Zahid Hamidi should be asked to resign

So, yes, we too in the UK were not happy with the system. And we ‘sold out’ the ruling party and ‘toppled’ the government because we were not happy with the system. But no one told us if we are not happy with the system then we can get out of Britain and go live in another country. If they had done that they would have been crucified. They would have been hung upside down from the nearest tree. We would have nailed their balls (or tits) to the wall.

NO HOLDS BARRED

Raja Petra Kamarudin

The first thing that Home Minister Zahid Hamidi did on taking office was to tell Malaysians who are not happy with Malaysia’s political system to leave Malaysia and go live in another country.

If Zahid were a British Cabinet Minister, by now he would have been asked to resign. In the UK you are forced to resign for an even lesser offense than that. And he would have had to resign, no two ways about it. 

Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak should, at the very least, demand that Zahid publicly apologise to Malaysians. Forcing him to resign is the correct thing to do but at the very least he must be made to apologise.

Is Najib prepared to demonstrate to Malaysians that he is really serious about his transformation program by doing this? The ball is now in Najib’s court. I would suggest Najib walk the talk and do something about this rather than pretend that this never happened.

Look at the two graphics below. In 2010, 23% of us (yes, me included) voted for Liberal Democratic, an opposition party, because we wanted political reforms. However, because of gerrymandering, our 23% of the popular vote gave us only 57 of the 650 seats.

Now do you know why we wanted political reforms? Even though we won 23% of the popular votes we won only 8.8% of the seats. What a bloody unfair system!

The only silver lining in that dark cloud is that the ruling party, Labour, as well as the main opposition party, Conservative, both did not win enough seats to form the government either.

They needed at least 326 seats to form the government. Labour won only 258 seats while its challenger, Conservative, won 307 seats -- both less than the required 326 seats to form the government.

The insult to this injury is that Labour won 39.7% of the seats with 29% of the popular votes while Conservative won 47.2% of the seats with 36.1% of the popular votes. And this also meant that with just 65% of the popular votes (less than two-thirds majority) they could have won 87% of the seats in Parliament (way above two-thirds majority).

What the hell! Bloody unfair, is it not?

Well, we from Lib Dem, the 23% or almost a quarter of the voters, were bloody pissed about this. How can we win 23% of the votes and yet win only 8.8% of the seats while Labour (the government) and Conservative (the main challenger) win only 29% and 36% of the votes respectively and yet win 40% and 47% of the seats each respectively?

Before the election we already knew that we were going to see a hung parliament. We knew that no party was going to win enough seats to form the government. In fact, probably 90% of the British citizens knew this and the media was talking about it every day. Hence no one thought that anyone was going to be able to form the government.

Before the election, Lib Dem said that in the event of a hung parliament it would choose Labour as its partner in a coalition government. But that did not happen for two reasons.

One was that Labour’s 258 seats added to Lib Dem’s 57 would give the coalition only 315 seats, still short of the 326 it required to form the government. Hence Labour plus Lib Dem cannot form the government either. Only by teaming up with Conservative, where the total would now come to 364, could it happen.

Secondly, Labour promised us electoral reforms, which was not good enough, while Conservative promised us political reforms (which would include electoral reforms), which is a better deal.

Hence for two reasons Lib Dem ‘sold out’ Labour, as Malaysians would normally say, and went to bed with Conservative.

Hence also, the Labour government was ‘toppled’, as Umno loves to say, and 59% of the voters controlling 56% of the seats formed the new coalition government.

So, yes, we too in the UK were not happy with the system. And we ‘sold out’ the ruling party and ‘toppled’ the government because we were not happy with the system. But no one told us if we are not happy with the system then we can get out of Britain and go live in another country. If they had done that they would have been crucified. They would have been hung upside down from the nearest tree. We would have nailed their balls (or tits) to the wall.

And what was it that Tun Abdullah Ahmad Badawi said? Ah, yes, Malaysia is a country with a first world infrastructure but a third world mentality. How true!

Zahid Hamidi, apologise! Najib Razak, sack him if he refuses to apologise.