End of shelf life

Minister-in-charge of Communications, Information & Culture Dato’ Seri Utama Dr. Rais Yatim Ph.D

At true dawn of the new year, a lot of actions and surprises expected for 2013. The much anticipated 13GE almost must happen in the first quarter of this year. And the event (which is more likely, will) BN wins the general election, Prime Minister Dato’ Sri Mohd. Najib Tun Razak gets to form his own choice line of leaders.

We at BigDogDotCom have been considering and weighing all mitigating points and arguments to deactivate ourselves from active blogging and post 13GE would be the fine time to go off air. However, recent developments does not warrant us to do so.

Yesterday was the last day for Bernama CEO/General Manager Dato’ Hasnul Hassan. His contract was not renewed. A new manager is expected to take over from him and announcement is said to be sometime very soon.

In the past, we briefly raised the contentious point of Minister of Information, Culture and Communication Dato’ Seri Utama Dr. Rais Yatim Ph.D has a sinister habit of appointing CEOs of GLCs under his Ministry for an annual contract. This inadvertently brought up the argument of nothing strategic could be achieved for CEOs of GLCs whose responsibilities amongst other things include to develop the industry which are under their watch.

Annual contracts meant for Minister who has been described as ‘arrogant’ and ‘control freak’ to ensure these CEOs of GLCs now-tow to the Minister’s agenda rather than achieve strategic goals, outlined under what the Ministry expect to achieve on behalf of the Federal Government.

Probably it necessary to highlight that the Minister himself should be subjected to the same ‘renewal of service contract’ first. Then again, at his age of over 70 years old, he should already be retired or soon to be retired.

Minister-in-charge of archives and antiquities should qualify to be archived and an ‘antique’

Dr Rais has been in the Cabinet since December 1999, when then Prime Minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad brought him back into mainstream politics in the November 1999 10GE after his dissent party Semangat 46 was dissolved in 1996 and members brought back into the UMNO fold. Dr Rais resigned in April 1987 right after the ‘Team B’ defeat citing “I have burned the bridge”, in UMNO’s worst party election.

Dr Rais along with Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah formed UMNO 46 right after the de-registration of UMNO on 4 Feb 1988 by Kuala Lumpur High Court but was rejected by ROS. Then, Parti Semangat 46 was formed and became the Opposition. For nine years (1987-1996), Dr Rais was in the political wilderness and failing to win his Jelebu Parliamentary seat from UMNO in Nov 1990 8GE and Apr 1995 9GE.

Aggregating all the years of service, Dr. Rais has been enjoying the perks of ‘Ministerial’ stature for over 22 years now [4 years as Menteri Besar, 5 years as Minister (first round) and 13 years plus (from Nov 1999 till present day)].

Considering that he is already too old, he is no longer productive in his job, he is out of touch from the realism, his ‘Little Napolean’-ship  apparently has evolved into somewhat mega-lomaniac-in-a-small-pond and the blunders  he made (making a Police report against a blogger and later abused his power, humiliating failure on the 55 Merdeka celebrations campaign and manipulated and lied to deny the screening of ‘Tanda Putera’, twice!), Dr Rais should no longer be in Prime Minister Najib’s Cabinet.

The man who is way out of season

There should no longer be any argument on why Dr. Rais should be retired come the dissolution of the 12th Parliament and should not even be into any position with a ‘Ministerial Status’. Just like expired food, expired personalities should be garbage-bagged and sent for disposal. - bigdogdotcom