Dec 16, 094:53pm, MalaysiaKini
Speaking at the third Umno Veteran Council general assembly, Muhyiddin Yassin has announced the impending launch of an 'Umno the People's Champion' campaign “for Umno to get closer to the people”. A proposition that has me wondering how much more up close and personal the people can bear to let Umno get.
After all, this is the party that had its hands in the people's pockets, its police at the people's throats and its media pulling the wool over the people's eyes for two generations or more. So I fancy that most Malaysians with half a brain would prefer Umno to get lost rather than creep even closer to them.
Umno the People's Champion?
Certainly Umno's the champ at treating the people like chumps. As we've been reminded recently, the Umno/BN regime has cheated the rakyat to the tune of somewhere between RM100 billion and US$100 billion over the past 20 years, depending whether you accept the arithmetic of former Asian Wall Street Journal editor Barry Wain or Morgan Stanley economist Daniel Lian.
And if you're unwilling to take either foreigners' word on Umno's record of robbery and jobbery, read the recent speech to the Young Corporate Malaysians Summit in which party veteran Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah rightly said that Malaysia's oil wealth, instead of being invested in taking the country to “a more diverse economy based on high income jobs” has been “squandered by the government”.
Besides greasing its palms with the nation's oil revenue, the Umno-led BN government has also championed a champagne lifestyle for the chosen few by taking the people for chumps in every other sector of the economy.
The list of financial scams and scandals by Umno ministers, members, cronies and supporters is far too long, and my memory far too imperfect, to try and recall them all here. In fact, as I and many others have said before, it's high time a public-spirited individual or organisation compiled them all in a website for the people to visit and see what “champions” Umno really are.
Meanwhile, Umno's reigning champion of champions, Prime Minister Najib Razak is champing at the bit to woo supporters back to the party and investors back to Malaysia, and in the process once more proving that he's the champion of the unconscious faux pas.
According to a Reuters report by Razak Ahmad and David Chance, Najib recently floated the possibility of opening membership of BN parties to people of all races, adding that “I think anything is possible because I don't think anything is a sacred cow within Barisan Nasional”.
A comment that inevitably evokes memories of the notorious 'cow's head' protest against an Indian temple in Shah Alam that was permitted by the police and excused at the time by Home Minister Hishammuddin Hussein.
Which bring us to the fact that, unrivalled champion as it is in stealing and squandering the people's prosperity, Umno's even more of a champ at cheating the chumps of their constitutional and legal rights.
As you'll no doubt recall, Hishammuddin excused the cow's head protestors with the statement that “In this day and age, protests should be accepted in this world as people want their voices to be heard. If we don't give them room to voice their opinions, they have no choice but to protest”.
On the same day, however, he sanctioned the arrest of a group of Hindraf supporters who held a peaceful candlelight protest, and declared that he would “not hesitate to fill the Kamunting Detention Centre to the brim if there are people out there who are a threat to national security”.
Umno the People's Champion?
Champion at threatening people with arrest and detention without trial under the Internal Security Act, no doubt. And champion at hiding its crimes from the people by indiscriminate and indefensible use of the Official Secrets Act.
Champion too, and still more disgracefully, at corrupting and subborning the police, the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) and the judiciary to ensure that crimes committed by Umno/BN members, cronies and the “law-enforcement” agencies themselves go uninvestigated, untried and therefore unpunished.
And perhaps most damaging of all, champs at treating the people like the ultimate chumps by ensuring that the media on which they rely for their news report only what Umno dictates.
What economic and political reforms?
Yet, to hark back to the Reuters report in which he was quoted as making his ridiculous “sacred cow” remark, Najib Razak keeps promising to “accelerate economic and political reforms”.
What economic and political reforms is he talking about? The token reduction in bumiputera equity required for projects by foreign companies? The selective prosecution of a few suspects in the Port Klang Free Zone scandal? The charge of one single, solitary constable for “causing hurt” in just one of countless cases of suspicious death in police custody?
What happened to allegations of corruption against former trade minister and 'AP Queen', Rafidah Aziz? When is S Samy Vellu going to be called to account for the Maika Holdings and Telekom shares affairs? How long do the people have to wait for Dr Mohd Khir Toyo and dozens, if not hundreds, of others with assets far beyond their legitimate incomes to be audited, investigated and charged with corruption?
When are the police, MACC and judiciary going to be brought to book for their crimes and derelictions of duty and forced to revert to serving the people?
Umno the People's Champion?
Of all this gruesome regime's outrageous perjuries, this has to be the most pathetic I've ever heard. I can't for the life of me imagine why they'll think Malaysians will buy it. Unless they've been such champs at cheating Malaysia for so long th
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