Gambling licence - politics all the way

UMNO supreme council member Dr Mohd Puad Zarkashi described the decision by Najib not to go ahead with the football gambling licence (well, at least for now) as appropriate and timely.

Then he spoiled it by stating: "I hope no one will take advantage and politicise the matter."

This is the typical patronising UMNO bullshit that I detest. WTF is he talking about not politicising the gambling issue.

Dumbo, it has been politics all along the way.

Politics on the side of Pakatan in objecting to it.

Politics on the side of BN (save a few UMNO branches) to support it, even to the ridiculous extent of arguing that Chinese rights to gamble should be respected – but of course not Chinese rights to have its Chinese education recognised.

In The Malaysian Insider’s Chinese are not gambling addicts!, Lim Mun Fah wrote:

For a few decades, the Chinese community in Malaysia has asked the federal government to accept and recognise the Unified Examination Certificate (UEC) awarded by the Chinese independent schools, but nothing comes out of the request.

Each time a plea is made the federal government would dismiss the UEC as being not in line with the national education policy and the UEC issue would become dormant for a while until it is brought up again.

This never-ending cycle of ask-reject-ask-reject goes on ad infinitum without any positive resolution.

On the other hand gambling which the Chinese community considers undesirable is being promoted as a part of Chinese culture and way of life and attempts to legalize the demonic habit is propagated as respect for the Chinese culture.

Neither the Chinese community at large or any of the Chinese associations had so far requested that gambling be legalized yet the political leaders are literally going all out to ensure the legalisation of sport-gambling is effected to respect the wishes of the Chinese.

Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad has also said that if he were still the prime minister he would definitely issue the sport-betting licence. Fortunately he is not the prime minister now.

Even the UMNO branches which were against issuing the footie gambling licence to Vincent Tan based their objections on politics – they were scared of losing the moral grounds (and hearland votes) to PAS, though other UMNO sections were more interested in ensuring UMNO's political war chest can be topped up via this footie gambling.

So WTF is this Dr Mohd Puad Zarkashi to come up with such a bullshit comment, trying not only to insult our intelligence but the intelligence of the heartland.