— Sakmongkol AK47
The Malaysian Insider
Sep 22, 2012

SEPT 22 — Umno is always trying to ambush and put up red herrings to divert people’s attention. Why, for example, is the hudud issue between PAS and the DAP being made into a big thing? This is a sideshow being elevated to a premier status complete with intellectual gloss from Uncle Tom-ing academics.

PAS and the DAP — they operate on different principles. PAS champions Islamic principles and an Islamic agenda. The DAP champions secular democratic principles as in justice and equality and good governance and all that. Both co-operate on common grounds.

Why is Umno driving a wedge between the two? Umno should be looking out for the MCA which has ridiculed Umno’s stance on an Islamic agenda.

Sometimes I think Umno religious luminaries are not that bright. Umno is in power now. The MCA, which is a party of infidels, works closely with Umno, so Umno labels them friendly infidels (kafir zimmi — infidels who accept the authority of Muslims in power). What does that prove? It proves the classification of infidels is a function of who is in power. That is how Umno plays the game.

Suppose now a new government comes into power. The leaders of the government are also Muslims. The DAP, which will emerge as the dominant Chinese supported party, works closely with PR. The DAP represents the new infidels who accept the authority and leadership of the new PR government. It makes them friendly infidels. The DAP now becomes kafir zimmi.

So ustaz-ustaz, the branding of infidels is therefore a function of which side is in power at that particular time. And by that time, if we were to apply the Umno stance, the MCA will become kafir harbi, which makes the slaughter of MCA people permissible?

Umno itself has no agenda about hudud laws. PAS isn’t making hudud as the overriding political agenda. Why should Muslims bother about how the DAP thinks about how the Malays want to practise Islam. Since when is Islam dependent on the thinking of non-Muslims? Muslims should be clear about this; the fate of Islam depends on them. Not on non-Muslims. So why should we place the responsibility of talking about hudud on the DAP?

Its leadership is basically non-Muslim. It never made itself as a party championing religious issues. So when Tunku Abdul Aziz expressed disappointment about hudud and other Islamic issues not being discussed in DAP meetings, I can’t believe that he’s so naïve. Why should non-Muslims talk about Islamic issues? If he was the DAP vice-president then, why wasn’t he vocal about it? And if we want to be mean about it, we can talk all night long about Tunku Aziz’s Islamic credentials over some bottles of Johnny Walker.

The people who should do the talking are Umno and PAS. Umno isn’t talking about it. So where is Umno in all this?

Let’s talk more about Najib’s economic agenda.

The early indicators show that Najib is all talk when it comes to economic strategies, his government’s inability to curb spending. He hasn’t done any transformation actually. It’s all big talk. His transformation means increased government spending, direct government involvement in the economy including owning the means of production or doing business through proxy companies. We are led to ask: does Najib understand what he is doing?

I know he has only one economic strategy. Pay his way though. Spend to buy votes. It’s all motion with no substance of creating the fundamentals of economic growth. This includes nurturing organic growth and reducing government interference. Teaching Malays, for example, to take personal responsibility for their own affairs and look out for unnecessary government wasteful spending.

If he wants to transform the economy he should abandon his from-cradle-to-grave economic strategy. He’s giving out money to people which, of course, is an immediate stress reliever. But in the long run, it snuffs out the drive in people, reducing them to expectant beneficiaries of free lunches. Umno is creating the slave owner-slave economic relationship.

What does he mean, for example, by New Economic Model? Once upon a time, I asked him about his NEM. He said it was market-driven economic affirmative action. I thought it was unplanned capitalism or spontaneous voluntary co-operation between economic actors. It wasn’t any of that; it is the same old strategy of selecting close friends as principal business agents. It’s the same Mahathirnomics of choosing and selecting winners who proved in the end they are all his surrogates and front men.

Spending has taken up a big proportion of our national income. By spending, we mean public spending i.e. by the government. The government spends by creating debt instruments, borrowing from banks and issuing government bonds. Public spending has reached almost 50 per cent of our national income and yet government leaders dismiss the ominous warnings. That shows they are poor economic managers.

For all his talk especially about the New Economic Model, Najib hasn’t moved away from the cradle-to-grave economic strategies. He is doing what Roosevelt did with his New Deal.

Here Najib is always doing a new deal. The deal is in the money! Spend baby spend is his mantra. — sakmongkol.blogspot.com

* Sakmongkol AK47 is the nom de plume of Datuk Mohd Ariff Sabri Abdul Aziz. He was Pulau Manis assemblyman (2004-2008).