The prodigious prophecy now is that the next prime minister of Malaysia will be Anwar Ibrahim. This is the opinion of majority Malaysians, according to many surveys done by local independent bodies. And with this development UMNO together with Barisan Nasional (BN) may lose many more seats in the 2013 general election as compared to what they encountered in the 2008 general election.
Many opinion surveys have also shown that the fate of UMNO and BN in the coming general election will be shoddier than that of 2008. The general expectation is that Pakatan Rakyat (PR) will form the next government.
Anwar has now become more popular
Najib Abdul Razak’s – the caretaker prime minister – popularity has plunged significantly and Anwar’s fame has ominously increased. Surprisingly, in one of the surveys it was also found that Khalid Ibrahim the caretaker Menteri Besar (MB) of Selangor has come out to be more popular than both Anwar and Najib.
This further approves Khalid’s efficacious performance as MB of Selangor for the past five years.
The observable finding implies that Anwar has now become more popular than Najib to become the next prime minister and of Khalid – the most popular MB Selangor has ever had in history – is set to win big in Selangor.
Caretaker leaders of the other three states – Penang, Kelantan and even Kedah – have also been rated positively in the many surveys done in the past few months. Lim Guan Eng of Penang has been appraised as the best Penang Chief Minister (CM) the state has ever had since independence.
With his fair-mindedness, honesty, popularity and competence the people of Penang will naturally reinstate him as the CM of the state.
Nik Aziz Nik Mat – the caretaker MB of Kelantan – will always remain as the most ‘revered’ MB the county has ever had. He is always mobbed by huge crowds where ever he presents himself in the country and this was evident in his recent visit to Putrajaya to endorse Husam Musa’s candidacy at the precinct.
A humble and simple man who does not have any flavour for any posh lifestyle Nik Aziz gets the support of all the races in the country. According to surveys, PAS led government of Kedah under the unpretentious stewardship of Azizan Abdul Razak still has the edge over BN and the state will remain under PR.
The political tsunami has now swept almost all states in the country and this time around it’s predicted that many more states will be flounced by PR. Most Malaysians are optimistic now that Putrajaya will be captured by PR in the 13th general election.
Hudud backfires on UMNO
When BN has become so brittle a coalition PAS, DAP and PKR pact has grown to become almost ‘as resilient as the rock of Gibraltar’ despite the continuous efforts by UMNO to pop the coalition using its bias media and using some dubious personalities and pseudo professors – which include those who had failed in politics in the past – to debase the pact.
Be that as it may, a significant number of Malaysians today do not watch or read the MSM. They prefer to seek the truth from the alternative media.
Worried UMNO and MCA are still playing to hilt the issue of hudud (preventive laws or bounds of acceptable behaviour and the punishments for serious crimes in Islam) to win over votes of non-Muslims. But, shockingly, in the process they are losing more Malay votes for disparaging Islam.
Ill-informed Najib is toying on frantic politics insisting that PR ‘state their stand on hudud’. PR has indeed replied intelligently and convincingly to this and now demands that UMNO state its stand on the issue. UMNO has no answer to this to please the Muslim Malays and the non-Muslims and this simply shows Najib’s and UMNO’s hypocrisy when it comes to hudud.
Ill-advised Najib has opened his mouth loud on hudud thinking that the Chinese will abandon PAS and DAP but noticeably his strategy has backfired on him, UMNO and BN. DAP on its part has overtly declared the party’s respect for Islam as the official religion of the country and PR as a pact has stated clearly that hudud is not included in their common manifesto and thus the matter has become a non-issue to the coalition and also when PR takes over Putrajaya.
Islam is the official religion of the country no doubt but hudud is not drawn into PR’s manifesto to maintain their harmonious alliance. The Chinese and Indians are well aware of this.
Again when Najib and UMNO on their part cannot state their stand on hudud their media too has failed to break the PR coalition by erroneously slaving on this issue.
‘Surat khabar lama’
Thoughtlessly, Mahathir Mohamad who is now suffering from a saviour and post prime-ministerial syndrome – also often described as an acquired psychological disorder – still believes that he is so popular in Malaysian politics. He has to be updated by UMNO that the people out there have discarded him as ‘surat khabar lama’ (old newspaper).
But Mahathir has not stopped playing the race card to save his political dynasty – he has a son who is ambitious to become the MB of Kedah and perhaps later the PM of the country. He also has sons who are deeply involved in business.
Mahathir cannot be ‘recycled’ by UMNO anymore, as he is now patented by all Malaysians as a ‘racist’ – so unbecoming of a leader of his stature who had helmed the country for 22 years as prime minister. His slogan of Bangsa Malaysia then was all but hypocrisy just for him to survive as prime minister and this slogan is now shattered to bits due to his own xenophobic tones and rhetoric.
He is now even branded as an ‘extremist’ the calibre of Perkasa’s Ibrahim Ali and Zulkifli Nordin – the both contesting just to be slaughtered in the coming general election. Mahathir, pitifully, has not come to his senses that he has now become more of a liability than asset to UMNO and BN.
Mahathir’s staunch support for Perkasa has atrociously affected Najib’s rating, as the latter – with the huge baggage that he carries – has no gut whatsoever to stop the former from championing his bigoted stance.
Fielding Perkasa members as BN-friendly candidates in the 2013 election has further doomed Najib’s credential as BN leader. The Chinese, Indians and majority moderate Malays have now abandoned him. Waning Najib has now been branded as a leader who condones extremism and racial politics by directly ratifying Perkasa members as BN-friendly election candidates.
This has even alienated many UMNO members from him and they will in all likelihood sabotage the party in the coming general elections.
Surge in popularity of Anwar
Of late there is a surge in popularity of Anwar and this is sign that the people seem to have more trust in PR than BN to form the new government after the 13th general election. In one recent survey it was found that 54 percent Malays felt that Anwar is more capable as prime minister.
Najib in this survey only scored 28 percent support from this ethnic group.
Taking all ethnic groups into account Anwar still leads by about 6 to 10 percent. Surveys of late have shown that Najib, UMNO and BN have lost the people’s support considerably.
Najib has turned down the many offers by Anwar to debate on the many national issues facing the country. His cowardice stand and refusal to engage in healthy political debates with Anwar has further made him unpopular. To the people the perception is Najib seems to hide behind the MSM to spin and cover his many weaknesses as a leader.
This is doing more harm to Najib as he can never be regarded as a ‘fighter’ in politics. He is more trademarked as a ‘play-safe’ leader who is dubbed as not gutsy enough when dealing with political enemies.
High cost of living
Four years of Najib’s leadership has brought no substantial progress to the country. It’s truly a four year of wasting taxpayers’ money on building his muddy image. Millions of taxpayers have been spent on dubious foreign bodies for his image building exercise that has only peeved the people. People’s hard-earned money has been wasted for personal glory, they whine.
Najib under his 1Malaysia slogan has tumbled when it comes to improving the people’s standard of living. Figures on household income from the Malaysian Statistical Department in 2009 indicate that that rates of stark poverty stand at 20 percent in the country. Saying that the rate of poverty is only 1.7 percent is a political bluff on the part of BN.
At least 80 percent of Malaysians are not living a comfortable life with the escalating inflation and high cost of living. Over 95 percent of working Malaysians are bogged down with loans to sustain their livelihood. And almost 75 percent of their incomes are spent on paying off debts to financial institutions.
Eighty percent of government servants living in urban areas cannot afford to own houses due to the ever escalating prices of properties in a capitalist economy the country seems to adhere to. Instead of creating more jobs and helping to reduce the cost of living Najib could only decide on short-term measures or ‘bribes’ to please the poor by giving them pittance – a one-off paltry sum of money that could not last the poor even for two days.
There is indeed a gulf of gap between the rich and the poor in the country and this has been significantly expanded since Najib took over as prime minister. The high cost of living today is just unbearable to almost 80 percent of the population.
Country in huge debt
More than RM3billion was spent to help the poor under BN’s BR1M (Bantuan Rakyat 1Malaysia). The RM500 given to the poor is not even enough to sustain their live for two days – which Najib thinks otherwise; it was enough for the poor to spend the money for a year at about RM41 a month, he quipped.
To hide the government’s weaknesses the poor are made to shop for no-quality products. To make the poor buy inferior products Najib’s governemt has come up with 250 KR1M (Kedai Rakyat 1 Malaysia) and plans for another 57 shops of this nature to be set up in the whole country.
Najib is creating a class society where the rich shop for essentials in posh shopping complexes and the poor in shops that offer low quality products. Malaysians are expecting Rosmah Mansor to set the trend first by shopping at these cheap joints for the poor.
The BN government has not stopped at that. Their plan is to make all pay for health services provided in government hospitals when 90 percent of Malaysians including government servants depend on free health services provided by the government. They just cannot afford the pricey health services provided by the private sector.
To reap money from the people the government introduced the AES (Automated Enforcement System). With the AES and high toll rates, car road taxes, high car insurances, driving licences the people are continuously being ripped off by the BN government.
Prices of almost ALL essentials have shot up in the past four years when Najib is lost for ideas on how to curb this problem. The country is in huge debt of more than RM500 billion and this will further increase to bankrupt the country sooner than the year 2007.
Nothing has progressed
Najib has not been a capable leader and it’s high time that there was a change to the leadership. This seems to be the opinion of a significant number of voters.
In 2007 the country’s foreign debt was RM267 billion and this shot up to RM502billion in 2013.
When Anwar was the Minister of Finance the deficit rate was turned to surplus rates in 1998. The country achieved surplus rates of 2.4 percent but this plummeted to deficits when Anwar left the government.
The deficit rates under Najib’s leadership have escalated to 5.4 percent in 2010 and there is no sign that this will decrease.
With all the bombastic terms and acronyms used to describe the economic transformation programmes under Najib’s leadership nothing has progressed on the ground other than what has been contributed by the private sectors on their own initiatives.
But this has not been enough to sustain the economy. Corruption, capital flights and negotiated tenders offered to cronies at inflated process have further doomed Malaysia’s economy.
Najib does not seem to have any solution to these problems. The standard of education has dropped drastically when higher institutions are filled with significant number educationists who are political yes-men.
The credibility of many other public institutions such as the Police, Judiciary, Army, the Election Commissions, the Corruption Agency have all become a subject of ridicule all because of political interventions.
Thousands of graduates are jobless and even when they obtain jobs their pay do not commensurate their qualifications.
A ‘flip-flop’ leader
Najib is more known as a ‘flip-flop’ leader who has no stand on many important issues wreaking the nation. From the economy such as those involving negotiated tenders, the Malaysia Airlines-Air Asia deals, the SBPA (Sistem Saraan Baru Perkhidmatan Awam) to his own personal life he has been criticised by all Malaysians.
Najib has never been firm or rather prefers to keep an elegant silent on many controversial issues such as on reining in corruption, cronyism and the many personal attacks on him.
The National Feedlot Centre (NFC) fiasco, Scopene purchase dishonour, Altantuya’s murder case, PKFZ (Port Kelang Free Zone) debacle, AES, 1Malaysia e-mail ignominy, Taib’s mysterious wealth, excessive reaction on BERSIH 2.0 and 3.0 demonstrators, the ‘First Lady’s’ lifestyles and spending sprees and lavishness, , the wasteful spending on birthdays, engagements and weddings by leaders, shopping and holidaying overseas and staying at posh hotels, huge expenses on maintenance of official residences, Perkasa extremism ‘sanctioned’ by Najib’s administration, political violence, and the list goes on …. have all but put Najib, BN and the country in bad light.
These are among the many issues still disturbing the people’s mind and haunting Najib and his administration. Najib failed to handle the recent Lahad Datu intrusions by foreign elements early this year that claimed the lives of 10 of the nation’s security forces and left many others injured.
For all these reasons the support for Najib and BN has dwindled. Mahathir’s choice of Najib as prime minister was an utter disappointment. Najib has in fact failed to steer the country to success. He seems to be more interested in rhetoric and his personal glory than the nation, is the view of most Malaysians.
Poor choice of candidates
A confused Najib could not even be fair to UMNO and BN supporters when it comes to the selection of candidates for the coming elections. Many UMNO hopefuls and supporters are sullen and may sabotage the party during the elections. Some critics say the list of candidates for the elections is Rosmah’s, which she has denied vehemently. Still, many chosen are obviously not going to be winnable candidates.
MCA has to loan their incumbent seats to UMNO as the party knows that it will be wiped out in the coming elections. MIC has to bear with UMNO’s choice of Zulkifli Nordin as BN candidate for Shah Alam parliamentary constituency despite the fact that the man has humiliated the Indians and Hinduism.
Many in UMNO and BN are not pleased and Najib’s political scheme could only lead to a significant number of them planning to incapacitate the party’s chances of winning the coming general elections.
Under Najib’s leadership BN is now in complete disarray. With Najib’s popularity and BN’s popularity dipping, no amount of MSM spins, news propagandas and multiple banners put up in the streets are going to convince the voters to retain BN as government.
It’s time for change; say a significant number of voters.
Ini kalilah…
Malaysia Chronicle
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