General election: Here they go again, folks By Thor Kah Hoong

Zahid Ponogro

Malaysiakini : COMMENT | It’s let us choose a new prime minister time… again.

Since the last general election four-and-a-half years ago, we’ve had three prime ministers, none of whom won favour with the large segments of society. The declining years for the length of their tenure clearly indicate a fractured instability of the besieged position.

The first, Dr Mahathir Mohamad, with his ways known only to him, was around for one year and 291 days. Muhyiddin Yassin hopped into the hot seat, and then hoppers left him with the dubious distinction of the shortest serving prime minister – one year and 169 days.

Krabian : He knows the Ghost of Yayasan Akalbudi is knocking on his door. He needs to be desperate, he needs to be stupid.

apanama is back : Thor Kah Hoong, thank you for that word schadenfreude which has its equivalent in English, epicaricacy. It had been quite long I never come across that word. In fact, that one particular word explained a lot about our country and its citizen. When we talk about rejoicing at, taking fun in, or getting pleasure from the misfortune of others,

UMNO Baru is well known in doing so and it is well documented. This party had taken Malaysians for the ride, still taking Malaysians for the ride and of course if it win, will take Malaysians for the ride. It is a kind of pleasure for the party with their ‘ketuanan’ trademark which was nourishes over the decade with Malay extremism and religion bigotry.

The foundation was laid way back in later 1960s, precisely in 1969 by none than other, Najib’s father. He was assisted by none then other, the menace and nuisance Mahathir. The nourishment begins with education. Yes, you need to nourish and grow it since childhood so that we have a strong and thick ‘ketuanan’ in 50 years. Thus, here we are.

Welcome to land of ‘Ketuanan Melayu’. Why am I writing this is because we can’t choose a Prime Minister directly as what American could do? We could blame the voters because they kept of voting BN and its predecessor Alliance. However, I believe this is WRONG. What the voters could do if you design a system in such way that they could only vote the party, not the individual.

I will always take side with my fellow Malaysians. Malaysians voters are not wrong in choosing BN over the years because they do have much choice to navigate. This system of voting the party was further bastardised by gerrymandering and malapportionment. Again, here we are. Therefore, choosing a Prime Minister is a way forward for Malaysian voters. We should have a few public debates with two of three candidates for PM post prior to voting as what they undertake in US.

Again, are we ready to change the system radically and drastically? No. Because the ‘ketuanan’ will not allow it because they just know how to deny and make police reports. They do not know how to debate and argue rationally and sensibly. This GE15 will be same as others. This is reason why UMNO Baru is confident of dissolving the 14th Parliament. But we need to teach them a lesson even within this limited system.

In fact, the system of voting a party makes us difficult to vote because our mandate could be betrayed due to the politicians who are part of a party since politicians here are not responsible. It is not same as US President, who is answerable to US citizen. We need vote UMNO baru out even with low voters’ turnover. The system does not give us much choice.

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