COMMENT | Blind obedience and tribal politics of Umno-Baru

COMMENT | Blind worship of the leaders of the tribe which we call Umno-Baru is why Malaysia is in the mess that we find ourselves today.

Even then, the nightmare of the 1MDB scandal is only just beginning.

On Aug 28, the Swiss Federal Criminal Court convicted two Petrosaudi International Ltd executives for their role in defrauding 1MDB of RM8 billion in the world’s worst case of kleptocracy.

However, 10,000km away, Johor Mentri Besar Onn Hafiz Ghazi, proudly boasted that convicted felon Najib Abdul Razak was one of Malaysia’s “best prime ministers”.

Najib is the co-architect of the 1MDB scandal. He was its facilitator, its guardian angel, and its protector.

Onn could be forgiven if he had been marooned on Mars all this while or just woken up from a coma.

Didn’t Onn read about the trials, the denials, the temper tantrums from a former First Lady whose haul of handbags and gems were unceremoniously dumped onto the backs of trucks? Apparently not.

Does the menteri besar, who is also the Johor Umno-Baru chairperson, not realise that he has become a national embarrassment? He hoped the Umno-Baru leadership would continue to fight for “justice for Najib”. His remark suggests that he thinks Najib is innocent.

The greatest actor

It has never been about the rakyat and nation. It is all about their party and selfish interests.

Onn said that he still missed Najib. We don’t.

In fact, we’d like all of Najib’s former cabinet to join him in Kajang but that’s another story about the dodgy foundations of a hastily cobbled together coalition.

Onn said that he was “very indebted to Najib”. At least he shares something in common with the other people who benefited from Najib’s largesse.

As finance minister and PM, Najib controlled the public purse and could create positions and give away perks to reward those who blindly worshipped him. The only difference is that he did not give away his own hard-earned cash. He gave away money that belonged to the taxpayer.

Onn said that Najib was “so sincere in working for the people and was not someone who merely ‘acted’ in front of the public”.

“Sincerity” does not figure in Najib’s vocabulary. Moreover, Onn forgets that politicians are like actors. They do “act” in front of the public.

Instead of reading lines prepared by the screenwriter in front of the camera, the politician is reading lines composed by his speech writer, in which the politician says what he knows you would like to hear. Politicians are actors who have perfected the art of deception.

If only Onn could hear a recording of himself at the Pekan Umno-Baru meeting last month when he said that Najib “loved others (the people) more than himself.”

In the Umno-Baru tribe, they profess their love by stealing from their lover.

Najib almost bankrupted Malaysia and left behind a huge mess in all the ministries. Funds to the tune of hundreds of millions of ringgits were embezzled. Ships went missing. White elephants were aplenty. Sharks roamed the corridors of power. Monkeys invaded Parliament and if these were not serious enough, the nation inherited a failed education system, an extremely sensitive Malay/Muslim electorate, and a cabinet which enjoyed having the wool pulled over their eyes over the 1MDB scandal.

Why should we mince our words?

We bear some responsibility too

It’s terrifying that the MB of one of the richest and most productive states in Malaysia thinks that Najib is innocent. If one man can think like this, what about the ignorant masses?

We put our leaders on a pedestal and hand them absolute power to rule over us. We don’t care that they fail to wield the power without abusing it.

We allowed them to think for us so that we could be spared from exercising our own grey cells. We were so happy for the leaders to control our lives that on the few occasions that we ought to defend ourselves against authoritarian rule, we did not know how to do it.

During the heyday of Najib’s tenure, the National Professors Council was formed but a few days ago, its president Emeritus Professor Raduan Che Rose was charged with alleged criminal breach of trust (CBT).

1MDB caused old, established banks to close forever and financial institutions around the world were shown to be lax and complicit in the scandals.

Former Wanita Umno-Baru leader Shahrizat Abdul Jalil said that she was concerned about the crimes against women. Did she do anything to get justice for the Penan girls of Sarawak who were raped by the timber workers? Never mind the women, what about justice for the National Feedlot Corporation cattle farmers and cows?

In our Malaysian culture, be it Malay, Chinese or Indian, it was drummed into us that our leaders can do no wrong as they are people we should respect and look up to. That is, until they messed up, as in 1MDB, the mother of all scandals.

Even then, it took Clare Rewcastle-Brown around a decade to continually remind us about the 1MDB scandal that was looming on the horizon and former US attorney-general Jeff Sessions to tell the whole world about the world’s worst kleptocrat.

Welcome to the world of the blind worshippers in Umno-Baru, with their blind obedience to their tribal leaders.

Incredibly, some of you still yearn for its return.

MARIAM MOKHTAR is a defender of the truth, the admiral-general of the Green Bean Army, and the president of the Perak Liberation Organisation (PLO). Blog, X.

The views expressed here are those of the author/contributor and do not necessarily represent the views of Malaysiakini.

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