The ugly Umnoputera
In short, hold the general election now. After the general election the economy will collapse. But Umno-BN would have five years till the next general election in 2027 — so it really does not matter because by GE16 the economy would be okay again and the voters would have forgotten about their suffering in 2023, 2024 and 2025.
NO HOLDS BARRED
Raja Petra Kamarudin
Back in the old days when I had more hair and less stomach, instead of the other way around, there was a term ‘the ugly American’. This was because Americans were loud, conceited, noisy, inconsiderate, had a superiority complex, looked down on the rest of the world, felt they were always right and everyone else was wrong, considered everything in America the best, considered themselves the ‘Bumiputeras’ and the Native Americans (or ‘Red Indians’) the ‘pendatang’, etc.
50 years on and we now have ‘the ugly Umnoputera’.
The term ‘Umnoputera’ was coined in the mid-1980s during the global recession when Malays or Bumiputeras were suffering from the economic meltdown (just like what is happening today almost 40 years later).
(At that time Finance Minister Tengku Zafrul Tengku Abdul Aziz was in standard six and did not know he would one day become Malaysia’s Finance Minister and Selangor’s Menteri Besar if BN-PAS were to win GE15).
Anyway, there were two classes of citizens in Malaysia, the Bumiputeras and the non-Bumiputeras. And the Bumiputeras were subdivided into Umnoputeras and ‘normal’ Malays. And the ‘normal’ Malays were third class citizens behind the non-Bumiputeras (while, of course, the Umnoputeras were first class citizens who received all the government contracts, permits and quotas — most times as ‘Ali Babas’ for the non-Bumiputeras).
Alias Ali, the member of parliament for Hulu Terengganu, said Umno people fight, struggle, and sacrifice for the Malays — so what’s wrong if Umnoputeras are given first-class citizen status? If you know where Hulu Terengganu is located, you will undoubtedly forgive him for saying something like this, which even Adolf Hitler would not dare say.
Anyway, listening to how Umno activists talk today, one example would be Lokman Noor Adam (see his video yesterday), the ‘Umnoputera’ label would be most apt. Lokman talks about purging Umno of traitors (his interpretation of traitors, of course), and of restoring the purity of Umno (that was what Hitler propagated as well in the Nazi party’s ‘Final Solution’ ethnic cleansing of Jews).
Lokman’s speech yesterday sounded like it was translated from German to Malay. Basically a ‘pure’ Umno is a party that strives for absolute power or kuasa mutlak and does not share power with anyone else. A ‘pure’ Umno seeks to dissolve parliament and hold a snap GE15 immediately, before the economy collapses — because once the economy collapses next year it would be difficult for Umno to win the general election, let alone ‘win big’ with an impressive majority.
In short, hold the general election now. After the general election the economy will collapse. But Umno-BN would have five years till the next general election in 2027 — so it really does not matter because by GE16 the economy would be okay again and the voters would have forgotten about their suffering in 2023, 2024 and 2025.
That was also Hitler’s strategy. Destroy the world. Kill 100 million people. Then Germany (with Japan) will rise from the ashes of WWII as the greatest economic power in the world. I suppose you need to break the shell to fry an egg or burn down the forest to plant oil palm trees.
