Fellow citizens! Make your own report card
SAKMONGKOL AK47
I sense an air of hopelessness and despondence among UMNO supporters and leaders. Dr Mahathir `thinks’ Najib can pull it through. Mahathir seldom thinks as he is more at home trusting his gut feelings. So when he has to think, instead of trusting his political instincts, UMNO is in trouble. He is hoping.
Others less informed but nevertheless conceited enough to show to the public their exuberance and enthusiasm for all things UMNO are now not responding and arguing about the issues we put forward. Instead they will either mutter some unsupported statements or go for the usual stock in trade UMNO ad hominem attacks. This time, we don’t even have time to humor them so let them drown in their own sputum.
Their sense of bleakness which are reduced to mere entreaties now, remind me of some passages from TS Eliot’s poem I first heard of these passages during one of those talks given by `comrade’ Kassim Ahmad as he was then, at the University of Malaya. That was some time ago. I Google and found those same passages;
“I said to my soul be still, and wait without hope; for hope would be hope of the wrong thing; wait without love, for love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith. But the faith, and the love, and the hope are all in the waiting. Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought: so the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.”
Dr Mahathir waits without hope. The lesser UMNO beings also wait without hope. They are hoping for the wrong thing. And so they go on believing the darkness that UMNO brings is light and the rigor mortis that is embracing the dying UMNO as something in motion.
Let’s continue with Najib’s report card to the nation about his ETP and GTP. The various plans that he has in store to jump start the economy again. UMNO leaders always have this game plan- come out with big sounding terms to jump start the economy. How does having grandiose terms increase productive capacity of the enation to produce goods and services to sell to the world or to service the world to bring in additional income?
One of the core pillars of the ETP is the oil and gas industry. Then Idris Jala comes up with some statements saying we can’t rely on these extractive industries because oil and gas are depleting resources. That we already know. Yet the oil and gas industry contributes only about 20 over percent to the GDP. Manufacturing is a bigger contributor. The oil and gas industry can be exploited further.
I find this statement contradicting with the esteemed positioning of the O&G industry in the ETP scheme of things. It’s also strange given the fact that out of the 113 marginal oil fields, only two were given out to Mokhzani Mahathir’s and Sharil Shamsuddin’s companies. How about the 111 marginal fields?
Are we waiting for Omar Ong to come out with a business plan where Ethos will function as global project coordinator like it does in the FGV listing come- what-may exercise, while CIMB is perhaps busy culling up with some merger plans for some new O&G outfit to manage the 111 marginal oil fields. Maybe a new company that will be floated and more money going to the BN and UMNO piggybanks?
That is a likely scenario.
