Killing the mother of all golden geese

Umno has 'killed' the Malays who voted them into power for the last half a century.

COMMENT

Blink! And perhaps you will no longer see Najib Tun Razak as Prime Minister when you open your eyes. That is how much time Najib has left to lord over all that he now surveys in Putrajaya. I say Putrajaya because Malaysia is no longer his to govern.

Penang, Kedah, Kelantan and Selangor are ours. He has as much hold over Johor as Assad has over Syria. Muhyiddin Yassin is king there! Everywhere else it is the electorate that holds sway over who shall get to form government after the 13th general election and, by all credible accounts, it is anybody’s guess.

Decades of incompetence, and entrenched corruption compounded by hypocritical politicians who no longer even pretend to care for the nation and the people they are robbing blind… they all now await their fall from grace with a finality that they know has to come.

All that they had done to our country and to our people is now in the public domain to be perused at our leisure before our votes are cast.

We have seen from the time of the Bank Bumiputra debacle right up to the more recent NFC (National Feedlot Corporation) scandal that those to whom Umno had given the goose that laid the golden eggs do not understand that when they kill the goose, they kill themselves.

What these people – for whom “kebendaan” (materialism) is the be all and end all of their existence – do is to collect the golden eggs day in and day out without feeding the goose. They take without giving anything back until there is nothing to take anymore.

They did that to Bank Bumiputra. To PKFZ (Port Klang Free Zone). To Renong. Just see what Tajudin Ramli did to MAS! What Amin Shah Omar Shah, Abdul Razak Abdullah Baginda and a host of other cronies did to their Ministry of Defence (Mindef) business opportunities. How Halim Saad and Syed Mokhtar al-Bukhary mired themselves in mortal debts. How Khairy Jamaluddin, through his arrogance, managed to sour the relationship the people had with Abdullah Ahmad Badawi. What Shahrizat Abdul Jalil and family did to NFC.

To the privatisation opportunities given to them. To every Mindef tender. To Felda and to every money-grabbing opportunity that political power had accorded them. Now all they have left to take from are EPF and Petronas. And then what? No more golden goose? No more golden eggs?

The parasite had literally killed the host. They killed the goose that laid the golden eggs and in doing so, killed themselves. They, together with their insane wealth, would spiral in tandem into the abyss of election defeat once this 13th general election is over.

This Umno-led Barisan Nasional coalition runs our nation as a criminal enterprise. Our only comfort from this would be that when Pakatan Rakyat is in government, then Najib and his Cabinet would spend quality time in prison together and then the decline, decay and corruption of our government would cease.

Killing the mother goose

Today, Umno had killed the mother of all golden geese – the Malays who voted the party into power for the last half a century.

Umno killed the Malays through neglect, through willfully ignoring the Malay need for sustenance in the Malay struggle to shake off years of apathy and Umno-imposed negativity in their own self- worth, through a callous disregard and dismissal of the need to ensure that Ketuanan Melayu (Malay supremacy) works not only for Umno but, more critically, for the Malays at large.

And that inability to see Ketuanan Melayu as anything more then an insidious opportunity to enrich itself is what dammed Umno to what it is today: Irrelevance.

Umno is irrelevant to the needs of the Malays as the Malays now accept that to rise above their present circumstances, they need to rid themselves of the parasite called Umno. And like all parasites, Umno gorges itself on all that the Malays can give it, if not more.

Umno is irrelevant to the needs of the Malays because after 12th general election the Malays understand that Umno is the cause, and not the solution, to their problems.

Umno is irrelevant to the needs of the Malays because there exists for the Malays proven and capable national leaders and national political entities as viable alternatives.

Umno is irrelevant to the Malays because race and religion no longer define the political psyche of the Malays. National reconciliation, law and order, personal and civil liberties, the spectre of bankruptcy because of our increasing national debt, the plight of the poor, the aged and the disadvantaged – these are the issues that concern not only the Malays but everyone.

Any political entity, any national leader and any person that does not understand this deserves the fate that now awaits Umno and BN.

No more blind obedience

We Malays must recall how the legend of two of our greatest heroes Hang Tuah and Hang Jebat – not only for the Malays but for all Malaysians – had unfolded throughout our history.

Our early memories are of two warriors fighting a duel to the death because Hang Jebat transgressed Malay tradition when he “menderhaka” to his Sultan. Over the years the telling of this legendary confrontation had been adjusted to reflect the prevailing ideology of the time that we lived in.

Today we understand and even support Hang Jebat’s defiant stand against the authority of the Sultan and question Hang Tuah’s blind obedience to that authority and ask ourselves if that justified Hang Tuah killing his brother warrior… just as we now support Bersih and the movement against Lynas in Kuantan.

Today blind obedience to authority – be it to Umno or to the Sultans – is no longer the norm because no longer would it lead to “kiamat zaman dan berakhirlah zaman Melayu kita!”

Today the Malaysia we want, the Malaysia we aspire to and the Malaysia we need for the future of our children is not yet ours. For the Malays must understand and accept that our loyalty to any political entity must come with more than just the promise of Ketuanan Melayu or the need to have a Malay prime minister. We need to go beyond that.

We, and by “we” I mean all of us that call Malaysia our home, must go beyond what this Umno-led government had given us in its half-a-century of misrule and mismanagement of our nation’s resources, the plundering of our nation’s wealth and its attempts to destroy our nation’s inner strength and core values of a real 1Malaysia.

“You eat pork. I do not eat pork. So let us not eat pork together.” I came across that line in one of the blogs that I read yesterday, but for the life of me I could not recall where and in what context it was written and by whom. That thought had not left my head. It is the image of two good friends trying to find an opportune time to sit down and talk on matters of mutual interest.

Yes, they might not sit down and eat pork together but they could do many other things together. Is that not the story of our people? We understand each other’s sensitivities and work towards overcoming everything that divides us. We do this with the good grace of those who seek out unity in diversity.

Like sticks in a bundle, together we are unbreakable. Malaysia does not belong to me. I belong to Malaysia. You all belong to Malaysia. Let no one tell us otherwise. Let no one attempt to take you away from Malaysia. Now let us all together go onwards towards Putrajaya!

CT Ali is a reformist who believes in Pakatan Rakyat’s ideologies. He is a FMT columnist.