Tuesday, June 2, 2009

Will Najib Survive The Next Term ?

Hantu Laut

If Najib were to survive the next term as prime minister of this nation he needs to create a nation of thriving communities where everyone feel they have a share in the nation.A sense of belonging.A sense of being proud to be Malaysian, not as Malay, Chinese, Indian or Others but as Malaysians.His 1 Malaysia fits well only if it is implemented true to the word.The only way this can be achieved is through the creation of prosperity, eradication of poverty and fair treatment of all the races. The NEP need not be abolished in toto but should be fine-tuned to be in line with the current situation and not to be used as a gravy train but genuinely use for helping less fortunate Malays.


Prosperity of a nation depended on the soundness of its economy.Setting the economy properly on the spindle should be Najib's priority if he wants it to spin at optimum speed.He has only three years to redeem the loss of confidence under Abdullah Badawi.It would be a feat but not impossible.

After almost four decades in government he should have the experience to do the job.He would be a better finance minister to take the country out of the current economic crisis, certainly better than Anwar Ibrahim who had been proven to be a standard issue when he wanted to seek assistance of IMF and comply with their terms during the Asian financial crisis in 1997 against the wishes of the then Prime Minister Mahathir Mohammad. Malaysia got out of the financial mess unscathed and credit should be given to Mahathir for his grit when his finance minister at that time has thrown in the towel.


Najib should ignore the political rhetoric of the oppositions.Their dirty political campaign is for the sole purpose of diverting his attention from the real danger, the falling economy. All the mud-slinging and dirty campaigns against him were intended to inflict maximum damage to his reputation and kill his enthusiasm.They seriously wanted him to fail to revive the economy.A failed economy would give the oppositions a better chance of taking over the central government.

Responding to such organised dirty tactic with police action is exactly what the oppositions wanted him to do so they can use it as political capital to convince the people that he is an unfit leader. The video below is just one of the many examples of organised dirty campaign and mud-slinging by the oppositions against him and the BN government.What's the point of harping on the same sour note every time they take to the podium.This MP sounds ridiculously stupid by saying it was also published by the international media implying there is truth in it.That is the sorry state of Pakatan leaders, their fixated holier than thou attitude and half-arsed rhetoric
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Former Prime Minister Mahathir Mohammad managed to rule this nation for 22 years with authoritarian hand and yet the nation had stayed peaceful with no major racial tension, even if there were some, they were nicely tucked away below the surface.Mahathir was able to do this because of prosperity.The nation economy grew substantially during his tenure and though the NEP was there he did not apply it stringently. The Chinese and Indians were fairly happy and played very supportive role in keeping the BN government in power.One just have to look at the KLSE and it would not be wrong to conclude that most of the listed companies are controlled by Chinese businessmen. The majority of the heavy league bumiputra companies on the KLSE are government-linked.The number of individual bumiputra companies are no match with that of the Chinese.

One must admit that the Chinese are laborious people and have much longer history of business culture in them.The story of rag to riches were aplenty in this particular community gained through perseverance and hard work.Needless to say the Chinese also controlled over 90 percent of the retail trade.Although, Malays formed the majority in this country, go to any major cities and towns and see how almost all kind of businesses are dominated by the Chinese.

Najib should pay serious attention to the Chinese contributions to the economy and should tap their expertise and resources in the economic field and not only confine himself to bumiputra advisers.
The people around him should have a cosmopolitan look.

There are many resource rich countries that can't be considered prosperous.Countries like Brazil,Russia, South Africa,Nigeria are just some example of resource rich countries that definitely wouldn't fall in the prosperous category.On the other hand countries like Singapore,Finland,Switzerland,Austria lack natural resources but enjoy tremendous stability and prosperity.In some cases the people don't even bother about politics or try to change the government unless the political system made it mandatory to do so as in the case of the US where the President can only hold office for two terms.

I have always been a proponent that UMNO should not contest the Penanti by-election to see how popular the Pakatan camp is without UMNO upsetting the nest.The result of Penanti, which is within Anwar's impenetrable fortress, is obvious that they are not as hot as they made it out to be.The turn-out was less than 50 percent. The Malays are not falling head over heel to vote for them.As usual to pull wool over the people's eyes they have to blame Najib and UMNO for the low turn out.

The Malaysian Insider which lately seems to have turned the table and are more vocal against the establishment published a survey of Najib's popularity poll and came out with some very surprising results.Overall only 16% of respondent are dissatisfied with Najib as PM while 45% gave him a thump-up.Even more surprising and unexpected on racial breakdown 64% of Indians are happy with him and only 15% are not.The figure with the Chinese was a bit dismal, only 24% are happy and 23% are not and 53% did not respond which means the Chinese are mostly fence-sitters.


For a man with a heavy baggage and constantly under personal attack by the oppositions the results is most unexpected.However, see what this anti-Najib blogger wrote here. So, there is hope for Najib after all.

He has been in office for less than a hundred days, give him a year, I believe the rating would rise in his favour.

It's the state of the economy that's going to decide the future of BN as a government and it fell on Najib to find the magic formula to bring back prosperity and unity to the people.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

It will be very easy for Najib to increase his popularity - all he has to rule is the there will no longer be identification by race at birth on any official documents - a first substantial start to his 1Malaysia.

eddy said...

I share your thoughts bro, I think Najib is doing fairly well considering the tremendous pressure and unfounded allegations that the Pakatan opposition had heaped on him since before he became our PM.

Actually Pakatan have nothing to show Malaysians that they can be a better alternative Government by coming out with their own feasible plan on how they think that Malaysia could recover from this economic crisis and I have not started to talk about their failure to come up with a credible shadow cabinet of their own even until now. In reality, Pakatan game plan until the next election is simple really just "BLAME EVERYTHING ON BN" so anything bad is BN, if police arrest demonstrators its BN, if judge decision against Pakatan its BN, if stadium collapses guess what its BN.

In short Pakatan is on a campaign for the hearts and mind of Malaysians by turning BN into some sort of a boogey monster.
(note:The boogey monster(also spelled boogyman, bogyman, boogieman, or boogeyman) is a legendary ghost-like monster. It has no specific appearance, and conceptions of the monster can vary drastically even from household to household within the same community; in many cases it simply has no set appearance in the mind of a child, but is just an amorphous embodiment of terror. It can be used metaphorically to denote a person or thing of which someone has an irrational fear).

However I am happy to note that Najib also has a game plan of his own and the first one is not dancing to the tune of the Pakatan music. Najib exhibited this in the Penanti by-elections where BN did not participate in the PKR Anwar inspired internal election disguised as a vote of confidence for PKR.

1Malaysia is a good idea but need to be further explained to the Malays/Bumiputra that it would not infringe the various articles in our Perlembagaan in relation to their rights and that of the rights of other citizens.

Anyway if Najib stays true to his cause and ensure that most of the needs and rights of all the major races in multiracial Malaysia is taken care of and is NOT diverted by the obvious Pakatan boogey monster tactics to undermine his Prime Ministership, I think BN will regain much of the lost support that Abdullah Badawi lost in the March 2008 elections and more if the economy gets better due to the anticipated recovery in America and Europe.