Time To Say Goodbye - Con Te Partiro

Gerakan acting chief Koh Tsu Koon has offered to resign, accepting responsibility for his party’s disastrous outing in Saturday’s general elections. Ong Ka Ting has announced he will not accept a Cabinet position since he too accepts responsibility as MCA president for the party terrible defeat in the 25 out of the 40 parliamentary seats it contested.

Pak Lah, however, has stated he is not going to resign despite the debacle.
And, Samy Vellu has stated he will work even more vigorously than ever to ‘rebuild’ his party, the MIC.

Rightly or wrongly, the first two men have been perceived as gentlemen. Repentant gentlemen who accept the rebuke they received from the Rakyat.

The latter two?

In order to answer this question, one must first explore the necessity and viability for Pak Lah to resign as Umno president. What’s the mood in the country? Is it ready to accept second-in-command Najib Tun Razak in the event of Pak Lah stepping down?

One suspects not. Not while the Altantuya murder case is meandering somewhere in the ether, tied up in the knots of legal technicality. The Malaysian of 2008 isn’t a dithering idiot with Attention Deficit Disorder. He remembers Altantuya the Mongolian beauty is murdered by explosives, blown to smithereens by military-issue C4. He remembers testimony that cops were seen bundling the woman away. He remembers Altantuya is Abdul Razak Baginda’s self-confessed former mistress. He remembers Abdul Razak Baginda’s ‘kam-ching’ relationship with Najib as confidante and head of his political think-tank. He knows the case is going into technicalities which he does not understand but is patiently waiting to see whether justice will be done or whether some shady lawyerlike character will pick up his phone and ‘correct, correct, correct’ the whole sordid affair into oblivion.

So Pak Lah cannot step down. Not yet. Not till there is a viable candidate to take over. And by viable, one must absolutely discount then Khairy Jamaluddin, Pak Lah’s son-in-law. Never in the history of general elections has there been such an outpouring of hatred and anger towards this one chap. Young, cocky, ambitious to the hilt. Hundreds of blogs have dedicated airspace to vilifying him. And it didn’t help that in these elections, he went up against a popular Parti Keadilan Rakyat man Chegubard, defeating the man by 5,000 votes under extremely shady circumstances. (Initial report said Badrul Hisham Shahani won by 140-odd votes, the fight went into a recount, and then KJ suddenly emerged victor with a decent majority.)

Which leads us to Hishamuddin Hussein Onn. This is one man whose name actually encompasses that of three men: his, his father’s and his grandfather’s. Blue blood to the core as far as Malaysian politics go. Too bad he went around waving a keris and annoying the hell out of millions of Chinese and Indians. But then again, if we forgave Anwar Ibrahim his rabid rantings against the Chinese, who are we to withhold a pardon for Hishamuddin Hussein Onn?

So Pak Lah gets to stay. For now.

Samy, Samy, Samy. Ayoyo. Sometimes one feels really sorry for him. On his 72nd birthday, he gets booted out of Sungai Siput by Dr D. Jeyakumar Devaraj of PKR.
Not only did he lose, all but three members of his platoon was wiped out. Deputy and successor-in the-wing G. Palanivel also got chucked into the burning bier like an unwilling sati widow. What a way to go.

And now Samy says he will stay to ‘rebuild’ the MIC.

One really questions the logic of this reasoning.

Has no one told Samy yet why the MIC lost?

It lost because of Samy. Samy is the cancer. Not the cure. If he needs evidence of that, just go read some of the posters and banners plastered all over town by the Indians. And now Samy wants to play doctor and ‘heal’ the MIC. Someone seriously needs to let him know that honorary doctorates from Annamalai University does not qualify one to perform heart-and-brain surgery.