Malaysia Today - Your Source of Independent News

Posted: 11 May 2013 12:54 PM PDT

The political parties are loath to change because they want to; most of them are forced to change, just like the LDP in Japan, the KMT in Taiwan and the Congress Party in India.

Stephen Doss, Advisor to the Malaysian Social Media Chambers

There is a tendency after every election for winners to amplify their wins and take sole credit for their performance, and for losers to find convenient scapegoats.

It would be easy for anyone to look at the results of the 13th General Elections and classify the winners as Barisan Nasional and the losers as Pakatan Rakyat. Not so.

In actual fact there is much more for Pakatan Rakyat to be happy about than the Barisan Nasional, for one they are riding an uptrend in terms of total number of votes received, not to mention an increase in the number of seats both at the parliamentary and the state.

Barisan Nasional is expected to react the same way that they did after the 2008 General Elections, which is to look for a convenient scapegoat. For UMNO it was Pak Lah, for MCA it was Ong Tee Keat.

Fast forward to 2013, already Najib Razak and Chua Soi Lek are now feeling the heat.

Unfortunately the Barisan Nasional will again refuse to acknowledge that the rot had set in years back, not 10 years back, not 20.

Just like all political parties which have governed for years without interruption, arrogance, corrupt practices, cronyism, and nepotism have become second nature and barely noticed among members.

The political parties are loath to change because they want to; most of them are forced to change, just like the LDP in Japan, the KMT in Taiwan and the Congress Party in India.

Dr Mahathir did a grave disservice to UMNO and BN when he pinned the blame for the 2008 results on Pak Lah, and the BN lost a golden opportunity to reform itself and hence, they are now suffering from having to form a government with the humiliation of having lost the popular vote. And those that think that by putting the blame solely on certain individuals are gonna change anything, are making the same mistake.

Even if there is a change in leadership within the BN, but without recognition that brand BN has been damaged because of widespread corruption, concentration of wealth among the economic elite, arrogance of thought and action among the rank and file, a dearth of talent among its ranks, then the BN can expect to continue in its free fall, they should not be surprised if their share of the popular votes keep dwindling.

There are some within the BN who see the 13th GE results as opportunities to climb the ladder, nothing more. They deliberately try to avoid looking at the real reasons why they are now in a downward spiral.

If that is the case, Good Luck Barisan Nasional, you're gonna need it come GE14.

PR Didn't Want To Work With Us

Posted: 11 May 2013 12:53 PM PDT

Datuk Dr. Jeffrey Kitingan, Chairman STAR Sabah

State Reform Party (STAR) said that it was the Pakatan Rakyat (PR) which didn't want to work with STAR to go for the one-to-one fights in the constituencies.

In response to Desah Chairman, Tan Sri Simon Sipaun, who said that the PR could have obtained eight to 10 seats more had STAR and SAPP listened to Desah's urging for one-to-one fights against the Barisan Nasional, STAR's Chairman, Datuk Dr. Jeffrey said he respected Sipaun's concern but Sipaun had been misinformed about what really happened.

"It is not true that we didn't want to work with the PR. Nothing would be further from the truth," Jeffrey stressed. "On the contrary, it was PR who was not serious cooperating with STAR."

He said that STAR even delivered an official memorandum dated November 12, 2012 to all three components of PR seeking their cooperation for a one-to-one contest in Sabah but received no official response, although discussions were held on the side even to the extent of just almost agreeing on cooperating on 12 parliamentary seats on one-to-one basis against BN.

"STAR believes that the opposition wave that netted PR three parliamentary and 11 State seats was actually due to the efforts of UBF/STAR since December 2010 with the Borneo Tea Parties (BTPs)," Jeffrey said. "With the BTPs we managed to educate Sabahans on the actual history of Sabah in the formation of Malaysia and the dilution and removal of Sabah's rights and autonomy, and empowered them to re-claim Sabah's rights and autonomy.

"PR benefited from the sentiments and managed to ride on this wave started by us. PR plagiarized this political ideology and political struggle by adopting it as theirs. They even used our war cry, 'Ini kalilah!'"

"The real issue for Sabahans now is which party should be supported by them to lead Sabah out of its current quagmire of internal colonization by Umno/Malaya. These include attendant problems of poverty, loss of oil and other revenues, marginalization of local natives, security problems and the overwhelming by illegal immigrants aided by the Umno/BN government and lack of focus on the development of Sabah," Jeffrey said.

He said STAR remains committed in its fight for the restoration of Sabah's rights and autonomy as an equal partner in Malaysia, equal to Malaya and Sarawak and its sole Bingkor seat will be the starting platform to show to the people that STAR is the right party to lead Sabah.

"If PR, and for that matter BN, are serious about the autonomy and rights of Sabah (in which the PM Najib had stated that the 20-Points remain intact), they should take immediate remedial actions to demand for the return of Sabah's rights including the oil rights and revenue and not pay mere lip service and rhetoric in their election campaign to dupe Sabahans into voting for them in the just concluded elections," he opined.

"Since both BN and PR are supposed to be on the same side on Sabah rights, a simple motion to amend the Federal Constitution will restore most of Sabah's rights and the amendment can be easily carried out since BN and PR control all 222 of the parliamentary seats.

"Furthermore, if the Sabah BN MPs are serious about Sabah's rights, there is never a better opportunity than now to demand for these rights and etch their names in the annals of history forever. There is no meaning for BN to have a DPM2 if the DPM will be toothless to fulfill the people's aspirations," Jeffrey added. "There is no meaning in additional ministerial posts when the rights for not less than 20% oil is not given, and the cabotage policy is not scrapped for good."

He said if these Sabah MPs do not demand for these rights in return for supporting and ensuring the BN federal government remains in Putrajaya, then Sabahans should reject and vote out these irresponsible leaders when the opportunity next arises.

"As for Tan Sri Sipaun, his intentions are admirable but he needs to respect the democratic freedom of choice," he said. "While it is ideal to have one-to-one contests, in a democracy, we can't easily avoid multi-cornered fights due to various reasons. Sometimes it is a matter of strategy and not just purely a matter of idealistic planning.

"We can see that in many of the results one-to-one contests wouldn't make any difference to the BN's wins. Imagine, at one time we were offered only few seats by PR to contest, while the PR was to get the lion's share of seats. In such a situation it would have been better for PR just to colonize and takeover Sabah like what Umno/Malaya is doing and let Sabah remain as the 12th state of Malaya and Sabahans continue to be the poorest in Malaysia.

"In fact, I would think that Tan Sri Simon should have supported our proposal that PR concentrate on parliamentary seats and local parties to take the state seats. This would minimized the splitting of the votes and the results would have been better."

Kredit: www.malaysia-today.net

Ahad, 12 Mei 2013

Malaysia Today - Your Source of Independent News

Malaysia Today - Your Source of Independent News

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