Coming back to Malaysia, the 2008 political tsunami was actually more damaging and threatening to the incumbent BN in comparison. Its lost its two-third majority in the parliament, dropping to 140 seats from its previous 198 seats. It lost power in five states. Most threatening of all, its vote share dropped to 50.27%, with a swing of 13.63% against it. It’s effectively a minority government if factors like ‘captive’ postal voters, control of mainstream media and abuses of government machineries during the general election are to be factored in.
What has BN changed as a result? We have a new prime minister, Najib Tun Razak, a year after the tsunami, but the process of his installation was the most undemocratic of all, decided only by a group of about 32 people called Majlis Tertinggi UMNO. Najib then spent millions on a US-based, Israelis-led public relation company called APCO, producing what I would call the 1Malaysia campaign. Full of publicity stunts and superficial element but lacking in substance and clarity, the campaign has proven Najib’s absence of sincerity, courage and leadership to tackle the challenge in Malaysia, to take on hot-button issues.
We continue to have a government that ignores the danger from religious and racist bigotry, in the form of right-wing group Perkasa and UMNO-owned newspaper Utusan Malaysia. We have had the darkest moments through the incidents of cow-head protest by Perkasa members in Shah Alam, fire-bombing of churches and the latest allegation of Christian state conspiracy. We have the deceptive transformation programmes in the public sector that do nothing more than a public relation branch from the umbrella 1Malaysia campaign. The judiciary, the police and various other law enforcement agencies continue to be used as political means of BN. We have had the worst from the death of Teoh Beng Hock, abuse of the court for the coup in the Perak state and prolonged prosecution (and non-stop persecution) of opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim.
We have now reached the stage whereby lives of political opponents are even at stake when Anwar’s daughter, Nurul Izzah, another parliamentarian, received life threat to her daughter and Anwar’s car was apparently sabotaged causing an accident. While we had a state election in Sarawak recently where the opposition has made a historically significant gain, BN continues to keep the corrupt chief minister Taib, who is reportedly holding to billions of ill-earned fortune.
Whether or not the transformation measures taken by the PAP are sufficient, that is for the people of Singapore to judge. But I can say they are speedy and responsive, clearly a shining characteristic of PAP. In contrast, three years ago, we can now safely conclude that BN’s first business of the day is to grab on power at all costs, as prime minister Najib himself has once proclaimed. It has no interest and sincerity to understand the wish of the people. At most it would only try to create some feel-good factors, the so-called ‘shiok sendiri’ phenomenon in Malaysia.
Political analyst Cherian George sums up the Singapore general election well, and as I quote: “Singaporeans are evidently not immune to a dose of democratic common sense: government, they’ve concluded, will perform better when confronted with a threat of unceremonious eviction, a threat that must occasionally be realised if it is to be taken seriously.” (Emphasis mine.) In the case of BN, it is worse. It has expired itself and Malaysians should vote it out completely come the next general election.
Source: Part of the article PAP is a shining example of BN failure https://airkosong.com/_/2011/05/24/pap-is-a-shining-example-of-bn-failure/
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