If Najib wants to win the war of perception, his administration should stop creating a Kafkaesque Malaysia


The Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Najib Razak yesterday told the first morning assembly with staff of the Prime Minister’s Department after the 13th General Election that the government must intensify efforts to address negative perceptions and cautioned civil servants against being distracted by excessive politicking.

If Najib wants to win the war of perception, his administration should stop creating a Kafkaesque Malaysia.

Named after the author Franz Kafka, “Kafkaesque” is typically used to describe anything that makes no sense, has no colours and has no points of reference. It describes something that is horribly complicated for no reason, usually in reference to bureaucracy.

The Kafkaesque character of the Najib premiership is immediately highlighted by his speech yesterday, warning civil servants against being distracted by excessive politicking when some civil servants have been guilty exactly of excessive politicking at the behest of their political masters in the first month after the 13th general elections.

Off hand, three immediate examples come to mind:

• firstly, the police with the most “political” IGP whose top priority is the crackdown against Pakatan Rakyat leaders and social activists when the country’s foremost concern is the wave of crime and fear of crime sweeping the country as well as breakdown in police discipline with three deaths in police custody in eleven days;

• secondly, the Registrar of Societies who seems to have a political brief from the new Home Minister, Datuk Seri Zahid Hamidi to make life as difficult as possible for the Democratic Action Party, even to the extent of wanting to deregister the DAP as being illegal and unlawful on the flimsiest and baseless of grounds; and

• thirdly, Immigration Director-General who out of nowhere issued outrageous warnings to revoke the passports of thousands of Malaysians abroad for exercising the constitutional right to support the political coalition of their choice in the 13GE.

In fact, the photograph published by all the press today about the Assembly further highlighted the Kafkaesque character of the Najib premiership as it showed the illegal Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department, Paul Low, standing in the same row as the other six Ministers in the PM’s Department next to Najib.

In his speech congratulating the Yang di Pertuan Agong on his birthday, Najib pledged to uphold the Constitution and upgrade the quality of governance and integrity in his government, but he has done absolutely nothing for close to three weeks to rectify his unconstitutional act in unlawfully appointing two Ministers and three Deputy Ministers without their first being appointed and sworn in as Senators!

In fact, Najib started to create a Kafkaesque Malaysia immediately after the announcement of the 13th general elections, calling for “national reconciliation” minutes after he destroyed the basis for such a process by dismissing the elections outcome as a “Chinese tsunami”.

After the 13GE, Najib promised in his blog to be a Prime Minister for all Malaysians, regardless of race, religion, state or political views, but he allowed the UMNO propaganda outfits, in particular Utusan Malaysia, New Straits Times and Berita Harian to continue to brew and spew their daily potion of extremism and racism based on lies and falsehoods further polarizing race, religious and political relations in the country.

Yesterday morning, I was informed that together with Anwar Ibrahim, Nurul Izzah, Rafizi Ramli, Mohamad Sabu, Ambiga Sreenivasan, Syed Ibrahim Syed Noor, Wong Chin Huat, Maria Chin Abdullah, Ong Boon Kiang, Hishammuddin Rais, I am barred from entry into Sabah by the Sabah Chief Minister, Datuk Seri Musa Aman.

This is not only unconstitutional and illegal, as it violates Section 67 of the Immigration Act which entrenches the right of a Malaysian to enter Sabah on “legitimate political activity”, it also makes a total mockery of Najib’s 1Malaysia policy and claim to want to make Malaysia the “best democracy in the world” when elected MPs have even less rights that millions of illegal immigrants to visit Sabah.

Last night, Astro Awani quoted the Sabah state police chief Deputy Comm Datuk Hamza Taib as confirming that the state had lifted its ban on Nurul Izzah entering Sabah and that no other individuals had been placed on the Immigrant blacklist – raising the question why such an announcement was not made by the Sabah Immigration chief who is directly responsible for the matter.

This morning, hidden in an inconspicuous corner in the New Straits Times was the statement by the Sabah State Secretary Tan Sri Sukarti Wakiman that there is no permanent ban on any opposition leaders from entering Sabah.

When is Najib going to stop the Kafkaesque antics of his Barisan Nasional government, whether at the Federal or state government levels and get down to the serious business of governing to restore the full confidence of all Malaysians?

  1. #1 by Bigjoe on Tuesday, 4 June 2013 - 11:54 am

    Kafkaesque? Well calling the problem ‘perception’ is Kafkaesque.. Asking Najib to self-change? Is that really possible for someone that has sold his soul long time ago to the sociopath Mahathir? So long as there is riches to be had, sociopath followers don’t change, they only change when it collapses..

  2. #2 by worldpress on Tuesday, 4 June 2013 - 12:09 pm

    With free banana (bribe)

    Monkeys in jungle voted them again protecting the banana supply and turn country to monkey playground gather banana

    Each morning concentrate search for banana tree (job) gather more banana from the monkey playground

    Most of the banana tree (job) be done by sharing banana

    EC help again monkeys in jungle protected those big tall nature banana tree (dpt) seal off top from human

    Naturally, one don’t like banana, no banana monkey no keen interest

    BANANA PARTY without banana all run away

  3. #3 by good coolie on Tuesday, 4 June 2013 - 12:34 pm

    Would presenting an amorphous or wooly surface to the public, so that political enemies would not know where to aim the rocket be a kind of Kafkaesque pose? An extreme case of this is the the PM’s deafening silence on so many issues of importance: increased cases of murder in the lock-up; allegations of voter fraud; the distorted portrayal of the Malaysian Tsunami; restrictions against Malaysians wanting to visit East Malaysia; the shaky economy (to be baled out by GST); illegal ministers, BRIM-lagi; …. .

    Or is the PM presenting a diffused target to his enemies in UMNO Baru itself, enemies who might want to topple him from his position on top of the mound? If ever the word Kafkaesque is appropriate, it must be so to the sinister and inscrutable currents flowing below the placid stream, UMNO Baru.

  4. #4 by buylower2003 on Tuesday, 4 June 2013 - 1:12 pm

    1984esque is more like it… Ministry of “Truth” is working overtime.

    And with Two-Face running things, what do you expect?

  5. #5 by ENDANGERED HORNBILL on Tuesday, 4 June 2013 - 2:09 pm

    Aiya, Najib should just introduce labour camps like BTN camps.

    Except Labour Camps, like China’s labour camps (read CNN.com) are to silence people.

    Najib prefers ruling over sheep; people who make noise should be just dumped into labour camps to rot-lah. All protesters probably appear like ‘prostitutes’ to BN.

  6. #6 by pulau_sibu on Tuesday, 4 June 2013 - 3:14 pm

    Gerakan ready to merge with MCA and Umno

    what a misleading title. Is this merging? The mosquito parties simply got absorbed.

    • #7 by buylower2003 on Tuesday, 4 June 2013 - 4:07 pm

      The last “merging” I watched was in the movies “The Blob” & “The Thing”. It wasn’t pretty… not by a long shot.

  7. #8 by Cinapek on Wednesday, 5 June 2013 - 1:14 am

    “….If Najib wants to win the war of perception, his administration should stop creating a Kafkaesque Malaysia….”

    Absolutely. The man is serial hypocrite. He talks about reconciliation and in the next breadth declares the “chinese tsunami” – insinuating that the chinese were ungrateful – whatever that means. Next, his administration went ahead and allowed Tanda Putera to be screened in August. The sheer hypocrisy of this episode is disgusting. Prior to GE13, him and his then Cabinet made a big charade of stopping the show in order to try to win votes but immediately after GE13, his administration wasted no time to approve the screening of this racist and divisive movie.

  8. #9 by Noble House on Wednesday, 5 June 2013 - 2:36 am

    I think it’s very sad, very sad indeed to watch the PM we have today is a typical UMNO politician that’s prone to hyperbole and decisiveness and false outrage. Do we really have a PM for all Malaysians?

You must be logged in to post a comment.