KITA - the example of Zaid Ibrahim

Zaid Ibrahim is a much maligned man, both personally and as a politician.

When he stood as the PKR candidate in Hulu Selangor, UMNO groped into its bag of dirty tricks and found enough to portray him as a brandy swilling kuda kaki, so much so that PKR’s ally, PAS, was embarrassed in supporting him in the by-election campaign. The only label UMNO didn’t/couldn’t stick onto him was womanizing or buggery wakakaka.

Incidentally, while on Hulu Selangor, Zaid was reported recently in Free Malaysia Today for calling Anwar Ibrahim a liar. Zaid was riled by Anwar’s claim that he (Zaid) had pleaded with him (Anwar) for the opportunity to stand in the by-election for that federal constituency.

Zaid said in fact it was Anwar who selected him to contest. At that time Anwar Ibrahim was at his political nadir following the desertion of seven PKR MPs especially after the cataclysmic failure of his bullsh*t 916, the most shameful un-reformasi folly of Anwar in his power-crazy but failed attempt on 16 Sept 2008.

Zaid suspected that the so-called de facto boss of PKR nominated him because he desperately wanted to make use of Zaid’s high profile personality (my words, not Zaid’s) to regain lost momentum through winning Hulu Selangor for PKR.

Zaid told Free Malaysia Today: “Anwar is a liar and this is how he makes his living in politics. He thought I could pull it off. He did not spend a single sen on me [in the by-election]. I paid the deposit with my money. The party did not do anything to help me. His remarks are a joke. It’s not true.”

Zaid isn’t the only person to say thus of Anwar – in Malaysia-Today there is an article written by Christopher Badeaux which accused Anwar of being two-face, with one message for Muslim audience but a completely different one for western audience. Badeaux condemned Anwar as follows: “... he has played the nasty demagogue at home, then played the good democrat in the West ...”

There’s no doubt that Badeaux doesn’t like Anwar as he took pains to explain to his western readers that Anwar is on trial for forced sodomy and not, as mistakenly described by some more sympathetic western reporters, consensual sodomy.

Though the distinction makes no difference to Anwar’s case insofar as Malaysian laws are concerned, it does to western readers as consensual sex between adults of the same gender is not a crime, and in fact, in the general case, accepted by society. Obviously Badeaux has plunged the knife into Anwar’s heart or, rather, image in the West, by alluding to Sodomy II as a trial for rape.

Back to Zaid - To demonstrate that he had not pleaded to stand in Hulu Selangor, when in the first instance he was already doubtful of his chances in that UMNO stronghold (the 2008 GE result for HS being more of a fluke), Zaid referred to DAP’s Lim Kit Siang and PAS’ Mustapha Ali as his witnesses, that he had asked the two Pakatan leaders for advice.

According to Zaid, Lim and Mustapha told him that “it would not be good for me, as a party member, to decline the offer, because it would seem that I did not want to help the party," presumably even in the face of his mentioning he wanted to decline because the election odds in HS were against him.

Thus he accepted the candidacy because he had believed Anwar’s offer was made in good faith. He tossed another couple of names as his referees, namely Dr Mahathir and AAB, as to his characteristics/style of never pleading for any opportunities.

I am not surprised by Zaid readily referring to personalities from both sides of Malaysian politics - Dr Mahathir and AAB from UMNO, and Lim KS and Mustapha Ali from Pakatan - as his character referees or witnesses to what he alleged as Anwar’s blatant lie of him (Zaid) pleading to stand in Hulu Selangor.

And that’s because Zaid has been consistently mature in his political stance, unlike the feral examples introduced by the UMNO faction of Anwar Ibrahim, a vicious herd mentality that now prevails mainly among the PKR anwaristas and some UMNO people.

While in Pakatan, Zaid has repetitively and more importantly, OPENLY, demonstrated his willingness to talk with BN or even be interviewed by UMNO’s mainstream media mouths, such as Utusan and Berita Harian, etc. He had also not hesitated in praising good policies by BN.

I stress on the word OPENLY because there’s a certain someone who talked to UMNO secretly; I have often accused him of wanting to return to that cesspool in which he had once thrived. ‘Tis only the sheer greed of UMNO’s current crop of leaders who saw no room for him in the party that they have spurned his overtures.

Of course it is this very OPEN-minded mentality, befitting that of a mature politician (like Ku Li wishing Lim KS a happy 70th birthday, and the DAP leader in turn wishing an UMNO leader who was hospitalised a speedy recovery) that saw Zaid Ibrahim being vilified by anwaristas.

Their extreme dictate has always been “Thou shall not breathe the same air as the enemy .....” with of course the exception of you-know-who wakakaka.

But they remained dumb, mute and blind when Zaid became the alleged victim of a PKR polling process which has been questioned by several people, including courageous Jonson Chong and neutral but fair-minded Haris Ibrahim.

Other alleged victims of that party poll have been Chegubard, Jenapala (who was mysteriously struck by a phantom 'resignation'), Gobala and in the past, Nallakaruppan (told to stand aside for Anwar's blue-eyed boy), etc. Those rabid dogs* suddenly became diam saja when even the tikus2 were more vocal.

* note it’s not only UMNO dogs that are rabid

Now, if Lim KS or Mustapha Ali were to dare come out and confirm Zaid’s reference of them as witness to Anwar’s lies, I bet you those anwaristas will be calling them all sorts of names as they did to RPK, Haris Ibrahim, etc.

Personality cultism, black & white no-quarters-given politics, ‘either you’re with or against us’ primitive Bush-ism! That’s the politics of anwaristas. And it has spread across to UMNO (from where it originated).

2-party politics? How man, with such immature mentality?

Yup, the sort of mentality that rejoiced in petty pathetic puerile lil’ insignificant things like ousting Rosmah Mansor from her post as Chancellor of Unisel.

I wrote despairingly of Azmin Ali’s pathetic twitter of his paltry ‘victory’ in my February 2010 post (long before RPK clarified his statements in his Stat Dec about allegation of Rosmah being at the scene of Altantuyaa’s demise) Mean-spirited Malaysians:

This is really pathetic, shamelessly partisan and totally mean-spirited.

She was invited by the previous Selangor government so why not let her term as Chancellor finish off without re-inviting her?

Why make such a spiteful announcement? It’s pathetic, pitiful, petty and utterly childish. Don’t Azmin Ali and other PKR leaders have more important things to do, like running Selangor State, than to dabble around with such masturbatory indulgences?

The argument that she should go because she is surrounded by controversies is not only too partisan but unsubstantiated.

We only have RPK’s word that she was allegedly at the scene of Altantuyaa Shariibuu’s last moments to personally ‘supervise’ the demolition of the late model’s corpse – which without any shred of evidence other than RPK's 'I have been reliably informed ...' has been, in my opinion, an incredulous preposterous allegation.

There was also an argument that her Masters degree wasn’t good enough – really, this is such a pathetic shabby argument.

OK, I know PKR is deliberately being vocal about Rosmah as part of their tactic to mitigate the Sodomy II fallout, by ratcheting up the anti-Najib campaign, but PKR should have remained on high moral grounds rather than ….. sorry, I keep forgetting they and UMNO are from the same stock … where spiteful pettiness and mean-spiritedness are their stock-in-trade.

I hope DAP will never descend to such petty bickering.

I also lamented that in the face of such rabid fanatical mindless mean-spirited mentality:

(a) we aren’t quite ready for a two-party political system,

(b) some politicians don’t consider all citizens of this country (including their own supporters and political opponents) as fellow Malaysians, and

(c) political attacks are often ad hominem rather than directed at the policies, governance and conduct of the other side.

Thank goodness Zaid Ibrahim, Lim Kit Siang and Haris Ibrahim are showing the way to mature Malaysian politics.