cakap cakap : Semangat 46, the good doctor, a new party...how many from Umno will join?

The process of healing our nation is not yet a work in progress. It is not even a blip on the horizon that the naked can see unless you look long and hard into the vastness of the future and will your self to believe that somehow, sometime in the future, good will prevail over evil.

But politics in Malaysia have no time for the future. Nothing beyond the present term of office matters unless it has to do with it's continuance.....unless the future threatens your physical self and rob you of your ill-gotten gains while in public office. The same ill-gotten gains of political office that politicians arrogantly claim to be their entitlement for their services to party and country but which we the people take as pillage and plunder of our nations wealth.     

The truth of the matter is simply this : Political power in Malaysia brings it's holder insane wealth. How much wealth? Try to get your mind around that RM2.6 billion donation deposited into the personal bank account of Najib Razak.

 A Mentri Besar with a palatial mansion for a house purchased while still in office.

Friends, families and cronies rich beyond their wildest dreams.  

But I digress...

That is all in the past. True we must not forget the past but if you look around you today at the state of our nation today you must wonder if our politicians have forgotten the past! 

Has Mahathir forgotten Semangat 46 formed in June 1989 by Ku Lin with the support of not one but two former prime ministers of Malaysia : Tunku Abdul Rahman and Hussein Onn and many other notable Umno's leaders who left Umno to join Semangat 46 : Harun Idris, Marina Yusoff, Suhaimi Kamaruddin, Ahmad Shabery Cheek, Othman Saat, Salleh Abas, Mohd Radzi Sheikh Ahmad, Ibrahim Ali  and Tengku Azlan Sultan Abu Bakar.

Over the next few years, Semangat 46 lost support; many of its members defected to UMNO, including the party's youth chief Ibrahim Ali. Others remained as members but withdrew from political activity. In February 1994, Semangat 46 decided to challenge UMNO on Malay communal issues. The party was renamed Parti Melayu Semangat 46, and thus renounced its multi-ethnic stance.

In the mid-1990s, Semangat 46's relationship with DAP deteriorated, which eventually led to the breakup of the Gagasan Rakyat coalition, shortly before the 1995 Malaysian general election. At the same time, Semangat 46 had increasingly strained ties with PAS over power-sharing in Kelantan state, though they still managed to retain control of Kelantan and worked together in the 1995 election. By this time, the party's credibility was severely compromised by winning so few electoral victories and the loss of many key figures. The deputy president, Rais Yatim, lost his parliamentary seat in the 1995 election, though Tengku Razaleigh was re-elected. In the end, Semangat 46 won six parliamentary seats, with support coming mainly from Kelantan.  

^wikipedia

Mahathir's proposed new political entity will sink or swim by the numbers of Umno members who will leave Umno to join the new party....and having join Mahathir's new political entity....the next pertinent question is ...how many will stay! 

How many Umno members will leave Umno for King and Country? Ok lah throw in bangsa and ugama just for laughs. And add a dash of "the future of our children" just to spice it up a bit....and what will you get?

You will get the same Umno that now supports Najib Razak through all this and more!

• 1987 Kampung Baru ethnic tension.
• Through his tenure as Minister of Defence where a number of scandals were revealed involving a number of arms and equipment procurement deals.    
• Eurocopter.
• Scorpene Submarines and Sukhoi Fighters.
• Naval Patrol Boats.
• Missing Jet engines.
• Perak Crisis.
• Murder of Altantuya.
• Murder of Balasubramanium.
• Murder of Najadi Hussein.
  Murder of Kevin Morais.
• Anwar Ibrahim sodomy trials and tribulations.
• That RM2.6 billion donation. 
• 1MDB.
• ...even the dismissal of his deputy, Muhyiddin Yassin! 

So tell me how will Tun Mahathir, a 91 year old man, who is by his own admission, will be the first among equals in the new political entity, be able to put together this new political entity, take it through the next two years to the next federal elections and hold together all the opposing factions against Umno and Najib? 

The same Umno and Najib of the deep pockets and large army that has somehow been able to neutralise the opposition that had received the popular mandate to govern at the last general election and wreck asunder whatever that is left of the opposition after having put away the very leader - Anwar Ibrahim - that had been almost successful in doing what Mahathir is now trying to do : i.e. to overthrow Najib and the Umno that supports him at the next general election?

The prognosis, at best, is grim and the good doctor knows that Umno is already a "DO NOT RESUSCITATE" basket case because his own two decades as it's president has made Umno into what it is today. Najib Razak only fine tuned it to his "Cash is King" mantra and made it into his own odious image where politics and money became one.

But the good old doctor thinks that there is still hope for an Umno without Najib.

 

And so Mahathir will try with this new political entity that, for the lack of a better word, is merely a stop gap measure that all politicians in Malaysia delight in taking for short term gain of their own personal self........with the usual King, country, race and "future of the nation" thrown in somewhere in the equation just to give it depth and draw support from the long suffering people of Malaysia.

  

Saya steady aja....ahhh to be in K Hell now and spend the evenings with like minded friends to debate, discuss and denounce all that is evil in our politicians over teh tarek in Bangsar....and then adjorn for Nasi Briyani at Mahboob...no greater things do I crave more than this!