your say 'It's not just Najib's credibility, the political party he heads is a huge stumbling block. The Umno warlords are NEP-junkies who're addicted to getting rich quick.'

Najib's gaping void between illusion and reality

Kingfisher: A significant number of Malaysians did give PM Najib Razak much kudos in the early period of his ‘professed' progressive leadership in anticipation of a healthier and people-oriented culture in BN politics.

However, their faith in him appears to be eroding. His actions are increasingly making his convictions/values untenable in the public eye. And like the PDRM (Royal Malaysian Police), the PM is losing the public trust.

This can have unhealthy consequences for democratic values and practices, although many Malaysians would still feel that Najib could still redeem his leadership through increased sincerity in his handling of the demands from the people and the shedding of the tainted and vested group in his fold.

Cannon: It's not just Najib's credibility, the political party he heads is a huge stumbling block. The warlords inside Umno are NEP-junkies who're addicted to getting rich quick without having to do any honest work.

They're vehemently opposed to change and will resist any reform initiative that threatens their vested interests. Post-2008 GE, Pak Lah (Abdullah Ahmad Badawi) promised to tackle corruption in our country. The Anti-Corruption Agency (ACA) was done away to be replaced by an anti-corruption tribunal 'with teeth'.

We got the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) - an anti-corruption tribunal from hell, with fangs. MACC totters from one scandal to another, again making the news headlines this week.

We read, with horror, three of its officers, including an assistant commissioner, have been arrested for robbing a moneychanger of RM900,000 inside the Kuala Lumpur International Airport (KLIA) complex.

Najib's new flavour of the month is liberalising civil liberties aka Umno style - transformation of our institutions into its sleazy and scandalous image. Real reform is only possible with regime change.

Docs: Najib is being push to the wall by the public, opposition politicians and his own party. Just like a cornered rat trying to break free, the rat may injure itself in the process of escaping as in the tense situation, all forms of reasoning are lost.

Muak: Does the Umno-BN government need to mobilise the entire government machinery to deal with Mat Sabu? What a waste of taxpayers' money and civil service time. Or have they nothing else better to do?

Isa@1penyu: The police are doing whatever job they are supposed to do. If Najib interferes, then the opposition will shout there is no separation of powers.

Mat Sabu is good at damaging Pakatan Rakyat - the more he talks, the more people will leave PAS and Pakatan Rakyat. Now he has upset the police, military, etc, and it's a big vote bank gone down the drain because of his big mouth.

In fact, BN is doing Pakatan a favour by charging him so that he will behave.

Equinox: "The task of leadership is to transform the public understanding of national issues and ... the leader must break through the gauntlet of obstacles made up of reactionary forces, interest-group power, public passivity or cynicism, and conventional wisdom," writes Malaysiakini's Terence Netto.

I agree, but an enlightened leader (I haven't seen any yet) is unlikely to survive the gauntlet unless and until the entrenched socio-political dependency culture nurtured by half a century of a pervasive patronage system and ‘affirmative action' can give way to a true quest for human dignity and sense of self-worth, a culture that browns on dishonesty, corruption, injustices, hypocrisy, and a value system that shows no fear of God.

Cala: The correct question to ask is - is Najib a character who is always truthful to himself? Does he preach what he does? What is his track record? What is his family background? What is his system of moral values? In a nutshell, who is he as a person? Do you trust him for who he is?

In the literature on economic development, I am afraid the West posits that the Third World is poor because they themselves ask to be poor (Handelman, 2011, pp. 15-16). The West claims that these Third World nations/people have inferior set of culture that makes them weak.

At the end, the West believes the said faulty culture has made us "so prone to excesses of scoundrels, so politically irrational". Najib is limited by the same culture. The point is who can help him?

Anonymous_40dc: From what Najib has demonstrated - cakap tak serupa bikin - he has no real power to implement what he said.

A combination of lack of support from Umno right-wingers and his ‘wimp personality' has prevented him from following through what he had promised. It is also possible his reforms were suggested by his spin doctors - PR (public relations) con-sultant - without him having full commitment to them.

In an effort to regain sagging popularity, he has engaged spin doctors and he is also dishing out goodies:

a) Bonus and pay rise for the over one million civil servants who are loyal supporters of Umno-BN;

b) Imams and village heads and folks, who can easily be pleased with the increase in allowance and haj trip to Mecca.

What is clear is that Najib is a good-time PM - clowning around in an effort to show he is cool and jet-setting all over the place at taxpayers' expense. He is not the kind of PM we should have.

Swipenter: Najib is going to outdo Pak Lah in flip-flopping.

 

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