Mohd Ariff Sabri Aziz | October 31, 2012
Free Malaysia Today

Every Umno leader knows that Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad blames Rosmah Mansor for the position Umno and Najib Razak find themselves in today.

COMMENT

It’s none of our concern if Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad’s attacks on Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak are tactical or real. What we know is that they are all masters and practitioners of subterfuge and deception.

I suspect the Umno camp is really worried about the attacks on their man that they have to do a spin on the whole works.

That’s Umno thinking for you. When something is not working for them, they will manufacture a preferred storyline.

Hence the story line they come out with is that Mahathir is doing his usual reverse psychology.

Every Umno leader knows that Mahathir blames Rosmah Mansor for the position Umno finds itself today.

Rosmah is the heel to Najib’s Achilles. Mahathir is the poison arrow.

Mahathir never ceases to bully Malays into believing they are inadequate and therefore the solution is to entrust their future in the hands of good people like him.

Social evils, intoned Mahathir, arise from the activities of evil people and if only known devils like him and the band of marauders and plunderers are in control, Malaysia is safe.

What is wrong with this kind of thinking? Well, it only requires one to be unthinking and self-praising.

Mahathir likes to self-praise although he has a round-about way of doing it. The medical doctor uses self-deprecation to disarm and defeat opponents.

Malay disengagement scares Mahathir

So what’s really bothering Mahathir?

Mahathir’s biggest fear is that the process of Malay disengagement has spread so widely that it is threatening Umno’s stranglehold on the people.

Let look at the situation before us and perhaps help Mahathir make peace with himself.

First, Malaysians have acquired a new tradition of embracing democratic values and the sense of importance and self-worth.

These are natural outcomes of economic and social advancements with our own borders and also arise as a result of an almost complete removal of artificial physical barriers between nations.

Advances in the internet have demolished almost all barriers set up by autocratic government and has allowed people to learn and make comparisons.

Governments established by using autocratic means are finding themselves under increasing assaults from civil rights groups and people.

And that is happening to Umno and BN who have thrived on unchallenged autocracy.

Malaysians have acquired new values and traditions- that of liberty and liberal values.

The second force checking Umno’s hegemony and autocracy is simply its own success.

Mindless Umno leaders

Umno is a victim of its own success.

Once Umno and BN acquired a false sense of invincibility, they become victims to the baneful influence of corruption and power abuses.

Umno and BN have become a corrupt government.

The government endorses, incubates, nurture and encourage rampant and rapacious corruption buoyed by its believe in its own invincibility.

The desire to stop a corrupt government has become both a unifying and motivating force for Malaysians.

So Mahathir harangues the public with simplistic takes.

If Umno is vanquished, Malays will be finished. So, Malays need to continue to place their future in the hand of good people like Umno people.

Associating Umno with all the goodness is easy to do. It needs only an appeal to the emotions.

And that is what Mahathir and the menagerie of Umno political animals do.

To reason with people requires overcoming prejudices and subordinating the emotions.

That would require analysis and a thought process. And that is something that Umno people and its cyber troopers sorely lack.

The writer is a former Umno state assemblyman but has now joined DAP. He is a FMT columnist.