Pakatan at its height of political mendacity

Was it true that Pakatan Harapan had previously accused Rosmah Mansor of being the owner of Grab and Uber? I heard Uber exited Malaysia’s market early this year.

Former PM Najib grumbled: “If she (Rosmah) is the owner of Grab and Uber, she would be the most successful businessperson in the country."

Najib's sarcasm was made in the wake of the Pakatan government proposing to use Grab to replace feeder buses for MRT and LRT, that after accusing Rosmah of owning it, wakakaka.

FMT reported: Earlier this week, Damansara MP Tony Pua said the government was “in discussions” with Grab but did not provide further details. Grab has not commented on this proposal.

Chicken Little 

According to Najib, some taxi drivers believed such e-hailing companies would be banned if PH took over but alas, they must be disappointed by now.

Well, Commander (rtd) S Thayaparan, a Malaysiakini columnist wrote recently in his article titled The Harapan manifesto is worthless:

Is the Pakatan Harapan manifesto worthless? Yes, it is.

Most manifestos or campaign promises are suspect but now we know that the Harapan manifesto was void ab initio (void from the beginning).

too much of UMNO blood 

Politicians who make campaign promises make an attempt to fulfil them and would make excuses if they could not. What they never do is say: “We made a bunch of stuff up to get your votes which we knew we could never fulfil.” This is exactly what the old maverick has said.

Claiming that you made promises while actually believing that you could not win is really dumb. I mean, the people who voted for you had faith in the movement and obviously thought you could take Putrajaya. [...]

Mahathir is not some neophyte political operative. He is a seasoned political operative who managed to get people to vote for his coalition even with the systemic corruption, systemic discrimination and race-based ideology for decades. Granted he was operating in unfamiliar terrain with the then opposition but even in this marriage of political convenience, surely he must have believed in some parts of the manifesto, right?

Surely there must have been Harapan political operatives who did believe in the manifesto and did not just say things because they believed they could not win.

Was that really the strategy? Make a bunch of stuff up and then if victory was miraculously achieved, claim that they could not fulfil those promises?

Moving forward, how can people ever trust anything Harapan officials say when it comes to policy?

Bersatu’s Rais Hussin claimed that a lot of thought went into the manifesto but apparently the prime minister does not think it means all that much. All these people that Rais talks about, who put in the hard work of drafting the manifesto, did they not have access to the facts when they promised they could abolish tolls, for instance?

We always get this horse manure that the manifesto promises cannot be kept because new information has been “discovered” but really, the Harapan political elite had been claiming that we were reaching failed-nation status, hence whatever “new information” that has been discovered could not be possibly worse than the apocalypse they believed would happen if they did not win.

Remember that they claimed that the government was bankrupt at one point. Surely all this must have gone into the number-crunching done by Rais' so-called experts when they were formulating the well-thought-out manifesto, no?

If you buy this “new information” excuse, you do understand what this really means, right? That Harapan operatives were talking without having full access to the facts. They were making promises while ignorant of the facts and either they knew it or did not care. Claiming the discovery of new facts that make certain promises unworkable is the height of political mendacity.

Do you know the meaning of the word 'mendacity'?

The dictionary defines it as:

1. the quality of being mendacious; untruthfulness; tendency to lie.

2. an instance of lying; falsehood.

And the adjective is (as above) 'mendacious which means:

1. telling lies, especially habitually; dishonest; lying; untruthful: (a mendacious person)

2. false or untrue: (a mendacious report)

I hope my FB friend would be able to read the definitions and Commander Thayaparan's accusation of Pakatan as at the height of political mendacity. and know what that means.

My FB matey claimed that Pakatan in making promises thinking it NEEDN'T fulfil them (as it thought it won't win GE14) and then as the new government went about capati-ing those 'promises',  did not make pre-election lies, wakakaka.

I have to admit I was unable to get him to see the picture of sheer arrogant mendacity, and so gave up against his persistent insistence that those Pakatan reckless manifesto promises (with no intention on the part of Pakatan fulfilling them because Pakatan thought it wouldn't have won) were not lies.

Sadly, I realised I was banging my head against a brick-wall, and decided to end the discussions by saying politely "Maybe my English is dodgy".

I was surprised when he grabbed on that straw and agreed that my English might not be good enough and that also he studied some aspects of law which convinced him false promises were/are not lies, wakakaka.

I gave up on that discussion because I value our fellowship more. But I dare say he is the typical Pakatan supporter who is suspicious, speculates and insinuates I must be, as an example, an enemy of so and so because I criticise that person.

Anyway, let's leave that and return to Mahathir's refusal or reluctance to remove road tolls. I realise by then he was the person who started the tolls so I shouldn't have been surprised that he is behaving like former MB Selangor Khalid Ibrahim who showed he was more interested in protecting the interests of tolls owner rather than the rakyat who voted for him.

Khalid Ibrahim was seen to be very pro BIG business, and this, his very pro big business attitude, was first witnessed in 2008 in the Grand Saga new tollgate in Cheras.

Sadly then, Khalid Ibrahim as the first non-BN MB of Selangor, abysmally failed the people of Cheras who had supported and voted him in also as their federal MP for Bandar Tun Razak.

He refused to take action to prevent the erection of the illegal barrier on state land and we'll soon learn why in my July 2014 post My 3 strikes out for Khalid Ibrahim.

The height of political mendacity, wakakaka. But then again, it's not a laughing matter when it describes the current Pakatan government.