BN faces “cornered animal” scenario
A survey of the political landscape ahead is timely. The combined momentum of Permatang Pauh and the steady one-upmanship Pakatan has enjoyed in recent months make the prospects of a new government an increasingly compelling possibility.
If in March, parliamentarians considering crossing from BN to Pakatan were concerned that they would jump and find no one behind them, the landscape seems to have changed to the point where many may worry that if they don’t commit to jumping now, they may be left behind on the wrong side of the fence.
The fact that all the binds BN together is racially divided power sharing means that without power, all there is left of BN is racial division; seems a terrible creek to be up without a paddle.
Given the huge stakes, we must ponder with grave seriousness how BN, or more specifically Umno, will react to this threat.
My view is that Umno has still been playing with their gloves on. Attempts thus far to frustrate Anwar’s bid for Putrajaya appear almost half hearted and disorganised; the word bumbling admittedly comes to mind.
Perhaps Umno has continued to live in denial and hope against hope. It is dangerous and foolhardy to assume that this thinking will prevail in the face of growing “cornered animal” instincts kicking in. Umno stands to lose everything, and the word everything is not used lightly; it seems unlikely that they will sit idle while the government is taken from under their noses.
If and when they awake, Umno’s top leadership will find an arsenal of weapons with which they could potentially take out Anwar, and by extension, Pakatan.
Let’s start with the relatively mild. First, there is always actual reform and trying to buy the heart of Malaysians via various goodies in the new budget and such; I don’t think there’s any evidence at all to suggest that BN is likely to take this route lock, stock, and barrel – which is the only way it would work.
There is also trying to get on the good side of the YDP Agong; many possible scenarios for both BN and Pakatan are technically at the discretion of the sovereign.
Next, we note that it would be a simple matter to fix the sodomy case, ala the 1998 trials. Certainly, they would look like fools and suffer the wrath of the international community; but is that so high a price to pay to escape extinction and fears of being prosecuted themselves?
This is after all the yardstick against we must measure all potential options available to Umno: that they will lose federal power not only in these elections, but essentially forever.
The feudal structure of Malaysian politics and the manner in which every BN politician alive today is born and bred on the premise that to be BN is to be in power; remove power, and all that remains is some vague racial ideology that is decades behind present day global political correctness.
If Anwar is convicted in the courts and should appeals all the way to the Federal Court fail, it will take quite a bit of undoing to redeem the mess, no matter how drastic a sham the legal process may be. International pressure alone is not likely to yield any significant change; our leaders are known to have thick skin when they need to. All in all, it’s still a bargain, if it keeps Anwar out of power.
Ops Lalang II is the next option, in terms of intensity – simply round up all the major Pakatan leaders and detain them without trial, crippling Pakatan to the point of inoperability.
Assassination, in all honesty, is probably still a bargain as well. Yes, there will be a massive uproar, Anwar will be martyred, and discontent will reach unprecedented levels. Yet, at the end of the day, police investigations will be inconclusive, Anwar will be gone, and Pakatan becomes eminently vulnerable.
With or without an assassination, there is also the opportunity to engineer large scale street chaos and violence, using the 1969 Emergency as a model of how to engineer a transfer of power.
Do these measures sound unreasonably extreme and unlikely? To you and me perhaps, but once again, we must take the perspective of individuals who are looking at a lifetime legacy of destroying their political party, losing all access to wealth and power, and facing some serious prospects of significant jail time.
I think under those circumstances, prospects of facing derision and shaming by the international community as well as local storms that will hopefully just blow over, start to sound a little more tolerable than usual.
One of the few factors generating resistance for BN/Umno to embark on any ‘adventurous’ tactics is the lack of unity amidst its top leadership. Ever since March 8th, Umno leaders especially have had to fight battles on multiple fronts, exhausting their already stretched resources.
This situation may somewhat dilute any attempt at concentrated scheming. Unfortunately, this same intra-BN/Umno disarray is exactly what will make for a weak, distracted ruling coalition whose ability to govern strongly and well may be compromised considerably.
One controversial option to forestall any such drastic measures by the powers that be is for Malaysians to push for a change of government – either by crossovers, or calling for a snap general election (a potential last resort for BN, which is good for democracy, but unlikely to forestall the ruling coalition’s demise). While less than ideal, these remain some of the few ways we can avoid a descent into chaos and desperation within BN, and by extension within Malaysia.
Malaysia has crossed one defining moment only to find itself at the cusp of another. In light of the ultra high stakes cost-benefit calculations facing Umno leaders, we must now increase our vigilance and prepare to resist, both peacefully vigorously, any attempt to usurp democracy and the rule of law. Malaysians are now called upon to use well informed people power to provide a rock steady bulwark against any vicious and desperate manoeuvring.
Before you talk about the 1969 incident, go read about how it happened and what caused it.
Read also what was done to remedy it.
And see how DSAI and Pakatan’s “struggle” is taking apart the peace and harmony painfully sown by BN leaders of old and new.
And assassination? Please be careful with what you choose to write.
Nat - your theory sounds quite logical especially when the BN (UMNO in particular) key players’ personal stake (even head) are on the line.
Remember Sabah - how they even tried to wrangle Pairin’s victory through foul means?
So any of your mentioned scenarios can be an acceptable escape route.
Hopefully, it just stays thay way - a theory and no desperate person sees fit to activate the theory.
This entry of yours is the first I have noticed in the blogosphere to try and describe the present conjuncture — which may be fairly called a crisis — and suggest what might lie ahead.
Apropos this, I am reminded of an old dictum in politics, to wit that it’s not enough for long-suffering people to realise the impossibility of living in the old way, and to demand changes; for far-reaching societal change to take place it’s essential that the dominant elites should not be able to live and rule in the old way.
Put another way, it is only when the ’lower classes’ do not want to live in the old way and the ’upper classes’ cannot carry on in the old way that a thorough-going reform can hope to succeed.
I am not sure, though, that we have reached that point of no return.
I agree wif Anwar that a small reduction in personal tax do not have any effect or help the economy. Let’s say we contribute tax on a monthly basis wif an average salary of RM2K per month (provided there’s a reduction in tax from 27% to 26%) then the savings we derive from the reduction of 1% is RM20 per month. [we will have a savings of RM240 per annum in tax relief rite??] What can we buy wif RM240 per year??? Maybe a trip to pulau redang alone????? Notice that it will only benefit those wif higher income like above 5 figure income per month - then the saving from 1% tax reduction is a lot!!! but noted that 80% or more working adults in Malaysia draws a salary of less then RM2K per month, this tax reduction does not help any Malaysian to counter inflation. Only less then 20% of the rakyat earns more then RM6K per month, would be useless to counter inflation unless we can stop high income earners from pump-priming the prices at consumer level. Those earning RM6K will still continue to spend like nobody business because they’re already there up on top of the working hierarchy, ask them to resign from their posh job and start an SMI/SME business - I think no way!! So how does this encourage more Malaysians to be entrepreneur!!!
I still believe that the govt is up to the tricks of bluffing the rakyat that this is a business friendly budget. If the petrol price is increase by 30% in just 3 months - it should be countered by a tax reduction of 30% also if proper economic planning is done. To encourage more SMI/SME to grow - our govt should provide tax-free period of 5 years for all start-up companies irregardless of their profits. That will somehow cushion the impact of inflation otherwise no one will want to start their own business or if they do start business now - they will pass the inflation buck to the consumers by charging higher prices.
As for competition
As for competition from overseas, our govt should encourage profit oriented society instead of wage base society. By increasing salaries un-neccessary, the govt is creating unproductivity, any increase in wages will have no effect on productivity but in fact reduce productivity as cost of production increase due to increase in wages. What our govt should do is to bild an environment that we have low basic salary but fat/higher commission for piecemeal results instead of high salary but no commission.(Commission is terms as incentives that each personnel is rewarded base on result obtained on certain HR formulas) We have a society that believes in high salary and do not want commission as commission will somehow reveal or reflect on the performance of the individual. By having low wage but high commission instead of fat salary but no commission - we will be able to improve productivity and also increase competition domestically and abroad and compute globally. It is well known that employees in local banks with low basic salary but given good commission performs better then those without commission but with high basic salary.
I also understand in theory that if we don’t give high salary then where is the govt going to earn their revenue as most of the govt revenues comes from monthly salary taxes obtained directly from salary deductions. But again, by having high salaries, or increasing salaries unnecessarily - the company will have to translate this fixed wage monthly cost the goods and services produced thereby increasing product prices and this will automatically increase inflation and rendered goods made in Malaysia uncompetitive thus reducing exports as our export product’s pricing cannot match those product by other countries. When international sales drop, so does salary increments and bonuses.
ok enough comments, I guess no govt would like to listen to my theory, anyway just to let you know, I am only 19 years old studying IT - can’t help to put in my fair comments to the Finance minister and the federal govt, as Malaysia economy is on the verge of collapsing, being a good Malaysian I do not want our economy ot fall out of competition anymore, vietnam+thailand+indonesia+burma+india are fast overtaking us in terms of efficiency and economic standings.
The in-thing in the world to kill is suicide-bombing, the people who want to stay in power can always get a person strap C4 around him/her and get close to the target and blow all around.
i concur with your analysis Nat. I dont think the current regime will just play dead and give Pakatan a walkover without a fight. Situation seemed pretty calm now and I am worried sick. Calm b4 d storm - u think so?
i hope the Pakatan team will have a strategy to counter whatever move the regime gonna make next.
my bet would be they will try to take DSAI out with the sodomy charges - and who knows - with the aggressiveness shown by the ACA nowadays mayb that will be the second option. They tried at the Perak states.
Ops Lalang II - I dont see how it can be done without a big people power demo. it will be chaos and i dont like it one bit.
and i dont even want to mention about the other more violent option you highlited - have we degenerated to such a state as to have our leader or potential leader - taken out?
I shudder even to remotely consider that such a thing will happen. No. Not in my country.
The stakes for some is high, no doubt, but we are not a tyrannical country - things can be work out by compromise - i just hope all parties will think the same.
bowl:
The riots of ‘69 were caused by an outdated political philosophy giving Malays political dominance and Chinese economic dominance. (Seriously - I suggest you read some of Tunku’s statements. Well-meaning guy, but completely out of touch with what had to be done in the long run.)
The solution was to give the Malays both political and economic dominance but letting the Chinese have a token role as long as they deferred to the Malays in name. (In other words, Ali Baba writ large - the Chinese are the Ali Baba in the economy, but politically the UMNO Malays have everything and just pretend that the MCA has some say.)
As for harmony, last time I checked, the only political party which tolerates speeches at its annual general assembly calling for murder and bloodshed of Malaysians who do not share their political views is…UMNO. Hm. If UMNO is bringing about harmony in this country, I don’t think they’re doing it on purpose.
I have a very mixed feeling reading this.
Some of the horrible thoughts here are indeed very reasonable. Personally I have been very troubled by that ‘A’ word, that all it takes to stop this momentum is to take out the life of one person. Malaysia already have such environment ready - how many businessmen were taken out by hired hit men in the last few years? If I were one of those UMNO cronies on the brink of losing the millions, what would stop me to fork out just less than a million to do that? Perhaps only a little bit of sensibility and respect for the life of millions of Malaysians.
The ‘A’ word is not part of our political culture, and I hope it will never be. But there are many other countries that we can learn their lesson from of not being one of them. It is highly Malaysians are made well aware of this possibility and stay vigilant. On the same note, we can be more understanding when confronted with overzealous security personnel now deployed around Anwar Ibrahim.
While countering the technical aspects of the Malaysia-Today censorship by the Malaysian government, I started to have this mixed feeling. Five days later, their effort seems to be at best half-hearted. MT site is still accessible through various means, and it only loses a small number of its readership as a result. But the whats-next has been long overdue. (Or am I just overestimating their efficiency?)
This is only a good sign. And I try to sleep well now.
This is precisely what I have been thinking about these days. The threat from the cornered animals are real and serious. It’s not merely a question of losing power and wealth but that of losing it all. The most dangerous is probably Najib and his cronies. He has the most to lose if Pakatan successfully engineers a change of government.
On the other hand, if Pakatan does succeed, the new coalition will be as fragile as a bridge made of poker cards. We have already seen cracks in PAS, with factions siding with Anwar and with that of the idea of Malay domination, aka UMNO, respectively. It appears that the pro-Pakatan faction has an upper hand now but the issue of Islamic state will gain come to the forefront once the BN is toppled. What happens if a significant number of PAS parliament members decide to flip? The majority, whoever has it, will be razor thin.
My take is that Anwar will not succeed in engineering the takeover. The stake is too high. Those who have the most to lose will not crossover as they will not be able to get what they are getting from a Pakatan government. And we don’t want them anyway. How many parliament members of good conscience can you name in the Peninsula? Not even a handful. We can only rely on Sabah and Sarawak. The show cause call of Sabah and Sarawak parliament members the other day showed that the group is split and you can’t even expect half of them to cross over.
I sent this comment (below) to Malaysiakini on 28/8/2008 but ofcourse they couldnt publish it as it was mostly my personal opinion, not backed up with proof. However, I was surprised that you seem to think similarly, as per this article which appeared in Malaysiakini today.
Kudos, and keep up the great writing.
Regards,
Kenny
From: Kenny
Subject: Is it even possible for Anwar to become PM?
To: “MalaysiaKini”
Date: Thursday, August 28, 2008, 2:30 PM
A lot of people are very excited that Anwar has taken “the first step in his march to Putrajaya”.
However, I am convinced that this will never happen, just as Mahathir had stated yesterday. The ruling BN Government are guilty of so many faults and crimes that a lot of their senior people will be put behind bars, or perhaps even worse, in the case of those involved in murder. They will not and cannot ever allow BN to lose power at Federal level.
What will they do?
Many believe that Anwar will be arrested and put away because of the Saiful-Sodomy issue. I strongly believe that the sodomy trial is just a way to divert attention from the truth. From Day 1, when Saiful first came out and reported that he had been sodomised by Anwar, the BN Govt knew that they will let Anwar win this case. The reason for this is to make the BN Government look like they are fair and just, allowing their number 1 political enemy to be discharged in court, proving that our justice system still has integrity.
Similarly, the many arrests done by the ACA in recent weeks is also to hoodwink people into believing that the ACA is now independent and able to prosecute anyone fairly, even BN-appointed senior Govt officials. Many Malaysians have fallen for this and sincerely believe that the ACA is now “really doing it’s job.”
The reason for these 2 “sandiwara” is actually to make the coming corruption case against Anwar to be more valid. This will be plan A for BN to stop Anwar. The corruption charge will only happen after Anwar is dismissed of the sodomy allegations and the ACA has successfully put a few senior men behind bars, “proving” that our criminal justice system is fair.
If Plan A does not succeed, or perhaps even simultaneously, the Government may even go to the extremes by getting rid of Anwar permanently, once and for all. This could be why BN was so adamant that Anwar swear on the Quran that he did not sodomise Saiful. If he did that, then the Goverment could poison him, causing him to suffer from a chronic and untreatable disease (e.g. arsenic poisoning). They would then say that Anwar was being punished by the Almighty, for swearing a lie on the Quran.
I really do hope and pray that I am wrong. However I believe that sadly, the BN cannot afford to let Anwar come to power and the main BN players will do anything and everything it takes to ensure Anwar is out of the picture. Sadly, Pakatan Rakyat does not have anyone close to Anwar’s calibre to take over when this happens. All the security that Anwar can hire will never be able to protect him from the Malaysian Police and BN, when they decide to act. I truly dread the day it happens.
Ken