healthy.

Traders can’t make decent profit while the cost of living around them is escalating. So why shouldn’t the people- the ‘us’ outside the imagined world of the media operatives not be cynical?

In the world shaped and imagined by BN friendly media operatives, Najib is considered criticised when old man Mahathir starts saying things. Do we all have to wait until the only man who can walk on water in Malaysia, aka DR Mahathir does so?

My immediate response is this: have people asking this pedantic and pedestrian question been suffering from mass deafness and have gone to Africa and got bitten by tse tse flies?

Stupid people asked stupid questions so that the same stupid people can then answer what they asked in the first place. Then it becomes one whole staged question and answer sessions taking on the semblance of some serious public discourse of the policies and politics of  Kim Il Najib.  The only form of criticisms that Najib likes is mass adulation of himself and outpouring of a love fest.

Are the people asking this question mental retards or what- can we seriously expect the media owned by UMNO or controlled by its tentacles dare criticise Kim Il Najib?

Let us take on Najib with the issues of the day. That will be through a series of articles in the next few days.