Questions for Mahathir’s new Bumiputera-only party

Mahathir is soon to launch his new party with Muhyiddin leading it and Azmin has announced that a new ‘grand’ coalition is going to be launched. Is this the beginning of a new dawn or are we just going to see old wine in a new bottle? It looks like déjà vu when Mahathir promised us the same thing ten years ago in 2006.

NO HOLDS BARRED

Raja Petra Kamarudin

So it is now confirmed. Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad’s new Bumiputera-only party is going to soon be launched and in the next few days they will be meeting the Registrar of Societies (RoS) to submit their registration.

So that lays one more issue to rest: which is Malaysia Today said many months ago that by or before September 2016 Mahathir would be forming his new party. It is so nice, yet again, to be proven right after being proven right many, many times so far.

And the man who is going to head this new Bumiputera-only party will be Muhyiddin Yassin, one of the six Tan Sri in the conspiracy to oust Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak, and the man in the middle of the Nika Gee divorce saga that is going to prove juicier than Anwar Ibrahim’s sodomy trial

Muhyiddin is famous or infamous for many things. When he was the Menteri Besar of Johor, Mahathir called him ‘my richest Minister’. It was no secret that Muhyiddin made deals left, right and centre like there was no tomorrow when he was running Johor. He is also infamous for saying that he is Malay first and everything else second.

But then while a Malay-Muslim is a Bumiputera, a Bumiputera may not necessarily be a Malay-Muslim. He could be Portuguese or Christian and so on. So is Muhyiddin still Malay first and everything else second or is he now Bumiputera first and everything else second?

And how does this new Bumiputera-only party define Bumiputera? Can an Indonesian or Bangladeshi who has been given Malaysian citizenship and is also Muslim be considered Bumiputera according to this new party’s standards? What about a Chinese-Muslim, whether Muslim by birth or saudara baru by conversion?

In other words can Hussein Yee or that other Chinese-Muslim preacher that most Malaysian Chinese hate so much also join this new Bumiputera-only party or will they not be considered Bumiputera? I am sure Indian Muslims will have no problems, or Arabs, since Umno accepts Indian-Muslims and Arabs not only as Bumiputeras but as fellow Malays. In fact, Umno has never had a 100% true Malay Prime Minister since the First Prime Minister in 1957. Every Prime Minister so far has been a chapalang — just like me.

But do not assume that we are very smart just because we are chapalang. Some of us are but that is not true for all chapalang. I mean look at Zainuddin Maidin as an example of an Indian-Muslim chapalang who my 14-year old grandson and granddaughter are smarter by far.

Anyway, back in 2004 there was an attempt to form the Malaysian Civil Liberties Society (MCLS) to address many problems the country was and is still facing — in particular those concerning religious intolerance or extremism, racism and racial discrimination, lack of transparency and good governance, abuse of power and corruption, lack of electoral reforms and unfair elections, and so on.

I really do not need to expand on that long list of problems Malaysia is facing because most of you will know all of them by heart anyway.

That effort failed so in 2007 we decided to launch Bersih where we would march to His Majesty the Agong’s palace to hand over a petition asking for electoral reforms. That was a civil society effort and not a political party effort although there were also politicians from the opposition as well as Barisan Nasional-Umno involved in Bersih (in fact, some who are now in Perkasa).

Nothing really happened and the government or Elections Commission (SPR) did not respond to what we demanded. Then, a few months later, the 2008 general election was held and due to the ‘success’ that Pakatan Rakyat achieved the issue of electoral reforms was forgotten for the meanwhile.

Not long after the 2008 general election we saw that everything the opposition promised us was not happening. Instead of wiping out the Umno culture in line with our battle cry, ABU (Anything But Umno), the opposition was now becoming the new Umno. And this article (Umno has lost control of corporate Malaysia) explains it well.

It was almost like taking a leaf out of the book Animal Farm. After driving out the evil humans the pigs take over and become as bad or worse than those humans they replaced. So Pakatan Rakyat was now, metaphorically speaking, those pigs of Animal Farm.

And that was when we decided to launch the Malaysian Civil Liberties Movement (MCLM) in 2010. If Pakatan Rakyat was not going to do what they promised after two-and-a-half years then we will need to do it ourselves. And the rest, as they say, is history and a story already told many times before.

So we are back to where we were ten years ago in 2006 when we first mooted the idea of a civil liberties movement, Bersih, ABU and so on, and when we agreed to work with Mahathir in the oust-Pak Lah and ABU campaign by defeating Umno and Barisan Nasional in the 2008 general election.

Yes, ten years, 2006-2016. That was when the whole thing started, 2006 — 24th June 2006 to be exact. It was supposed to be the beginning of a new era. It was supposed to be when civil society activists and political activists team up to fight for changes. It was supposed to be when those from the opposition and those from Umno-Barisan Nasional cooperate on a common platform for the good of the country.

What happened over those ten years? And now, yet again, we are seeing a new party — that is going to create a new ‘grand’ coalition, said Azmin Ali — being launched. Every few years we keep launching new parties and new coalitions and we still talk about the same old things that we have been talking about since the 1970s, not long after May 13.

I think it is time that we first hear what this new party and the new ‘grand’ coalition that they are going to launch is going to do. Show me first and then we will decide whether to support you.

What are your plans for the social re-engineering and affirmative action program a.k.a. the New Economic Policy?

What are your plans regarding freedom of religion? For example, can Christians preach to Muslims and can Muslims leave Islam?

What are your plans to address the conflict and confusion between the Syariah courts and the Common Law courts, which was created by Mahathir in the first place? Will the status of the Syariah Courts be downgraded again, like it used to be and as what most Malaysians would like to see?

Can Malaysians choose which laws they would like to come under (Syariah Laws or Common Laws) or be exempted from Syariah Laws if they declare that they are no longer Muslims even if they were born Muslims and carry Islam as their religion in their papers such as identity cards?

Will racial discrimination be abolished so that there is no longer any Bumiputera preferential treatment whether in business, quotas, government service, education, universities, purchase of property, etc? Will Malay Reservation land be abolished?

Will there be total civil liberties and freedom of choice that extends to religion (Muslims becoming atheists included), lifestyle (becoming LGBT included), and many more? What about freedom of choice and association? For example, can we choose to become a Communist and start a Communist movement or political party in Malaysia?

Will there be electoral reforms? Malaysia has a population of 31.5 million people with about 20 million eligible voters. However, only 70% actually register to vote. Are they going to make it compulsory to register to vote (even though it may not be compulsory to vote)?

What about the gerrymandering? What is this new party/coalition going to do about that? And how are they going to address seat variances? Is there going to be a plus-minus 20% voter variance between seats (and not like now where the voter variance between seats ranges from 5,000 to more than 120,000 voters)? How are they going to make sure that if you win 51% of the votes you will win 51% of the seats?

This is only a small part of what needs addressing. And we need the new party to tell us what to expect. It is fine that they want to form a new party and launch a new coalition. But then are we just seeing old wine in a new bottle like what we have been seeing over the last ten years from 2006-2016?

Look at what we said in 2008 when we helped Pakatan Rakyat campaign in the general election that same year.

The People’s Voice & The People’s Declaration

That was what the new coalition agreed to do. But they did not do what they promised. And now we are going to see yet another party formed and yet another coalition launched. Why should we trust you now when you could not be trusted in the past?