May 5 has been set as polling day for the 13th general election.
Will it turn out to be a historic day or the day Malaysians will look back to as the day we allowed history to bury us?Fifty six years is too long a time for any single party or a coalition to be continuously in the seat of power without break.
That is what Barisan, helmed by taiko (big boss and bully) Umno, has become - a Malaysian dinosaur of sorts.
In fact, it is the world's longest extant ruling political dinosaur.
It is long past time that a Malaysian comet send the dinosaur on a free trip back to the Jurassic age where future paleontologists would do well to research its fossil for rich pickings.
Fifty six years of the same old, same old has rendered a once justifiably proud and independent judiciary into an institution that few Malaysians today see as their last bastion or fountain of justice.
Fifty six years of the same old, same old has turned law enforcement agencies into what unkind Malaysians call "political lapdogs" doing the bidding of their masters, instead of being fierce crime busters.
Fifty six years of the same old, same old has effectively neutered what should otherwise be a zealous commission against corruption into what looks more like a yelping puppy in the face of the rich and powerful and the corrupt?
Fifty six years of the same old, same old has turned the nation's economy into the private domain of the rich, the powerful, the connected and the corrupt.
Where deals are all done under the skirt of the Official Secrets Act and where the only accountability demanded and practised is "lu tolong gua, gua tolong lu" (you scratch my back, I scratch yours)
Fifty six years of the same old, same old has resulted in sixteen consecutive years of deficit national budgets that have ballooned the sovereign debt to some 500 plus billion ringgit, dangerously close to the legal limit of 55% GDP, if not already past it, if you take into account contingent liabilities which are really the liabilities the government undertakes for off budget public projects.
The latter a very clever cover, but nevertheless a risk driven and dangerous undertaking given the history of the number of failed and bailed out public projects like the LRT.
Fifty six years of the same old, same old has earned us the dubious distinction of the country with the second highest outflow of illicit funds in 2010 at some 200 billion ringgit and third overall in terms of the same for the period of the last ten years at some 800 billion ringgit!
That is a distinction that Malaysia least needs and can ill afford.
Fifty six years of the same old, same old has made it more and more difficult for the average Malaysian to own a home of their own because the cost of living has far out paced incomes and the prices of good and services rise like nobody's business.
Fifty six years of the same old, same old has seen a more divisive, and divided, society instead of a more inclusive one between the races, a position consonant with the divide and rule philosophy of the powers that be who believe this will help entrench their position.
Fifty six years of the same old, same old has even made the Election Commission seem more like a willing tool of and elated to be, on the side of the ruling dinosaur instead of being on the side of neutrality and independence, as it should be.
Do we want another fifty six years of the same old, same old?
The choice is yours.
Everyone should make sure they get out and vote. Doesn't matter what your preferences are, a true democracy only works when all voices are heard. The only way to truly do that, is vote.
ReplyDeleteTrue, people should get out to vote their choice. Unfortunately, choice and democracy is meaningless unless one's vote is predicated on informed consideration instead of establishment propaganda and fear mongering, and limited access to a fair and balanced media. Fortunately, thanks to the internet, Malaysians' source of information nowadays is not confined to the main stream media that is largely if not entirely pro establishment by dint of the latter's control of the local press and TV and their power to grant of deny licence to operate one and/or the other.
ReplyDelete