Monday, May 08, 2017

Déjà vu 1999?

18 years ago, on 29 November 1999 Malaysia held its 10th general election. It was a Monday which indeed turned out to be a Black Monday for two of my DAP icons then.


While people made casual reference to Black Monday as an awful start to their week, the term Black Monday, according to Wikipedia, technically refers to Monday, 19 October, 1987, when stock markets around the world crashed, shedding a huge value in a very short time.

It was a worldwide phenomenon which hit Malaysia badly and led to the Mahathir-Anwar split. The Anwar people frightened the shits out of Malaysians with their street protests in KL, such was his iconic status among younger Malays.

Anwar being expelled from UMNO for corruption (Sodomy I was to come later) plus a black eye did not endear Mahathir to many Malays. He knew he was in deep trouble from his ethnic constituency, so he had to resort to the bloody Chinese to save him politically, wakakaka.

30 years before, in May 1969 he insulted his hateful Chinese in Alor Setar, dismissing their support saying he did not need Chinese votes.


On 10 May 1969 he lost in the parliamentary constituency of Kota Setar Selatan to Yusof Rawa (Yusof Abdullah) of PAS by 989 votes.


He blamed his loss on the very people he had so arrogantly declared he didn't require votes from, wakakaka. In 1974 he wisely selected a different parliamentary constituency, Kubang Pasu, wakakaka.

In the 60’s, Dr Mahathir was notorious as an 'ultra', one of UMNO's frightening ‘Young Turks’. In his immense dislike of the Chinese he had, as just mentioned, prior to the 1969 GE arrogantly declared he didn't require Chinese support in the election.

So I guess those Chinamen and women must have taken him at his words and most unprecedentedly for any Chinese in the 69's voted for a PAS man - ajar sama dia, wakakaka.

But by 1999, he had to swallow his pride and suck hard at the Chinese whatever, though he did it in a way by emulating the late Tun Razak.

Juo-Yu Lin writing for The Brookings Institution in a paper titled 'A Structural Analysis of the 1999 Malaysian General Election' said:

Having sacked Anwar and enduring UMNO's loss of 30% of the Muslim votes in the General Election in November 1999, UMNO's Chairman Mahathir was still capable of leading the country to overcome the financial crisis and its political instability.


The strategies employed by Mahathir of inviting Chinese Premier Zhu Rongji to visit Malaysia, meeting the demands of the Chinese electorate ... He wrote down a big Chinese character ‘’Ren’’ (endurance) during the meeting with Malaysian university students. This move greatly touched both Malayan and Chinese students.

Now, wasn't his invitation to Chinese Premier Zhu Rongji to visit Malaysia, and pretending to show interest in Chinese calligraphy just what he has now criticised Najib for?

Just 4 days ago I wrote Mahathir & 'His' Chinese, quoting a Malaysiakini's article, Dr M: Malays should fear 'pro-China PM' more than DAP in which he said (extracts):

The Malays and Umno have more reasons to fear Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak's reliance on China than the DAP, according to Dr Mahathir Mohamad.

Mahathir has no moral qualms or scruples to say one thing when he himself did exactly just what he accused Najib of.

And as Juo-Yu Lin wrote of Mahathir's strategies in ... meeting the demands of the Chinese electorate ... was undeniably exactly what he had been criticising Najib in the last couple of years, for wasting too much time on the useless Chinese?


To top all that, he has even embraced Najib's BR1M, wakakaka. What a shameless hussy.

Pokoknya, dia mahu undi2 Cina sahaja. Selepas pilihanraya, Cina ni akan dikembalikan ke status Cinakui, wakakaka.
But yes, the Chinese Malaysians in 1999 saved his bloody arse. But for what?

Because Juo-Yu Lin also wrote:

The 1999 election showed that Chinese and Malays shifted their party preference and this will affect the course of political life in the future. The distinguishable phenomena in the election were as follows:

  • The PKN led by Wan Azizah won only 5 seats. This suggested that the votes could not be transformed to seats proportionally owing to the gerrymandering districts. The 'excess profit' is 20%. 
  • The split of Malayan votes was a warning to Mahathir. The implication of the loss of two states and the failure of six ministers cannot be underestimated. It seems the ruling party had lost dominance like in the past.
  • The PAS rose to be the main opposition force, and Chinese political status declined. The victory of Islamic fundamentalism will prevail among the ‘Reformasi Movement’ in parliament.


That year (1999) PAS won 27 federal seats riding on the skirt tail of Wan Azizah, which the Islamic Party seems to forget. Well, let them carry on, wakakaka.

Lim Kit Siang and Karpal Singh both lost their federal seats. The DAP loss was shocking. Two of DAP's most respected and revered icons were sent packing home by their normal supporters.

I recall someone saying rather poignantly that after the results were known, he saw Lim Kit Siang walking away from the counting hall all alone by himself, without one single person to accompany him. I felt really sad to see the great man deserted by all the rats.


But Kit Siang today is far different from Kit Siang of yester-years. Hmmm, maybe he doesn't have Karpal to moderate his current disappointing 'fraternisation'. And the warnings of the children of Karpal have been ignored. Maybe they are considered 'too junior' by LKS?

In April 2015 the now-defunct TMI published a news report titled Working with Dr M to remove PM will be a ‘disaster’, Pakatan told.

In that report we read Ramkarpal's opinion on working with Mahathir (extracts):

“The question of working with Dr Mahathir is an unimaginable disaster waiting to happen.

“There can be no doubt that Malaysia needs to be saved. While I agree that Najib ought to go, I cannot agree with the means by which Dr Mahathir proposes to do so.” Ramkarpal said in a statement here. [...]

Ramkarpal said that working with Dr Mahathir would mean that PR would just be maintaining the status quo and allow “corruption to continue”.

“I am firmly of the view that saving Malaysia can only mean a new clean, accountable and transparent government."

“Pakatan Rakyat must live up to its promise to Malaysians of being that alternative and democratically oust Najib and the BN through the ballot box,” Ramkarpal stressed.

There wasn't any doubt about Ramkarpal's extremely poor opinion of Mahathir, but alas, LKS has pressed on heedlessly. After all, Lim did say this would be his last election, and as I have often written, he wants a fitting swansong to his half a century of politics, even unto walking with the Devil himself.

And as my Aneh, S Thayaparan, wrote in Malaysiakini's Is this the Harapan New Deal? (extracts):

... needing Mahathir is a Hobson's choice of the opposition’s making and while racial politics has always been a feature of opposition politics, the rhetoric coming from the de facto opposition leader is furthering the fear-mongering racial narratives that used to be only the province of Umno only.


Those dark paths to retaining power is always fraught with danger and it is naïve to think that the opposition is “using” Mahathir. Nobody has ever used Mahathir and as one dejected DAP political strategist told me, referencing a line from a forgettable Nicholas Cage film ‘8MM’, “When you dance with devil, the devil doesn’t change, the devil changes you.”

You have to give it to former prime minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad. Even when he is peddling his ‘Malay’ nationalistic narrative, he manages to include the ‘domestic’ Chinese under his protection by claiming that “local businesses, largely Malaysian Chinese owned, will definitely lose out to those of the mainland Chinese.”

The operative word here is “Chinese” and even though Mahathir said, “It is this massive immigration that we object to."

Wasn't he the very person who accused Tunku of giving away needlessly citizens to 1.7 million people. What a bullshitter.

And that has compelled Ramkarpal's sister, Sangeet Kaur Deo, to state during debates at the DAP national conference (via MM Online):

“I want to clarify at this stage that it was interesting to see Tun Mahathir in support of *Maria’s release when it was him that was instrumental in the cruel enforcement of the ISA.”

* Maria Chin Abdullah of Bersih

Hasn't she been delightfully sarcastic about Mahathir's all-too-apparent hypocrisy? She ought to know how evil Mahathir had been when it was his regime that incarcerated her father Karpal Singh three times, in 1987, 1989 and 2000.


But to remind you what Aneh Thayaparan said: “When you dance with devil, the devil doesn’t change, the devil changes you.”

And Kit Siang ploughs on heedlessly.

But will we see another 1999, where the Chinese supporters of Pakatan again saves Mahathir and his Pribumi, while sending LKS to another political oblivion? Chinese are known to political kingmakers but stupid ones, wakakaka.

By the by, I will still vote DAP but not for Lim Kit Siang, wakakaka again.



1 comment:

  1. politically biased write-up? Right?

    "poor try, you're truly pathetic" - yr words!

    A continuation of the dead silo of opinion singularity!

    Once infected, NEVER can be off-loaded.

    On & on while that thought continuously single-mindedly, even though that train MIGHT have diverted at the fork junction at the home stretch!

    Meanwhile, a bigger iceberg is ignored right in front of one's eye!

    Sad....sigh...

    ReplyDelete