Category: Politic

Of Labu Sayong and Sabu’s Ayoyo

The day was going along well. I had a few glasses of plain water from our trusty labu sayong. It kept the water cool and clean. I much prefer that rather than Coway or Cukoo. It has that signature taste you can’t get anywhere else. So to get he best of both world, I have the Coway feeding the water to the labu sayong and I’d drink it off of that. Although nowadays I’ve been having a bit of a problem, ants. I’d find ants in and around the cap edges. I guess they love that signature taste as well. If this keeps up, I’ll probably skip the labu sayong and drink from Coway filters directly.

Typcal Labu Sayong on the table. The water inside is cool and have this distinct taste I like.

After the drink, I got ready for office and head off. The traffic to the office was super smooth. The day was A-OK and thinking that Raya is just a day away, it’s looking like an oh-so-happy day ahead.

It went south pretty quickly after that, the few WhatsApp groups I am a member of suddenly starts giving out multiple notifications. I was thinking something bad must have happened, probably on the same level as the recent shooting in Christchurch.

Scrolling through the endless chat, I realised it’s something far worse than that. It’s what I’ve been fearing all this while, our Defence Minister, Mohamad Sabu or his rather his street name, Mat Sabu, speaking at an international forum. I’ve always thought he’s more suitable to be taking care of a more local issues than international ones. Probably because he’s so close to the ground and can really feel what the public is feeling. But alas, what I’ve feared have happened, so let me put it here so we can unpack it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iz9pBXGc4-I

Let’s get the elephant in the room out of the way first. It’s his English. Now we all know English is our second language. We can’t write or speak it as fluent as our mother tongue. Going through my articles, you can see thousands of grammatical errors, wrong choice of words and whatnot. Having said that, his advisers or his aides, if they really are his advisers that is, should’ve advised him to just speak in plain Bahasa Malayu and use a translator instead. There’s no shame in that. We see countless great world leaders do it. The gender mistakes, the helter skelter English, and the humiliation can be altogether avoided. In fact, he can be seen as a proud Malaysian who insisted to use Bahasa Malaysia as it’s our national language.

I find it odd that his aides and advisers didn’t insist that he speaks in Bahasa. His forte isn’t speaking to such crowds at the IISS Asia Security Summit Shangri-La dialog. He’s a local man who commands a very good oratory skill speaking to the common folks, not to foreigners. The foreigners can’t understand his rather peculiar choice of words that the local folks finds captivating. The fader and mader, soft way and hard way, saluting him/her, these are words and phrases only locals can connect. If any of the dearest Mat Sabu advisers or aides are reading this. You guys failed miserably on this. You guys better take a good look at these turn of events, realise your mistakes and learn from it. And if you are reading this Bro Rafizal, it’s because I love you as a friend, him as a person and wants PH to succeed that I write this up.

Mohamad Sabu and his aides. looks like a lovely group of people.

Now that the elephant in the room is out of the way, let’s unpack some of the things he said. First off he sent his utmost regards to the Prime Minister of New Zealand. The choice of words again was rather peculiar but we’ve gone through that already. What really ticks me off was his comment that we share our border with China. That’s a factual error. He’s either jet lagged or just plain confused with his facts.

40th Prime Minister of New Zealand. She the world’s youngest female head of government having taken office at the age of 37.

Prior to that, he mentioned the kidnappings in and around Sabah waters. Paraphrasing, “We reduced the kidnappings as we works closely with Indonesia and Thailand”. Again, it could be the jet lag or it could be that he just couldn’t wrap his head around it. Why Thailand when the topic is Abu Sayyaf and the Mindanao province? Probably the topic he’s covering that day is too hard for his to study by himself. He did say that he’s not a university graduate and in fact, he’s a dropout. I’m not one who dis folks without a university degree. Some of the greatest minds are university drop out. In my line of work, we thrive with folks who never set foot in a university. But they are all expert in their field, and my dear Mat Sabu, you just doesn’t look and act like one.

You can’t take it too easy. You can’t just pretend to do it. You really have to do it proper. We had dozens of pretenders back in the day under BN. We also had Ali Baba who only knows how to swindle money back in the day. We had celebrities who only want to be famous back in the day. You have to do your homework, you have to burn the midnight oil and get it up to snuff, you have to get your people to read up and tell you how it’s going that day. People that can do the job, not just some guy who don’t even know where Thailand’s border is. You just have to buck the hell up and own this shit.

On the China bigger ships, it doesn’t matter if China, US, Russia or the damn aliens from Planet Zargon69 have bigger ships, bigger planes or bigger cojones. What matters is that we have the biggest, baddest, meanest muthatrucking soldiers, navy, paskal and etc. Just say that lah at least, make our lads land ladies in the force feels proud la sikit. If Mat Sabu can’t even realise that, he surely isn’t assisted by his aides and advisers.

Clearly his aides and advisers are not up to the standard that he requires. We have seen so many leaders fell because he surrounds himself with people who only serve to make him feels good rather than to make him proper good.

Finally, if he can’t wrap his head around the topics, if he can’t pick and choose aides and advisers that really works for him, if he can’t detect that his aides are just plain useless, it’s his damn fault. The buck stops with him. It’s what leaders are made of, buck that stops on their table. He needs to own the damn decision and be ultimately responsible for the screw up his aides and advisers did as his own screw ups.

33rd US President harry S. Truman kept a sign with that phrase on his desk in the Oval Office.

If he and the advisers are still on their high horses and ignore what the public think of them, then face the downfall very very soon. He might face the same fate as my labu sayong, just because of the ants feeding off the signature taste of the water, I’d throw the whole thing out. So please Mat Sabu, don’t go ayoyo again on us.

Thanks and peace be unto all.

Being Critical, Being Objective and Calling a Spade A Spade

I’m been busy the last few weeks, only managed to catch up on news the last few days.

This one catches my interest. I have long since wanted to write on this topic. The news was on our Education Minister, Maszlee Malik. There are several articles on this (See HERE, HERE, for video see HERE) and he said the following:

“Matriculation is just a road to university, just like a diploma, STPM and so on. But the matriculation programme gives the chance for the poor to advance their studies at the pre-university level.

“If we want to change, if we say in ‘Malaysia Baru’ there is no need for a quota system and so on, then we must also make sure job opportunities are not denied to bumiputera just because they don’t know Mandarin,” he said to a round of applause. 

“We should not look at such issues in isolation – we harp on (the quota system in) matriculation without considering that people are being denied jobs because they don’t know Mandarin, for instance. 

“If we can make do without all that, if we can give equal and business opportunities, then we can talk about being fair to all.”

Education Minister Maszlee Malik with students of SJK (T) Sungai Ara in Penang. (Photo: Bernama)

These two have nothing in common. First of all, matriculation program is a government program. Together with it comes the quota policy.

How can a quota policy by the government be linked to what the ignorance private sector (the ignorant and possibly racist employer) do? Is this particular government policy a result of what the ignorant private sector is doing? It’s like, the government decided to raise the interest rate due the the increased number of blue-coloured car on the road. These two have nothing in common.

Maszlee needs to be more objectives. Don’t mix being objective and being emotional about the situation. He was right in the beginning to state the reason why matriculation program was setup. It’s due to the imbalance in university enrolment of bumi and non-bumi students in science scream courses. He should just stop there and it’s enough to both get the non-bumi to understand and the bumi to give him a round of applause.

Secondly, he shouldn’t be doing the immature tit-for-tat move. Those are kids stuff. Is he the type of person who can’t think and only know how to react impulsively. You racist? Ok lah, I pun racist lah. You pukul eh? Ok, I pun pukul la. You kick me? Ok then I kick you la. You stab me? Ok then I stab you back lah.

These are kids stuff. People who can’t think objectively will react emotionally. We can’t have people who can’t use their head properly be our ministers. We had enough of that back in the days.

If we really want to have a New Malaysia or Malaysia Baru, we should abolish the policy favouring bumi versus non-bumi and have a new policy that favours the less able or the B40 instead.

If we really think about it, who are the B40? What is the racial distribution of B40? The answer will be the same, the majority will be the Bumis. Huge majority will be the Bumis. Don’t believe me? Check the statistics for yourselves. Let me share some, HERE and HERE. You can get more, just google and read them up.

A diagram showing breakdown of the B40, M40 and T20. Taken from http://www.dosm.gov.my

We all know which race is the poorest, we all know who are the farmers, fishermen, low level government servants, low level policemen/women, low level army/navy/airforce officers. In case you don’t know, a good 80-90 percent of them are Bumi. So it goes without saying that the policy based on income level benefits the Malays and Bumi the most. If together with the Bumis we have 10-20 percent non-Bumis, it’s all good for unity right? All of our less able Malaysian get taken care off. ALL of them, ALL of the less able be it Malay or otherwise, ALL of them Malaysian . That’s good. That’s the ideal situation. It can’t get any better than this.

Here’s another reason why we shouldn’t have a race-based education policy, take the example of MARA scholarship, or MRSM or Sekolah Berasrama Penuh (SBP) enrolment. Since the BN days, these are places reserved for majority of the Bumi. The problem is, not many of the enrolments are from B40 families. It became the places reserved for the Malay elites. These people are probably already in the higher M40 and T20 and yet still get a place in the above places. It’s been abused to no end.

The famous MCKK. One of the many Sekolah Berasrama Penuh.

Nobody stopped them because it’s not against the policy. The policy is for the Malays and Bumi right? They are Malays and Bumis, so nothing is wrong right? Wrong!

We have heard so many stories of the rich Malay elites getting MARA scholarship and getting into SBP/MRSM. It’s disheartening that nowadays we still see only 70% of MRSM enrolments and 50% of SBP enrolments are from B40 group (See HERE). We should either have more from B40 or use the surplus budget to spend on other things for B40. Not spend for non B40 or those Malay elites who can afford all manner of things already.

Now if we do it based on income levels, the Malay elites can no longer enrol in the above program. So we will end up with more budget per students or we can include more from the less able or less stellar result to be enrolled. Give them special care to better educate them and we will end up with more bright people in the country. So, let’s do away with race based education policy. Let’s do it based on income level. Let’s start to do the good things and good things will come to us. It’s what Allah have said in the Quran.

If we spend our wealth in the way of Allah, we will get more and more. Spending for the wrong Malays, who isn’t supposed to be there in the first place isn’t called spending in the Way of Allah.

We need to spend the money wisely, if it’s for the poor or B40 groups then let’s do it as such and Allah will give us more to spend.

We need to always be objective, even more so as leaders. So Maszlee as the Minister of Education has to be objective in this part. As much as I’m a supporter of PH, I need and I want to be critical. When you love something, you always want the best for it. So you tend to be critical of it. I believe Maszlee should be more objective and not make that stupid comparison. He’s wrong to make that comparison and unbecoming of a Minister. So, I am calling a spade, a spade. Nothing more, nothing less.

Peace be unto all.

Of Nangoi and Prince, can we tell the difference?

This blog have opined once or twice before of The Unprincely Prince. I have made it known among my circle of friends that I’m not fond of royalties who have lost the true meaning of being a royalty, even with so many bedtime stories, fairytales and legendary tales telling us how a good King, Liege, Sultan best play his or her role. If there’s one thing to learn from History, it’s that we need to learn from them, especially the mistakes we did. More on this history lesson later.

Recently, The Unprincely Prince was again in the news, and it’s all for the wrong reason of course. There was a video clip of a football fan asking him to change Mora (JDT football coach), The Unprincely Prince answered, “Better to change the PM rather than Mora”.

As this blog shared previously, if a prince decides to step down from his throne and no longer behaves like a prince, be prepared to be clobbered. History have shown again and again what will happen to an Unprincely Prince, so as fairytales and bedtime stories. The world as a whole have somehow slowly but surely stopped believing that a King’s blood and a peasant’s blood is not the same. So whenever someone who believes his blood is so much more special than the rest of the people, not behaving the way he’s supposed to behave, then he is no longer special in any way.

Back to The Unprincely Prince, since the video have made its way across the internet, it’s just a matter of time for it to be used as fodder for those people who’s hungry to see the Malays and the Royalties go against each other. The Unprincely Prince having a special kind of blood flowing in his veins should’ve anticipated this and not be the fodder that he’s about to be soon. Hence a question was asked to Dr. Mahathir our PM about this video starring The Unprincely Prince. This time, Dr. Mahathir no longer minced his words, watch the video below.

Give it to The Good Doctor to say things that cuts you into a thousand pieces. The fact that he used the word “nangoi” (a word we Kedahan use to refer to small kids, or kids who not yet know anything much, tells us that The Unprincely Prince is almost nothing to him. To Dr. Mahathir, The Unprincely Prince is nothing but a kid, whose balls have not even dropped yet.

What is more important, Dr Mahathir showed that The Unprincely Prince failed to understand and probably refused to accept that Malaysian have chosen Dr. Mahathir over his own choice in GE14. Dr Mahathir reminded him that even The Unprincely Prince can’t change that. Only the Rakyat can change that.

Of course this started a chain of events where more spats occurred between The Unprincely Prince and the rest of the Rakyat with nothing special running their veins but peasant blood. The ever so spirited Syed Saddiq, Minister of Youth and Sports have chipped in as well with a couple tweets below.

He has a good point on the FAM though. I had high hopes when The Unprincely Prince was about to take over FAM from the rut that they are in under the care of the Pahang royalties. However, after about a year, with so many drama unfolding, he quit FAM. I still remember feeling so stupid at the time, I had put my faith on another spoilt royalty who, through my eyes, values his wealth and possessions more than anything else. And that, as what spoiled kids always do (I know because I spoiled my kids too) they quit something when they just can’t wrap their head around them, usually with a bit of a tantrum. They don’t have the will and courage to continue with it and go through all the hard work. Spoiled kid can’t understand that money can’t buy everything.


Of course someone else chipped in as well, Rais Yatim, one of the old guards who I fancies whenever he speaks Malay, oh so eloquently. He didn’t quite minced his words as well. Look at his tweet below.

The fact that he used the phrase “…ikut selera anak raja saja. Nanti hurhara rakyat.” is pretty damning. He practically told off The Unprincely Prince to not wave the Prince Card around according to his whim and fancy or it’ll be chaos. On top of that, he’s basically telling The Unprincely Prince off again when he said “Tolong Waras”. It is basically a gentleman‘s way of telling The Unprincely Prince “You are too crazy la, Don’t be so crazy can or not?”

Lastly, I’d like you my dear readers to read this PIECE by Dato’ Kadir Jasin for some history lesson. It is important that we all learn from history because history tends to repeat itself. It’s all in our hands ladies and gentlemen. Be it to change Mora the coach, change the PM, or even change our stars so we all stand as equals. Like the old days, back in the kampung, in my teens, whenever we want to go have a swim at the abandoned lombong near our house. We would make sure no budak-budak nangoi followed us or it’ll be chaos.

Thanks and peace be unto us all.

The Prince and the Youngster

This article on our youngest minister really hit me hard. Here’s a guy who shared on his twitter page, his experience working with the person he really admires, and out of nowhere, our regal prince came and took a jibe at the young minister.

The Prince and the Youngster.

I can’t help but surmise that our prince just could let our dear Tun get all the attention and admiration he deserves. In the past, our prince had also took a jibe at Tun before GE14, not forgetting to mention the conflict our dear Tun had with his late grandfather.

He also said “Don’t change the boat if the engine is not broken, don’t even change the skipper but allow HM The Sultan of Johor and I to work with the skipper”. We all know what he meant by this.

Rewinding a little further back, our prince’s JDT Facebook Page has also been saying things that are unpatriotic and unbecoming of a Malaysian. I have said my piece in a Facebook posting I made on 31 August. and not long after that, the good prince complained that he and his father are being monitored on social media, and I’ve said my piece as well.

And today, here we are again, saying my good piece for the good prince, yet again. My prince, one’s age is not the absolute measure for wisdom or stupidity. Looking at the young minister, he is already a full cabinet minister. On the other hand, many, many years ago, I was still trying to figure out what to do with my life after I got married at 25.

After the stories of Tun’s wonderful UN speech, we have several people coming out sharing similar experience with Tun, on him being ‘a master at his own work’ validating our young minister’s ‘claim’. You can check them HERE and HERE.

I can’t but feel something is off when our good prince is in the news for all the wrong reasons this year. Perhaps something can be learned HERE.

Daulat Tuanku. Peace be unto all of you.