Sudah tiba masanya Umno dan Barisan Nasional (BN) memilih antara Datuk Seri Najib Razak dan Putrajaya, kata wartawan veteran, yang kini mengkritik kepimpinan Perdana Menteri itu kerana lebih mementingkan 'diplomasi golf' berbanding rakyat sendiri yang ditimpa bencana banjir.
Datuk A Kadir Jasin berkata, perubahan perlu berlaku atau sedia menghadapi risiko melihat kerajaan pemerintah yang "tunduk kepada zaman silam".
"Seperti kerajaan Romania yang terpaksa memilih antara Caesar dengan Rom, tiba masanya Umno dan BN perlu memilih antara Najib dengan Putrajaya," tulisnya dalam blognya hari ini.
Bekas Ketua Pengarang New Straits Times itu berkata, beliau percaya gelombang perubahan itu semakin membesar seperti kata pepatah "sekali air bah, sekali pantai berubah".
"Umno perlu berbuat sesuatu mengenai presidennya dan perdana menteri jika tidak mahu situasi menjadi lebih buruk. Seperti tebing pasir, ia boleh hanyut begitu sahaja semasa pilihan raya umum (PRU) akan datang.
"Banjir besar mungkin titik perubahan yang kita harapkan, ia mungkin tanda permulaan bagi pengakhiran kepimpinan yang sederhana. Pepatah Melayu lama tentang 'banjir' dan 'pasir' melambangkan makna yang sangat dekat dengan Najib," katanya.
Katanya, kecuali Umno dan BN hilang semua deria sensitif dan tanggungjawab, mereka sepatutnya tahu masa depan tidak lagi menjanjikan sesuatu yang baik.
"Mereka boleh berpura-pura dan meneruskan penafian, tetapi rekod kebelakangan tahun ini menunjukkan prestasi mereka dan janji yang ditaburkan kepada rakyat tidak ditunaikan.
"Maaf saya terpaksa bercakap. Umno dan BN boleh kekalkan PM dan berpura-pura semuanya baik tetapi mereka mesti terima fakta, ada risiko mereka bakal ditendang keluar semasa PRU akan datang," katanya sambil menambah hasrat rakyat yang mahukan perubahan tidak boleh diambil ringan.
Najib baru-baru ini dikecam selepas gambarnya bermain golf dengan Presiden Amerika Syarikat, Barack Obama di Hawaii menjadi viral ketika rakyat pantai timur menderita akibat banjir.
Beliau kemudian memendekkan percutiannya dan pulang semula ke Malaysia dan mengambil alih tanggungjawab operasi menyelamat banjir.
"Takkan 'diplomasi golf' tak boleh tunggu? Adakah Obama marah jika Najib beritahu beliau tidak boleh datang kerana negaranya sedang menderita banjir besar?" soal Kadir.
Katanya, peruntukan RM500 juta yang diumumkan Najib selain mempercepatkan pemberian Bantuan Rakyat 1Malaysia (BR1M) mungkin dapat meringankan beban rakyat luar bandar tetapi masih gagal meredakan kritikan yang dilemparkan terhadapnya.
Beliau turut menyifatkan seruan Najib meminta semua menteri membatalkan percutian sebagai melucukan, kerana ia membuktikan Kabinet lebih mementingkan percutian mereka berbanding kebajikan rakyat.
"Jelas PM menerima nasihat yang lemah daripada pakar perang sarafnya. Arahannya supaya menteri membatalkan percutian itu tidak sepatutnya dibuat secara terbuka.
"Bunyinya seperti bapa borek anak rintik," katanya.
Mengulas gabungan Pakatan Rakyat, Kadir berkata jika mereka boleh menilai perbezaan, berhenti membuka pekung di dada kepada umum dan tidak bersikap ego, mereka ada peluang cerah mendapat sokongan rakyat dalam pilihan raya akan datang.
"Dalam bahasa mudahnya, PR perlu membetulkan dirinya sendiri dan berharap tidak ada perubahan positif dalam kepimpinan kerajaan dan BN," katanya.
Katanya, zaman kepimpinan yang kuat seperti bapa Najib, Tun Abdul Razak Hussein dan Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad sudah berlalu buat Umno.
Jelasnya, survival pemerintahan parti Melayu bergantung kepada kepimpinan secara kolektif, namun Najib gagal berbuat demikian kerana sejak dari awal beliau menggambarkan dirinya sebagai presiden dan bukannya perdana menteri.
"Beliau membuat perkara yang tidak mendapat pandangan parti dan khidmat awam. Sebaliknya beliau dikelilingi oleh jawatankuasa, penasihat, perunding, dan pegawai khas yang kebanyakannya bukan kakitangan awam tetapi yang mempunyai akses kepada kerahsiaan negeri seperti cara seorang presiden," katanya. – tmi
Banjir is the Watershed for Change...
Debater Ismail Muda, commenting in the previous post, had the following to say – “Dari sudut politik, kita amat berharap akan muncul pemimpin baru yg lebih berwawasan berkaliber dan penuh tanggongjwab membetulkan segala kepesongan.”
Translated, it says, from the political angle, we are very hopeful that a new leader with calibre, vision and sense of responsibility will emerge to put right all the wrong.
I am afraid his statement typifies the dissatisfaction of many Malaysians with the leadership of Prime Minister, Mohd Najib Abdul Razak and his merry men and women - not all but many.
The “banjir besar” could have been the ultimate opportunity for them to rise to the challenge and prove to the people far and wide that they are concerned and capable.
Instead the Prime Minister himself had chosen to put his so-called “golf diplomacy” with US President Barrack Obama ahead of the flood victims and played hide and seek with the rakyat on the whereabouts of the government jet he used to travel to Hawaii and also the whereabouts of his wife, Rosmah Mansor.
On the positive side, despite the extent of the floods the lost of lives had been minimal. More people died in a New Year stampede in China! Still the lost of properties, sources of income and economic opportunities are significant and will take time to recover.
The Malays have a saying that “sekali air bah, sekali pasir berubah.” It means, each time it floods the sandbank would move.
If that saying holds true, I believe the wave of change will only get stronger. Umno has to do something about its President and Prime Minister if it wants to stop the situation from getting worse. Like the sandbank, it could be swept away the next general elections.
The big floods may be the watershed that we are hoping for. They may spell the beginning of the end of a mediocre leadership. That old Malay wisdom about the banjir and the pasir could very well have a literal meaning for Mohd Najib.
The Beginning of the End?
It is a watershed and an ominous one when the rakyat, through the blogs, the independent news portal and the social media outlets, discovered that the PM was golfing in Hawaii while a quarter million people were flooded out of their homes, they asked, does the PM care?
No amount of explanations and attempts to gloss over the Hawaiian misstep by his propaganda machines will restore the Prime Minister’s image as a caring leader. His “rakyat didahulukan” (people first) slogan is a sham.
His RM500-million allocation and the speeding up of 1Malaysia People Assistance (BR1M) may help to mend fences with the rural poor but is unlikely to appease his critics and detractors.
His psychological warfare onslaught is farcical. For instance, in calling for his ministers, who were also holidaying abroad, to come home, the Prime Minister was proving the social media right that some members of his cabinet were more concerned with their holidays than the well being of the people who elected them.
In seeking to placate the people, the PM is clearly being poorly advised his psychological warfare specialists, of whom we know there are many. The instruction to his holidaying ministers to come home should not have been made public. It makes it to sounds like “bapa borek anak rintik” – like father like son.
For Umno and the Barisan Nasional, a change has to happen. If it does not happen, the situation can only get worse and the grand old coalition may finally succumb to old age.
Like the Romans who had to choose between Caesar and Rome, the time has come for Umno and BN to choose between Mohd Najib and Putrajaya.
The Buck Stops with the PM
NO matter how we look at the handling of the big floods in particular and the administration of the country in general, we have to be very clear that the buck stops with the Prime Minister.
We cannot hope to have a motivated, committed and transparent civil service, the police, the military and, above all, the populace if the man at the top does not display the same motivation, commitment and transparency.
Can the “golf diplomacy” not wait? Would Obama be fuming mad if Mohd Najib told him that he could not come because his country is suffering big floods?
How many more disasters and tragedies do we need before we dare judge our government, our leaders and our Prime Minister and say, enough is enough?
Just ask ourselves do we still believe in “Malaysia Boleh”? Does people first, performance now slogan has any meaning?
By the look of things, the future does not hold great promise for the rakyat jelata if this situation continues. And unless Umno and the BN have lost all sensibilities and bearings, they would by now know that the future does not hold a great promise for them either.
They can pretend and continue to be in a state of denial, but the record of the last few years does not speak well of their performance and their endearment with the rakyat.
The Heavy Price of Denial
I am sorry to have to say this. Umno and BN can keep the PM and pretend that everything in fine, but they must accept the fact that the risk of them being chucked out at the next GE is immense.
The Pakatan Rakyat parties do not have to do much. They just need to keep their internal differences in check and stop washing dirty linen in public. If they stop quarrelling about ideologies and stop being egotistical maniacs, they stand a good chance of keeping their 52% popular votes and probably get more in the coming polls.
In simple language, all that the PR has to do is keep its nose clean and hope that no positive changes happen in the leadership of the BN and the government.
Do not underestimate the voters’ desire for change. The tumbling support for the BN since the 2008 GE suggests that this trend is gaining momentum.
BN should realise that it has not only lost the popular votes but also the battle of words. It propaganda machines have lost the war with the social media.
Also, the PR has many more younger and smarter leaders than the ageing BN parties. Can we name more future Umno/BN leaders other than Youth Minister Khairy Jamaluddin and Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department Wee Ka Siong?
Do not forget that the young people who are joining the rank electorates are the prime movers of social media and the BN is a poor second in the use of this new communication tool.
For Umno, do not forget that the most numbers of unregistered voters are Malays and Umno is trailing the DAP in enticing young people to register as voters.
The era of strong leaders like (Tun) Dr Mahathir Mohamad and late (Tun) Abdul Razak Hussein is over for Umno. The survival of the party, for now, appears to rest on collective leadership, which Mohd Najib has failed to put together.
This is because, from the start, he fashioned himself as a president not a prime minister. He does things not in consultation with the party and the civil service.
Instead he surrounds himself with presidential-type councils, committees, advisors, consultants and special officers many of whom are not government servants but having access to confidential materials and state secrets.
And may be Mohd Najib’s earliest mentor (at Petronas), the Gua Musang MP Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah, is entirely correct, when he said Malaysia may be heading into a new year but we have deviated from the path of progress, and instead has been set back several decades.
In his New Year message, the former Finance Minister said, 2014 had been a “horrible year” but the future does not look bright particularly because of worsening racial and religious politics. - A.Kadir Jasin
Wira tak didendang bencana banjir...
Nama mereka tidak mendapat perhatian serta liputan meluas media cetak dan elektronik di negara ini, yang hanya tertumpu kepada mereka yang berpengaruh. Maka, ramai yang tidak sedar akan sumbangan dan pengorbanan mereka.
Mereka ini adalah wira tak didendangkan. Mereka muncul di mana-mana sahaja lokasi yang dilanda banjir, tanpa apa-apa permintaan.
Kelibat mereka muncul di saat masyarakat mengharapkan bantuan orang ramai, ditambah dengan kekangan seperti kekurangan sukarelawan untuk mengangkat dan memunggah barangan, atau tiadanya wang untuk membeli keperluan asas.
Mereka langsung tidak terfikir untuk mendapat nama, jauh sekali inginkan publisiti meluas daripada jurugambar media arus perdana, tak terfikir untuk menjadi calon pilihan raya, tak terfikir untuk menjadi ahli jawatankuasa penting kawasan perumahan.
Namun, keikhlasan mereka ini mendapat pujian pengguna media sosial seperti Facebook, yang sama sekali tidak menyangka masih ada anak-anak muda ringan tulang untuk menyantuni masyarakat.
Salah seorang sukarelawan, Nadia Rahmat dari Shah Alam menulis komen di Facebook 29 Disember lalu.
Secara peribadi tulisan beliau menyentuh. "Bagaimana 2-3 hari ini saya rasakan semangat 1 Malaysia itu tinggi. Ini rakan FB saya Jimmy Wee. Ya, beliau seorang Cina dan berjambang! Semalam adalah kali pertama kami bertemu setelah beliau bertanyakan tempat dimana saya membantu untuk barangan mangsa-mangsa banjir.
"Tempat pengumpulan yang paling hampir di rumah saya adalah Kompleks Darul Thibbun Nabawi (dalam jalan yang sama). Beliau datang dari KL! Walaupun beliau tahu itu tempat tahfiz dimana kawasan perumahan sini adalah majoriti Melayu Islam, beliau tidak kekok, malah sangat bersemangat untuk membantu. Sungguh terharu melihat kesungguhan beliau.
Saya sangkakan semalam beliau hanya dari pagi hingga ke petang, rupanya beliau membantu sehingga tengah malam semalam! Dan hari ini, beliau kembali lagi bersama sebuah kontena (hasil pencarian bersama rakan-rakan beliau)! Bro Jimmy, you are THE REAL SANTA! Malaysian unite, 1Malaysia."
Pada hari yang sama, seorang lagi pengguna Facebook, Norhayati Berahim yang menulis, "Saya nak cerita mengenai anak muda ini. Remaja India berusia 18 tahun. Namanya Sughes. Sedang membuat persediaan untuk terbang ke US sambung belajar.
Saya kenal dia sebab anak murid cikgu Yasmin adik saya. Jadi kami selalu jumpa. Dia datang ke rumah dan ke pejabat saya. Dia sudah macam anak kepada Yasmin, saya dan Liza juga. Bila Yasmin beritahu mahu ke Kelantan dia terus mahu ikut. Katanya, dia boleh tolong orang dan dia pandai berenang.
"Jadi Yasmin bawa ke pejabat saya untuk bantu buat selimut. Seronok dia walau kata dia, 100 helai macam buat sejuta. Ha ha.. Di tangan dia ada RM700 dari hasil dia mengajar tuisyen.
Berlari lari anak muda ini ke kedai, beli air, beli makanan semalam dan sudah dihantar ke Firefly pada hari yang sama untuk bantuan mangsa banjir. Bila Yasmin tanya, mana dia nak cari duit lagi, apabila RM700 itu habis.
Kata dia duit bila-bila masa boleh cari, habis mangsa banjir tu nak cari makan di mana? Ini satu cerita kecil dari insan yang saya kenal. Mungkin banyak cerita lain mengenai anak muda yang baik hati. Cuma hero-hero kecil ini jarang kita dendangkan. #Sughes? jangan marah, tulis cerita you ha ha…”
Ini hanyalah dua daripada banyak lagi cerita tentang wira-wira tak didendang, yang kini sedang berlegar di Facebook ketika banjir masih lagi melanda. Pengajaran untuk kita renungkan di saat melangkah ke tahun 2015. - Ahmad Fadzly Esa,theantdaily
cheers.
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