Iqbal Abd Ghaffar

It’s been a while since I last updated my blog. Ok, a long while. Six months and 14 days to be exact! (Need I count the hours, minutes and seconds?)

In that absence, I received a number of comments from my readers about my sudden silence.

Thank you all for your concern. I was touched by your kind words of encouragement to go on writing. While my writing and articles will not win me a Pulitzer, to know that you find my articles informative and my style is acceptable to many of you is a good endorsement and motivation for me to carry on with what I had set out for.

Contrary to what many of my readers and friends believed, I was not detained nor had I become a victim of any political power that I may have upset.

I was merely caught up with the demands of my new job and some personal set backs (thank you for listening and being there when I needed someone to be there, you know who you are).

The demands from the job are huge because I’ve made a quantum jump in my career line. It’s a huge leap of faith. Switching from IT to Marketing (which I have little or no formal education) in a formidable global oil & gas company requires much sacrifice and adjustment. This is not IT marketing, its business marketing of which the concepts and reach are new and alien to me.

The first four months were a struggle, but I’ve manged to cope with it now. I’m still learning and developing and I’m very eager to learn and develop more. I just wished that my assessors had given me a business or commercial role rather than an IT role when I first started with this company. But I take it as a blessing in disguise. At least I now know what I don’t want to do!

I sincerely hope that I will continue to blog and share my thoughts and my 2 cents worth of opinions on the issues that affect this country, region, world, or after world. And I do hope that you would find my articles a pleasure to read.

To the future!

IAG

This is one man who is both smart and evil in the same time. His rule and grip on the ountry and its institutions would be far reaching and perhaps far worse than Mahathir’s years.

BN is a Four Letter Word

by Iqbal Abd Ghaffar

Dissapointed, disgusted, and outraged is a pure understatement of what the Rakyat of Perak and Malaysia feel of the saga that has unfolded in Perak.

Perhaps not all would feel that way, but to some extent a large majority of Malaysians who support PR, are anti-BN, or are pro-BN but sympathise PR, and not forgetting the fence sitters would feel that the events that have happened were in the most dubious of manners and shrouded in doubt and secrecy.

It could well have been that the whole ordeal was orchestrated and engineered timely and precisely to every minute of the hour. It was a movie directed extremely well, with scripts prepared by the best of brains, and a cast that could stand every chance of being nominated for a grammy award.

The actions of Datuk Nasaruddin Hashim, assemblyman for Bota to jump ship from UMNO to PKR on 25th Jan may have been a coy. The coy successfully put the PR’s gaurds down as they celebrated a small victory. Probably, little were they aware that by them accepting Nasaruddin into PR’s fold, this very move gave every reason for BN to justify PR’s assemblyman to jump ship to BN.

The “I’ll get even with you” and “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth” attitude prevails. 

Soon after, the ex-minister of Perak and Perak UMNO liaison and BN chief, Datuk Seri Tajol Rosli quit. Najib Razak replaced his incumbent as Perak UMNO liaison and BN Chief with immediate effect.

This was followed by two of the most corrupted, incompetent, unethical and immoral PKR assembly went missing since the 27th of Jan. Their dissapearance caused a stir as it was rumored that they were defecting to UMNO. All attempts to contact them were futile as even their family members could not even reach them.

In the same time, Jelapang Assemblywoman from DAP, Hee Yit Fong also went missing for 24 hours. Speculation and rumors went abuzz about her meeting up with the President of MCA to defect into that party. When she appeared, she only said that she turned her phone off because she was “unwell” and quashed rumors that she was leaving the party. 

The whole event came to its climax when the speaker of DUN Perak recieved two undated resignation letters from the missing Behrang and Changkat Jering Assemblyman via fax. Suddenly then, did those two men who were MIA appeared rebuking that they had resigned from their posts as assemblyman. Ironically, this was done via a represntative and not appearing by themself! What a coward!

The mess began got from bad to worse as these three ADUN’s then left their party to become independant. They went as far as becoming friendly and supportive of BN. 

The Bota Assemblyman, after completing his mission , joined UMNO again. 

This gives BN a 31 seat lead against PR’s 28. 

Datuk Nizar’s request to the Sultan of Perak for a snap election to allow the people of Perak decide on their leaders was not well recieved by the King.

His Royal Highness rejected it, and instead accepted the BN’s proposal to form a new government in Perak. One wonders why the King had done this, but I figure that this could really be related to the decision of Nizar’s government to convert lease hold land of many new villages to free hold status.

This sentiment was reflected in a speech given by his Son and crown Prince of Perak, Raja Nazrin Shah on the Islamic Economic Forum held in KL last January. He had made references of how the British, before the inception of Malaya and during the Malayan Union gave away Malay Land to the Chinese in many parts of the country. Raja Nazrin was emotional when he said this in his speech.

Coming back to today, could this have been the real reason why the wise Sultan disapproved Nizar’s request? Only he will know, but the backlash from the rakyat was something that was never expected by the Sultan. 

But whatever the reason the Sultan may have used to deny the request of the Datuk Nizar, what’s brewing for sure is a constitutional crisis.

On the one hand, the Sultan is to be fair, neutral, and uphold justice for the interest of the people and uphold the sanctity of the constitution, but on the other hand, did the Sultan live up to the expectations that he has after he and his son has positioned themselves as a champion of nuetrality and the uplholder of the constition since March 8th?

Constitutional experts have a mixed view on this as there are gray areas in the constitution that does give the right to the ruler listen or not listen to the advice of the Menteri Besar of the day.

But apart from all this, what’s most disturbing and the real focus should be on the upcoming Prime Minister in-waiting, Najib Tun Razak. 

A protege of Dr. Mahathir, he is already showing his leadership style; strong, willed, and determined; far more dictatorial then the man he is replacing. 

This is one leader that carries the most access baggage with him. He comes in with his name stilled embroiled with the Altantuya case, his commisions that he earned from the procurement of the submarines, and the latest, the toppling of a people’s government in Perak to that of the Federal’s choice of government from Putrajaya.

If there’s anything to go by, his cloak-and-dagger leadership style that was effectively and well demonstrated in the toppling of the PR government in Perak shows that he is one leader is power hungry and will stop at nothing to have things his way.

After a defeat in Permatang Pauh and Kuala Terengganu, he needed something strong to show to the UMNO warlords and its members that he is no weak leader. The Prime Minister in-waiting needed to tell his people that, he is strong, capable and not a wimp. And the UMNO warlords are happy that they have someone who can stand up to Anwar’s onslaught and grind his plans to a halt with the saga in Perak. 

This is one man who is both smart and evil in the same time. His rule and grip on the ountry and its institutions would be far reaching and perhaps far worse than Mahathir’s years.

But his show down in Perak and his onslaught to topple more PR state governments will not bode very well for everyone particularly with the more enlightened Malaysians. He is dealing with a country far more politically divided than his predecessors and his father had ever faced.

Though he may have won the battle in Perak, he has already set the stage for the imminent down fall of BN and put UMNO on a fast track to extinction. The very people that he should have worked hard to win their hearts and mind, has been cast aside for his political ambitions.  He has lost my respect and many other Malaysians as well.

Thanks to him, BN and UMNO has become a four letter word. – IAG-

May we all continue to stand united during these hard and trying times and emerge stronger, resilient, and matured as the year of the Ox progress.

Gong Xi Fa Chai!

IAG