Umno/BN’s ‘transformation’ will never affect us

By Joe Fernandez

Dear Datuk Idris, I just read your piece, "Why transformation may not be affecting you yet", carried in the local papers in Kota Kinabalu on Mon 7 May.

I have accepted your invite to write to you at idrisjala@pemandu.gov.my on the continuing debate.

I am also taking the liberty of sharing my thoughts here with all Malaysians just as you have done so in the local media.

You are spot on when you conceded that the more that you talk about transformation these days, the more that you come across as a confidence trickster, a charlatan or worse. And why not when you claim that the economic crisis supposedly raging elsewhere in the world has not affected us and this thereby ostensibly proves that transformation is working and has reached us all. This must be the mother of all spins.

There’s a hidden message here for all of us and we must thank you for it. In your own words, you have confirmed that Malaysians are not buying the ruling Barisan Nasional’s (BN) spin, or at least Prime Minister Mohd Najib Abdul Razak’s, on transformation.

You mentioned that Malaysians are cynical.

Yes, that's true. It’s not a sin to take such an approach especially with a ruling party which has squatted on all Malaysians for more than half a century.

Umno/BN's "transformation" will never affect us, not in a million years, just as all the gimmicks, cosmetics, hype and spin by previous prime ministers have not affected us. Every prime minister throws out lock, stock and barrel whatever his predecessor preached about and comes up with something else to peddle to the rakyat.

Your predecessor Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, for example, was into Islam Hadhari and economic corridors.

The fact is that while the Umno/BN hypes itself up on various so-called transformations, starts foaming at the mouth and works itself up into a fit, all Malaysians see is the politicians continuing to plunder the Public Treasury to line their pockets and feather their nests under the guise of bringing development to the people.

There’s no better illustration than Chief Minister Abdul Taib Mahmud in your home state of Sarawak. Transformation will not touch Sarawak.

Taib continues to live a charmed life, immune to the long arms of the law. He continues to have a licence, even under your transformation, to put a finger in every economic pie in Sarawak on behalf of family, friends and cronies. If you want further proof, please ask the Chinese community in Sarawak who have since turned completely against Taib. They can’t wait to see him and the sycophants around him vanish into the dustbin of history.

Politics is all about the distribution of power and resources.

Transformation means the ruling party not behaving as if the country is their grandfather's ancestral property.

Sovereignty lies with the people.

No one in Malaysia cares about High Income and Developed Nation status. There are lies, damn lies and statistics!

These concepts mean nothing to the man in the street in Malaysia as they mean nothing to countless millions even in the United States, the largest and richest economy in the world, and other large economies like China (2^nd largest) and India (3^rd largest by 2014), Greece, Italy, Spain, Portugal etc etc

The people are no longer interested in anything that comes from Umno and BN. They can't wait to see the ruling coalition disappear from the politics of the nation.

Transformation, for starters, means the people being able to throw out the ruling party every two terms or so. It also means no one hogging the Prime Minister's post and passing it on to his family, friend or crony.

Transformation, for Malaysians, means getting away from Umno's policy of twisting and turning every issue into racial and religious issues. This twisting and turning is part of the politics of distraction and disruption to camouflage the ruling elite plundering the Public Treasury.

Transformation means ending the deviations and distortions in the implementation of Articles 153, 152, 3, 8 and 10, among others, in the Federal Constitution and the various clauses on citizenship.

Transformation means the Brightest and Best leading us all for the benefit of all.

Transformation means respecting the rule of law, the checks and balances inherent in the doctrine of separation of powers, and not reducing Parliament to a rubber stamp.

Instead, we see the Police being a law unto themselves, happily beating up people, brutalizing them even for a petty car theft and then going on to lie about it through their teeth. The law enforcers themselves are breaking the law.

Transformation means prosecution in Court and not persecution or selective prosecution.

Transformation means ending the internal colonization of Sabah and Sarawak and complying with the 1963 Malaysia Agreement which holds that Sabah and Sarawak are equals of Malaya in the Federation of Malaysia.

Transformation means respecting the principle of one man, one vote, and this means ending gerrymandering in the delineation of the electoral boundaries, removing the illegal immigrants on the electoral rolls, allowing the electoral rolls to be challenged even after they are gazetted and doing away with the first-past-the-post system to give the minority the right to be heard in Parliament while conceding that the majority has the right to rule.

Instead, we see the activists of the Bersih movement for clean and fair elections getting bashed up by the police and their agent provocateurs. Is it the position of Umno/BN that they are not in favour of clean and fair elections?

Last, but not least, transformation means bringing back the concept of the Federation where power is shared at three levels i.e. the Federal, State and Local Government levels. Malaysia is emerging more and more under Umno as a unitary state.

I could go on and on.

Datuk Idris, the best thing for you to do is to stop this charade on transformation and save your soul from eternal damnation. There’s such a thing as karma. Our past will, at some point in time, catch up with us in the present to haunt our future.

You should either go back to Sarawak Shell, or if that's no longer possible, run away as far away as possible from this country so that no one can find you and thereby you can keep your sanity.

Now, you are part of one big lunatic asylum.

Have nothing to do with the racists who kicked you out from Malaysia Airlines once they discovered that you were more Jala than Idris. Transformation indeed! Regards, Joe Fernandez