Shahbudin Husin: living in denial

By MT Webmaster Last updated May 10, 2015

People like Shahbudin should stop trying to con Malaysians and pretend as if the problem is Najib and once we get rid of Najib everything is going to be perfect. The problem is not Najib. The problem is Umno and the 191 warlords who decide what Umno does. And even if you replace the Prime Minister there is very little the new Prime Minister can do if the 190 Umno warlords think that Malays own Malaysia and non-Malays are second-class citizens.

NO HOLDS BARRED

Raja Petra Kamarudin

While Shahbudin Husin admits that Malaysians in general, and rural Malays in particular, no longer blindly support Umno and Barisan Nasional, he attributes it to the Prime Minister’s lack of popularity. Shahbudin is suggesting that if Najib Tun Razak is replaced then Umno’s and Barisan’s fortunes can be reversed (see the news report below).

In 2004, Tun Abdullah Ahmad Badawi (Pak Lah) performed the best ever in Malaysian election history after taking over from Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad just four months before that.

Can we say that this is because Dr Mahathir was not popular and Pak Lah was? The 1999 general election, the last election under Dr Mahathir, was almost a disaster. And in the following general election, Umno and Barisan Nasional achieved a new record.

Hence if we apply Shahbudin’s theory then Dr Mahathir should just retire and not say another word. The 1999 (under Dr Mahathir) and the 2004 (under Pak Lah) general elections proved that Malaysians no longer want Dr Mahathir.

But then the ‘very popular’ Pak Lah almost lost the next general election in 2008? Why is that?

Well, it was because Pak Lah is no longer popular so Malaysia needs a new Prime Minister. So, in 2009, a new Prime Minister took over. But the new Prime Minister could not improve the election result in 2013. In fact, it got worse.

Well, this, again, is because the Prime Minister is no longer popular so, again, we need yet another new Prime Minister.

In that case why not we change the Prime Minister every five years and hold the general elections four or five months after we change the Prime Minister to make sure that Umno and Barisan Nasional can regain and retain its two-thirds majority in Parliament?

Simple right?

No, it is not so simple. In 2004 Pak Lah managed to pull off a new Malaysian election record just four months after taking over because the voters were so relieved that after 22 years they finally managed to get rid of Dr Mahathir.

It was ABM: Anything But Mahathir. You could have put a donkey as the Prime Minister and most likely Malaysians would have voted for the donkey Prime Minister. Okay, maybe I am being unfair; Pak Lah was slightly better than a donkey.

But then, in 2008, Malaysians had got over their wonderful shock of finally getting rid of Dr Mahathir and now the voters became sensible again. And they no longer voted Barisan Nasional because of the Prime Minister but voted based on other factors. And the fact that even after removing Pak Lah nothing changed proved this.

If people like Shahbudin think that all you need to do is to get rid of Najib and Umno and Barisan Nasional are safe then they are living in denial. This is not about Najib. This is about Umno and Barisan Nasional.

Malaysians have changed. The expectations of Malaysians have changed. Malaysians are no longer ignorant like in the past. Today, information is at our fingertips.

Do you know back in 1999 when the Reformasi movement first exploded onto the scene the Internet was practically unknown? Today, just 16 years later, there are 152 million Blogs and 200,000 new Blogs are being added every day.

In the past, you needed a computer and an Internet connection to get onto the Internet. Today, all you need is your mobile phone and there are more mobile phones than there are Malaysians. Even illegal Indonesian workers have mobile phones.

Hence information is literally at your fingertips. And this is what we are facing: an information revolution.

So you can change the Prime Minister every five years if you like. You can even change the Prime Minister annually. But unless you change the Umno culture and mentality, people are going to change Umno. That is what Shahbudin and people like him do not understand.

Is Shahbudin and those of his ilk prepared to allow Umno to change?

First of all, the Umno President cum Prime Minister needs to kowtow to 190 Umno division chiefs (the President being the 191st). And if the head honcho refuses to kowtow to these 190 then they will get rid of him.

So, in short, Umno is a party of warlords. So, to be able to see change we first need to get rid of the 190 warlords. Will these Umno warlords agree?

Then Umno needs to change from being a Malay party to becoming a Malaysian party (you can still call it Umno but the ‘M’ stands for Malaysians, not Malays). So non-Malays can now join Umno and probably even one day become its President.

Then Umno needs to allow non-Malay Malaysians to become the Prime Minister. The post of Prime Minister, Deputy Prime Minister, Menteri Besar, Governor, etc., should not be reserved for Malays only.

Then Umno needs to end the New Economic Policy and remove Article 153 in the Federal Constitution that grants Malays special privileges. Quotas in universities and government service, plus Bumiputera discounts on property, need to be removed. Islam must be removed as the religion of the Federation and all other religions must be allowed the same status as Islam.

So you see, removing or changing the Prime Minister alone is not enough. Many other things need to be removed or changed as well. If you change just the Prime Minister while leaving everything else untouched this is not going to pacify Malaysians.

Okay, so we don’t just remove or change the Prime Minister. We also remove and change all those others as well. Then what? Do you think the 190 Umno warlords are going to keep quiet? There will be a rebellion and the new Prime Minister would not last one month.

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(Free Malaysia Today) – Umno’s poor performance in the Rompin by-election indicates that the party can no longer take its traditional support base for granted, political analyst Shahbudin Husin says in his latest blog posting.

He notes that Rompin is the archetypal Umno stronghold. The voters there are mostly rural Malays, with many of them coming from Felda settlements. The seat lies in the state of Pahang, the home state of Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak, who, furthermore, is also closely associated with Felda.

These factors alone, according to Shahbudin, should have ensured an overwhelming victory for Umno instead of its drastically reduced majority, particularly if the voters wanted to show they disagreed with Najib’s critics.

He also points out that the government concentrated its resources on the Barisan Nasional campaign, “giving its all”, as in all by-elections.

In yesterday’s by-election, Umno beat PAS by 8,895 votes, which was slightly more than half of its vote majority in the 2013 general election.

The Rompin results, Shahbudin says, is “nothing other than a bad omen” for Umno and Barisan Nasional. The rural Malays are no longer “blindly loyal” to Umno, he warns.

He says Umno’s dismal performance strengthens former prime minister Mahathir Mohamad’s forecast that Barisan Nasional will lose in the next general election unless Najib is replaced as Umno President and Prime Minister.

Shahbudin agrees with several commentators that the Rompin voters were showing their disapproval of the Goods and Services Tax (GST), which they see as one of Najib’s initiatives. But he adds that the problems associated with Felda are also a factor.

“The GST and Felda issues, as well as other issues such as the 1MDB scandal, have tightened the noose around Najib’s neck and eroded the public’s confidence in his ability to lead the nation,” he says.

He speculates that Mahathir will now intensify his campaign to force Najib’s resignation because the rakyat have shown, through the Rompin by-election, that they are behind the former prime minister.

He congratulates Rompin voters for “not marginalising themselves” from the call for change. He says he expects the results from tomorrow’s Permatang Pauh by-election to show a similar trend.

Raja Petra Kamarudin RPK