By Haris Ibrahim,
Be not in any doubt that on the night of 8th March, last year, as the fall of the mighty BN began to unfold as the election results were announced, the move by UMNO to re-take Selangor from DAP, PAS and PKR and thwart the will of the voters, had already begun.
Remember the revelation much later, after the Pakatan Selangor state government had been sworn in, of Khir Toyo and Hassan Ali’ s clandestine meetings in the days immediately after the elections, with a view to negotiating a PAS-UMNO/BN coalition government in Selangor?
If Hassan had been able to swing enough crossovers then, he would be MB of Selangor today.
He couldn’t then, and he still can’t now.
Not that they haven’t tried.
As Selangor State Assembly YB Teng has pointed out, getting 9 Pakatan ADUNs in Selangor to crossover is not as simple as getting the two donkeys and the other Hee-whore in Perak to sell out.
It would cost far, far more and besides, Pakatan, possibly learning a lesson or two in Perak, have been more guarded in Selangor.
Several forces in UMNO are still determined to take Selangor back.
On 9th August, this year, Malaysiakini reported Najib as saying that he wanted Selangor, which he described as the heartbeat of the nation, back in BN’s grip, calling on all the component parties within the coalition to bring about the necessary changes, to win back the state, implying taking back the state in an election.
Yet anyone with any credible source of information from within the BN coalition will tell you that the major component parties are all, without exception, in total disarray.
Gerakan has lost all credibility, MCA is split and MIC has become incresingly irrelevant to the Indian community.
Some speculate that Najib’s intelligentsia had hoped that the release of the Hindraf 5 from Kamunting might, amongst other things, spell the end of Aiyo Aiyo Samy’s allready tottering political career.
Can Najib still confidently count on UMNO’s ‘fixed deposits’ in East Malaysia?
And Najib has to constantly watch his back, with word making its rounds that he is out of favour with he who was the architect of Pak Lah’s premature departure from the seat of power, working in tandem with the current No.2.
And Najib is advocating a reform to make ready to face the next elections?
Zaid’s challenge to Najib to call for snap elections in Perak if the latter really believes that Pakatan Rakyat is floundering in the states that they now govern hits the nail squarely on the head.
Forget snap elections in Perak, though.
Najib doesn’t dare call for a snap general election now.
And yet, Selangor had to be taken back, and now.
It is a rich state; a literal money-churning machine.
Hence Toyo’s RM24 million mansion.
Hence the huge amounts of state asemblymen allocations misappropriated as is emerging from the ongoing Select Committee on Competence, Accountability and Transparency (Selcat) probe.
And, it is rumoured that in the run-up to the last elections, Selangor UMNO, through the late Zakaria Deros, raised a huge amount in campaign funds on the promise of future contracts and projects when BN returned to form the government.
That didn’t happen.
Leaving some very unhappy, very unfriendly people in the state who want their money back, I am told.
More than ever, Selangor had to be taken back.
If MACC’s investigation into the affairs of the Selangor Pakatan ADUNs hadn’t gone awry with the death of Beng Hock, so it seems, MB Khalid and several of his exco members were to be arrested and remanded that Friday to face trumped-up corruption charges.
The circumstances in which Beng Hock died turned the spotlight on MACC, which then had to tread carefully.
A new plan had to be hatched.
Turn to the tried and tested.
History will bear testimony that every time Barisan Nasional and, before that, the Alliance, found itself losing its grip on political power in the country, a bout of madness would coincidentally seize a certain segment of the polity.
Take May, 13, 1969.
We may never know the truth of why this sad episode happened in our nation’s history.
Official accounts will blame it on the overly exuberant celebrations of the opposition who had just emerged from a recently concluded general election, leaving the ruling coalition barely holding on to federal power. This, it seems, was simply too much for the supporters of the ruling UMNO to swallow. Hence, the racial clashes.
Dr. Kua’s book points the finger at elite Malay nationalist leaders contriving to displace Bapa Malaysia and the rule of law, impose emergency rule and effectively return unto themselves what had been lost through the democratic process.
Two seemingly differing accounts of the whys and wherefores of 13th May, 1969 and yet, when viewed closely and in the light of all that we know now, one may begin to see that the two actually describe different forces, albeit on the same side, at work .
The elites that Dr. Kua speaks of set the agenda.
Intermediaries then go to the ground to agitate the masses with the same, old, rhetoric.
Loss of Malay political dominance will see the Malay enslaved in his own land.
Muslims will one day be ruled by the kafir unless they rise to defend their dissipating political dominance.
Immigrants are robbing and abusing the generosity of the indigenous.
The old divide and rule.
The events leading up to Ops Lallang is another case in point.
Najib stirring up the sentiments of the Malays, and Lee Kim Sai supposedly ‘reacting’ thereto.
The script’s the same.
Only the settings, the props and the actors change.
On 4th August, the wannabe MB, Hassan Ali, goes public with his harebrained proposal to ban the sale of alcohol in all Muslim-majority areas in the state of Selangor, immediately pitting the ultra-conservative Muslims in the state against the more liberal of that faith and the non-Muslims.
A controversy, it seemed, was set to explode in Selangor.
3 days later, however, MB Khalid appeared to have nipped the storm in the bud when he announced that there was to be no blanket ban of the sale of alcohol in the state. This, however, set the stage for the ‘Take Beeer” slogans that were to appear at the Permatang Pasir by-elections.
Unbeknownst to most, though, even as this potential controversy was headed off, the foundation for another, more sensational one, had been set the day after Hassan announced his ‘ban alcohol sale’ proposal.
On 5th August, the Selangor state exco approved the proposal to relocate the Sri Maha Mariamman temple, presently situated in section 19, Shah Alam, to section 23, and directed that the proposal be made known to the residents of section 23.
At the dialogue that was sponsored by the state government last Saturday, YB Khalid Samad was at great pains to emphasise that the relocation was, at that stage, only a proposal, and the state government had no intention of moving forward with the same until all interested parties had been heard. This is an important point to note.
Even before the dust from the ‘ban alcohol sale’ announcement could settle, Hassan came up with another salvo.
On 24th August, Hassan now announces that mosque officials will be called upon to arrest Muslims found working in establishments that serve, store or display alcoholic beverages.
The next day UMNO Selangor chief Abdul Shukor Idrus responds to Hassan’s announcement by taunting the Selangor government to arrest Muslims working at the two breweries operating in the state.
Two days later, on 27th August, Hassan responds to UMNO’s taunts to say that the Selangor government will not mobilise mosque officials to arrest Muslims working in breweries but that such actions could be taken in future.
It’s important to note here that all these announcements by Hassan were never sanctioned by the state government.
He was on a frolic of his own.
A frolic that laid the state government open to be painted as being anti-Islam.
The ‘cow head’ protest that took place the next day, 28th August, was replete with banners declaring the state government, MB Khalid and several other named YBs as just that : anti-Islam.
Interestingly, Hassan, who is in charge of Islamic affairs in the state, has not been heard on this issue at all.
Not even a call for calm, or to denounce the vile acts of the protestors.
UMNO, so as squeeze the Pakatan state government into a seemingly inextricable corner, then offers to find an alternative site for the to-be relocated temple.
I think the protest, whilst planned with some detail, was hastily put together.
Had the organisers more time, the individuals involved, and who have today been slapped with charges in court, would not themselves have featured in the protest that day, but would have left it all to hired hands with no ostensible links whatsoever to UMNO so as not to leave such a pointed trail as would prove an embarrassment to Najib and leave his 1Malaysia looking patently hollow.
Or was that also the intended effect?
Weaken the Najib administration whilst laying the ground to contrive Selangor as being on the brink of racial chaos?
Perhaps by those unhappy with measures announced by the present administration which appeared to incline towards meritocracy and do away with reservations and quotas long accustomed to by the few privileged in UMNO?
There can be little doubt that the protest was intended to injure the feelings of the Hindus, and yet, on the face of it, the grouse of the protestors was with the state government.
This, in my view, was the first giveaway that the protest had a hidden agenda, far removed from the matter of the relocation of the temple.
The opportunity to observe the same protestors of that ‘cow head’ demo at the dialogue, for me, proved to be most valuable.
Watching Azmir ( the songkok’d one ) and his sidekicks at the back of the hall laughing amongst themselves after each round of loud abuse hurled at the YBs in front left me convinced that their displayed anger, allegedly for the state government’s lack of sensitivity towards the feelings of the Muslim community in section 23, was contrived and not real.
So why this contrivance, and was the end-goal achieved?
I think it was a monumental disaster, save and except if it was also intended to embarass the Najib administration, which it certainly did.
Firstly, the Hindus did not react in the manner that the organisers must have hoped for.
Gandhi would have been proud of my Hindu brothers and sisters.
I am.
Secondly, they probably overlooked that even as the mainstream media might not carry footage of the disgusting mistreatment of the head of a dead cow, the internet has carried those scenes far and wide, and has largely been roundly condemned by a large segment of the Malay community.
They were not prepared for this.
Was contriving a state of affairs in Selangor to then allow for federal intervention through emergency provisions the gameplan?
To allow for such a state of affairs to spill into neighbouring states so as to enable the ”emergency’ net to be cast nationwide?
Thereby deferring general elections ad infinitum, at least until a redelineation exercise creates another 30 or so safe seats?
If so, was Najib in the driving seat and, if not, what gives?
In 1977, emergency powers were used to displace PAS rule in Kelantan. A brief account of the events leading up to this may be viewed HERE.
YB Lim Kit Siang’s speech, when the emergency bill for Kelantan was debated in Parliament, can be read in full HERE.
You draw your own conclusions.
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