Pengusiran senator Australia Nick Xenophon minggu lalu menunjukkan pentadbiran Datuk Seri Najib Razak “takut” dengan rakyat Malaysia yang akhirnya mencapai kematangan untuk mencapai kebebasan demokrasi, kata akhbar Sydney Morning Herald hari ini.
Pengarah akhbar antarabangsa Peter Hartcher berkata kerajaan pimpinan Barisan Nasional (BN), walaupun memerintah lebih setengah abad, tetapi masih belum membawa negara ke arah demokrasi matang, dan takutkan pilihan raya bersih dan adil yang akan mengugat mereka memegang kuasa.
Beliau mengatakan peranan Xenophon sebagai pemerhati antarabangsa sistem pilihan raya Malaysia dan berkempen untuk pilihan raya adil, menyebabkan senator bebas itu diusir dari negara Sabtu lalu.
“Puncanya kerana beliau adalah pemerhati antarabangsa berkempen untuk pilihan raya adil dan bersih,” kata Hartcher dalam komentarnya hari ini.
“Ini bukan ancaman keselamatan kepada Malaysia, tetapi ancaman ke atas parti yang memegang kuasa,” katanya... ~ The Malaysian Insider
Lagi Sydney Morning Herald tu tulis..
At the centre of the long success of the ruling party is racial politics.
The county had a history of communal violence; the coalition National Front or Barisan Nasional (BN) party addressed that problem because it was founded on the principle of power-sharing between racial groups, the Malay majority with the Chinese and Indian minorities.
This balance held in check the fear of racial violence on a communal scale. But another key concept in the long years of BN rule was that the native Malays were inferior. They may be numerically dominant, but they lacked the skills and abilities of the other races. ''Deep within them,'' wrote Mahathir in his 1970 book The Malay Dilemma, ''there is a conviction that no matter what they decide or do, things will continue to slip beyond their control; that slowly but surely they are becoming dispossessed in their own land. This is the Malay Dilemma.''
How to address it? By granting the Malays special privileges, including guaranteed dominance of the public sector and automatic, unearned shares of national wealth. In short, affirmative action. ''It should not be wrong,'' wrote Mahathir, ''for the Malays to cling to a system which can elevate them to the status of other races, thus creating a more equitable society.''
The system kept the peace, but one side-effect of such a long stasis was that the government's monopoly on power allowed it to wield a near-absolute control over the other arms of the state, including the courts.
Mahathir shocked the world when he demonstrated the way that he'd managed to compromise all parts of the system when he moved against his deputy and potential nominated successor, Anwar, by trumping up charges that he'd sodomised his aide and speechwriter. Anwar went to jail for six years.
This was supposed to discredit Anwar permanently. But after moving to the US, the aide who testified against him recanted. In the police cells he had been ''brutalised to make a totally false confession'', he said.
Anwar, freed, led a barnstorming campaign as the leader of the opposition. He delivered the BN government a terrible shock at the 2008 election - it lost its customary two-thirds majority of parliament.
And while the BN retained a big majority in the parliament, the actual voting figures show that the contest was much closer than it appeared. BN won 51.4 per cent of the votes while the greater opposition gained 48.6 per cent.
The BN is protected by a gerrymander which means that while some electorates have more than 100,000 voters, others have as few as 7000. It's also protected by other systemic factors including a restricted press - the opposition parties need government permission just to print their own newsletters.
These are some of the awkward facts that Xenophon, as part of a wider international observer group, pointed out in a report last year. That group reported that in its discussions with the secretary-general of BN, Adnan Mansor, he'd stressed the importance of ''avoiding racial strife'' in Malaysia. He had posed this question to the group: ''Are our people mature for freedom?''
The Malaysian government is afraid not of an Australian senator but of this question. In particular, the Najib government is frightened that the answer might be ''yes.''
Read more HERE.. Macai UMNO jangan baca, nanti sakit hati pulak..
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