UMNO Goes For The Status Quo

Malaysia’s party elections deliver a resounding – if pyrrhic – victory for the Prime Minister

Malaysia’s intraparty elections for the United Malays National Organization, which concluded over the weekend, have resulted in a resurrection of sorts for Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak, who was all but given up as finished in the wake of the May 5 election debacle.

The party has been struggling with its identity since the election, in which the ruling Barisan Nasional lost the popular vote by a 50.87-47.38 percent split to the Pakatan Rakyat coalition headed by Opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim. The Barisan returned to the majority with a diminished 133 seats to the opposition’s 89 only because of gerrymandering. Najib was blamed for the debacle by party stalwarts including led by and egged on by former Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad.

Nonetheless, within the party, Najib has emerged as the rejuvenated leader of a fractured party. His candidates for the party’s top seven slots – president, deputy president, three vice president, youth leader and women’s leader – all were returned to office, most by healthy margins, as were members of the party’s Supreme Council.

But the question is whether the decision by 145,000 of the party faithful to return them to office was a pyrrhic victory.

“UMNO has not changed. Money still talks,” said an embittered anti-Najib source who described himself as a 20-year member of the party. “Political corruption is rampant. These elections point to a party that is dying and could very well lose the next national elections.”

That was a reference to the fact that Najib’s forces appear to have poured vast amounts of money into buying votes at the district level to ensure that his candidates won. The vote-buying was termed a “golden storm” by party insiders, with votes going for as much as RM300 each.

Najib and his deputy, Muhyiddin Yassin, were unopposed in the party elections. However, an unofficial “Mahathir slate” developed for other positions. Particularly, Mahathir was pushing to make his son, Mukhriz, the 49-year-old chief minister of Kedah, one of the three vice presidents, which would have been viewed as a springboard to eventually go for the party presidency and premiership. Mukhriz finished fourth.

Party insiders say the danger is that the 88-year-old Mahathir could stage an all-out attack on Najib, as he did on Najib’s predecessor, Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, after poor electoral results that cost the party its two-thirds majority in parliament in 2008. Already, a legion of bloggers aligned with Mahathir has been on a rampage against Najib. However, the betting is that since Mahathir has no allies in senior positions in the party, his ability to do much damage is probably limited. Such a move, however, obviously would exacerbate the schisms in the party that are already there.

Among the winners, the most significant included Khairy Jamaluddin, the son-in-law of former Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, who has drawn close to Najib after previously being regarded as a pariah by much of the UMNO rank and file. Khairy was returned as head of the party’s youth wing despite the fact that he was the Mahathir’s particular bête noire.

Also returned to power was Shahrizat Abdul Jalil, who was forced to step down last year as a senator amid allegations that members of her family had looted the National Feedlot Corporation, a publicly funded project to rear cattle by halal, or Islamic religious methods.

Read more.http://www.asiasentinel.com/politics/umno-goes-for-status-quo/

Of Running Dogs, Misunderstanding And Proving UMNO Shortcomings

Hantu Laut

The arrogance in DAP continued.Tony Pua slandering the ROS and UMNO, he says:

Do the police, Utusan Malaysia, the five groups that lodged the reports or even Umno understand what running dogs even means? It’s an English translation of the Mandarin word that refers to lackeys or lapdogs.

Maybe Bakri Zinin should go for English classes too, if he is unable to figure out what the phrase means. It is fine to accept police reports on anything but to waste time considering which law to apply here says a lot about the police.Read more here.

I agree, it's stupid to charge him under sedition, but that doesn't mean he is not liable for what he uttered. UMNO leaders should used their heads, which shows they are incapable of. 

The Register of Societies or UMNO should take legal action against him for slander, instead, of using strong-arm tactic to try silent him.

UMNO may be the ruling party, but it is not the government per se and has no executive power to interfere in the administration of the state.

They should take Pua to the court of law for him to produce  evidence that they have interfered with the legal process.

The police should stay out of this.

If I call you stupid or ugly that's my opinion, you can't sue me,  but if I say you are a thief and have committed such crime and you know it's a lie than you can sue me for slander

UMNO leaders should learn from Lee Kuan Yew, use the court to take such people to the cleaners.

For UMNO, it's old habits diehard.

Misuari’s final gambit?

By Jobers Bersales
Cebu Daily News

Old, forgotten and hounded, the once-great Nur Misuari, founder of the once-formidable Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF), is now dealing his last card in Zamboanga City.

Zamboangueños woke up last Monday to his latest and what I imagine is his last caper as time and the tides of history dealt him an insurmountable blow a long time ago when he failed miserably as governor of the Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao. Sidelined in the recent negotiations for lasting peace in Mindanao, he has resorted to the thing he knows best to get attention: blow his way into the national headlines.

His timing could not have been more impeccably suspect as protests against the scandalous multi-billion peso misuse of pork barrel funds is mounting and inching towards the doorstep of Malacañang. It does not take a rocket scientist, hence, to wonder if this Misuari misadventure in Zamboanga has been staged, complete with unlimited funding, to divert attention—and heat—from the capital. Even a lowly taxi driver told a friend and colleague of mine who rode with him, “When Misuari needs money, he goes to war.”

The question to ask therefore is this: Who is funding this little war that Misuari has foisted on the helpless people of Zamboanga? While Misuari may have some following in Sulu where his popularity among the older generation of the MNLF remains, I do not think those followers will risk whatever money they have to this caper that everyone knows will only end in pushing Misuari and whatever cause he is espousing further into the back-burner to be judged later by history. Old men tend to grumble when the latter and younger generation fail to notice what they want. But they do not go to war for it, not unless they have the guns and the bombs. And those cost money.

Read more: http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/486249/misuaris-final-gambit#ixzz2ejHogvam 

Also read:

Nur Misuari’s last scream

Philippine Pork and its Many Bedfellow

Written by John Berthelsen and A. Lin Neumann

Pork no more The current scandal over patronage funds exposes deeper truths about the country's feudal ways The Philippines' multibillion dollar Pork Barrel, the center of a massive and growing scandal, is a river of money that enriches those most at its confluence but then flows down to mayors and other local political leaders, corrupting the democratic process as it goes, with a trickle eventually reaching impoverished voters in the form of favors and benefits intended to buy loyalty for the local congressman. The Pork Barrel, formally known as the Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF), provides each of the country's 24 senators with P200 million (US$4.8 million) per year, or P1.2 billion for an entire six-year term. Congressional representatives receive P70 million per year, or P210 million for their three year terms. For months, attention has been riveted on the activities of Janet Lim Napoles, who made herself and her family massively rich after she set up a series of phony NGOs that were the recipients of PDAF funds that were then apparently recycled back to the lawmakers in cash after Napoles took a 30 percent cut. That story has been told extensively and is the subject of an official government audit report; at least six senators and 28 congressmen could be liable for criminal charges. Mother's Milk  But the other part of the story is how these funds even when "properly" used perpetuate an almost unbreakable system, helping to create a long chain of political dynasties. In effect the PDAF has been a government-funded way to sustain a corrupt and feudal system. The way the funds are used illustrates the enormous difficulty of ending or reforming a system that makes a truism of the phrase that money is the mother's milk of politics. The funds were intended to finance rural development projects for constituents but investigations have shown that while many districts benefit from them, more often they are used as a method of delivering patronage and furthering the business interests of powerful local families. The poorly audited PDAF funds and other sources of money that flow down from lawmakers to district officials or mayors are sometimes used to fund outright illegal operations including smuggling of drugs or weapons and munitions sales, according to a former military officer, virtually unstoppable by an outmanned, outgunned and often corrupt customs service trying to police an archipelago of 7,100 islands, about 2,000 of which are inhabited.Read more.