― Jaleel Hameed The Malaysian Insider Sep 21, 2012
SEPT 21 ― How cheap is Malaysia? Power is cheap, labour is cheap, the KR1M shops make sure household goods are cheap. And today, we hear it only takes RM20 million to destabilise the government of the day.
Is this a joke, newspaper and television editors? Is this a cheap joke, even?
That’s all for a government that has been in power since Merdeka? A measly RM20 million in a country of billion-ringgit projects and IPOs?
Cheap isn’t even the word to use if this report is to be believed. That foreign agencies ― and Germany’s RM21,400 ― is all that it takes to make the Najib administration wobbly enough to be taken down.
This, a government that is bullish enough to say it can win all states and its two-thirds majority in the next election that seems further away every day.
How do we believe a report using figures plucked out of thin air and without attribution? How do we believe that there are cheap people out there willing to pay such low rates to people willing to bring down a government for next to peanuts? How, sir?
How is it these mainstream newspapers and television stations even report this without checking their facts, sir? That a government that dispensed RM2 billion in direct cash aid called BR1M can be toppled with just RM20 million?
That SUARAM, Malaysiakini, Seacem, LoyarBurok and Centre for Independent Journalism have such great powers against the might of a civil service and media friendly, if not beholden, to Barisan Nasional?
You know what it is, sir? It’s a cheap shot before the general elections, sir.
It shows Barisan Nasional has run out of bogeymen, and it’s easy to tag these groups as agents of foreign groups either jealous of our success or wanting to put in a liberal, Western-friendly government.
And it shows desperation in getting a coherent storyline to tell to Malaysians to be beware of such groups and their message.
But this is what you get on the cheap, sir. A cheap storyline with a lousy plot worse than a B-grade movie.
And a government cheap enough to resort to such base tactics to remain in power, sir.
Sir, thank you for the cheap laugh today. Tell your journalists to come up with more jokes like this to keep us happy in these gloomy hazy times.
RM20 million to destabilise a government….. What a laugh, sir!