| By Martin Jalleh |
| It is the Year of the Rat. The prime minister (PM) has just let the cat out of the bag - the general election (GE) will be real soon, for there is a feeling among many that the country is going to the dogs. The PM, who has never lost any sleep since he became the PM, has been trying to awaken the nation to the imminent GE. He had declared last June, in what could have been the most important statement of his political career: "I am no sleeping PM!"
But the boys on the fourth floor of the PM's Office, who have been spinning the broken record which critics have entitled `I started a joke' (with apologies to the Bee Gees) have a tough job ahead. Experts of make-believe and myths, they have to create a mega-mirage of a PM and a government with a proven track record for the election campaign. Often, and as was evident last year, their script and sandiwara have spun out of control by the silly statements of small-minded and self-serving sycophants surrounding the PM, causing him and his government to stumble from one comic caper to another. As the government's delivery system fell apart, very symbolically and significantly so did structures give way in buildings such as Parliament, the world's second largest court complex in Jalan Duta and even Putrajaya. Back to the PM's "proven track record", surely 2007 was a very "revealing" year and there is much that the ordinary citizen of Bolehland can fall back on to help them decide who they should vote for in the GE. `Excellent' economy Fifty years ago, we were second in Asia in terms of economic development. Last year we were almost second last. We also have a much lower FDI than many other countries in Asean such as Thailand and Indonesia. But we are told our economy is doing well compared to many countries. As one BN MP had so proudly declared in Parliament last year, Bolehland had great cause to celebrate Merdeka, for we are "10 times more (economically) advanced than Ghana" which became independent in the same year as us!
2007 proved to be the high point of Pak Lah's premiership. We had to contend with high prices of food, fuel, gas, public transportation and toll rates, resulting in higher cost of living. We were told we were better off than four years ago. We were merely paying the high price of believing some people in high places. Even backbenchers doubted the positive economic indicators set out by the government and expressed disappointment that the grassroots are not benefitting from domestic economic development. It is difficult to gauge what is going on in the grassroots when you are governing from the fourth floor! Graft galore Pak Lah's track record in his supposed `zero tolerance for corruption' has drawn a big zero. But there were several `firsts'. For the first time, serious allegations of corruption were made against the Anti-Corruption Agency (ACA) chief and even the Inspector-General of Police (IGP). Corruption allegations were also made against the deputy internal security minister, the Sabah and the Sarawak chief ministers and the commercial crime investigation department chief. It was revealed that 40 percent of the senior police officers could be arrested without further investigations – strictly on the basis of their lifestyle.
What the Mahathir administration took to `achieve' in 22 years - pervasive corruption and criminal breach of trust, mismanagement and wastage of public funds - Pak Lah's regime did even better in his first four years, made evident especially in the 2006 Auditor-General' s Report. Dr M's administration ended with Malaysia being ranked No 37 on the Transparency International Corruption Perception Index in 2003. Three years after Pak Lah took over, Malaysia's ranking plunged to No 44 in 2006. It is likely to fall further. Crippling crime-rate Pak Lah also achieved a record of sorts with regard to his pledge of a drastic reduction of the crime rate. For the first time in Bolehland's history, the crime index crossed the 200,000 mark. The rakyat in Bolehland do not feel good nor safe at all - whether inside or outside their homes.
Shocked by the crime statistics, Pak Lah came up with a multi-prong anti-crime strategy. What was really needed was the setting up of the Independent Police Complaints and Misconduct Commission (IPCMC), a key proposal by the royal commission on the police. The PM had in fact in principle agreed to the setting up of the IPCMC on Jan 24, 2006, but by the end of last year, his track record showed that his biggest `crime' was to shelve the IPCMC and replace it with a toothless Special Complaints Commission proposal. Blocking bloggers 2007 saw the elite in Umno going berserk over blogs. For so long they had monopolised `the truth'. Unable to buy over the countless blogs on the Internet as they do with newspapers, they did what they were best at - criminalise or demonise what was a major threat to them.
On International Women's Day, Tourism Minister Tunku Adnan Tengku Mansor put on record how the government (also read as Umno) felt about bloggers: "All bloggers are liars, they cheat people using all kinds of methods. From my understanding, out of 10,000 unemployed bloggers, 8,000 are women. "All bloggers are not in favour of national unity. Our country has been successful because we are very tolerant with each other, if not, there will be civil war, the Malays will kill the Chinese, the Chinese will take revenge and kill the Malays, and the Indians will kill everyone." Adnan proved how asinine he is. But bloggers were not bothered. (Raja Petra was the least petrified.) They refused to be cowed by the blather on blogs by the bunch of official blockheads. They took to heart former PM Dr M's description of them as being the "only hope" left to speak out on problems. Puerile Parliament Pak Lah had quite a track record of being absent from Parliament. In fact he was more abroad than in the August house. In the 44-month period as PM he made 83 trips abroad. Yet his deputy Najib Abdul Razak would declare: "Parliament' s importance has not diminished even after 50 years of independence" . Najib added that the role of the legislature "should be given due respect not only from the elected representatives but also the people". It was difficult to take Najib seriously especially when one takes into account:
Idiocy and the ISA The government of Pak Lah created its own track record on the 20th anniversary of Operation Lallang last year. Minister in the PM's Department Bernard Dompok claimed there had been no detention under the ISA after Pak Lah took over as PM in 2003! Foreign affairs ministry parliamentary secretary Ahmad Shabery Cheek had even the cheek to insist that "no one has demanded that the ISA be abolished". The PM himself declared that the ISA "is still relevant and useful" and that "matters pertaining to the rights of detainees will be given due consideration and assessment". How can this be done when the basic tenet of the ISA is to detain a person without trial?
In a landmark decision the Kuala Lumpur High Court ruled that ex-ISA detainee Abdul Malek's arrest was unlawful and that he was assaulted under police custody. He was awarded RM2.5 million in damages. But it did not deter the government from ordering the arrest of five leaders of the Hindu Rights Action Force on the false notion linking them to terrorists without a shred of evidence. MIC head S Samy Vellu would later confirm that was no such evidence. Source : Malaysiakini |
Sunday, March 2, 2008
Of blockheads, buffoons and bigots (Part 1)
Four years have passed swiftly by since Pak Lah became PM. He has made it very clear he is no "one-term" PM. Why, in between his many 40 photogenic winks he has even come up with Vision 2057! Who says the PM has failed to walk the talk when he has even managed Bolehland sleepwalking!
Why bother with the remarks of former 
Another first was when the parties suspected of corruption investigated each other. The police investigated the ACA chief; the ACA investigated the deputy internal security minister and the IGP….and the Attorney-General decided that all three were clean!
The crime rate soared from 156,315 cases in 2003 to 224,298 cases in 2007 - a sharp rise of some 45 percent during Pak Lah's premiership. The number of serious crimes increased by 13.36 percent nationwide, with gang robbery without the use of firearms rising by more than 159 percent.
It was quite a record - they intimidated bloggers with police reports (and yet could not pinpoint what they were complaining about), law suits, arbitrary arrests, police interrogation and threats to use the Internal Security Act ((SA), Sedition Act and a host of other laws. 
The Abolish ISA Movement demolished Dompok's claim by providing the statistics of arrests and renewal of detention orders during Pak Lah's premiership. They relieved Ahmad Shabery of his amnesia by forwarding him the long history calling for the abolition of the ISA.
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