A slap in the face for Abdullah and the goverment alike
Johor Sultan Iskandar Ibni Almarhum Sultan Ismail caused a stir during his address at the launch of the South Johor Economic Region (SJER) project yesterday when he digressed from his written text and said the Causeway should be removed.
Not long ago, the Bernama quoted a third party and attributed Sultan Iskandar al-Marhum Sultan Ismail, the reigning Sultan of Johor and a former Agong, as saying :
PM Abdullah Ahamd Badawi responded in this transcript of his Kepala Batas interview in The Star:
The Sultan's comment reflects the peoples' opinion,and that The Causeway has to be removed to allow ships to pass ?
Sultan embarrased Badawi down to the bone. Badawi has been going around saying 'the people of Johor do not want the new bridge' but here is the Sultan of Johor saying the exact Opposite.
The Sultan says demolish the Causeway and build a new bridge. Three cheers for Tun Dr M, you are not alone!
‘Respect for Dr M still there’ ?
The Umno supreme council’s decision not to act against Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad shows that the party still respects him.
Kubang Pasu division chief Datuk Mohd Johari Baharum said the former prime minister should respect the decision and follow proper channels when criticising the leadership of party president Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi.
"The decision also proves the party never sidelined him and that Umno is rational," he said when asked about the party supreme council's decision not to take action against Dr Mahathir.
Johari, who is Deputy Security Minister, said Dr Mahathir, who had led the division for some 30 years, should use proper channels when raising concerns with the government and Umno.
He said Abdullah had always advocated a policy of openness and would accommodate any grouse if raised properly.
"Dr Mahathir could always meet with Pak Lah and I know the prime minister would be willing to listen to him."
In Kangar, party secretary-general Datuk Seri Radzi Sheikh Ahmad said for the first time in its 60-year history, Umno members will be issued an I-Kad when they attend the Umno general assembly.
Meanwhile, Mahathir re-emphasised his earlier assertion of a 'Police State' during this Abdullah administration. An Mahathir's Open Letter, Nov 3, published in the Harakah Daily :
Kenyataan Dr Mahathir pada 3 November
Tuan-tuan dan puan-puan,
Saya tidak lagi dapat bercakap dengan secara langsung.
Hari ini saya diberitahu majlis NGO di Baling pada 3 hb November 2006 sudah dibatalkan. Polis memanggil penganjur dan mengarah supaya majlis dibatalkan.
Perkida Johor juga diarah supaya batalkan jemputan kepada saya pada 1 hb November 2006.
Dengan ini sudah 14 jemputan kepada saya dibatalkan atas arahan Kerajaan Pak Lah melalui Johari Baharom, Timbalan Menteri Dalam Negeri.
Di masa yang sama semua media aliran perdana membuat laporan yang tidak berasas untuk memburukkan diri saya. Saya tidak boleh jawab, tidak boleh nafi walaupun laporan telah diputar.
Inikah yang dikatakan kebebasan bersuara dan kebebasan akhbar zaman Pak Lah. Segala saluran untuk seseiapa mengkritik kerajaan ditutup.
Jawapan Pak Lah dan konco-konconya tidak tertumpu kepada kritikan yang dibuat. Sebaliknya semua marah kerana saya membuat kritikan.
Jangan kritik.
Kalau nak kritik keluar dari parti.
Semua mesti akuar kepada Pak Lah.
Jika tidak buang jawatan.
Apakah pernah perkara seperti ini berlaku di zaman Dato Onn, Tunku, Tun Razak, Tun Hussein dan saya sendiri?
Tunku dan Tun Hussein bebas mengkritik saya. Tidak ada sekatan. Polis tidak menganggu sesiapa yang ingin dengar kritikan mereka. Tidak ada ugutan untuk bertindak terhadap Tunku dan Tun Hussein.
Percayalah apabila pemimpin tidak boleh ditegur dia akan salahguna kuasa. Dia akan utamakan kepentingan diri, keluarga dan kroni. Kepentingan negara, kepentingan rakyat akan diabaikan. Akhirnya negara akan rosak dan rakyat akan menderita.
Pak Lah dan keluarganya takut membenarkan saya bercakap kerana kebenaran apa yang saya akan perkatakan. Jika apa yang saya perkatakan tidak benar, tentu mudah untuk membuktikan apa yang saya kata adalah tidak benar.
Berani kerana benar.
Takut kerana salah.
Takutnya Pak Lah jika rakyat dengar saya ialah kerana dia dan konco-konconya bersalah.
Saya guna saluran ini kerana tidak ada saluran lain bagi saya. Sama-samalah kita renung perkara ini.
Sekian,
Dr Mahathir Mohamad
3 November 2006.
Lead! Or Get Out of the Way!
(M Bakri Musa )
Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi should quit whining. Lead, or get out of the way! He has had three years to make up his mind. If there is any jantan (male) left in UMNO, this is the brutally frank message he needs to deliver to his leader.
There is a place for loyalty to the leader, but not at the price of the followers being led collectively over the cliff.
The singa (lion) in UMNO is long gone; the kittens of the kucing kurap (scruffy cats) have taken over. Their meows would be heard loud and clear (and incessantly too!) only when they run out of milk. The ginger has also been long uprooted from UMNO’s garden. What we have instead are Bell peppers; colorful but pepper only in name, it spiciness long ago bred out of them.
At the upcoming UMNO General Assembly, expect effusive choruses of praise and an orgy of adulation for the leader of the day. In spectacle, it would not match what the North Koreans regularly put on for their “Dear Leader,” but the exuberance of the glorifications and the superlatives used would; their intensity matching the desperation of the speakers in being beholden to their leader.
Abdullah’s sycophants have already bestowed him the glorified title of “Father of the K-Economy,” whatever that means. I suggest he be adorned with a more appropriate appellation, “Bapak Tanah Kayangan!” (Father of Fantasyland!). After all he is heading a cabinet of Mat Jenins (Malaysian Walter Mittys), individuals who fancy themselves as legends in their own fertile imaginations.
Obscenely generous money politics and political patronages have effectively emasculated UMNO. To be sure there will be plenty of gaily-attired putris (princesses) gracing the gathering. They will add color to the otherwise dull background, but nothing more. As for the putras (princes), they will be dozing off, having spent their late nights with the Mat Rempits terrorizing the streets and neighborhoods with their motorcycles.
I long for brave souls along the fashion of the late Sulaiman Palestin. He never hesitated to challenge even the most esteemed leader. If he were alive today, he would courageously introduce a “No Confidence” resolution at the Assembly. Even if it were not successful, it might just prove to the needed shock for Abdullah to come out of his slumber. The man has been daydreaming for too long.
Pathetic Performance with Mahathir
Abdullah’s performance after (and also presumably during) his one-on-one meeting with his predecessor was pathetic. If Abdullah cannot stand up to Mahathir, how on earth can we expect Abdullah to look after the nation’s interests in even tougher negotiations with foreign leaders?
Mahathir effectively reduced Abdullah to an errand schoolboy guilty of being delinquent in his homework and now has to write down a hundred times, “I must pay attention to my work and not doze off!”
According to Abdullah, Mahathir did most of the talking. Abdullah by his own admission was too polite to interfere. Touching! According to Mahathir (and Abdullah corroborated this), he brought up the very same issues he had been harping on for the past few months.
Abdullah does not need to listen to the details again; presumably he had heard them before and would by now be ready with the answers and rebuttals. Malaysians and the world have certainly heard Mahathir’s litany of complaints. What he and we needed were answers. Yet there was the sorry sight of Abdullah pleading for more time! If Abdullah does not get it by now, he never will.
What Abdullah should have done when Mahathir began to repeat what he had said many times before was to stop him cold and assert, “With due respect Tun, I have heard them all before, and many times over. Let me address them one by one!” With that, effectively take over the meeting. Then we would know who was in charge!
After the meeting, Abdullah should have called for a press conference and publicly invited Mahathir to join in. That of course would take confidence and leadership, the very qualities so clearly lacking with Abdullah.
Instead it was Mahathir who gave not one but two press conferences to let the public know what transpired between them. Abdullah was reduced to whining and complaining that Mahathir was spewing “venom.” He took solace behind the protective but ineffectual barks of his ministers and spinmeisters.
Abdullah forgot that the issues Mahathir raised are also very much in the public mind. He owes Malaysians, not just Mahathir, an explanation. Whining, maintaining an “elegance silence,” or asking his surrogates to answer for him merely exposes Abdullah lack of engagement. What we have in Abdullah is not a chief executive but a pseudo sultan, and not a very regal one at that. Malaysia already has nine sultans; it does not need a tenth.
During this past Ramadan, Abdullah was busy being an imam, dispensing homilies and delivering sermons. Again, Malaysia has no shortage of imams and khatibs, what it needs desperately is a chief executive.
The Issue is Abdullah’s Leadership
Mahathir has long retired as Prime Minister; his legacy is for historians to dissect. Abdullah Badawi is a significant part of that legacy. At issue here is Abdullah’s leadership, or lack of it. He hides his inability to make the tough decisions by rationalizing that he leads through consensus. That has long been the excuse of the indecisive.
Mahathir singled out Kalimullah Hassan and Brendan Pereira for their sinister influences on Abdullah. Mahathir is being kind to Abdullah. In my view, Abdullah’s faults and weaknesses are his own making. If he had guts, he would have long ago fired the two, not for their presumed bad advice but for their juvenile commentaries, blatant plagiarisms, and inability to stem the declining readership of the once proud The New Straits Times. If the two cannot even run their paper, how can they presume to know how to run the country?
When the issue of conflict of interest with his family’s businesses arose, Abdullah at first denied it. When confronted with the facts, he did not deny the business dealings rather that he did not know about them! He should have been embarrassed by his ignorance; instead he used it as a pretext! Now that Mahathir had brought the issue directly to him, Abdullah’s latest excuse was that Mahathir’s sons too were involved in the past. Soon Abdullah will exhaust his explanations.
Instead of seeking solutions, Abdullah grabs at excuses. Since his advisors and those on the “infamous fourth floor” have not offered him any, I will offer my solution on avoiding future potential conflicts of interest.
Henceforth, any family member (spouse, sibling, children, in-laws) of the prime minister, minister, or any senior government official doing business with the government would have their contracts and bids subjected to a post-decision independent review by a commission to be headed by a former senior judge. That body would have court powers to subpoena witnesses and records. Its deliberations would also be open to the public. Details like the companies’ capabilities and principals, as well the bids of other competitors, would be examined. Let the sunshine in; that is the only effective way to disinfect the current cesspool that is the government’s procuring process.
Related to the issue of conflict of interest is the increasing private use of public assets by Abdullah and other leaders. The Prime Minister is treating the government’s luxurious corporate jets as his private limousines. Someone in Parliament ought to inquire whether the Prime Minister and his adult children and in-laws reimburse the government for using the jet on their recent umrah. When President Bush uses Air Force One for his campaign, his party had to reimburse the government for the non-official use of the plane.
If we do not make an issue of such abuses at this early stage, it would not take long for more egregious patterns to emerge. Soon you would have some sycophantic politicians suggesting that Sri Perdana be deeded to Abdullah.
Abdullah constantly decries about Malaysians having First World facility but Third World mentality. The government’s fleet of corporate jets is certainly First World, but its current users are not.
Abdullah should draw up clear guidelines of when and under what conditions can members of his family (as well as other leaders) partake in business relationships with the government, as well as when public assets can be used for private purposes. That would go a long way towards satisfying Mahathir as well as other Malaysians.
Malaysia Abdullah Ahmad Badawi Tun Mahathir Asia Johor Sultan Iskandar Ibni Almarhum
"Robohkan juga Tambak Johor... Datuk nenek aku (beta) dah kena tipu dengan Mat Salleh...
“Tu causeway tu bukakan, baru negeri Johor ini maju...”
Not long ago, the Bernama quoted a third party and attributed Sultan Iskandar al-Marhum Sultan Ismail, the reigning Sultan of Johor and a former Agong, as saying :
"If one has already been pensioned, just behave like a pensioner, what is the use of making more noise?,"
"former prime minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad should start acting like a pensioner and stop criticising the government".
PM Abdullah Ahamd Badawi responded in this transcript of his Kepala Batas interview in The Star:
Q: "What are your views on the Sultan of Johor’s statement that Dr Mahathir should behave like a pensioner and stop making noise?"
A: "The Sultan’s comment reflects the people’s opinion.........."
The Sultan's comment reflects the peoples' opinion,and that The Causeway has to be removed to allow ships to pass ?
Sultan embarrased Badawi down to the bone. Badawi has been going around saying 'the people of Johor do not want the new bridge' but here is the Sultan of Johor saying the exact Opposite.
The Sultan says demolish the Causeway and build a new bridge. Three cheers for Tun Dr M, you are not alone!
‘Respect for Dr M still there’ ?
The Umno supreme council’s decision not to act against Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad shows that the party still respects him.
Kubang Pasu division chief Datuk Mohd Johari Baharum said the former prime minister should respect the decision and follow proper channels when criticising the leadership of party president Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi.
"The decision also proves the party never sidelined him and that Umno is rational," he said when asked about the party supreme council's decision not to take action against Dr Mahathir.
Johari, who is Deputy Security Minister, said Dr Mahathir, who had led the division for some 30 years, should use proper channels when raising concerns with the government and Umno.
He said Abdullah had always advocated a policy of openness and would accommodate any grouse if raised properly.
"Dr Mahathir could always meet with Pak Lah and I know the prime minister would be willing to listen to him."
In Kangar, party secretary-general Datuk Seri Radzi Sheikh Ahmad said for the first time in its 60-year history, Umno members will be issued an I-Kad when they attend the Umno general assembly.
Meanwhile, Mahathir re-emphasised his earlier assertion of a 'Police State' during this Abdullah administration. An Mahathir's Open Letter, Nov 3, published in the Harakah Daily :
Kenyataan Dr Mahathir pada 3 November
Tuan-tuan dan puan-puan,
Saya tidak lagi dapat bercakap dengan secara langsung.
Hari ini saya diberitahu majlis NGO di Baling pada 3 hb November 2006 sudah dibatalkan. Polis memanggil penganjur dan mengarah supaya majlis dibatalkan.
Perkida Johor juga diarah supaya batalkan jemputan kepada saya pada 1 hb November 2006.
Dengan ini sudah 14 jemputan kepada saya dibatalkan atas arahan Kerajaan Pak Lah melalui Johari Baharom, Timbalan Menteri Dalam Negeri.
Di masa yang sama semua media aliran perdana membuat laporan yang tidak berasas untuk memburukkan diri saya. Saya tidak boleh jawab, tidak boleh nafi walaupun laporan telah diputar.
Inikah yang dikatakan kebebasan bersuara dan kebebasan akhbar zaman Pak Lah. Segala saluran untuk seseiapa mengkritik kerajaan ditutup.
Jawapan Pak Lah dan konco-konconya tidak tertumpu kepada kritikan yang dibuat. Sebaliknya semua marah kerana saya membuat kritikan.
Jangan kritik.
Kalau nak kritik keluar dari parti.
Semua mesti akuar kepada Pak Lah.
Jika tidak buang jawatan.
Apakah pernah perkara seperti ini berlaku di zaman Dato Onn, Tunku, Tun Razak, Tun Hussein dan saya sendiri?
Tunku dan Tun Hussein bebas mengkritik saya. Tidak ada sekatan. Polis tidak menganggu sesiapa yang ingin dengar kritikan mereka. Tidak ada ugutan untuk bertindak terhadap Tunku dan Tun Hussein.
Percayalah apabila pemimpin tidak boleh ditegur dia akan salahguna kuasa. Dia akan utamakan kepentingan diri, keluarga dan kroni. Kepentingan negara, kepentingan rakyat akan diabaikan. Akhirnya negara akan rosak dan rakyat akan menderita.
Pak Lah dan keluarganya takut membenarkan saya bercakap kerana kebenaran apa yang saya akan perkatakan. Jika apa yang saya perkatakan tidak benar, tentu mudah untuk membuktikan apa yang saya kata adalah tidak benar.
Berani kerana benar.
Takut kerana salah.
Takutnya Pak Lah jika rakyat dengar saya ialah kerana dia dan konco-konconya bersalah.
Saya guna saluran ini kerana tidak ada saluran lain bagi saya. Sama-samalah kita renung perkara ini.
Sekian,
Dr Mahathir Mohamad
3 November 2006.
*********
Lead! Or Get Out of the Way!
(M Bakri Musa )
Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi should quit whining. Lead, or get out of the way! He has had three years to make up his mind. If there is any jantan (male) left in UMNO, this is the brutally frank message he needs to deliver to his leader.
There is a place for loyalty to the leader, but not at the price of the followers being led collectively over the cliff.
The singa (lion) in UMNO is long gone; the kittens of the kucing kurap (scruffy cats) have taken over. Their meows would be heard loud and clear (and incessantly too!) only when they run out of milk. The ginger has also been long uprooted from UMNO’s garden. What we have instead are Bell peppers; colorful but pepper only in name, it spiciness long ago bred out of them.
At the upcoming UMNO General Assembly, expect effusive choruses of praise and an orgy of adulation for the leader of the day. In spectacle, it would not match what the North Koreans regularly put on for their “Dear Leader,” but the exuberance of the glorifications and the superlatives used would; their intensity matching the desperation of the speakers in being beholden to their leader.
Abdullah’s sycophants have already bestowed him the glorified title of “Father of the K-Economy,” whatever that means. I suggest he be adorned with a more appropriate appellation, “Bapak Tanah Kayangan!” (Father of Fantasyland!). After all he is heading a cabinet of Mat Jenins (Malaysian Walter Mittys), individuals who fancy themselves as legends in their own fertile imaginations.
Obscenely generous money politics and political patronages have effectively emasculated UMNO. To be sure there will be plenty of gaily-attired putris (princesses) gracing the gathering. They will add color to the otherwise dull background, but nothing more. As for the putras (princes), they will be dozing off, having spent their late nights with the Mat Rempits terrorizing the streets and neighborhoods with their motorcycles.
I long for brave souls along the fashion of the late Sulaiman Palestin. He never hesitated to challenge even the most esteemed leader. If he were alive today, he would courageously introduce a “No Confidence” resolution at the Assembly. Even if it were not successful, it might just prove to the needed shock for Abdullah to come out of his slumber. The man has been daydreaming for too long.
Pathetic Performance with Mahathir
Abdullah’s performance after (and also presumably during) his one-on-one meeting with his predecessor was pathetic. If Abdullah cannot stand up to Mahathir, how on earth can we expect Abdullah to look after the nation’s interests in even tougher negotiations with foreign leaders?
Mahathir effectively reduced Abdullah to an errand schoolboy guilty of being delinquent in his homework and now has to write down a hundred times, “I must pay attention to my work and not doze off!”
According to Abdullah, Mahathir did most of the talking. Abdullah by his own admission was too polite to interfere. Touching! According to Mahathir (and Abdullah corroborated this), he brought up the very same issues he had been harping on for the past few months.
Abdullah does not need to listen to the details again; presumably he had heard them before and would by now be ready with the answers and rebuttals. Malaysians and the world have certainly heard Mahathir’s litany of complaints. What he and we needed were answers. Yet there was the sorry sight of Abdullah pleading for more time! If Abdullah does not get it by now, he never will.
What Abdullah should have done when Mahathir began to repeat what he had said many times before was to stop him cold and assert, “With due respect Tun, I have heard them all before, and many times over. Let me address them one by one!” With that, effectively take over the meeting. Then we would know who was in charge!
After the meeting, Abdullah should have called for a press conference and publicly invited Mahathir to join in. That of course would take confidence and leadership, the very qualities so clearly lacking with Abdullah.
Instead it was Mahathir who gave not one but two press conferences to let the public know what transpired between them. Abdullah was reduced to whining and complaining that Mahathir was spewing “venom.” He took solace behind the protective but ineffectual barks of his ministers and spinmeisters.
Abdullah forgot that the issues Mahathir raised are also very much in the public mind. He owes Malaysians, not just Mahathir, an explanation. Whining, maintaining an “elegance silence,” or asking his surrogates to answer for him merely exposes Abdullah lack of engagement. What we have in Abdullah is not a chief executive but a pseudo sultan, and not a very regal one at that. Malaysia already has nine sultans; it does not need a tenth.
During this past Ramadan, Abdullah was busy being an imam, dispensing homilies and delivering sermons. Again, Malaysia has no shortage of imams and khatibs, what it needs desperately is a chief executive.
The Issue is Abdullah’s Leadership
Mahathir has long retired as Prime Minister; his legacy is for historians to dissect. Abdullah Badawi is a significant part of that legacy. At issue here is Abdullah’s leadership, or lack of it. He hides his inability to make the tough decisions by rationalizing that he leads through consensus. That has long been the excuse of the indecisive.
Mahathir singled out Kalimullah Hassan and Brendan Pereira for their sinister influences on Abdullah. Mahathir is being kind to Abdullah. In my view, Abdullah’s faults and weaknesses are his own making. If he had guts, he would have long ago fired the two, not for their presumed bad advice but for their juvenile commentaries, blatant plagiarisms, and inability to stem the declining readership of the once proud The New Straits Times. If the two cannot even run their paper, how can they presume to know how to run the country?
When the issue of conflict of interest with his family’s businesses arose, Abdullah at first denied it. When confronted with the facts, he did not deny the business dealings rather that he did not know about them! He should have been embarrassed by his ignorance; instead he used it as a pretext! Now that Mahathir had brought the issue directly to him, Abdullah’s latest excuse was that Mahathir’s sons too were involved in the past. Soon Abdullah will exhaust his explanations.
Instead of seeking solutions, Abdullah grabs at excuses. Since his advisors and those on the “infamous fourth floor” have not offered him any, I will offer my solution on avoiding future potential conflicts of interest.
Henceforth, any family member (spouse, sibling, children, in-laws) of the prime minister, minister, or any senior government official doing business with the government would have their contracts and bids subjected to a post-decision independent review by a commission to be headed by a former senior judge. That body would have court powers to subpoena witnesses and records. Its deliberations would also be open to the public. Details like the companies’ capabilities and principals, as well the bids of other competitors, would be examined. Let the sunshine in; that is the only effective way to disinfect the current cesspool that is the government’s procuring process.
Related to the issue of conflict of interest is the increasing private use of public assets by Abdullah and other leaders. The Prime Minister is treating the government’s luxurious corporate jets as his private limousines. Someone in Parliament ought to inquire whether the Prime Minister and his adult children and in-laws reimburse the government for using the jet on their recent umrah. When President Bush uses Air Force One for his campaign, his party had to reimburse the government for the non-official use of the plane.
If we do not make an issue of such abuses at this early stage, it would not take long for more egregious patterns to emerge. Soon you would have some sycophantic politicians suggesting that Sri Perdana be deeded to Abdullah.
Abdullah constantly decries about Malaysians having First World facility but Third World mentality. The government’s fleet of corporate jets is certainly First World, but its current users are not.
Abdullah should draw up clear guidelines of when and under what conditions can members of his family (as well as other leaders) partake in business relationships with the government, as well as when public assets can be used for private purposes. That would go a long way towards satisfying Mahathir as well as other Malaysians.
Malaysia Abdullah Ahmad Badawi Tun Mahathir Asia Johor Sultan Iskandar Ibni Almarhum
Labels: Politic- Local
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