REMINISCENT OF 1984

Ah, 1984! That was 30 years ago. At that time Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad, the Prime Minister of Malaysia, and his Deputy, Tun Musa Hitam, wanted to clip the wings of the Rulers.

And why did they need to do this (clip the wings of the Rulers)? Well, this was because the Malaysian Parliament can table any laws that it felt it wanted to table but unless and until His Majesty the Agong signs these Bills they could not be passed into law.

You see Malaysia, 30 years ago, was very unique. While most countries had three branches of government, Malaysia had four. Malaysia had the Chief Executive, the Legislature, the Judiciary, and the fourth, which most countries do not have, the Monarchy.

And all these four branches of government shared power to a certain extent.

So that had to change. There was no way the Chief Executive was going to share power with another three branches of government. Power, as Anwar Ibrahim pointed out in 1999, ‘must be concentrated in the hands of the Prime Minister and not shared with others’.

That, Anwar said 15 years ago, was Dr Mahathir’s game plan, to concentrate power in his own hands.

So, as Anwar explained, first Dr Mahathir controlled Parliament. And that was easy. All he needed to do was to decide who became candidates in the general elections.

Hell, he even decided who should become the Deputy Prime Minister when he sent his subtle message to the Umno delegates that he leaves it to the party to decide the number two but he feels he can work with Musa Hitam better than with Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah.

Dr Mahathir believes in democracy and that was why he would not appoint his number two like all the previous Prime Ministers before him. He would leave it to the party to decide, like a true democrat should. But he made sure that Umno realised he was more comfortable with Musa than with Ku Li.

That is what Lee Kuan Yew calls democracy Singapore-style, guided democracy. So Dr Mahathir left it to the party to decide but he guided the party on what to decide.

After Dr Mahathir controlled Parliament he then controlled the Judiciary. And we all remember the Judiciary Crisis (the result of the Umno Team A/Team B crisis) so I really need not go into that story. In fact, the Lord President or Chief Justice, Tun Salleh Abas, even wrote a book on this, May Day for Justice.

Finally we had the Constitutional Crisis, the final blow. And the catalyst to start this crisis was the criminal acts of His Highness the Sultan of Johor.

But then Musa Hitam was from Johor so he found it very difficult to attack the Sultan from his home state. Hence Musa sort of ‘abstained’ from the fight and did not join the attacks on the Rulers. And this did not please Dr Mahathir one bit.

Musa was not showing loyalty to the cause and from thereon the relationship between the Prime Minister and his Deputy was no longer smooth. Finally, Musa Hitam was ‘persuaded’ to resign and was replaced with Tun Ghafar Baba.

And when Ghafar took over he and Anwar Ibrahim launched an attack on the Monarchy and began to expose all sorts of shit regarding the Rulers, some true of course but quite a bit of it fabricated as well; a weaving of fact and fantasy.

And now we are seeing the 1984 history repeat itself.

A couple of days ago, I saw a posting on the Internet asking how does His Highness the Sultan of Selangor have sex. Since he is not married he either masturbates a lot or he has girls/women hidden somewhere whom he bonks on a regular basis.

And now we have the graphics below circulating on the Internet.

I suppose many in Pakatan Rakyat are quite pissed with the Selangor Sultan regarding His Highness’s ruling on the Allah word. So they are applying the 1984 formula to attack the Sultan and embarrass him.

I suppose if it worked 30 years ago back in 1984 it can work again today. But does Pakatan Rakyat really need two battlefronts? With Barisan Nasional on one battlefront and the Monarchy on the other, Pakatan Rakyat may fall into the fatal pit that Napoleon and Hitler did when they, too, started two battlefronts.

I suppose the 3R strategy cannot be complete until you start attacking the Rulers as well. And what better strategy than to attack them personally and expose their lifestyle.