Really, it comes as no surprise that the last king, who has now returned to his throne in Pahang state, from which Najib hails and holds the Pekan seat, would so stupidly agree to release Najib. I am not in the habit of mincing my words. Najib's old man, Abdul Razak (who presided over state-sponsored racism fostered by the astonishingly racist New Economic Policy, along with the vile racist Mahathir Mohamad, will be spinning like a top in his grave that his son has turned out to be one without a shred of decency, far less principles, and who brought untold ignominy to his entire family. With his enormously ugly and overbearing wife Rosmah (there, I said it!), they will forever be known as morally bankrupt -- personally and in terms of their totally discredited Islamic devoutness. It questions just what Islamic values are delivered to Malays like Najib and his corrupt cronies, most of whom will probably escape facing justice. the last king has set a dangerous and stupid precedent. Malaysia's most hideously criminally-minded couple robbed the people of Malaysia -- including all Malay-Moslems -- royally blind, and the king and the pardons board of morons -- as they can only be called -- personally and collectively bear the responsibility for unleashing more rottenness in the fabric of Malaysia's so-called society, otherwise so mindlessly, so unintelligently called 'rakyat'. But only in totally blinkered Malaysia where education across the board has the value of the depositories of Malaysian toilets.
What comes when Najib plays kingmaker will not be political stability but chaos. He will not be able to unite the deeply fractious nature of heinously corrupt and selfish Malay parties. Not one of them. Not even Anwar Ibrahim's PKR, which long ago lost the K -- Keadilan (justice) in PKR -- to the Malaysian jamban (toilet). The judicial system is weaked by the decision of the last king and the pardons board
and, under the tutelage of Najib and the hopelessly incompetent and untruthful Anwar, will return to its former glory of being a tool of Malay state power and the return to Malay despotism and autocratic rule. The rule of law that so many were pedaling so unthinkingly since 2018 will rear the ugly old head of rule by law. It's a matter of time. This is one way Najib and Anwar will desperately seek to keep a lid on the very likelihood of Malay internecine warfare not for the soul of the "nation" -- it has never had a soul -- but for structural power, control of the country's -- not "nations" -- purse-strings for self-aggrandizement of Malay "invested interests". The jockeying isn't about to begin; it began quite a while ago, soon after the spineless Anwar Ibrahim took over the reins in the false name of "reformasi" and "democracy". Anwar Ibrahim lied to the people, especially the incredibly gullible urban Malays, Indians and Chinese -- especially the 'politically desperate' Chinese -- with a straight face.
The economy is destined to take a big hit. The Philippines was one time known as Southeast Asia's basket-case with an economy that was being plundered left, right and centre by dictator and despot Marcos, his wife and their cronies. Just as Indonesia was under Soeharto, his family and their cronies. Malaysia could easily become the region's basket-case economy after Burma when -- not if -- manic corruption is resurrected to the levels seen since the beginning of Mahathirism, who isn't the founder of "modern Malaysia" but the father of racism, corruption lies and division. Najib followed in Mahathir's footsteps and, thinking he was infallible, given he was the son of political royalty -- my foot) -- openly and brazenly allowed his greed and stupidity to rape Malaysia for his own, his wife's and his family's despicable gratification. Najib and Rosmah are despicable Moslems who sold Islam down the river as they did Malaysia that they'd ruled like sultanate-age Malay despots and autocrats.
Rafizi Ramli, the economy minister, can spin all he wants about how gung-ho the Malaysian economy, how it's going to bring 'tiger economy' prosperity to Malaysia but the tide will turn very sour once the political risks are totaled by foreign multinational firms and Chinese conglomerates for the economy. All business investment MOUs will be re-thought, even revised, if they do not flee Malaysia altogether. The capital flight that has been underway is not laughing matter but Rafizi and finance minister and the trade minister might be laughing through the other side of their faces before long. If disinvestment in Malaysia is on the cards, the greater the capital flight and the worse the 'brain drain' and out-migration, especially the Chinese (China isn't an option for them as that economy is drowning in its broken economic model; somebody should have told Emperor Xi models like his have short and disastrous life-spans, that he could have taken lessons from his region and elsewhere. Ahh, the greed and the corruption of the Chinese capitalist class.)
Does the jailbird Najib's freedom from prison mean Zahid Hamidi, another Malay-Moslem crook who sold Islam and Malays and 'his country' down the river will not see another day in court, will never see the four walls of a prison? Probably, not plausibly. But what will this mean for Umno and its leadership? Umno is sunk, has been sunk for years, and will likely die a cold, deserved death for being a corrupt party of corrupt Malay leaders, liars, racists, bigots and criminals. Hamidi's days are numbered as Umno head-huncho now that najib is being released. But Najib will not revive Umno. John Bertelsen is probably correct in suggesting Anwar Ibrahim -- despite his denials, i.e. blatant lies for not playing a part in Najib's freedom -- will go into bat for Anwar when Anwar has so miserably failed, in spite of his attempt to play the populist in the worst possible guide, to win broad-based Malay suppoprt for him, personally, and for his so-called Unity coalition of what I will called low-life Tossers and Scumbags and the idiocy of his Madani ideological hoodwink.
The other interesting question, then, is what happens to Taliban PAS, to Perikatan (Pengkianat) Nasional, to the next-to-useless Bersatu?
All in time. But it won't be all sparkling gold. Guaranteed.
The NEP began and ended with racism, and Mahathir was the main progenitor or father of racism post 1957. In fact he'd harbored his racist views before independence and became agent provocateur of the Bumiputra Economic Congress in the 1960s. The BEC sought a rebalancing of not just the 'Malaysian' economy but of its politics as well. It's too simplistic, like most neoliberal economists, even of the orthodox school, to claim economics and politics being mutually exclusive (about as barmy as thinking all Asian economies including the 'tigers' and the 'dragons' were 'successful' because they were open economies who practiced either laissez-faireism or that they were free-market economies, which clearly is just a whole lot of malarkey borne of ideological stunts and gross ignorance).
The NEP's project may have been chalked on matters of 'equality' but its roots were in the first and last instance racist. One only has to read Mahathir's Malay Dilemma. It is a stretch, to say the least, that in the West equality amounts to nothing less than preferencing one group or one race or one tribe over another to rebalance or even "restructure society". Just as it is a stretch to claim the NEP sought to do just that in Malaysia. But all the while the common denominator was, and remains, race and, since it was hijacked by the then Malay state, it became more forceful in pronouncing that the project was more about "equality" or affirmative action when by and large, as history has shown, the Malay political class, having created a Malay ruling (business) class did not also reinforce traditional Malay patron-client relations and through this fostered cronyism, nepotism and manic corruption. Whatever affirmative action, even by the end of its project, had failed and failed miserably lower-class Malays, most of whom lived in villages, and almost all lower-class non-Malays and low working class non-Malays as well as, in 2024, those urban Malays who are Malaysia's gig economy workers whom successive Malay states have allowed for their exploitation by the capitalist class.
Affirmative actin in the West, say between males and females in the workplace and even outside the workplace is a long, long way from achieving any sort of rebalance in spite of the states affirmative action policies. It remains, shamefully, a man's world in the West, just as it is throughout Asia. In Malaysia, and even in Singapore, patriarchy still rules and patriarchy is accompanied by patrimonialism. Preferential treatment, for lack of a better word, is a misnomer because it is defined not by economics but by politics and male-dominated political ideology -- throughout the world. Not one place in the world has affirmative action borne fruit in real terms. Nice for cosmetics but one can see through all the artificialities and superficialities borne of man, of shameless their sexism and their putrid racism. Malaysia is a case in point. So, too, Singapore.
I think you have to distinguish between positive discrimination such as giving preference to women (in the west and in many other parts of the world), preferential treatment to native races such as the North American Indians, the Aboriginals of Australia and "Racism" as you and most non Malays tend to describe the NEP.
When the Madani regime tells the media and the people not to jump to conclusions over Najib's release from prison, you can -- reading between the lines of such remarks over a long time -- that Najib's release looks certain. If Najib keeps hogging the headlines, Anwar may as well resort to selling peanuts by the kerb. He has been losing traction and he's likely to lose even more of it as the time nears to his Najib's release. All the noise at Malaysia's Bar Council membership and in and around Kuala Lumpur is fixed on the Great Najib Escape. One would have thought it would be in Anwar political interest to speak up and speak out against Najib's release. But then he is a weak politician, a spineless dude, who is afraid he may lose his Umno sidekick Hamidi on whose succor he has been relying to maintain the Madani regime. My guess is that Anwar and the Madani regime will start practicing more opacity, just as Umno had practiced it during its long reign. After all, Anwar learnt from Umno when he allowed himself to be coerced by his master Mahathir to join that party from ABIM in the 1980s. How long will be Anwar's reign?
Malaysia today and its politics is the poster child of Regime Change and a middle class who in a well worn Malay idiom can only be described thus:" Saperti Kera Dapat Bunga" (literally like a monkey with a flower) .
The Indian's from whom the saying was originally derived interpret the meaning of the saying as follows: The monkey is attracted to the flower by its fragrance and its colour and texture although it has no value to the monkey. It wears it because it attracts attention. It consumes it and the resultant runny motion and stomach cramps it suffers is not equivalent to the fragrance and colour of its promises.
The Malaysian Bar and all its acolytes, Regime Change in Bersih and the promise of greater freedoms and democracy have all come to nought.
Malaysia is yet to endure a further and longer period of instability till someone with an iron fist pulls them all in and shuts out those who try to rule and disturb the peace without a lawful mandate.
A mercurial king with a history of cruelty and disrespect for the constitution, human rights and the law is like high octane petroleum to an unruly flame.
Be careful what we wish for. We might just get it.
Don't care much for the idiom. But I agree that civil societies of those you mention amount to rubbish in so far as their professed political outcomes are concerned. Malaysia is not a "democracy" and never was one (just because it holds regular elections does not mean it is democratic when much of Malaysia's elections are based on money-politics as another form of corruption, coercion and co-optation) and gerrymandering that is overseen by the Election Commission, at the behest of the Registrar of Societies) on behalf of the ruling state. Malaysia is, to all intents and purposes, a Malay-dominated autocracy that rules on behalf of the Malay political and ruling classes (quite a few in the latter class are Chinese and Indians who operate on the basis of their political links, such as in the case of business licenses and state contracts). This has not change on jot and is most unlikely to change despite Anwar Ibrahim bullshit on his reform promises.
And so I agree with you that Malaysia will see continued instability, and perhaps more so as the politics of race, religion, and milking the system by and for powerful invested interest becomes more fraught as finite resources are corruptly allocated and pilfered by the business class and the political "elites".
But I, for one, do not wish to see a person with an "iron fist" rise in Malaysia and take the helm of that country's ugly racist, corrupt politics. Because, as history has shown, if Mahthir had ruled with iron fists during his two tenures, the results in both cases were fraudulent on all counts. He was a terrible prime minister who fathered manic corruption in Malaysia on the aegis of the hugely failed NEP. His privatization policy was a terrible failure and deepened corruption and cronyism. I think Anwar is now fathering the old Malay system, which explains why he has effectively dumped his reformasi promises, because the old Malay system has him caged within it. And because Anwar Ibrahim is a weak politicians who blows an awful lot of hot air in his attempt to be a Malay populist, for obvious reasons. I don't hold much hope for Malaysia to rise to its promise because its politicians -- all of them, Malays, Chinese, Indians -- have squandered opportunities and in fact criminally stolen them. I do think Malaysia will become Southeast Asia's basket case in time if its racist and corrupt politics and economics continue. And they will, under a weakling like Anwar or a "strongman" if one has the guts to take the job.
Really, it comes as no surprise that the last king, who has now returned to his throne in Pahang state, from which Najib hails and holds the Pekan seat, would so stupidly agree to release Najib. I am not in the habit of mincing my words. Najib's old man, Abdul Razak (who presided over state-sponsored racism fostered by the astonishingly racist New Economic Policy, along with the vile racist Mahathir Mohamad, will be spinning like a top in his grave that his son has turned out to be one without a shred of decency, far less principles, and who brought untold ignominy to his entire family. With his enormously ugly and overbearing wife Rosmah (there, I said it!), they will forever be known as morally bankrupt -- personally and in terms of their totally discredited Islamic devoutness. It questions just what Islamic values are delivered to Malays like Najib and his corrupt cronies, most of whom will probably escape facing justice. the last king has set a dangerous and stupid precedent. Malaysia's most hideously criminally-minded couple robbed the people of Malaysia -- including all Malay-Moslems -- royally blind, and the king and the pardons board of morons -- as they can only be called -- personally and collectively bear the responsibility for unleashing more rottenness in the fabric of Malaysia's so-called society, otherwise so mindlessly, so unintelligently called 'rakyat'. But only in totally blinkered Malaysia where education across the board has the value of the depositories of Malaysian toilets.
What comes when Najib plays kingmaker will not be political stability but chaos. He will not be able to unite the deeply fractious nature of heinously corrupt and selfish Malay parties. Not one of them. Not even Anwar Ibrahim's PKR, which long ago lost the K -- Keadilan (justice) in PKR -- to the Malaysian jamban (toilet). The judicial system is weaked by the decision of the last king and the pardons board
and, under the tutelage of Najib and the hopelessly incompetent and untruthful Anwar, will return to its former glory of being a tool of Malay state power and the return to Malay despotism and autocratic rule. The rule of law that so many were pedaling so unthinkingly since 2018 will rear the ugly old head of rule by law. It's a matter of time. This is one way Najib and Anwar will desperately seek to keep a lid on the very likelihood of Malay internecine warfare not for the soul of the "nation" -- it has never had a soul -- but for structural power, control of the country's -- not "nations" -- purse-strings for self-aggrandizement of Malay "invested interests". The jockeying isn't about to begin; it began quite a while ago, soon after the spineless Anwar Ibrahim took over the reins in the false name of "reformasi" and "democracy". Anwar Ibrahim lied to the people, especially the incredibly gullible urban Malays, Indians and Chinese -- especially the 'politically desperate' Chinese -- with a straight face.
The economy is destined to take a big hit. The Philippines was one time known as Southeast Asia's basket-case with an economy that was being plundered left, right and centre by dictator and despot Marcos, his wife and their cronies. Just as Indonesia was under Soeharto, his family and their cronies. Malaysia could easily become the region's basket-case economy after Burma when -- not if -- manic corruption is resurrected to the levels seen since the beginning of Mahathirism, who isn't the founder of "modern Malaysia" but the father of racism, corruption lies and division. Najib followed in Mahathir's footsteps and, thinking he was infallible, given he was the son of political royalty -- my foot) -- openly and brazenly allowed his greed and stupidity to rape Malaysia for his own, his wife's and his family's despicable gratification. Najib and Rosmah are despicable Moslems who sold Islam down the river as they did Malaysia that they'd ruled like sultanate-age Malay despots and autocrats.
Rafizi Ramli, the economy minister, can spin all he wants about how gung-ho the Malaysian economy, how it's going to bring 'tiger economy' prosperity to Malaysia but the tide will turn very sour once the political risks are totaled by foreign multinational firms and Chinese conglomerates for the economy. All business investment MOUs will be re-thought, even revised, if they do not flee Malaysia altogether. The capital flight that has been underway is not laughing matter but Rafizi and finance minister and the trade minister might be laughing through the other side of their faces before long. If disinvestment in Malaysia is on the cards, the greater the capital flight and the worse the 'brain drain' and out-migration, especially the Chinese (China isn't an option for them as that economy is drowning in its broken economic model; somebody should have told Emperor Xi models like his have short and disastrous life-spans, that he could have taken lessons from his region and elsewhere. Ahh, the greed and the corruption of the Chinese capitalist class.)
Does the jailbird Najib's freedom from prison mean Zahid Hamidi, another Malay-Moslem crook who sold Islam and Malays and 'his country' down the river will not see another day in court, will never see the four walls of a prison? Probably, not plausibly. But what will this mean for Umno and its leadership? Umno is sunk, has been sunk for years, and will likely die a cold, deserved death for being a corrupt party of corrupt Malay leaders, liars, racists, bigots and criminals. Hamidi's days are numbered as Umno head-huncho now that najib is being released. But Najib will not revive Umno. John Bertelsen is probably correct in suggesting Anwar Ibrahim -- despite his denials, i.e. blatant lies for not playing a part in Najib's freedom -- will go into bat for Anwar when Anwar has so miserably failed, in spite of his attempt to play the populist in the worst possible guide, to win broad-based Malay suppoprt for him, personally, and for his so-called Unity coalition of what I will called low-life Tossers and Scumbags and the idiocy of his Madani ideological hoodwink.
The other interesting question, then, is what happens to Taliban PAS, to Perikatan (Pengkianat) Nasional, to the next-to-useless Bersatu?
All in time. But it won't be all sparkling gold. Guaranteed.
The NEP began and ended with racism, and Mahathir was the main progenitor or father of racism post 1957. In fact he'd harbored his racist views before independence and became agent provocateur of the Bumiputra Economic Congress in the 1960s. The BEC sought a rebalancing of not just the 'Malaysian' economy but of its politics as well. It's too simplistic, like most neoliberal economists, even of the orthodox school, to claim economics and politics being mutually exclusive (about as barmy as thinking all Asian economies including the 'tigers' and the 'dragons' were 'successful' because they were open economies who practiced either laissez-faireism or that they were free-market economies, which clearly is just a whole lot of malarkey borne of ideological stunts and gross ignorance).
The NEP's project may have been chalked on matters of 'equality' but its roots were in the first and last instance racist. One only has to read Mahathir's Malay Dilemma. It is a stretch, to say the least, that in the West equality amounts to nothing less than preferencing one group or one race or one tribe over another to rebalance or even "restructure society". Just as it is a stretch to claim the NEP sought to do just that in Malaysia. But all the while the common denominator was, and remains, race and, since it was hijacked by the then Malay state, it became more forceful in pronouncing that the project was more about "equality" or affirmative action when by and large, as history has shown, the Malay political class, having created a Malay ruling (business) class did not also reinforce traditional Malay patron-client relations and through this fostered cronyism, nepotism and manic corruption. Whatever affirmative action, even by the end of its project, had failed and failed miserably lower-class Malays, most of whom lived in villages, and almost all lower-class non-Malays and low working class non-Malays as well as, in 2024, those urban Malays who are Malaysia's gig economy workers whom successive Malay states have allowed for their exploitation by the capitalist class.
Affirmative actin in the West, say between males and females in the workplace and even outside the workplace is a long, long way from achieving any sort of rebalance in spite of the states affirmative action policies. It remains, shamefully, a man's world in the West, just as it is throughout Asia. In Malaysia, and even in Singapore, patriarchy still rules and patriarchy is accompanied by patrimonialism. Preferential treatment, for lack of a better word, is a misnomer because it is defined not by economics but by politics and male-dominated political ideology -- throughout the world. Not one place in the world has affirmative action borne fruit in real terms. Nice for cosmetics but one can see through all the artificialities and superficialities borne of man, of shameless their sexism and their putrid racism. Malaysia is a case in point. So, too, Singapore.
I think you have to distinguish between positive discrimination such as giving preference to women (in the west and in many other parts of the world), preferential treatment to native races such as the North American Indians, the Aboriginals of Australia and "Racism" as you and most non Malays tend to describe the NEP.
When the Madani regime tells the media and the people not to jump to conclusions over Najib's release from prison, you can -- reading between the lines of such remarks over a long time -- that Najib's release looks certain. If Najib keeps hogging the headlines, Anwar may as well resort to selling peanuts by the kerb. He has been losing traction and he's likely to lose even more of it as the time nears to his Najib's release. All the noise at Malaysia's Bar Council membership and in and around Kuala Lumpur is fixed on the Great Najib Escape. One would have thought it would be in Anwar political interest to speak up and speak out against Najib's release. But then he is a weak politician, a spineless dude, who is afraid he may lose his Umno sidekick Hamidi on whose succor he has been relying to maintain the Madani regime. My guess is that Anwar and the Madani regime will start practicing more opacity, just as Umno had practiced it during its long reign. After all, Anwar learnt from Umno when he allowed himself to be coerced by his master Mahathir to join that party from ABIM in the 1980s. How long will be Anwar's reign?
Dafuq the system? Next ...releasing murderers?
Show me an example of what you call a democracy after you've defined a democracy.
Malaysia today and its politics is the poster child of Regime Change and a middle class who in a well worn Malay idiom can only be described thus:" Saperti Kera Dapat Bunga" (literally like a monkey with a flower) .
The Indian's from whom the saying was originally derived interpret the meaning of the saying as follows: The monkey is attracted to the flower by its fragrance and its colour and texture although it has no value to the monkey. It wears it because it attracts attention. It consumes it and the resultant runny motion and stomach cramps it suffers is not equivalent to the fragrance and colour of its promises.
The Malaysian Bar and all its acolytes, Regime Change in Bersih and the promise of greater freedoms and democracy have all come to nought.
Malaysia is yet to endure a further and longer period of instability till someone with an iron fist pulls them all in and shuts out those who try to rule and disturb the peace without a lawful mandate.
A mercurial king with a history of cruelty and disrespect for the constitution, human rights and the law is like high octane petroleum to an unruly flame.
Be careful what we wish for. We might just get it.
Don't care much for the idiom. But I agree that civil societies of those you mention amount to rubbish in so far as their professed political outcomes are concerned. Malaysia is not a "democracy" and never was one (just because it holds regular elections does not mean it is democratic when much of Malaysia's elections are based on money-politics as another form of corruption, coercion and co-optation) and gerrymandering that is overseen by the Election Commission, at the behest of the Registrar of Societies) on behalf of the ruling state. Malaysia is, to all intents and purposes, a Malay-dominated autocracy that rules on behalf of the Malay political and ruling classes (quite a few in the latter class are Chinese and Indians who operate on the basis of their political links, such as in the case of business licenses and state contracts). This has not change on jot and is most unlikely to change despite Anwar Ibrahim bullshit on his reform promises.
And so I agree with you that Malaysia will see continued instability, and perhaps more so as the politics of race, religion, and milking the system by and for powerful invested interest becomes more fraught as finite resources are corruptly allocated and pilfered by the business class and the political "elites".
But I, for one, do not wish to see a person with an "iron fist" rise in Malaysia and take the helm of that country's ugly racist, corrupt politics. Because, as history has shown, if Mahthir had ruled with iron fists during his two tenures, the results in both cases were fraudulent on all counts. He was a terrible prime minister who fathered manic corruption in Malaysia on the aegis of the hugely failed NEP. His privatization policy was a terrible failure and deepened corruption and cronyism. I think Anwar is now fathering the old Malay system, which explains why he has effectively dumped his reformasi promises, because the old Malay system has him caged within it. And because Anwar Ibrahim is a weak politicians who blows an awful lot of hot air in his attempt to be a Malay populist, for obvious reasons. I don't hold much hope for Malaysia to rise to its promise because its politicians -- all of them, Malays, Chinese, Indians -- have squandered opportunities and in fact criminally stolen them. I do think Malaysia will become Southeast Asia's basket case in time if its racist and corrupt politics and economics continue. And they will, under a weakling like Anwar or a "strongman" if one has the guts to take the job.