Malaysia:The Malays must take the Blame for the Political Mess in 2015

by Dato’Ahmad Mustapha Hassan

(This article is published in http://www.theantdaily.com on December 31, 2015)

As we bid farewell to 2015, a year with some dark chapters in the nation’s history, we Malaysians, especially the Malays, have to shoulder the blame for what had happened to this once beautiful and peaceful country.

Year in and year out, it seems that we have always chosen the wrong sort of leaders. We elect the incompetent to guide the destiny of the country. The Malays with their feudal attitude are afraid to challenge the leaders that they have chosen. Most accept that it is the privilege of their chosen leaders to be corrupt. That is the feudal makeup of a society which is based on fear of their leaders who may get angry if criticized.

UMNO’s Wise Man

At one time, former Deputy Prime Minister and Deputy UMNO President (Tun) Musa Hitam urged the Malays to be a little bit “kurang ajar” or impudent. I believe he was pressing the Malays to be “kurang ajar” or impudent to their leaders. They should not be overly servile, unnecessarily humble and unreasonably afraid of their leaders whom they had chosen.

In other words, they have to break out from that feudal prison which had cowed them into being non critical and simply accept all the evil antics of their leaders. This is a new challenging world and the old culture of servility must end.

UMNO has had its days and the Malays must no longer be tied to the traditionalism created by UMNO to dupe them in believing that UMNO is their savior. UMNO leaders, in fact, had abused and used the Malays for their own benefit. The Malays had been made the ‘kuda tunggangan’, the vehicle for UMNO to remain in power and to plunder the wealth of the nation.

Malaysia’s Corrupt Man of the Year

The hope for a better 2016? Not likely. The mess and the flith that had been created may in  reality be mounting. The 1MDB scandal remains unresolved. There was no sincere and rational explanation about the so-called donation amounting to RM2.6 billion which was deposited into the private account of the Prime Minister. In fact, the Prime Minister has lost public trust and investor confidence due to his failure to come clean on the matter.

The three-minute clarification by Deputy Prime Minister Zahid Hamidi in Parliament was a joke. Even the story of it being a donation from a very rich and friendly Middle East individual smacks of a fairy tale. The Prime Minister conveniently was not in Parliament to explain the mystery of this so-called donation. The only recourse for the people to know the actual situation about the huge sum of money is to charge those involved in this misdemeanor. But we know that this is not likely to happen since the new Attorney-General, Appandi Ali, is Najib’s lackey.

Never in the history of this nation has money presumed to be from a “foreign source” been made available to a Malaysian leader. This can be construed as an external interference in the political affairs of the country. A loan would have been more acceptable (if it is raised by the Prime Minister in his personal capacity),  but a donation from an external source is very dubious indeed. Nobody gives money, and such a huge sum at that, for nothing. So what is the deal and this we will probably never know.

Towards the end of the parliamentary session, the government introduced an enactment that gave tremendous power to the Prime Minister. Under the new National Security Council (NSC) Act, the Prime Minister has granted dictatorial powers. And this Act was completely unnecessary. There are adequate laws in the country that can be used to deal with threats to national security. This Act takes away the power of the King to declare a state of emergency when  a situation warrants it.

There is more to it than meets the eye. The ethnic and religious divisions had become more pronounced. The government had not acted to stop the spread of ethnocentric and Islamofacistic antics of some members of the Malay-Muslim community. Their brazen acts in belittling other religions were simply dismissed by the government although these acts were against the spirit of harmony and unity in the country.  The government just allowed the situation to turn into a complete mess.

The way I see it, 2016 is unlikely to see any change in this deplorable situation in the country.It is time for Malaysians and especially the Malays to open wide their eyes and their minds as to what is happening in the country.  We have to reclaim the Malaysia that was once the pride of the nation and the envy of our neighbours from Prime Minister Najib Razak and his UMNO kleptocrats.