SUNDOWN AT MID-DAY IN HULU SELANGOR

It’s sundown at midday after nominations on April 17 for the Hulu Selangor by-election on 25th April, the Parti Keadilan Rakyat (PKR), looking the likely winner even if it had lost its quest and is becoming a rubble. The party crumpled what remained of its bearings by parading its wunderman, Datuk Zaid Ibrahim, through Kuala Kubu Bharu looking like this



The serious business of choosing a parliamentary representative for the larger-than-Malacca constituency is now a comedy.

Hulu Selangor had been ravaged by over-construction in the failed attempt to create another Klang Valley in Selangor. It badly needed a committed person for the people to place their faith in.

In the picture above is Datuk Zaid Ibrahim, former de facto Law Minister in a crazier-than-fiction outfit to resemble a Chinese culture hero, Justice Pau.

The legend was aired over the TV in Malaysia from immediately after Abdullah Ahmad Badawi assumed the premiership in Oct. 2003, with someone declaring through advertising spaces in Chinese newspapers that the former regime was “corrupt to the core.”

Whatever is the motive of the hilarity in Kuala Kubu Bharu on April 17, Zaid, who had left Umno and joined the PKR, is being cut down to size from immediately after the nominations were closed.

By what looked like a freakish storm following the sundown, he was struck as having a drinking problem, a man of questionable moral values who approved gambling and may own a racehorse or two.

On the same night, Anwar Ibrahim, the maverick head-starter of the bash at the Indonesian Reformasi in Malaysia, said Zaid admitted he had been fond of drinks in his younger days. Zaid was also said to have been found guilty of vote-buying when he was in Umno.

Anwar drew an audience of less than 500 in Kerling on the night of April 17, after nominations. He should have attracted not less than 5,000.

Hardly any Chinese (other than newsmen and photographers) were in the audience on the field beside the Kerling Hindu temple.

In Kerling is a string of Chinese New Villages that run right to the hot-spring of the little villages that had once been a Red Area.

While most of the speakers last night were PKR and DAP Indians, the number of Indians in the audience was less than 30.

Anwar had drawn only a little more that 300 in Serendah, it was reported and the PKR drew only about 400 in Asam Kumbang New Village, Kuala Kubu Bharu on 15 April.

What’s going on is simple to grasp. The party that had shaken the Barisan Nasional in the 8th March 2008 general-elections has lost sense of its quest and is crumbling from the top down.

The PKR is not much more than Anwar’s vehicle to grab federal power, which he tried to do before September 16, 2008 and failed, the party appearing like it is quashed on the canvas as a result and senselessly muttering ‘Reformasi, Reformasi’, but for what?

Now, in the hilarity of its joyous mood to walk into Kuala Kubu Bharu and in Hulu Selangor as the champion of the recent past, the PKR cannot escape looking like it is punch-drunk to have dressed and dolled-up Zaid Ibrahim in the Chinese opera costume with the loose beard hanging down like its the curtain.

What's the suggestion then?

The suggestion is to restructure form and content because the quest for Reformasi has long been dead and what the Pakatan had been lugging was a cause to free Anwar from prison and since, to keep him from going back in.

That would be at least a mite different from Reformasi or Doi Moi.

And it should be the likes of Dr. Syed Hussin Ali or Dr.Xavier Jeyakumar at the lead for a chance at a two-party system and for Proportional Representation (PR).

What about the Barisan Nasional (BN)?

It has been behaving like in a circus act over the selection of its candidate but now its candidate, P. Kamalanathan, MIC Information Chief, will win on April 25 where the BN had lost in 2008 by only 198 votes. The ruling coalition secured all three state seats in the constituency. –a. ghani ismail, 18 April, 2010.

PKR AND PAKATAN IN A MIDSUMMER NIGHTMARE

Tossed into Alice’s Wonderland on 8 March 2008 by a fluke of fate, Anwar’s vehicle for his ride to power has now come loose, becoming a serious liability to its partners two years after the great surprise at the polls that brought in the absurdity.

It’s been departure time for scores of party members the past one month, with former party secretary-general, Salehuddin Hashim, leading the way and in his train three MPs have quit the party, another sacked and several more adrift.

While many from some parts of the world placed much faith in Anwar Ibrahim and the promises he made for reform, the facts say his outfit had been overwhelmed by his secretaries who struggled for influence among themselves, the losers leaving the party to publicly scorn Anwar and his favorites.

There was never a chance for the party to build a base for coherence and cohesion so it can survive the violence of a Punch and Judy puppet show.

The PKR was doomed from birth, riding piggyback on the Pas into the 1990 general elections and coming to an abrupt halt in 2004. It was wiped out at the polls, leaving Anwar’s wife, Wan Azizah, as the sole survivor in Parliament, winning as caretaker of Anwar’s parliamentary base, Permatang Pauh in Penang.

The pendulum swung to an extreme in the 8 March 2008 general elections. Seeing Umno and the Barisan Nasional (BN) were unable to remove Abdullah Ahmad Badawi from the helm, the people moved to vote against Badawi, denying the BN the two-third majority.

With the Opposition only 30 less than the BN in Parliament, Anwar became inspired to apply haste in politics and declared he had enough BN lawmakers willing to cross court and join the Pakatan to form the new government on September 16, 2008 .

It failed and it backfired, Anwar self-bashed to a pulp.

It was impossible for the PKR to recover since. Anwar and the Opposition could only hope for Najib Tun Razak to slump before he could succeed Badawi.

Najib made it. Then he moved swiftly to turn the tables on Anwar and the Pakatan. He recovered the state of Perak and in a series of offensives he left the Pakatan in distress in Selangor and Penang.

In Kedah the Menteri Besar (Chief Minister) is often sick and has not delivered anything worth a mention in the two years he has been chief executive.

In Kelantan the stoic old survivor, Nik Aziz Nik Mat, has finally gotten himself linked to a possible set of graft charges involving his son-in-law whom he appointed as the CEO of a state company he chaired himself.


In Penang Lim Guan Eng as Chief Minister has been alleged to have made a regulation giving him the power to withdraw contracts given out by the state or state agency, without having to give any reason for his actions.

In other words, he was said to have taken to himself extraordinary powers for someone demanding accountability and transparency in government.

The opposition has also been showing gross incompetence, lack of experience and silly arrogance. Some could not handle the simple taste of minimal power.

In many places it has been a lark the likes of which we have never seen or heard before – a powershoku that had come in with the 8 March 2008 electoral tsunami bringing to Malaysia a real life staging of William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, featuring some who had done nothing more than ferrying mineral water from the shops to the election hot-tents and were amply rewarded for that.

When some councilors at the district and municipal levels were dropped there was the news in several online newspapers that one of these had ingested a weed-killer. The news item was withdrawn many hours later.

The truth is bizarre. The Opposition had been as surprised as anyone else with the 8 March 2008 election results and the PKR and the DAP were not prepared to run state governments and to place selected members as councilors at district and municipal levels.

Why would the DAP and PKR now want town council elections is yet another kinky curio when the DAP’s Magister, Lim Kit Siang, had recently wrote against the proposal, possibly because the party and its strange sidekick, PKR, do not have cadre outfits to fill in the positions with people who know what to do.

Other than the socialists in the PKR, hardly any of the party members had been in touch with farmers’, smallholders’ or fishermen's associations, meaning they have no idea of the tensions faced by these sectors and to exploit the tensions.

The same is partially true for the Pas, which is probably why the party failed to hold the rural electorates in many states.

It would now become pertinent to ask who among the members of the PKR (other than the socialists) and the Pas have been keeping touch with workers’ unions in the urban?

What, therefore, is the Pakatan about other than to make Anwar Ibrahim the boss over Putrajaya? Why would we want to do that?

If it is about Reformasi, we need to ask what have they done in that direction the past two years other than talk in road-shows and in the coffee-shops?

If it is about the chance to incur a two-party system we have to know at which point had that been a viable option since 8 March 2008?

Is Anwar managerially substantial or is he the same now as he had been as a minister and Umno leader, with many of his boys forming a cackle of menacing husbanded power who misbehaved while pretending to be the champions of Islam.

It’s bottoms up! There will have to be shifts of the paradigms and of the chimes for Malaysia to progress in the processes of change, modernization, development and integration. In the meantime, it is Najib who is widely perceived as doing very well as a leader. ---a. ghani ismail, 8 March, 2010

On A Scale Of Justice (Or The Matter of I21(1A)

The writing below was to have been Marina's column in The Star. It was spiked because the paper had gotten into some trouble over a writing on Islam. Marina wrote in her blog to express concern, saying it is the Printing Presses and Publications Act (1984) that's the threat. In the column she had referred to the 1988 Amendment we know as 121(1A) which resulted in the country having two sets of laws and two judiciaries.

There are other laws, federal and state, that matter as well, even contempt of the mufti's orders and of Islam for options of the violence. Marina must have also known the Muslim authorities have discovered fire, long after Prometheus of course, but they still keep at burning books and newspapers. It's a tradition started sometime when Baghdad was the heart of the Muslim Empire before Hulagu's takeover in 1258 AD. Time hardly moved since, other than by stretching.

So here is Marina's spiked column - from rantingsbymm.blogspot.com



When we want to compete with anyone in any field, we seek those who are better than us. And we keep going until finally we are recognised as the best. For example, a tennis player starts at the unranked bottom and tries to play and win against better players until, finally, there is nobody to beat.

We do not, however, insist that everybody comes down to our level or to play badly in order for us to win. This is what puzzles me about the Shariah courts in our country.

In 1988, a clause was inserted into our Constitution that has been interpreted as having erected a “Berlin Wall” between the Shariah and the civil courts. Basically, Article 121(1A) said “the courts referred to in Clause (1) shall have no jurisdiction in respect of any matter within the jurisdiction of the Shariah courts.” This has caused untold problems because real life sometimes dictates that some issues cross over both jurisdictions. But leave that aside for a moment.

Although the new clause did not say it, there are some people who are of the view that the Shariah court is superior to the civil courts simply because Shariah law is deemed of a higher order than civil laws.

This is because apparently God made Shariah laws while mere human beings made the civil laws. Never mind the fact that human beings have been changing Shariah laws over the years, for instance, by loosening laws that protected women from losing all their property to their divorced husbands.

Shariah Laws


Like other laws in this country, Shariah laws have to be drafted, tabled and passed through our various lawmaking bodies, whether at the State or Federal levels. This process leaves a lot of human fingerprints all over them.

Civil laws are drafted, tabled and passed through Parliament. The difference is that at the tabling stage, they have to be debated before they are passed. The quality of the debate may be sometimes wanting but debated they are. This process provides some sort of ‘quality control’ over the laws so that they are hopefully current, reflect realities and are just.

The same does not hold true of Shariah laws. When they get tabled at State Excos, non-Muslims do not participate because there is the notion that they cannot partake in any such debate.

That leaves only the Muslim Excos, few of whom are women. This means that if a bill affects women, the opinions of the female minority in the Exco can be ignored.

Furthermore, most people are ignorant about their religion and tend to leave these matters to those they believe know best. Thus if the State Mufti or religious adviser says it’s a good law, they are unlikely to challenge him. Thus are religious laws passed without due scrutiny until something happens, such as when someone gets convicted of a Shariah crime and punishment is meted out.

Who knew that people could be caned for drinking, or for having a baby out of wedlock until the recent cases of Kartika who drank some beer and the three women who gave birth out of wedlock?

Not only were these laws not debated when they were being made, unlike civil laws they can’t be debated afterwards either. According to some, to do so is akin to arguing with God. (There are, however, some who think that God welcomes such arguments just so that He can prove He is right).

Superior Laws

If one believes that Shariah laws are superior to civil laws, should they not be held to higher standards? Should they not be subjected to more rigorous debate than civil laws out of fear that they may be unjust?

If Shariah courts are deemed superior to civil courts, should not their processes be more transparent and efficient? How is it that there are innumerable women having to suffer because Shariah court orders to their former husbands to pay child maintenance cannot be enforced?

How is it also that we suddenly hear about women being caned without any information about the processes they went through? Did they have the benefit of legal representation and heard in an open court? If they did, who were their lawyers and what defence did they mount? On whose behalf was justice served?

I have no problems with Shariah laws if their foundation is justice, equality and non-discrimination for all, even non-Muslims. But when their intent, processes and enforcement are unfair, they only give the impression that Islam is unjust and discriminatory. Surely to give such an image of Islam is a sin. –--
3 March 2010 rantingsbymm.blogspot.com/

* Marina Mahathir is a columnist with The Star.

ANWAR GOES INTO THE UNDERSIDE OF HELL

AFTER THE CHRISTIAN CAPER ANWAR GOES INTO THE UNDERSIDE OF HELL

Instead of flooring Najib Tun Razak’s One Malaysia in the attempt to sabotage Malaysian racial harmony, it is Anwar Ibrahim that’s down, his Parti Keadilan Rakyat (PKR) gasping for breath in the aftermath of the Christian demand to call the Trinitarian Godhead and the figure of Jesus Christ by the name of Allah.

The caper that has caused the desecration of several churches and mosques in the country would go down in history as a crude attempt to cause sectarian riots.

While it will be seen as a Christian oversight of fundamental Malaysian goodwill, the fact Anwar had quickly given his approval to the Church’s right to use the simple word has caused a net loss of respect and confidence in the man who had once led the country’s Muslim youths and gained for himself an image as a peerless leader.

As the excitement settles after the rabble aggressions on churches, mosques and one Gudhwara (Sikh Temple), Anwar is seen going on a road-show dropping the name of Yusuf Qaradhawi to support his position that the Christians should be free to use the term “Allah”.

It is inane. The trouble that brewed is not about the freedom to use that term “Allah”, which means “The God”, or simply the one God.

Anwar and the Christian Church must know the trouble stems from the constitutions of both the Federation and of the states and not in any Christian-imagined “Muslim Terrorism” that has been oppressing and persecuting Christians in Malaysia the way some would like the world to believe.

The constitutional “Islamic laws” are, in fact, Undang-Undang Raja (The King’s Law) issuing from the division of powers that was carried through from the British Intervention beginning in 1874.

Religion and Malay Customs became the sole prerogative of the Malay rulers and it was this power division that was drawn by a series of Acts and constitutional amendments into the serious complication that gave Malaysia two sets of laws and two judiciaries, one for the Malay-Muslims and the other for everyone.

Hence, there are laws and there are institutions that separate the Malays from other Malaysians by religious identities. These would need to be reviewed and possibly revised before One Malaysia would be realizable.

Prime Minister, Najib Tun Razak, or anyone else as premier, would need a little time to bring these incongruent matters to focus.

Needed is a panel of experts empowered to slap the Reid’s Commission and Constitution on the surgical table and to work on the body of histories in them until we can breathe easy and aspire towards a smoother passage to change, modernization, development and integration as we get ready for the Asean Union.

Anyone with a meager reading of politics and administration can tell that no central government can work with a given set of powers that can intervene and intercept the chain of command.

What had happened in several states at the end of the previous premier’s tenure was a loud distress signal that the central authority had been intercepted after several Menteri Besar (Chief Ministers) were chosen by the rulers (monarchs) who set aside Abdullah Badawi’s (Pak Lah) choices for the CEO in three states.

The central leadership and authority so weak, the state authorities worked overtime to display their extraordinary powers and the result is the renewed and wonderful assertiveness in the tug-of-war between the states and the center.

The religious departments grabbed bodies of dead converts, hold for years in rehabilitation centers young Muslims who ate in public during the fasting month (Ramadhan) or who were caught buying lotteries, and whipped or sent to prison those caught drinking beer.

Dr. Mahathir Mohamad, the failed dictator, had tried to place the state’s power over religion under a federal umbrella. He hoisted a federal Islamic Fatwa Council and then pushed through the constitutional amendment we know as 121. 1(A) in 1988.

That amendment effectively turned Malaysia into a nation of two sets of laws and two separate judiciaries, his daughter, Marina, once ranted at as leading to apartheid.

Mahathir and his minions had agreed it would need a “strongman” to run a Malaysia that’s ridden by such a nasty manner of divide-and-rule, himself averse to being called “dictator”, but happy with the nom de guerre of “strongman”.

But he was not altogether strong. Over and over again during his tenure the Press had to blitz against the actions of the religious departments to warn the religious authorities of what can lie ahead should they persist to satisfy their appetites for power by abusing civil and human rights.

In Malaysia the constitution does not allow the Malays the right of conscience. A Malay is not even allowed to marry outside his district of domicile. He must attend a day’s course on marriage for RM80 before “qualifying” to be married. Saying in court he is no longer a Muslim will put him into custody for contempt of Islam.

These are not Islamic laws. These are issued from the powers of the Raja (monarch) and it needs to be known that in some understandings of Islamic Law (Shariah), the laws of the monarch (hukum raja) are accepted as a legitimate component of the Shariah as are customary laws (hukum adat).

The Malaysian Archbishop should have known this before he applied to the court for redress against the ban on using the word “Allah” for the Christian God.

It isn’t at all a Christian-alone fight. It should never have been a Christian-alone struggle.

As Lim Kit Siang had observed, the Muslims themselves are oppressed by these laws. Pas lawmaker, Khalid Samad, described them as “out-of-date”.

What would be the effects of these laws and regulations when Asean becomes a Union? Are the religious authorities in the states and in the Federal Territories serious about imposing these laws in an Asean Union which will be reality by or around 2025?

It had been indeed a crude attempt to sabotage Malaysian racial harmony, and at a time when Malaysia lost RM 115 billion in her foreign reserves within a few months, her exports marginally receding and internally the government had had to apply austerity that cut 30 percent of departmental budgets in some cases.

Anwar's Sodomy II Trial begins tomorrow.

The events could not have chosen a worse time to happen. But somehow the people stayed calm and composed through the spate of church and mosque desecrations. There was no tension at all wherever I went. There were merely expectations.

Anwar Ibrahim, who was prompt in his approval of the Christian caper, was soon in dire political distress. It is about this person that a lot of people are talking, mainly wishing to see the end of his political career and the demise of his party, the PKR.

It is certain a lot of people have had enough of Anwar’s wanderings in a wilderness of his own making. Anwar is mainly and essentially a rabble-rouser, they say.

The man had hallucinated about taking over the federal government by September 16, 2008 and today, which is the 1st of February 2010, it looks possible it is his party that shall soon lose three Members of Parliament in a beginning of total recall of a party born as a living dead in 1999.

Should it happen, the Barisan Nasional (BN) would only need eight more to regain the two-third majority in Parliament that Pak Lah caused the coalition to lose on 8 March 2008.

In Penang PKR lawmakers are taking on the Chief Minister, Lim Guan Eng, which can lead to the breakdown of the Pakatan. ----a. ghani ismail, 1st Feb. 2010

PAGING HELL. CHRISTIANS AND MUSLIMS HAVE ARRIVED IN MALAYSIA

The Archdiocese in Malaysia should never have gotten itself embroiled in a court battle against the government simply to demand its right to use the Arabic term for God, Allah. Winning in court, the ensuing glory caused an overflow of temper to attack eight churches beginning Friday mainly in failed acts of arson by Molotov cocktails.

Now, as church spokesmen are reported to defy the official request for the Archdiocese to withdraw the demand, it does make the Archbishop to be seen behaving like a brat who must have what he wants. He shifted the general agitation of civil society for justice and for fair-play into a coordinated act of international espionage.

How does using the word Allah help the Church in its evangelism? Why make such a mountain of what is to the popular mind a mere mole-hill? Why can't they use the Malay word "Tuhan" (God) which is known to everyone in Malaysia?

After the baptism of fire, the Archbishop, Tan Sri Murphy N. Pakiam, for a long time much respected and loved by many across the religious barriers, is saddled with the choice either to apply strategic withdrawal or walk into outright rebellion.

The Church in Malaysia had firmly kept to the line of secure diplomacy to render unto Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what’s left of the remaining.

There was only the outspoken Jesuit, O.C. Lim of the Xavier Church in Petaling Jaya, who would mix politics with the apostolic in his sermons.

Then, from some years before, a wind came blowing the devil's artifices to change the Christian mind-set in Malaysia.

A group of Christians, said to have been funded by the Konrad Adenauer Foundation, began an earnest campaign to shake the Church into a political awakening while founding at the same time a dubious Malaysian Inter-Faith Network (NIM).

Small bodies of church-led Christians appeared to have become politically active in that elections, bringing in its wake the train of events that nearly caused the Archdiocese to burn in the fire of hell.

What had transpired had been a relentless flame-baiting, a loathing of Malays and of Islam. In the terms of history it could only be construed as a Vatican-US-CIA devise to seed civil unrest in Malaysia.

It is, of course, far less vivacious than the grand plan of the complot to stump the expansion of Communism in Vietnam after French colonialism was battered at Dien Bien Phu by the Vietcong (here).

That was when the Catholic Ngo Dinh Diem was propped-up as the first president and with his brothers and his sister-in-law and a Catholic Bishop to boot, he falsified Armageddon under the gaze of the Lady of Fatima in Vietnam.

He rained insults, injuries and blow after blow on the Buddhist population until monks in saffron began the unforgettable protests by self-immolation on the streets of Saigon. You remember? You can begin to remember better from here.

What followed the High Court decision to approve for the Christians the use of Allah, was a quick reflexive remark by Anwar Ibrahim, de facto leader of Pakatan Rakyat and an old buddy of the architect of the Iraq War, Paul Wolfowitz.

In Malaysia the connection means we are in the midst of a geo-political tussle for the containment of China and to secure both, the Straits of Malacca and the air space of the triangle from the Spratly’s to the Nicobar/Andaman islands and to Bangkok.

It is clear that the attacks on the churches since last Friday were a direct counter to this “Anwar-offensive”.

The IGP, Tan Sri Musa Hassan, was reported to have said the motive behind the acts was political. They were not about religious sentiments.

While Tan Sri Pakiam and the editor of the Herald had challenged an order of the Minister of Home Affairs, who also withdrew the license for the Herald, the fiery reactions that ensued had clearly been understood to have been a reaction against Anwar’s approval of the High Court decision.

The Muslims were widely split in their attitudes and responses to the Christians using the word Allah. It is possible the larger body of Malays and Malaysian Muslims are not averse to the use of the word by Non-Muslims.

Thus, to many observers the vitriol had been sourced from the underside of the political conflict and it had nothing to do with the broad-based agitation for the freedom of conscience by civil society.

The Archdiocese was clearly trapped in the political mess that’s now headed for a final countdown.

In this contest for power is seeded the fear that Malaysia may well have to pay a very heavy price for the hubris of the ruling elite that has caused executive and administrative dysfunction.

That price is re-colonization, the takeover of the micromanagement of Malaysia and of her resources in the quest of another operational staging point to contain China and the flow of the Islamic magma in the region.

So, does Tan Sri Pakiam, the Archbishop, want to continue challenging the powers which will force him to appeal to the Vatican sooner than later, or will he resist that temptation and himself retreat for the well-being of the larger numbers in the country?

We will have to wait and see.---a. ghani ismail, 12 Jan. 2010

Who Will Replace Nik Aziz In Kelantan?

In the blur of a mutiny aiming to overthrow the “ship’s captain” in the Kelantan government, the big question that arises in the waves sweeping over the petty state is about who will replace the 77-year old PAS Mentri Besar (Chief Minister).

Nik Aziz Nik Mat, wiry, wily and aging, is also PAS’s (Islamic Party’s) spiritual leader.

Approaching 20 years into a secure tenure, he ruled like a surviving slur of the oriental despotism he seemed to believe will hold for another century or two.

Observers had him supped into a senile wanderlust when he kept taking to task the party president he wanted tamed and the deputy president he wanted out. It was a sustained attempt to dispel any notion that may reduce him into anything lesser than the “Captain of the Ship”.

He kept cajoling the party leaders and each time he did his thing the PAS swayed and buckled close to rupture.

When the mutiny broke out it was, to many, a much-awaited sign of sustained life in the PAS, but bringing in the tide a clear reading of monumental death.

The current crisis in the state can lead to a grab of power for a decent future of modernization and development the Barisan Nasional (BN) can make. The BN needs a frontline leader acceptable to the people of the small delta community.

The drama began when popular blogger, Kickdefella (here), suddenly sacked from his position as a liaisons officer of the state investment arm, hit hard on Nik Aziz Nik Mat’s nose.

The ancient squat protuberance of the spiritual leader and politician bled. It will bleed more if he is found guilty of accepting criminal gratification from a logger.

The rich logger, said to be a former truck driver who gained a timber concession from the state government worth RM20 million, must have been grateful enough to spend more than RM400k on a "five-star" Haj trip to Mecca for the Chief Minister and his select group of VVIPs.

Nik Aziz and his spouse was one pair of the beneficiaries of this Al-Santa Clausu, the Muslim Gift-Bearer. His son-in-law, Ir Ariffahmi Abdul Rahman and wife, was another pair, said Kickdefella, placing the parents of the bride and the prodigal son-in-law in a political embrace few would envy.

The "five-star" trip to Mecca costs RM65,000 for each pair when about RM10,000 would have sufficed.

Nik Aziz had appointed his son-in-law as CEO of the state’s investment arm he chaired himself.

It is this fellow who sacked the blogger for reasons still unknown, the probabilities leaning heavily to a spin of intrigues Kickdefella suggested was about the creation of a dynasty.

For reasons of her own Ir Ariffahmi’s wife, Nik Amalina Nik Aziz, had written and widely published in the net a soul-spilling letter to say her father, the Chief Minister, had indeed offered the big job to her husband from about one year before he husband finally accepted the appointment.

She described it as a “hot seat”. It is looking like it could burn through his pants.

She targeted the blogger.

Kickdefella is known to be an aide of Husam Musa, a state Executive Councilor (Minister) who had been groomed by Nik Aziz he served for almost 20 years beginning as a Press Secretary in 1990.

Observers mostly agreed Husam Musa did a great job to promote his boss. He was articulate, physically well-stacked and informed.

When he became Political Secretary six years later he was seen as a protégé of Nik Aziz and being groomed for high office in the state.

Husam rose to become a state minister in 2004 and soon into his second term he lunged for number two of the Islamic Party in mid-2009.

He lost, a failed crossing of the Rubicon that would have unsettled Rome for Julius Caesar.

But Kelantan obviously isn’t quite comparable to Caesar’s Rome and Nik Amalina cannot be the asp in Cleo’s chamber.

Kelantan is actually one of nine petty monarchies in the Malay Peninsular noisily bugging the environment to create heat for a constant clear sighting by GSP from above.

Kickdefella locked in and he gripped the stoic Menteri Besar in an allegation of blatant nepotism and possible graft, threatening to spill more beans that should cause the old man to rue the day he decided his son-in-law must be the CEO of the state company he sits on as Chairman.

Nik Aziz had slipped. The 77-year old stoic who is regarded by many as a Muslim saint is certainly having lots to explain.

Is Islam actually free of values that collectively forbid nepotism? Are gifts from the well-gratified merely a pleasant way of saying “Thank You” to state leaders and their councils of powerfolks called in Kelantan “VVIPs”?

Husan Musa, obviously dunked by the wily old man, was soon reported to have said he wanted out of the state government and the party, sending the Chief Minister into a corner too tight for him.

How can he face the future should his former protégé lead the final attack against him from within, or abruptly slide into the Opposition and invade his fort?

The Deputy Mentri Besar, Mohamad Yakub, is a quiet man of diligence that seemed to have cleverly failed to record his political existence. He is held in the state as unavailable for the high office.

Ariffahmi Abdul Rahman, the Engineer CEO of the states investment arm, should have accepted the job his father-in-law offered him a year earlier. He has many steps to go before he can be in the running.

That leaves either Husam Musa who is now zoomed into a limbo and the Umno Kelantan liaison chief and federal minister, Mustapha Mohammed, a brilliant former civil servant.

Nik Aziz, cornered into the wilds of the fall from grace, is likely to be thinking of dissolving the state assembly pronto and let the party run for the sun it can lose.

Whoever will finally be chosen to lead the charge in the BN must be the sort of personality the people of the tightly knit delta community can accept and can trust. Mustapha, who is the brightest, must quickly take the lead. But will he go for it? ----a. ghani ismail, 29 Nov. 2009.

Umno Won Bagan Pinang. Who Lost?

Umno President and Prime Minister, Najib Tun Razak, slumped on the leeward side of Isa Samad’s landslide victory in the Bagan Pinang by-election on Oct. 11, suffers a popularity downslide he may find difficult to overcome as he plans to dissolve parliament next year for a quick grab of his own mandate to rule.

Najib had taken over a corrupt Umno. Unless purged, the party no longer made sense as a nationalist organization and would stand to lose more and more members to the Pas and Parti Keadilan Rakyat (PKR) Anwar Ibrahim had mounted to overtake Umno.

Isa Samad, Menteri Besar (Chief Minister) of Negeri Sembilan for 22 years, found guilty of buying votes to win as party vice-president in 2004, has now successfully made a tainted second coming, the taint a costly color that Najib had taken to win in the ninth by-election since the general elections on 8 March 2008.
Umno and the BN had lost the remaining eight.

Even if Isa was clearly in control of the constituency and could scuttle Umno in the by-election, a lot of people agreed with former Prime Minister, Dr. Mahathir Mohamad, when he openly attempted to persuade Najib not to choose the tainted Isa as candidate.

Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah, who contested Mahathir for Umno president in 1987 and narrowly lost, wrote on the eve of the by-election it’s better for Umno to lose rather than “affirm corruption” should Isa win.

Now that Isa has won by a record 5,435 votes, it is Najib who stands as a casualty.

He caused the party to reel under a weight it may not be able to carry through the next general elections. Umno cannot even be classified anymore as a nationalist party the Malays can trust to take care of their interests.

Many party divisions have been bought and are controlled by money-laden contractors and businessmen since vote-buying, or “money politics”, became rampant in Umno from sometime in the mid-1980s.

After suggestions to purge the party of the corrupt have fallen on deaf ear, the resurrection of Isa Samad on Oct. 11 seemed to have spaced out all alternatives to regime change, making it pertinent for my former teacher, Gamany of Daim and Gamany (now retired) to meet me to discuss some matters of ideological vehemence in the Opposition, the Pakatan Rakyat.

Gamany was a member of the PSRM and he agreed Kassim Ahmad's helmanship of the party for 18 years was senseless.

We areed even if there is still a chance for Umno and the BN to survive by an internal putsch, the possibility did not interest Gamany and the first thing Gamany asked when we met at Restoran Jamek in Kuala Lumpur was whether or not I could accept PKR’s Marhaenism as a suitable ideological base.

I had earlier suggested we use the broader Qur'anic class of Mustaz’afin (Oppressed/ Dispossessed/ Exploited) and the class of Mustakbirin (Oppressor/Exploiter/Corrupt) in socio-historical conflict to bridge the ideological divide between the Pas, PKR and DAP in the Opposition. (see here)

Since our purpose for an ideology would be to provide for coherence and cohesion while defining objectives, priorities and methods, whatever we decide should be something that can last a long time and not become merely a convenient adoption and adaptation that bears no relevance to our historical mission and society.

Marhaenism, whatever Sukarno had conceived and introduced it for, should be conveyed within the scope of historical materialism.

What we get is the petty traders and peasants who owned some scraps of capital but who would be badly mauled by a change in any of the factors of production, or merely by an increase of taxes or rent.

In our society we have 48 percent of landless farmers (in KADA and KEMUBU for example) and the social dynamics issued from the numbers do not favor Marhaenism.

Our landscape differ from the little patches of terraced rice-fields in Java Sukarno had seen fit to use as a means to enhance his NASAKOM (Nationalisme-Islam-Komunisme) of his Guided Democracy which lasted until his overthrow in 1965.

We need something that can provide for coherence and cohesion while striding distinctly above the communal and sectarian drawbacks of our own plural makeup, the likes of which would have been shunned by heaven and hell had these places been pre-informed in any detail about Malaysia.

Gamany did not worry about returning to a purely proletarian workout seeing that could inspire more Bangladeshi, Indonesian, Vietnamese and Myanmar workers in Malaysia than the sum total of the Malaysian blue-collar labor force.

So I suggested we can do with the scriptural generalizations and hone those into social stratifications and identities to display a broad ideological understanding as Ali Shariati had done in Iran during the Islamic Revolution that ended with the fall of the Pahlavi in 1979.

Gamany asked me what I thought of the DAP reviving the Chin Peng-Abdullah CD model of relationship between the Chinese-dominated MCP and the small 10th. Malay Regiment and I answered we can do better by aspiring to override the communalism.

Malays in Malaysia generally remain averse to socialism because of the anti-Malay policy of the MPAJA (Malayan Peoples’ Anti-Japanese Army) during the Japanese Occupation.

Abdullah CD hailed from Lambor Kiri, a village several miles upriver from Pasir Salak where J.W.W. Birch was killed in the early years of the British Residential System. He and many of his Malay compatriots were anti-colonial first and last, or so his family members assumed of him.

There we stopped. Gamany and I shall meet again.

Since neither of us wish for a total command economy and both are favorably inclined towards choosing western models for change, modernization, development and integration, many finer points will need to be discussed before we can draw the Pas and other Muslims into serious discussions over the Islamic Welfare State and other matters of common interest.

Umno is obviously lost in the overwhelming materialism of the awesome transitional society and even if Isa Samad had won handsomely in Bagan Pinang on Oct 11, given its ruling attitude about corruption, Umno is bound to become even uglier still in the near future. -----a.ghani ismail, 12 Oct. 2009