Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown

When I read the headlines in Malaysiakini which tell of All roads to Parliament blocked to prevent certain Bersih leaders from delivering a Bersih memo: Why he (Abdul Rashid) is unfit to continue as EC chief and the eventual but predictable outcome which caused Vexed (Opp) MPs to stage (a) walkout in frustration at the undemocratic and oppressive conduct of the AAB government ...

... I did wonder why AAB has gone to such silly attention-attracting tactics when he could have easily permitted Bersih to deliver the memo (afterall Bersih did say they weren’t going to conduct a rally), get one of his parliamentary staff to accept the memo and say he’d look into it ... and end of story without high drama to entertain or anger the public.

I have often attributed his dramatic but unproductive pronouncements or actions to the poor advice of his moronic sub-mediocre advisors, but I am beginning to wonder in these recent cases of rallies and unnecessary heavy-handed police actions, whether there may be more than meet the eye (well, at least my eye).

I had blogged in Mental makeup of AAB & his harshness towards Hindraf? where a ‘chieftain’ or pseudo-sultan like AAB expects, demands and enjoys the homage, tributes and oaths of allegiance and fealty, as well as the trappings and perks of the office.

But as Shakespeare said in Henry IV, Part II, ‘Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown’:

How many thousand of my poorest subjects
Are at this hour asleep! O sleep, O gentle sleep,
Nature's soft nurse, how have I frighted thee,
That thou no more wilt weigh my eyelids down
And steep my senses in forgetfulness?

… which of course is hardly applicable to him, because while he has been reported to be slumbering, some of his ‘poorest subjects’ (reportedly the terrori … Indian Malaysians) were steeping their senses (of frustration and hopelessness) with toddy to forget.

But that aside, is there something going on in UMNO?

I read somewhere that while he is expected to win handsomely in the general election, he is also under enormous (internal UMNO) pressure to wrest Kelantan back from PAS while ensuring he doesn’t lose Terengganu in the process …….. plus he must demolish the wretched (to UMNO) PKR in Penang.

... bearing in mind he mustn't at the same time allow Anwar Ibrahim to split the Malay community again which could happen if he were to overreact against the de facto leader of PKR.

Are these draconian-on-steroid oppressions of Hindraf, the lawyers and Bersih part of his manoeuvres to outflank whoever has been posing him the continuous set of problems, from which an early casualty had been his original plans to spring a snap general election?

Are these part of an internal UMNO (no doubt hostile or even malicious) initiation exercise to test his leadership mettle, to show him at his worst?

Has it been because of all these ordeals, that the pretences of democratic process, of so-called independent/neutral civil servants, of his image of Mr Nice Guy, have suddenly evaporated?

This has been a bloke who garnered over 90% of the votes seats* in the last general election. He is guaranteed to win again, this we have no doubt.

* thanks to Lone's correction of my error - he won 60% of votes making up 90% of seats; as someone said, the EC is worth his weight in gold which has been why the Constitution has been amended for one sole public servant ;-)

Yet, suddenly he has become paranoid and muttered of national security and public safety, and regrettably acted in unbelievable draconian fashion. Had he been so ill-advised or ... perhaps he was speaking in cryptic form, that the national security and safety pertain to his position as UMNO head and PM?

There is no nastier rat than a cornered rat ... except perhaps a pseudo-sultan under threat.

But then who has been behind all these, assuming my conspiracy theory even has any purchase ;-) - hey, I am sick of blogging about rallies, arrests and bullsh*t public servants so ........

Update:
My 12/1207 morning news reading came across Raja Petra Kamarudin’s interesting (and maybe related) article in his famous ‘Corridors of Power’ titled Losing the plot