S Thayaparan
“So I wish to put on record, as I said just now, on Nov 22, before Anwar Ibrahim went to Istana Negara, I told Anwar, as long as you can be prime minister, DAP is willing to sacrifice anything, that is my commitment to Anwar.”
COMMENT | As reported in the press, DAP secretary-general Anthony Loke said, “At that time, we hoped that (former prime minister Dr) Mahathir (Mohamad), after reaching a very advanced age, could have changed, and not just join forces to topple (then PM) Najib Abdul Razak, but to bring change.”
If you believe this, I have a bridge to sell you somewhere.
The grand old man of Malaysian politics, Lim Kit Siang, said in 2018, leading up to the general election, that Mahathir was needed to court the rural Malay vote.
This was not about reform. Mahathir already admitted that the Pakatan Harapan election manifesto was not worth the paper it was printed on. This was not about saving Malaysia, which truthfully was what the old maverick’s policies were meant to create. This was merely about toppling Najib.
There is a lot of historical revisionism going on now when it comes to the old maverick and DAP. Truthfully, as someone who endorsed Mahtathir, it hurts to see the kind of deflection going on now.
“So I wish to put on record, as I said just now, on Nov 22, before Anwar Ibrahim went to Istana Negara, I told Anwar, as long as you can be prime minister, DAP is willing to sacrifice anything, that is my commitment to Anwar.”
- DAP secretary-general Anthony Loke
COMMENT | As reported in the press, DAP secretary-general Anthony Loke said, “At that time, we hoped that (former prime minister Dr) Mahathir (Mohamad), after reaching a very advanced age, could have changed, and not just join forces to topple (then PM) Najib Abdul Razak, but to bring change.”
If you believe this, I have a bridge to sell you somewhere.
The grand old man of Malaysian politics, Lim Kit Siang, said in 2018, leading up to the general election, that Mahathir was needed to court the rural Malay vote.
This was not about reform. Mahathir already admitted that the Pakatan Harapan election manifesto was not worth the paper it was printed on. This was not about saving Malaysia, which truthfully was what the old maverick’s policies were meant to create. This was merely about toppling Najib.
There is a lot of historical revisionism going on now when it comes to the old maverick and DAP. Truthfully, as someone who endorsed Mahtathir, it hurts to see the kind of deflection going on now.
Lim Kit Siang and Dr Mahathir Mohamad
Furthermore, if you read what people like Kua Kia Soong documented back in those heady days when Harapan political operatives embraced Mahathir wholeheartedly, you would discover that Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim (incarcerated then) was actually a very sympathetic figure.
Kua said, referring to a rejoinder Anwar wrote while in prison, “I can’t help feeling flabbergasted by the simplistic assertions that with Najib’s removal, we will be able to usher change towards democratic accountability.”
In another section, Kua writes - “Despite the generous gestures shown toward Mahathir by his former detractors, including Anwar, Mahathir has not displayed any remorse for his past record and instead, repeated his scurrilous attacks on Anwar’s character. Naturally, Anwar was hurt when this ‘humiliation, sadly did not elicit any response from my trusted colleagues’.”
Furthermore, if you read what people like Kua Kia Soong documented back in those heady days when Harapan political operatives embraced Mahathir wholeheartedly, you would discover that Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim (incarcerated then) was actually a very sympathetic figure.
Kua said, referring to a rejoinder Anwar wrote while in prison, “I can’t help feeling flabbergasted by the simplistic assertions that with Najib’s removal, we will be able to usher change towards democratic accountability.”
In another section, Kua writes - “Despite the generous gestures shown toward Mahathir by his former detractors, including Anwar, Mahathir has not displayed any remorse for his past record and instead, repeated his scurrilous attacks on Anwar’s character. Naturally, Anwar was hurt when this ‘humiliation, sadly did not elicit any response from my trusted colleagues’.”
Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim
As someone who endorsed Mahathir and later very quickly learnt the error of my ways, what I wrote in my apology remains relevant today - “Worried about the far-right and agents of the fascist state coming into power? Well, this is what happens when a coalition breaks up because one man decides to screw everyone over in his coalition.
“This is the price we pay for compromising, enabling, and justifying behaviour anathema to democratic practices all because we wanted to remove Najib.”
Sycophantic DAP
Bersatu, PAS, and Umno - as Umno president Ahmad Zahid Hamidi rightly pointed out - have worked with DAP.
DAP was so sycophantic to the old maverick, but it wasn’t enough. DAP was so sycophantic to former prime minister and Perikatan Nasional chairperson Muhyiddin Yassin, but it too was not enough.
DAP was so sycophantic to PAS – even flirting with ‘PAS for all’ dogma – but it was not enough.
At each turn, DAP partisans argued that the various permutations of these Malay uber alles parties were different - but the reality is, all that these Malay uber alles parties desired was dominance over Malay polity, as measured by electoral power, and used DAP to reverse their political fortunes.
You can bet on one thing, though. When these race-based charlatans want to be saved from the treachery of their comrades, they run to DAP. As a political party, DAP has a strong stable base that has always acted as a foundation for these Malay uber alles types to cling on to power.
As someone who endorsed Mahathir and later very quickly learnt the error of my ways, what I wrote in my apology remains relevant today - “Worried about the far-right and agents of the fascist state coming into power? Well, this is what happens when a coalition breaks up because one man decides to screw everyone over in his coalition.
“This is the price we pay for compromising, enabling, and justifying behaviour anathema to democratic practices all because we wanted to remove Najib.”
Sycophantic DAP
Bersatu, PAS, and Umno - as Umno president Ahmad Zahid Hamidi rightly pointed out - have worked with DAP.
DAP was so sycophantic to the old maverick, but it wasn’t enough. DAP was so sycophantic to former prime minister and Perikatan Nasional chairperson Muhyiddin Yassin, but it too was not enough.
DAP was so sycophantic to PAS – even flirting with ‘PAS for all’ dogma – but it was not enough.
At each turn, DAP partisans argued that the various permutations of these Malay uber alles parties were different - but the reality is, all that these Malay uber alles parties desired was dominance over Malay polity, as measured by electoral power, and used DAP to reverse their political fortunes.
You can bet on one thing, though. When these race-based charlatans want to be saved from the treachery of their comrades, they run to DAP. As a political party, DAP has a strong stable base that has always acted as a foundation for these Malay uber alles types to cling on to power.
DAP played by the rules – unfair though it may have been – and let down its base when it came to various hot-button issues, and yet, this was not enough for the gang from Sheraton and even Malay power structures in Harapan.
Frightening the base
And this is the problem right here. Someone like Lim Teck Ghee asks non-Malays to fight for their rights or lose them. But the people non-Malays elect to fight for their rights have no intention of fighting for those rights.
Instead, what these elected representatives do is frighten the base into believing that those rights would disrupt, and would cause instability, and year after year, with each successive reinvention of Malay power, those rights are slowly fading away.
The irony, of course, is that Anwar and his former Umno cohorts now enjoy the kind of support that the MCA gave Malay power brokers during the long Umno watch.
While Mahathir has openly admitted that he gave the Malay community more (when he and the DAP were in power) and could not say anything because the Chinese community would be offended these days, Anwar is engaging in the same policy agenda in an attempt to shore up Malay support and DAP is keeping as quiet as a church mouse and the base has no problem with this.
Mahathir’s sickening vision of power-sharing triumphs again.
S THAYAPARAN is Commander (Rtd) of the Royal Malaysian Navy. Fīat jūstitia ruat cælum - “Let justice be done though the heavens fall.”
Making sacrifices that only benefits themselves has been the trait of the evangelical Christian party. Always blaming others if things don't work out according to their mischievous plans.
ReplyDeleteOne word - the meme-ed melayu Inferiority complex in play amongst all those elites that DAP supported wholeheartedly.
ReplyDelete