Self-preservation is the default mode of the self-destructive.Najib is trapped in an existential dilemma. He cannot blame himself for the wreck he has wrought. To do so would severely damage, if not abort, a political career born in genetic entitlement and wafted into that exhilarating but oxygen-thin ozone layer of celebrity. He cannot blame Barisan either, the favoured recourse of BARISAN parties caught in a crisis, for he is a child of UMNO in more senses than one. He owes his job to the masters of the Capital, UMNO and more specifically Mahathir. He tried blaming the local opposition, particularly his bete noire Anwar, but that is a futile dead end. It could not take him out of the maze. Anwar is in control of neither the street nor the secretariat. Blaming PAKATAN too obvious to raise anything more substantial than a yawn.
Jeffrey said the United Borneo Alliance (UBA) headed by him will be organising a meeting on Sept 13 for all the opposition leaders to discuss common grounds.
Fact No. 1: Abim is not a political party. Therefore there was no hopping involved. Furthermore Anwar was invited by Dr Mahathir to join Umno!
Fact No. 2: Anwar did not leave Umno, he was sacked by Dr M and the Umno Supreme Council.
Fact No. 3: He did not jump into PKR, he formed it!
Today, most people understand a "coup d'etat" to signify unelected officials, almost always from a country's and/or intelligence institutions, seizing power from an existing government. Unlike a revolution, the "people" play little if any role in this process, although, as to happened in Malaysia , they are often bought into a revolutionary discourse after the fact retroactively to legitimise the new state of affairs.Of course, while UMNO political scientists, philosophers and political and theSpeacial branch like to talk about the "state" precisely as if it is an independent organism whose preservation transcends any other concerns (certainly Mahathir want to describe itself as the protector and even saviour of both the state and the nation), the reality is that the state is much more the effect of innumerable discourses, relationships and networks created by those who have access to political and economic power, and to means of violence necessary to maintain the balance of forces within a society.
Near dictatorial power
Some of the country's most well-known activists seem to be of the second opinion, even as they hope the first is in fact what is happening.
"our revolutionaries are more deserving of a safe exit" than the seniorUMNO leadership.
"Our battle now is the Constitution," (ma'arakatuna al'an hiya ad-dustur) she tweeted, echoing the sentiments of most revolutionary activists who, however happy they may be to see NAJIB near dictatorial power to act as both legislator and executor. That is - as has happened so many times in the past - the president has the power to become precisely the leader whose system he came to power to dismantle.
Another possibility is that ANWAR is being set up to fail by UMNO and the larger power elite it represents: that, by allowing ANWAR to retire mahathir, assume full control of the legislative and executive functions of an interim government, and even take direct responsibility for launching what is being reported as an extremely violentpolice assault on BERSIH,najib is being given full responsibility for the consequences of actions that he does not have enough power to carry out successfully.
In the end, the most important player in this drama is neither Mahathir nor UMNO, it's theMALAYSIAN people more broadly. Only the people, coming together as a "public" to demand a full transition to democracy and a fair economic system, will succeed in dismantling structures of power, wealth and violence that have had more than half a century to enmesh themselves in the fabric of society. In a sense, the MALALAYSIAN people are in the first steps of a long-term process of national recreation.
anwar ibrahim may or may not turn out to be a major player in this drama, but by his actions he has at least moved the revolution out of its doldrums and into a new and pivotal phase, where the laws and institutions of a potentially new state will be written with less domination by the umno than most people would have imagined only a few days ago.
Fact No. 4: Nazri's political journey has made him an idiot!
Observers of historical ironies would find plenty to relish in the one that seems to be coming up on the back of Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak’s decision to empower a royal commission of inquiry (RCI) on the issue of illegal migrants given citizenship in Sabah.
This irony has to do with hypothetical developments, which if they eventuate, may well prove Tunku Abdul Rahman, founding Prime Minister of Malaysia and, more importantly, resuscitator of UMNO in 1951 after the shock of party founder Onn Jaafar’s resignation, as a seer on the issue of UMNO’s entry into Sabah.
By the same token, the same developments could prove Dr Mahathir Mohamad, the Tunku’s nemesis and incubator of a mutant UMNO (‘UMNO Baru’ was its assumed name) as guilty of destructive myopia.
The Tunku had before he died in December 1990 warned UMNO not to spread its wings to Sabah. He said that from what he had seen and heard from his friend from USNO, Mustapha Harun, the latter always had problems controlling political factions in Sabah.
Fact No. 1: Abim is not a political party. Therefore there was no hopping involved. Furthermore Anwar was invited by Dr Mahathir to join Umno!
Fact No. 2: Anwar did not leave Umno, he was sacked by Dr M and the Umno Supreme Council.
Fact No. 3: He did not jump into PKR, he formed it!
Today, most people understand a "coup d'etat" to signify unelected officials, almost always from a country's and/or intelligence institutions, seizing power from an existing government. Unlike a revolution, the "people" play little if any role in this process, although, as to happened in Malaysia , they are often bought into a revolutionary discourse after the fact retroactively to legitimise the new state of affairs.Of course, while UMNO political scientists, philosophers and political and theSpeacial branch like to talk about the "state" precisely as if it is an independent organism whose preservation transcends any other concerns (certainly Mahathir want to describe itself as the protector and even saviour of both the state and the nation), the reality is that the state is much more the effect of innumerable discourses, relationships and networks created by those who have access to political and economic power, and to means of violence necessary to maintain the balance of forces within a society.
Near dictatorial power
Some of the country's most well-known activists seem to be of the second opinion, even as they hope the first is in fact what is happening.
"our revolutionaries are more deserving of a safe exit" than the seniorUMNO leadership.
"Our battle now is the Constitution," (ma'arakatuna al'an hiya ad-dustur) she tweeted, echoing the sentiments of most revolutionary activists who, however happy they may be to see NAJIB near dictatorial power to act as both legislator and executor. That is - as has happened so many times in the past - the president has the power to become precisely the leader whose system he came to power to dismantle.
Another possibility is that ANWAR is being set up to fail by UMNO and the larger power elite it represents: that, by allowing ANWAR to retire mahathir, assume full control of the legislative and executive functions of an interim government, and even take direct responsibility for launching what is being reported as an extremely violentpolice assault on BERSIH,najib is being given full responsibility for the consequences of actions that he does not have enough power to carry out successfully.
In the end, the most important player in this drama is neither Mahathir nor UMNO, it's theMALAYSIAN people more broadly. Only the people, coming together as a "public" to demand a full transition to democracy and a fair economic system, will succeed in dismantling structures of power, wealth and violence that have had more than half a century to enmesh themselves in the fabric of society. In a sense, the MALALAYSIAN people are in the first steps of a long-term process of national recreation.
anwar ibrahim may or may not turn out to be a major player in this drama, but by his actions he has at least moved the revolution out of its doldrums and into a new and pivotal phase, where the laws and institutions of a potentially new state will be written with less domination by the umno than most people would have imagined only a few days ago.
Fact No. 4: Nazri's political journey has made him an idiot!
Observers of historical ironies would find plenty to relish in the one that seems to be coming up on the back of Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak’s decision to empower a royal commission of inquiry (RCI) on the issue of illegal migrants given citizenship in Sabah.
This irony has to do with hypothetical developments, which if they eventuate, may well prove Tunku Abdul Rahman, founding Prime Minister of Malaysia and, more importantly, resuscitator of UMNO in 1951 after the shock of party founder Onn Jaafar’s resignation, as a seer on the issue of UMNO’s entry into Sabah.
By the same token, the same developments could prove Dr Mahathir Mohamad, the Tunku’s nemesis and incubator of a mutant UMNO (‘UMNO Baru’ was its assumed name) as guilty of destructive myopia.
The Tunku had before he died in December 1990 warned UMNO not to spread its wings to Sabah. He said that from what he had seen and heard from his friend from USNO, Mustapha Harun, the latter always had problems controlling political factions in Sabah.
The federal opposition Pakatan Rakyat (PR). has done such a brilliant job of exposing this strangely gut-wrenching but simultaneously hilarious loot of our wealth in the name of Commonwealth? Why are we so depressed merely because the world media has turned MALAYSIA’s image into a toilet seat, thereby fulfilling Mahathir’s dream first sketched in “An Area of Darkness” ? Away with the frozen frown! We must be sunny and optimistic. regrettably, forgotten our true strength. Do we remember that we were the nation to defeat European colonialism? The British Empire never recovered from our independence; it was downhill all the way for London after August 15, 1957. It is but child’s play for a nation that destroyed the mightiest empire in history, to ruin the Commonwealth. Those who think of Mahathir and the Group of Ministers in charge of the our nation as merely incompetent or greedy or both are doing them a terrible injustice. They are, in truth, liberation theologians who are putting the finishing touches to a mission that were unable to complete. Mahathir killed the rulers power their faithful heirs have neutered the child of the ruler, the Commonwealth . Our generation achieved its goal through strict non-violence . All we did was to introduce the Commonwealth to Malaysian standards of hygiene and the Commonwealth became a gibbering wreck. The world is amazed only because it has always underestimated Mahathir's destructive capacity, which is second only to Najib ’s self-destructive capacity.
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