Mulut Longkang ‘pukimak’ Syed Rosli a la mulut Khairuddin Abu Hassan
The Third Force
Have you ever stood next to a pile of rubbish? When you do that, you will encounter an extremely pungent and pervasive stench that hangs in the air. It’s no wonder that in Kuala Kangsar, when they see Syed Rosli, people immediately begin to hold their noses.
Yesterday, Syed Rosli Syed Harman Jamalullail declared his candidacy for the Kuala Kangsar Parliamentary seat despite being cautioned by a senior party official against doing so. In Barisan Nasional (BN), that’s like committing hara-kiri, which is Japanese for ritual suicide by disembowelment with a sword. And it’s not as if Syed Rosli wasn’t forewarned.
Mid afternoon the same day, Barisan Nasional (BN) deputy chairperson Dato’ Seri Dr. Ahmad Zahid Hamidi cautioned Syed Rosli against committing the mistake by making clear the repercussions to such an act of defiance.
“He (Syed Rosli) wants to contest but in a democracy we cannot prevent this. But there is a price to pay when going against party policies and rules which is losing one’s membership,” said the Barisan Nasional (BN) deputy chairperson.
But none of what Zahid said mattered to Syed Rosli. The recalcitrant Taman Cempaka UMNO Youth assistant reaffirmed his candidacy for the Kuala Kangsar seat, insisting that Perak UMNO’s decision to field Datin Mastura Mohd Yazid was done hastily and without due consideration for better deserving candidates.
“She is still observing the iddah, why the desperation in fielding her?
“Furthermore, she is not from Kuala Kangsar, she is from Negri Sembilan,” he added.
If I hadn’t known better, I would have said that Syed Rosli and Dato’ Seri Khairuddin Abu Hassan were twins – apart from the facial features, the two share a tongue better known as mulut longkang, which Malays in several parts of the peninsula recognise as the tongue of an incondite yokel. And in case you’re wondering what an incondite yokel means, it refers to a badly constructed and unintelligent person (or a rustic bumpkin, as the English might say), or simply put, an asshole.
Well, thanks or no thanks to Syed Rosli, we now know a new term. I mean, it’s not every day you hear an asshole utter a remark like the one Syed Rosli uttered – he referred to Mastura as janda pukimak, implying that the widow of the late Dato’ Wan Mohammad Khairil Anuar Wan Ahmad had shed crocodile tears on her late husband’s grave, only to offer herself as contestant for the by-election days later.
Anyway, the fact that Syed Rosli seemed willing to be axed from the party for his actions put a new complexion to the whole fuss, in that we are now aware of his true intentions. That is, Syed Rosli has in mind the idea that staging a media-centric squabble to convince the electorate that there was infighting in UMNO and that the party was no better than PKR, DAP or Amanah.
“I am prepared to be sacked for my actions in going against the party, I am taking a risk by contesting as an independent,” Syed Rosli added.
Ok, so we have more clues – he’s prepared to be sacked, he’s recalcitrant, and most importantly, he speaks with mulut longkang. I tell you, if he ain’t Khairuddin Abu Hassan’s twin in flesh, he surely must be his twin in spirit. And these ‘rekindled spirits’ usually originate from one source and one source only – Tun Dr. Mahathir Mohammad’s camp.
Last year, on the 24th of August, Khairuddin referred to the Malays as bangsat, which is close to saying that the Malays are rogues or scoundrels. Earlier this year, on the 29th of February, he likened UMNO to a corpse fated to roam the barrier between the spiritual and physical worlds forever. See what I mean about spirits?
Syed Rosli must know as much about the spirit realm as Khairuddin does to be able to tell us that Wan Mohammad’s wife was pretending to be in mourning. In camp Mahathir, disciples are taught the art of communicating with the dead. As a matter of fact, Mahathir was himself wired to Hitler, who told the ex-premier that Najib had funnelled RM 2.6 billion worth of funds from 1MDB into his personal account and stuffed another RM 42 billion in his pillow.
Perhaps Syed Rosli got a tap from the late Wan Mohammad, who told him that “My wife was shedding crocodile tears on my grave and is hungry for power. Go stop her bro – you go get her good and proper, and do me proud. You go pal…”
Speaking of worlds, Khairuddin spent most of last year globetrotting. The sacked Batu Kawan Umno division vice-chairman pursued a vendetta against Prime Minister Dato’ Seri Najib Tun Razak by charting a trajectory to as many police stations as there were countries, with a mission to lodge as many reports as humanly possible against Najib and 1MDB.
That landed him in hot soup last September when he was arrested on three charges – for tainting the credibility of Malaysian enforcement agencies from abroad, for challenging Malaysia’s legal system, and for inviting foreign intervention into Malaysian democracy. But none of that mattered to Khairuddin any more than it did when he shared a stage with Lim Kit Siang and Mahathir to launch a citizen’s declaration against Najib and his administration.
The former Batu Kawan UMNO leader was well aware that his days in the party were numbered. But that didn’t seem to bother him. It seems that those aligned with Mahathir have positioned their necks on the guillotine and are looking skyward, anticipating the day the blade will slip down. The same goes for Syed Rosli – he isn’t the least bit bothered that he will be sacked from UMNO.
And that’s because he wants to be sacked, and he wants the news of his sacking to break the internet.
As a matter of fact, the media and the internet have been Mahathir’s tools since late in 2014 to launch an all out war of perception against Najib and government on as many fronts as possible. Last year, Mahathir got Khairuddin to meet reporters and news correspondents from Malaysia and abroad to insinuate doubt in the minds of Malaysians that Najib was guilty on charges of criminal malfeasance. With Syed Rosli, the game plan is more or less similar, albeit with a minor twist.
Of late, incessant infighting and interference in one another’s affairs between component parties of Pakatan Harapan (PH) caused the opposition coalition to pay a heavy price in Sarawak. With only a ten-seat margin to show for their campaigns, Mahathir realised that Sarawak voters had punished PH for their incoherence and bitter public squabbles, and not to mention, their knack for not agreeing to agree.
With that in hindsight, Mahathir, in his bid to get BN to tumble to a fall in Kuala Kangsar and Sungai Besar, is trying to drive the impression that UMNO isn’t as close knit and as stable as it ‘portrays’ itself to be. And that’s how and why Syed Rosli comes into the picture – his job is to resort to cheap publicity stunts, name-calling and bullying in order to convince voters that UMNO is just as messed up as Amanah is.
Similarly, last year, Mahathir sent Khairuddin prancing around the globe to lodge as many police reports as possible and also got the former Batu Kawan party leader to issue meaningless rhetoric in longkang dialect. The whole purpose of the longkang exercise was to estrange party leaders from one another and to drive the impression that Najib’s leadership was tearing BN apart at the seams.
And believe me when I say this – there are a lot more division and branch leaders who are keeping calm but have their faiths deposited into a mission to topple Najib and government. As a matter of fact, I personally know one or two such leaders. These leaders are beholden to Mahathir’s patronage or that of his son for some reason or the other, and will wait for opportunity to strike before they flourish.
