Opposition Leader Anwar Ibrahim told a crowd of mostly Malays that the Pakatan Rakyat’s fight for justice for Teoh Beng Hock had nothing to do with favouring the other races at their expense. But it had everything to do with stopping Umno from taking the country further down the hell-hole.
At a rally in Sungai Besar where more than 3,000 people came to hear him and other Pakatan leaders speak, Anwar said the top leadership at Umno had grown so corrupt that it no longer cared about the Malays.
It was only interested in using the community to cling to power so that it could continue to rape the country of its wealth.
Make no mistake, it did not matter if you were Malay, Indian, Chinese, Kadazandusun, Dayak or any other ethnic group, as long as you stood in their way, they would persecute you. Ruthlessly and mercilessly.
“I was beaten up to a pulp, but thank God I was rescued, but some people died in custody,” said Anwar, referring to the suspicious death of DAP political aide Teoh Beng Hock.
“The Umno ministers said do not politicise the issue, let the investigations be completed, but who is going to investigate? Our Musa Hassan?”
The Malay leader was referring to the Inspector-General of Police Musa Hassan, who has been implicated in fabricating evidence against him in the 1998 sodomy trial brought against him by ex-premier Mahathir Mohamad.
Anwar was an immensely popular former deputy prime minister. He was poised to succeed Mahathir before he was brought down on corruption and sodomy charges that he has said were politically conspired to prevent him from taking power and launching badly-needed reforms.
Value of money has dropped, corruption has increased
Since the 1998 fallout, which split the Malay community down line, the country has deteriorated. Despite huge accumulation of national wealth due to the high oil prices of recent years, democratic space and living standards have been pinched while the ringgit can only buy a fraction of what it used to.
But corruption and abuse of power has shot up. In fact, it has become so rampant and bare-faced that human life has become cheap in Malaysia.
And this is due largely to the fact that Umno has pampered and kept at its coat-tails federal institutions such as the police, the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission and even the judiciary.
They are now above the law and answerable only to the Umno top leadership. Not the citizens, not even the taxpayers.
Trapped in their own vicious cycle, the Umno-BN government has become so decadent that it no blinks at the string of custodial deaths, reported with increasingly sickening regularity. Beng Hock is just the latest sacrificial lamb.
Even now, Najib is trying to fight fire with fire. His supporters are labelling the push for a Royal Commission of Inquiry into Beng Hock’s death as a challenge against the position of the Malays.
At the same time, he is trying to sell the non-Malays his 1Malaysia unity concept. But despite the slick public relations, more and more Malaysians – including the Malays – are starting to see through the hype and demanding greater accountability.
Former MCA leader Jimmy Chua, who joined PKR over the weekend, was also at the rally. He told the crowd that despite projecting the image that it was championing the Malays, Umno actually cared little about who its partners were as long as they could keep it in power.
“In 1999, Umno had lost the support of the Malays, it was MCA and Gerakan that ensured Umno remained in power,” Chua told the crowd.
SK
23/07/09
At a rally in Sungai Besar where more than 3,000 people came to hear him and other Pakatan leaders speak, Anwar said the top leadership at Umno had grown so corrupt that it no longer cared about the Malays.
It was only interested in using the community to cling to power so that it could continue to rape the country of its wealth.
Make no mistake, it did not matter if you were Malay, Indian, Chinese, Kadazandusun, Dayak or any other ethnic group, as long as you stood in their way, they would persecute you. Ruthlessly and mercilessly.
“I was beaten up to a pulp, but thank God I was rescued, but some people died in custody,” said Anwar, referring to the suspicious death of DAP political aide Teoh Beng Hock.
“The Umno ministers said do not politicise the issue, let the investigations be completed, but who is going to investigate? Our Musa Hassan?”
The Malay leader was referring to the Inspector-General of Police Musa Hassan, who has been implicated in fabricating evidence against him in the 1998 sodomy trial brought against him by ex-premier Mahathir Mohamad.
Anwar was an immensely popular former deputy prime minister. He was poised to succeed Mahathir before he was brought down on corruption and sodomy charges that he has said were politically conspired to prevent him from taking power and launching badly-needed reforms.
Value of money has dropped, corruption has increased
Since the 1998 fallout, which split the Malay community down line, the country has deteriorated. Despite huge accumulation of national wealth due to the high oil prices of recent years, democratic space and living standards have been pinched while the ringgit can only buy a fraction of what it used to.
But corruption and abuse of power has shot up. In fact, it has become so rampant and bare-faced that human life has become cheap in Malaysia.
And this is due largely to the fact that Umno has pampered and kept at its coat-tails federal institutions such as the police, the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission and even the judiciary.
They are now above the law and answerable only to the Umno top leadership. Not the citizens, not even the taxpayers.
Trapped in their own vicious cycle, the Umno-BN government has become so decadent that it no blinks at the string of custodial deaths, reported with increasingly sickening regularity. Beng Hock is just the latest sacrificial lamb.
Even now, Najib is trying to fight fire with fire. His supporters are labelling the push for a Royal Commission of Inquiry into Beng Hock’s death as a challenge against the position of the Malays.
At the same time, he is trying to sell the non-Malays his 1Malaysia unity concept. But despite the slick public relations, more and more Malaysians – including the Malays – are starting to see through the hype and demanding greater accountability.
Former MCA leader Jimmy Chua, who joined PKR over the weekend, was also at the rally. He told the crowd that despite projecting the image that it was championing the Malays, Umno actually cared little about who its partners were as long as they could keep it in power.
“In 1999, Umno had lost the support of the Malays, it was MCA and Gerakan that ensured Umno remained in power,” Chua told the crowd.
SK
23/07/09
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