We’ll be Freddy Krueger to Umno

Don’t go after the politicians, go after their business cronies. And there are a 1,000 ways to skin the cat.

COMMENT

People are not stupid. They read in between the lines and are capable of coming to their own conclusions.

When Umno leaders say this country will go to the dogs if Pakatan Rakyat takes over, that is the height of hypocrisy.

It is Umno which has supported the pillage and plunder of this nation. It has worked hand in hand with the thieves of this country for 55 years. That is the reason people are disgusted with Umno.

Take Japan, for instance. Japan’s Umno is the LDP. It had governed Japan for a long time since 1955.

LDP was responsible for the economic transformation of Japan. It was behind the export-driven economy and supported the privatisation of government-linked companies and transforming the bureaucracy.

Essentially, LDP is like Umno but its achievements are bigger than Umno. Japan, steered by LDP, has developed into one of the powerful economies of the world.

Yet, the LDP was defeated.

Does this mean that the Japanese are ingrates and not mindful of the vast contributions and role of LDP?

Not at all. Their disgust over corruption and inept governance overrode their sentimental attachment to the role and contribution of LDP.

Beginning with the Lockheed scandal – which encompassed a series of bribes and contributions made by officials of the US aerospace company, Lockheed, from the late 1950s to the 1970s in relation to aircraft sales – the LDP has since been associated with corruption and cronyism.

Similarly, many Malays are mindful of the role and contributions of previous Umno leaders in shaping Malaysia into what it is today.

Mindless plundering

But like the Japanese, their disgust over corruption, the bullying and the indiscriminate conversion of wealth belonging to the people, overrides the sentimentalism over the role of Umno. And Malaysia has so many Lockheeds in its cupboard.

Umno should stop going around wearing its unjustifiable sense of over-importance because like LDP, it’s nearing the end of its history.

It’s the end of life as defined by Umno – the end of mindless plundering and pillage of the wealth of this country.

It’s the end of bourgeois living for the princelings from the leading luminaries of Umno and the government.

That is why former prime minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad is saying a change in government will mean life will be different.

It will be because there will no longer be the pillage and plunder and the conversion of public wealth into private wealth.

It will be a world without the lopsided agreements that impoverish state coffers.

That is why Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak is saying it will be the end of civilization.

Of course, it will be the end of civilization as defined by Umno where the people are waiting to be manipulated and exploited.

Mahathir fears that if Umno loses, then his legacy is finished. The businesses of his immediate family will be in danger.

All the businesses gotten through unfair and ill-gotten means will be untangled. The business Mahathir does through proxies will at last be exposed.

We will do as what former economic adviser Daim Zainuddin tells us – don’t go after the politicians, go after their business cronies. And there are a 1,000 ways to skin the cat.

We will be the Freddy Krueger to Umno and its satellite political partners.

(Freddy Krueger is a fictional character who appears in Wes Craven’s A Nightmare on Elm Street as a disfigured serial killer who uses a glove armed with razors to kill his victims in their dreams, causing their deaths in the waking world as well.)

The writer is a former Umno state assemblyman but joined DAP earlier this year. He is a FMT columnist.