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Sunday, August 24, 2008

What a Nightmare!

Ten years ago, I had a nightmare that this is how the political system works.

If you want to contribute to the country at the decision-making level, you must first join a political party. You must be loyal to the party and you must adhere to ONLY its goals.

You then must learn to compromise all your personal principles to climb up the ladder in the party. It is critical that you focus only on pleasing your few thousand party member’s wishes or their “created wishes” s as opposed to the rest of the population’s needs. At party level, the people do not count. Only party members and more importantly the party leadership’s wishes (which leadership you are ultimately hoping to displace to be replaced by you). Until you displace the party leadership, you must project yourself as its uno numero supporter.

You must not work with or acknowledge the contributions, if any, of other political parties. This is called party disloyalty. If your party is in power, it is called “treachery to the people”. You must exaggerate its faults and if you have to, then trivialize its achievements. This is called political pragmatism and expediency.

You must never, especially publicly, disagree with your party leadership. This called party discipline or party whip.

Then you must learn how to sensationalize, give speeches at the top of your voice, project yourself as an ultra of some sort (approved by your party of course). Topics? Does not matter but it will help if it is something “sensitive”. Being in politics, you will have immunity compared to the ordinary folks. There is honour among thieves, sorry I mean politicians.

Hopefully, by then your party members and especially the leadership at the moment takes notice of you. It is a question of either you are instrumental to their political survival or you are such a pain that it is considered best to have you on their side. This is of course the risky road that the more ambitious ones take.

The less ambitious ones can just tag along and chorus the leadership while bringing along loads of tissue paper to wipe off all the licking. The chorus is always the most exciting one in a choir even if they not the main singer.

You must at all costs have more than sufficient funds to climb the party ladder because the party members will not come to listen to you speak unless you provide them food in a comfortable hotel. Well, even in the outdoors, you will incur lots of expenses. So, middle income and lower income folks, better forget about helping to shape the nation though politics. No, sorry, your capability and fervor without finance is not going to assist you. No! Just stick to your dream of paying off part of your housing loan before you kick the bucket.

Now this part is the most important. Propaganda. Image building. You must learn to create public occasions where you can be seen and heard. You must get people to talk about you, write about you, photograph you. Give awards, receive awards. Whatever.
Keep repeating what you have to say even if it does not make sense to you. Sooner or later, people will believe it especially if some academic discusses it over television or in a seminar. You have to keep spinning. If you ever think you cannot spin anymore, then spin the spin. You will be surprised what sense they make of your nonsense. Then you can pretend that’s what you meant in the first place.

Remember always that there are many innocent, sincere people out there for you to dupe. These ordinary folks are so busy struggling to make ends meet, they have no time to think about what you are saying or doing. Being a leader, they will readily assume you must be right. If they think you are wrong, then they must either be a subversive or a traitor to the nation or they must be from the other party with vested interests. Either way, you as a politician is always right.

It will help if you can organize someone to criticize you but make sure great rebuttals are in store. Get someone from the middle income or lower income or someone facing a middle age crisis but going nowhere to help you on this. They will oblige, They need the money and/or the recognition.

If you can do all this, then you have changed so radically from the first time you entered politics that you will not be able to recognize yourself anymore. This is the stage where you will be anointed as the uno numero by your party. You have succeeded politically.

Then your party will have to outdo all the other parties in the general Election. Have convenient electoral pacts with whoever can help you win. Smear the other side all you can. Praise your side. Yes, including the members of your electoral pact even if you have never seen eye to eye for the past 100 years. Forget truth and honour. This is politics. People love dreams and hopes. Give it to them. Why do you think Hollywood and Bollywood movies are doing so well? Your party must win for your sake, I mean the people’s sake.

If your party wins, you now become uno numero in the country. Now, all you have to be concerned with is how you would like your legacy to be remembered. Yes. You can orchestrate that too. And later, how to dismount the tiger. Anyway, after you are long gone, they will sing songs about you in the interest of the party struggle’s continuity. Believe it or not, they will even have seminars after seminars in your name and speak about your thoughts which you never thought about while you were alive.

THEN I WOKE UP.

Thank God it was just a nightmare. Thank God! That’s not how our political system is. How different our country is. We have self sacrificing politicians. Our leaders are committed to the people. Look at them. By serving the people, they only live on the meager salary they receive. We have informed and responsible citizens. We do not expect our party leadership to provide anything for us. We only want them to govern the nation for the people’s general good. And that’s exactly what they do.

We do not have Opposition parties. We do not have Government-in-waiting Parties. We have Complementary Parties.

Look at our Parliament and you can well see how they debate graciously and passionately in the people’s interest. They stay up late nights to study bills. That is why every time there is a parliamentary sitting, you see all the MPs with bags under their eyes – not enough sleep.

In fact we all bring our own food and drinks when we attend party gatherings. In fact we do that even when we go to other party gatherings in which we are not even members. We even contribute from our salaries towards party activities. We never forget that each of us in our own way want to serve the nation. It does not matter to us who is in power for we are such caring, sharing, religious and loving Malaysians. We put national interest above party interests. We have Asian values. We detest western values.

Our leaders are capable of multi-dimensional thinking. Upright, firm, compassionate, intelligent, totally clean, selfless, transparent, accountable, approachable by anyone, efficient.

We have a great political system that needs no reform. It has worked well for the past 50 years. We did not inherit it from anyone. It is a Malaysian created system. That’s why we have total faith in all politicians.

That is why politicking is our major preoccupation. Thank God we are Malaysians.

And being all these, would God not be on our side? Surely we will be free from God’s wrath?

Thank God….I am a country boy. Well, that’s a song from John Denver who wears Gandhi-like glasses.

12 comments:

Anonymous said...

Brother Jahaberdeen,

Your inspiration of mind and enjoins righteous inspired me. Well, its very valuable message and advise to others especially Rapera.

It will also be very good if all politician who have open heart and mind read your advise and sharing.But I'm afraid most of them are blind due to their heart which has been infected with a serious virus i.e self interest and power struggle.

Hopefully, God will open up their heart with HIS mercy and guidance to actually wake up from their hypocrites world and face the reality as what you have laid down above.

I do pray for our leaders positive movements and please leaders do something for the nation or your "empayar" will come to an end!!!

At this junction it is still not to late to repent.....

Inbumubarak

Anonymous said...

Dear All,

I have quoted para 17-20 from Tun Mahathir blog :-

" 17. But the opposition led by the wily master of spin, Anwar Ibrahim, only made a show of being liberal, of being advocates of freedom of expression, as being above racialism, of being against detendtion without trial and of being all the way with the liberal intellectuals. They have no intention of being all these. But it was good politics and a good way to hoodwink the naive intellectuals and their even more naive followers.

18. The intellectuals and the pretenders had allowed themselves to be led by the nose up the garden path. The hard nosed real politicians, especially of the oppositions are laughing.

19. It is time the so-called intellectuals realise they were being duped by the Master of Spin, the pious Muslim who is also the bosom pal of Paul Wolfowitz, the neo-con Jew, the killer of Muslims, the supporter of Hindraf and of the Chinese schools etc. etc. "

20. But intellectuals will not admit they have made a grave mistake. They see what they want to see. Carry on dreaming. Hold your forum, discuss what you like. You are driving the people further and further apart, pushing them back to their old racialism. You are helping to hold up a regime that is incompetent and thoroughly corrupt. You are helping to destroy this country."


My doubt... at the end of the day Aren't all country "leader" submitted/recruited to/by Illuminati?

But to what extent.....???

Ibnumubarak.

Anonymous said...

Mr Jabar Sir,

Salamun alaikum

Don't know if you recall me...Zahir. Met you some 10 years ago at a discussion group in Johor. I have come several times to Brickfields to meet you and we used to email each other. Somehow, all my emails to you since 4 years ago bounced back.

I am glad you are blogging. You were an inspiration to me as a young man then. I know, you told us there are no teachers except Allah swt. I am now a canadian resident and admittedly do miss home!

You havent changed all these 10 years, only developed! Not that we expected you too. My wife discovered your email by accident and she was thriled (and she is more adept at the quran than me now and I feel like the convert!). would like to get in touch with you. My email is zahir078@yahoo.co.uk. I would love to bring you to Canada. There are many people who would love to hear your views.

Bless you always sir.

zahir

Anonymous said...

Zahir,

Thanks for reminding me that it God who is the Teacher. With so much happening, it is easy to forget that simple truth especially in a world where we have been led to believe that formal educational qualification must equal knowledge and wisdom.

I have emailed you on a more personal level. Wonderful to hear that you and wife are fine.

Anonymous said...

Abang Jahamy,

Assalamualaikum wbt. Saya mula ikuti blog abang sejak diberitahu oleh kawan saya beberapa hari yang lalu.

Sememangnya sistem politik yang diadakan itu harus memenuhi kesejahteraan rakyatnya. Malangnya, kerakusan insan berkepentingan meracuni sistem itu. Benar, sistem politik seharusnya direformasikan dan ini akan memerlukan penglibatan pelbagai lapisan rakyat. Saya khuatir tidak ramai yang akan sambut seruan ini kerana banyak sebab. Ramai yang tidak dapat berfikiran jauh macam abang. Walau apa pun, saya masih ingat pesanan abang dalam satu perbincangan lama dahulu bahawa tugas kita ialah untuk buat apa yang kita mampu secara aman dan sebaik mungkin tanpa sebarang kaedah mungkar. Keputusan ditangan Allah swt.

Saya doakan abang sihat supaya dapat teruskan perjuangan abang. Seperti kata abang kalau dalam seribu orang, seorang sahaja dapat kita mengingati diri nya adalah manusia atau dia mengingati kita, maka kita sudah berjaya.

Harap tidak masalah saya komen dalam bahasa malaysia kerana english saya tidak baik.

Anonymous said...

Wake up lah! No one is going to listen to your idealism. This is the real world man. every man for himself. if you think you are so clever , go into politics. Dont talk. sick of people like you. talk, talk, talk. You thnk one person can change the world ah? duh!

Anonymous said...

I know people like grow_up. They also will not do anything but critisice anyone else doing something. Is it because of frustration and helplessness? I like Rapera blog way of trying to make people think for themselves. I am also fed up with so much poltics controlling our scoiety but no one is stopping to think. What's so wrong about thinking? There are so many real things happening in society and many people dont care. Like how many people know how difficult it is to be a woman with family? I see many working woman struggling to be both mother and worker. Not easy. No we ever see this in the front of the paper? No.

Something is so wrong with our Malaysian culture. We are good individuals but as a group we seem to lack alot of good values. I blame it on our politician's and their wrong model of education. We are never taught to have the culture of thinking for society. We should change like the song. Rapera blog, dont change. please continue this way. It is different from what other people are saying.
thnaks.

jchl said...

The blue pill or the red pill? That is the question....

Anonymous said...

Wan Hashim,

terima kasih diatas komen sdr dan dihargai. Kunjungi lah selalu supaya kita sama-masa belajar diantara satu sama lain.

Penggunaan bahasa malaysia dialu-alukan didalam blog ini kerana rakyat Malaysia sememangnya multi-lingual.

Anonymous said...

Grow_up,

Thanks for dropping by and I hope you do drop by often. You could remind us of alternative views that we may forget. TO comment on your comment: Firstly, I am mindful that those in the grave are much cleverer than me. Secondly, if you doubt that one person can make the change, how do you explain Ghandi, HItler, Albert Einstien, Muhammad, etc. And today in our country, people blame or praise ONE man too - Anwar Ibrahim, Abdullah Badawi.

On the other hand, if you feel strongly that one man cannot change, guide me what is best for the country and I will support you - at least that makes TWO of us.

Peace.

Anonymous said...

jchl,

I am sure many are intrigued ---The blue pill or the red pill? That is the question.... could you elaborate?

Anonymous said...

well i know what the blue one does without elaborating, but the red one i am not too sure?