Monday, August 4, 2008

Is Anwar A Shrewd And Wasted Politician ?

Hantu Laut

The Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi is the punching bag of almost every other Malaysian if we go by online news portal, the blogging community and opinion polls.

A recent polls conducted by Merdeka Centre For Opinion Research shows a general decline of the PM's popularity and that of his ruling coalition.The pollster puts the margin of error at +-3.1% and indicated the polls targeted age group of 21 +. The world famous Gallup poll which has been in the business of public opinion polls for many decades also used +-3.0 % as margin of error.   

In Malaysia age, ethnicity and habitation have bearings on political affiliations.For instance, Anwar Ibrahim is popular among the Indians, Chinese and young urban Malays.The political landscapes in the rural areas are different.Here, the rural Malays are divided between PAS and UMNO with higher ratio in favour of UMNO prior to the March 8 General Elections , this may have deteriorated after the fuel price hike announced by the government.PAS ,besides its traditional stronghold of Kelantan, had made inroads into other northern states, particularly Kedah taking significant number of traditional UMNO voters in the March 2008 Elections.The rural Chinese are divided between DAP and MCA while the majority of urban Chinese are for DAP and PKR.

Going by opinion polls and the popularity of Anwar Ibrahim and his Pakatan Rakyat, the coalition government of Abdullah Ahmad Badawi is hanging in the balance and expected to fall by 15th September as predicted by Anwar Ibrahim. His modus operandi of promising cheaper oil and employing psychological warfare on the political front has been quite successful in wooing more support for him.

Anwar is very popular on line and have good penetration into those wired homes giving him strong followings among young voters.How popular is he on the ground? We will only find that out in the by-election.

Most Malaysians are generally spoilt by the many years of government subsidy, not only among the low and middle income group but including those in the higher income bracket, who wanted everything cheap and a short-cut to everything.They take it as of their rights rather than as privileges.

Anwar is not only a shrewd politician, he is also a good chess player and would make an excellent war general.He would be a model student of Sun Tzu.He is always 10 steps ahead of his enemies.Yesterday he said he expected massive rigging in the by-election to enable the BN to defeat him. In the event he loses the election, even in a fair contest, he would blame the government and the people would believe him.

The question is, did Anwar employs the same tactic before when he was No.2 man in the government.Did he helps rig the election before or is he the only saint in that dirty outfit called UMNO and the rest of them are devilish and corrupted to the core.

It would also be interesting to find out why is Anwar very popular with Western leaders.Is he the man that the West see they could use to further their world dominion and economic control of this part of the world?

Most Malaysians would believe the conspiracy against Anwar but if I say the West conspired to kill the economy of China and other developing countries they wouldn't believe me.

The high price of crude has little to do with supply and demand, it was more due to speculation and concerted effort to slow down the economies of China, India and other emerging economies.What happened in Darfur, Sudan is a blatant display of Western hypocrisy and attempts at undermining the oil resources exploited by China and to lesser extent Malaysia.Major part of the oilfields were given to Chinese companies which didn't go down well with the West.They have a habit of wanting to control all the oilfields of the world particularly developing countries.Petronas has a small presence in the oilfields of Sudan.

Without speculative futures market the real price of oil should be hovering around the US$70-80 bencemark.

The West would like the rest of the world to maintain the status quo and reap the benefits of making those countries as their sources of supply of  cheap raw materials. Those are the very people who want to see Anwar to be the Prime Minister of this country.

Not all public opinion polls are accurate and how reliable is the one conducted by Merdeka Centre is any body's guess.

Even the best of the bests can make wrong predictions.In 1948 Presidential Election between Thomas Dewey and Harry S.Truman, Gallup and all other pollsters wrongly predicted victory for Dewey.In the 1976 Presidential Election Gallup again wrongly predicted the outcome, it predicted Gerald Ford to win against Jimmy Carter. 

In the forthcoming Permatang Pauh by-election, almost all predictions are in favour of Anwar Ibrahim.Some in UMNO have taken a defeatist attitude, given up hope of ever winning the seat, a few have called for UMNO to boycott the by-election.

Have they ever given the thought that after the 8 March General Elections some of the Malay voters might have changed their minds about Anwar Ibrahim ?

If they want a fair chance of taking on Anwar, UMNO must not field Mohd Ezam.They have to find someone who carry certain amount of respect in that area.Ezam probably make a better campaigner than as a candidate.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

HL,

You said that "Most Malaysians are generally spoilt by the many years of government subsidy, not only among the low and middle income group but including those in the higher income bracket, who wanted everything cheap and a short-cut to everything.They take it as of their rights rather than as privileges".
Yup we are. Ask the Government to start letting us buys cars at the "marekt" price & then maybe we will stop asking to be subsidised for our petrol. Until then we will not keep quite about the crao the Bn Government is giving us.
As for the 'sodomy" allegations...I think most Malaysians know that it's a "desperate" attempt to stop DSAI from becoming the next PM!

Monsterball said...

There's no escaping the fact that the public's approval of BN / UMNO / Pak Lah has FALLEN after March 8.

Not really related to Anwar, more of a disappointment at the government or lack of. But Anwar will be very adept at capitalising on this dissatisfaction against the ruling regime.

In a way its unfair to BN, becasue many of the negative factors are beyond the government's control, but hey, BN lost the moral right to cry "unfair" a long, long time ago.

Anonymous said...

HL,

Very well written! Anwar has a western agenda to achieve if he becomes PM. I will not be surprised if oil production sharing contracts will be renegotiated favouring foreign oil giants, a one-sided FTA and probably an American Navy base in Sabah.

Anonymous said...

I agree that Anwar is a wasted politician. It was the vindictiveness of Mahathir that prevented him from contributing more to Malaysia.

Anwar is also, for good or ill, a brilliant political strategist. No one in UMNO comes near to him in political brilliance, and so the only weapon of the stupid is to engage in fitnah so that Anwar is defeated. This is what UMNO has done, with their fake accusation of sodomy against Anwar, which is, at one fell swoop, both anti-Islamic and anti-liberal, and distances UMNO both from the Malay/Muslim and non-Malay/non-Muslim populace.

UMNO members, especially the unitelligent ones (and there are many) think they have "won" the battle against Anwar. But the moral majority in Malaysia know that UMNO have been heavily defeated by their own doing and their lack of ethical or religious principles.

Of course, Anwar, even when he is brought down, never fails to take full advantage of the situation, and turns it eventually, to his advantage. Your comparison with Sun Tzu is apt. Anwar's ability to turn his weakness and lowly position into strength, which eventually defeats the much stronger enemy, is almost a classic textbook example right out of The Art of War. As the master says (chapter 6):

...if we can make the enemy show his position while we are formless, we will be at full force while the enemy is divided.

If our army is at full force and the enemy is divided, then we will attack him at ten times his strength.

Therefore, we are many and the enemy few.


Cheers,

Hantu Darat

Anonymous said...

I had just finished watching dramtisation of Albert Einstein on Ch 514 Astro "Einstein Great Idea". It strike a chord with what is happening in the country, eventhough it is a dramatisation of one of scientific great.

In one of the chapter about "Mass", it was shown the dramatisation between Lebousier (an amatur chemist whose full time job is French King head tax collector) and young French Revolutioner, Jean Marat (who is a fulkl time jurno, a scientist wannabe).

Scientific history have shown that Lebousier is the person who demonstrate the concept of Conservation of Mass - Mass is neither Created nor Destroyed.

In the dramatisation, Marat came to Lebousier to howed some scientific ideas. Lebousier dismiss Marat ideas as nonsensical, as he has not made any measurements and have no evidence.

Marat was angry and in one scene, has toled his friend in the pub that he was pissed with the rejection. He said, the establishment is to be blamed for his rejection and then said "Let the People Decide!".

History has shown who Marat is and so is Lebousier. Unfortunately, being history, we can only know the "truth" long after the fact.