Umno 66th: Shopping spree top on members' agenda not Najib's rhetoric

While UMNO’s 66th Anniversary seemed to take off with a pomp – as per the main stream reports, there were just far too many express busses parked all along the streets of the city centre and traffic jams on a late Saturday evening as an overflow of imported ‘locals’ went shopping in Jalan Tuanku Abdul Rahman.

While civil society is crying foul over the witch-hunting following the unprecedented Bersih 3.0 assembly of citizens championing free, fair and just electoral reforms, UMNO ‘followers’ combed the streets bargain-hunting as their express coaches lay parked all along Jalan Raja Laut and Jalan Tuanku Abdul Rahman.

While UMNO politicians at the rostrum raised the tempo by rubbishing the hundreds of thousands who came on their own volition convinced that ‘enough is enough’, the supporters for UMNO’s rally were obviously distracted by the shopping paradise that Kuala Lumpur offered – let alone the carnival atmosphere deliberately set up at Bukit Jalil.

Who's paying for the shopping spree

Question: Whose money are these people spending as they paint the town red? SOGO was over whelmed with thousands of out-station shoppers. Who is paying for the so many express buses ferrying the people from North to South, East to West, into the federal capital?

But more importantly:

1. While civil society has become the under-dog, UMNO politicians have become the promising saviors of nationhood.

2. While civil society leaders are been branded as anti-nationalists, their followers are hammered to a corner for being hooligans.

3. While UMNO celebrates its 66th anniversary by importing supporters from all corners of the country, the attendees are excited with all the shopping in town.

4. While BN politicians court the institutions of governance to support their agenda, opposition parties are being thrashed with mud by the main-stream media.

So the ultimate question is: who will now be the determining factor for the future of Malaysia?

Is it UMNO? Is it the rural folks who are all too excited with ‘makan angin di Kuala Lumpur’ thanks to santa-UMNO? Or will it be the civil society that is largely the middle class of the nation’s population? Or is it the opposition parties under the leadership of DSAI?

The defining truth is: The future of a nation is dependent on the independence of the media. For as long as the media is not free and is crippled from speaking the truth, we will only see the nation slide further, dividing the population based on race, social class and religion that are cemented with untruths.

While our neighboring countries are well ahead battling political ideologies of socialism, democracy and republics, we in Malaysia are pushed into the deepest ravines of race, religion and class struggles. How then are we to qualify for Vision 2020?

If after over five decades of UMNO supremacy, the President’s speech has to isolate and zero-in on such issues as comparing the ferryed crowd numbers of UMNO’s 66th Anniversary with that of Bersih 3.0’s assembly that happened out of the citizens’ own free will, it only affirms one thing: That UMNO is gripped by a sudden fever with no remedies in sight.

Hopefully, the civil society that comprises largely of the middle class segment of society, and the followers of UMNO – i.e. the tourist-followers from the suburbs and villages will be wiser and tell our politicians what the rules of the game are for the future of this nation.

Journalists and lawyers need to decide

Meanwhile all journalists have to do some serious soul searching. Do they want to be instruments of this nation’s resurrection or would they prefer to nail the coffin over civil society?

Likewise all lawyers need to be truthful to their vocation. Do they want to profit from the season’s windfall or do they want to keep the foundations of justice rock-solid?

If we do not have clear answers to these questions, going to the polls will be disastrous for every one of us. The outcome of the 13th GE will sink us into such a deep pit of dichotomy, bitterness against each other and overwhelming suspicion that it probably will place us far behind all out Asian neighbors.

May justice, honor and integrity triumph; may wisdom, compassion and goodwill prevail. And for that we need the learned and the village bumpkin to think alike.

Malaysia Chronicle