If Najib is really sorry, he should quit Umno and Dr M should apologize too

Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak has apologized twice as in many days, in Kelantan and Kedah, for the ruling Umno’s abuse of power during its 55 years in power.

Not surprisingly, he was too proud to beg for forgiveness but merely pleaded for a second chance, showing himself in his true colors. He has yet to do anything, for example, about Women's minister Shahrizat Jalil, whose family has been accused of abusing a RM 250 million government soft loan granted to the NFC cattle breeding project which they had been granted to manage.

Long list to be sorry for

High on Najib’s list, if he had spelled out Umno’s other crimes, would have been to admit that the party has been twisting and turning every issue in Malaysia into a racial issue.

The term Bumiputera, not stated in the Federal Constitution, was invented by Umno to defy the Orang Asli and accord Native status by the backdoor to Malay-speaking communities in Peninsular Malaysia.

The idea here is to pit the Malay-speaking communities and the non-Malays against each other and scare the former into circling the wagons and uniting under one political platform, Umno, so that the ruling elite could live it up lat the expense of the nation. Umno’s politics of what separates us as a people have since fizzled out despite the party out-sourcing its racial politics to Perkasa.

Najib thereby contradicts former prime minister Mahathir Mohamad who has yet to apologise for anything during his long innings, 22 years, in power. On the contrary, Mahathir appears to carry on as if he was infallible.

What about an apology from Dr M

One long awaited apology from Mahathir is the 1987 Umno presidential election which he stole from Tengku Razaleigh through votes from 30 pro-Mahathir illegal branches. If these votes had been discounted, Mahathir would have lost the presidency by several hundred votes and not won by 43 votes.

Mahathir’s cardinal sin was to get the Court to declare Umno unlawful so that he could form Umno Baru and leave out Tengku Razaleigh and his supporters.

Then, there’s of course the US$ 100 billion of the people’s money that Mahathir was accused of squandering away on hare-brained schemes like trying to corner the forex market, the International Tin Market, the politics of patronage and the like.

Najib did not indicate that he will get Mahathir, his political master, to apologise.  Neither did he indicate that he will stamp out the politics of patronage and corruption (opportunism, nepotism, cronyism, collusion) which is draining the nation’s coffers and sapping its competitiveness, incentive to work, and productivity.

Perak

An apology means that one is admitting criminal liability and what waits is punishment, not a second chance as Najib expects. The right punishment would be for the voters to cast Umno into the dustbin of history.

To add insult to injury, Najib while apologizing has given no indication at all that his party would work its way towards redeeming itself in the eyes of the people.

It’s not enough of course that Najib just apologized in Kelantan and Kedah. He should in fact visit every nook and corner of the country and apologise to the people with as much sincerity as he can muster.

In Perak, he should apologise to the voters for pulling a number on them by stealing the government from Pakatan Rakyat (PR) in 2009. It was a most shameful and disgraceful episode and the people are just waiting eagerly to punish Umno for disrespecting their wishes expressed at the ballot boxes.

The people have lost their sovereignty in Perak through illegal acts. This includes the police, an extension of the powers that be, entering the Perak state assembly hall and dragging out the Speaker - locking him up in a storeroom, so that a replacement from the Barisan Nasional could be sworn in to replace him.

The least that Najib can do would be to have the decency and courtesy to return the state to PR rule before he calls for the 13th General Election.

Sabah and Sarawak

In Sabah, Najib should apologise for the Federal Government looking the other way as more than 1.7 million illegal immigrants flooded into the state to the dismay of the locals. These illegal immigrants have also entered the electoral rolls via the backdoor with MyKads which only local-born citizens are eligible to get.

In short, the illegal immigrants appear to have been “born again” in Sabah by the simple method of drawing up a statutory declaration to secure a late registration birth certificate. It comes as no surprise that if put through a checklist for schools attended and the like, these illegal immigrants, posing as Malaysians, would fail on all counts.

Obviously, Najib is not sorry over the Federal Government’s virtually criminal record in Sabah since there’s little to indicate, at the moment, that the Royal Commission of Inquiry on Illegal Immigrants would be set up as pledged in the near future.

Malaysian Borneo is also the place where the Federal Government has been helping itself to the oil and gas resources since 1976, sucking most of the other revenue, and returning just a pittance by way of the Malaysia Plans and the National Budget. The result has been Sabah and Sarawak been consigned to the bottom of the dung heap as the poorest states in Malaysia, according to the World Bank in 2010.

Creating an apartheid system

Overall, Najib is yet to specifically apologise for Umno turning Malaysia into an ossified society through the introduction of a form of caste system, deviations and distortions in the implementation of Article 153 of the Federal Constitution, Article 3 and the New Economic Policy, among others.

As for one of the nation's most marginalized groups, Najib says he’s sorry but the Hindu temple demolishing continues, Tamil schools are no better than cowsheds which leak buckets in the rain, and foreign medical universities housing Indian students continue to be derecognized.

Yes, Najibtruly needs to apologize for the crimes committed by Umno against the nation under the guise of the party’s incessant mantra on agama, bangsa, negara.

But if he’s really sorry for his party’s numerous misdeeds against the people, he should defect to the opposition with his faction. Perhaps Razaleigh’s faction will join him as well.

Malaysia Chronicle