Waytha, Najib gambling on the odds in high-stakes poker game!

 

Waytha is after just 20 per cent of the Indian votes, all from the underclass, to help make a difference. He assumes that Najib will be able to at least maintain the status quo as the last time. If not, it does not matter to him anyway and not because PR has pissed him off. He has his MOU, again an unprecedented feat in Malaysian political history. He can use it to whack any Government in Putrajaya. 

Joe Fernandez

More brickbats than bouquets are pouring in thick and fast, albeit mostly from the opposition Pakatan Rakyat (PR) supporters, on the heels of the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) signed Thurs evening, 18 April, 2013, in Kuala Lumpur at a Tamil school between the Persatuan Hindraf Malaysia (PHM) or Hindraf Association of Malaysia (HAM) and the outgoing Barisan Nasional (BN).

Hindraf Makkal Sakthi and PHM/HAM chairman P. Waythamoorthy signed on behalf of the latter organization.

BN Secretary-General Tengku Adnan Tengku Mansor signed on behalf of the out-going ruling coalition.

Questions abound but more on that later.

Waytha himself has not made things any easier by issuing a statement Fri afternoon in which he declared: “It did not matter if the country was ruled by Ravana or Rama (the demon and the god respectively in Hindu mythology).”

This is not the first time that he has said this.

He has been chanting the same mantra during his enforced political asylum in England for four years until late last year.

PR should have been on the level with Hindraf from the beginning

In a telephone call on Fri morning, he said the MOU was a start and a historic one, the latter point one which can be conceded. He pointed out that BN accepted four – estate Indians, education, and business opportunities, stateless -- of Hindraf’s six major demands and had PR accepted even one, he would have gladly supported the Opposition rather than the ruling party. Anwar did publicly declare that PR would resolve the problem of stateless people in Malaysia within the first 100 days of taking office.

The Opposition Alliance and Opposition Leader Anwar Ibrahim in particular, according to Waytha, continued to humiliate and insult Hindraf and made all sorts of derogatory statements against it including the claim that he was a racist and that he was heading an extremist outfit.

Two other keys points which he made during his telephone call was that PR denied the role played by Hindraf Makkal Sakthi in being the catalyst behind the 2008 political tsunami which saw the opposition sweeping into power in five states and taking Kuala Lumpur.

The other point is that PR maintained the fiction that Hindraf was a spent force and had splintered into many rival organisations against each other and “we don’t know who the real Hindraf is and who to talk to”.

“I am still around. Uthayakumar – his elder brother and a Hindraf co-founder -- is still around,” said Waytha in the first indication that there was no split personally between him and his brother despite statements made by the latter’s supporters. “That’s why I mentioned that we will work to help return the two-thirds majority to BN.”

Najib is all hot air as the Father of All Bullshitters, Muhyiddin plain dumb

Whether the MOU is legally binding or otherwise is beside the point, according to Waytha. “Other governments have signed MOUs with NGOs elsewhere in the world.” He cited the Angola Government as a case in point. This is a political document, he stressed.

Waytha confirmed that he will be personally campaigning for the BN, but not MIC, come the 13th GE but had no specific details.

He pledged before signing off to take another call that “it will be War!” if the BN does not honour the MOU.

I think the most significant development on the MOU is that Najib apologized to the Indians for the wrongs committed against them by the Government over the last 56 years.

It's incriminating and legally significant. That covers the two points – deaths in police custody and institutionalized racism -- not in the MOU. It must be put on video and uploaded to the websites and You Tube. All Indians should applaud Najib for this in order to highlight the apology. I am going to ask Najib to apologise to Sabah and Sarawak for their 50 years of colonialism.

Obviously, Waytha and unelected caretaker Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak are gambling on the odds in a high-stakes poker game for the 13th General Election on May 5.

Waytha is more of a strategist than Najib will ever be. I won't be surprised if Waytha becomes Senior Advisor with Ministerial rank in the Prime Minister’s Department if Najib survives the 13th GE. Waytha as Senior Advisor makes sense.

I am inclined more and more to the view that Najib is all hot air, as evident from his public image as the Father of All Bullshitters – wither the MOU! --, and Muhyiddin more than a little dumb upstairs. No wonder Mahathir is up the wall, if not around the bend.

Hindraf Makkal Sakthi remains a Hydra committed to human rights, equal rights

It remains to be seen whether Najib was a drowning man clutching at a straw – MOU -- or otherwise. If not, he took Waytha's advice on the MOU.

Waytha is after just 20 per cent of the Indian votes, all from the underclass, to help make a difference. He assumes that Najib will be able to at least maintain the status quo as the last time. If not, it does not matter to him anyway and not because PR has pissed him off. He has his MOU, again an unprecedented feat in Malaysian political history. He can use it to whack any Government in Putrajaya.

Dong Zong, the Chinese educationist group, must be chewing on their you know what. Najib took them for a ride on April 1, April Fool’s Day, on Government recognition for the community-run Unified Examination Certificate (UEC), equivalent to the Sijil Pelajaran Malaysia (SPM) for High School graduates.

Hindraf activists linked to Uthaya are more than upset with Najib signing the Hindraf Blueprint with Waytha. They are wailing uncontrollably in FaceBook and elsewhere and beating their chests in unison that they were the ones who suffered in jail and under ISA but Waytha, according to them, has hijacked the movement for his self-glorification, whatever it means. This could turn out to be one of those Tamil melodramas from Tollywood.

The MOU is between Persatuan Hindraf Malaysia (PHM) and BN, according to Uthaya's people. In fact, they claim that the PHM was set up by Umno/BN just to sign the MOU. Persatuan Hindraf Malaysia (PHM) or Hindraf Association of Malaysia (HAM) is not Hindraf Makkal Sakthi, they say. PHM or HAM is a registered association. Hindraf Makkal Sakthi remains an ad hoc apolitical human rights NGO for all working across the political divide, according to Uthaya's people.

Waytha, in an email response to these claims, said: “What la J!”

Key elements missing from the Hindraf-BN Blueprint

I think it is okay for Indians to consider BN getting the biggest block of seats in Parliament but less than 112 seats -- purely on the grounds of giving them the benefit of the doubt for the MOU – but there are no guarantees the MOU will be implemented.

The racist civil service will sabotage it as in the case of the 3 per cent corporate equity plan for Indians, a 20 year old idea first raised by MIC and now recycled for the latest BN Manifesto.

Besides, it's a case of too little too late. The key element, the Ministry of Orang Asal and Minority Affairs, is missing from the MOU. Other issues like the anti-non-Malay administrative laws and deviations and distortions in the implementation of Article 153, NEP, and Article 3 are missing.

Is the Government still going to fiddle with public exam marks of students and call it "state secret" and continue to hand out free degrees to morons under the quota system including in critical disciplines?

Why did Najib wait until Parliament was dissolved to sign the MOU?

It's the Government – as in Angola -- which should sign the MOU, not the BN which may not form the Government after the GE.

No two-thirds majority for any ruling party in Putrajaya

One criticism leveled against the Hindraf-BN Blueprint is why Hindraf had to come out with such a Plan when the BN claims its Transformation Plans and Manifesto are inclusive and the Pakatan Rakyat claims that its Buku Jingga and Manifesto are needs-based. In fact, it's the work of the Government to come up with content like that in the Hindraf Blueprint. Indians shouldn't be begging for their rights. They should be accorded their rights automatically. If not for Hindraf, was the BN going to continue to ignore the Indians? The fact that BN signed the Hindraf Blueprint shows that Indians have been excluded from the so-called Transformation Plans.

If the MOU is implemented, Indians might be more comfortable with the idea of BN or any ruling party having a comfortable majority rather than the biggest block of seats in Parliament but less than 112 seats.

A two-third majority for Umno/BN is out of the question. Why does any ruling party or coalition need a two-thirds majority anyway? That's how the Indians and the other non-Malays got screwed in the first place especially since 13 May, 1969.

Waytha and Uthaya privately on the same page

The initial feedback, reflecting the Indian mood, is that the Tamil press is 100 per cent against the MOU on the grounds that it creates a dangerous precedent whereby the Government will ignore Indians and reduce them to begging for their rights and opportunities.

They are also suspicious that Hindraf got the MOU signed and not MIC. Why didn't the Government sign the MOU with the MIC? After all Hindraf is an association registered just last month. On what basis did BN sign the MOU with Hindraf?

Also, not being a political party, it looks odd for Hindraf to urge Indians to back Umno/BN when it was this very coalition which was responsible for the 56 years of internal colonization which the community suffered.

However, this does not mean that Waytha and I have parted company.

In fact, I am quite convinced that Uthaya is privately on the same page as well with Waytha. These two brothers have never once directly attacked each other below the belt. That should tell us all something.

If anyone plays out Waytha on the MOU, they will have to deal with Uthaya who has agreed to disagree with his younger brother for the moment and this writer.

Joe Fernandez is a graduate mature student of law and an educationist, among others, who loves to write especially Submissions for Clients wishing to Act in Person. He also tutors at local institutions. He feels compelled, as a semi-retired journalist, to put pen to paper -- or rather the fingers to the computer keyboard -- whenever something doesn't quite jell with his weltanschauung (worldview) or to give a Hearing to All. He shuttles between points in the Golden Heart of Borneo formed by the Sabah west coast, Labuan, Brunei, northern Sarawak and the watershed region in Borneo where three nations meet. He’s half-way through a semi-autobiographical travelogue, A World with a View.