The Edge Group Executive Editor P.Gunasegaram came up with 22 questions for the man in the news lately, the nation’s ex Premier, Tun Dr.Mahathir Mohamad.
The photocopies here were distributed by someone to those of us who attended the recent Dialogue organised by Raja Petra Kamaruddin, Malaysia Today.Net and other NGO’s with Tun Dr.Mahathir Mohamad.
An announcement was soon made not to distribute flyers or pamphlets by the organisers so I figured that these 22 Questions photocopies weren’t recognised by them.
Anyway, the Dialogue didn’t actually turn out to be a proper dialogue and Tun Dr.Mahathir came out with witty remarks and sarcastic barbs aimed at his successor and the ‘3rd party’ which we all understand to refer to Pak Lah’s son in law Khairy Jamaluddin.
Tun Dr.Mahathir as we all know him is a master at handling crowds and playing up to the audience. When written questions were put to him he went through them and only answered those that he wanted to answer; so the ‘Dialogue’ became a ‘monologue’!
I asked him about the ‘Islam Hadhari’ concept in my question form. Luckily , he did answer mine. 😛
I like what he said about the insignificance of Abdullah Badawi trying to come up with a new terminology of ‘Hadhari’.
It is as if Abdullah Badawi knows better than the Greatest Messenger of Allah, the Holy Prophet Muhammad al Mustafa, Sallalahu Alaihi Wassallam!
The Prophet Muhammad SAW just received one Final Message of Islam from Allah the Almighty. The Sahabahs learned only one Way of Life in Islam. There was no talk of Sunni and Syiah. No madhabs Hanafi,Shafie,Hambali and Maliki. There wasn’t a criteria that to preach about Islam, one had to go to Al-Azhar and graduate with a Masters in this and that to pass on the message of the Prophet.
Today, the whole world is full of ‘ulamaks’ who divide and confuse the masses rather than unite in submission to Allah. Even here in Malaysia, we, the Ummah are divided into so many factions and movements, each claiming to be the right ones. What more can I say about the latest concept being bandied about by our ‘ulul amri’s’ .
For all his excesses and dictatorship, the 81 year old Tun still has his wits about him and refuses to play along with the present leadership.For that I can concur with him on not acknowledging this new fanciful delusion of the current leaders of UMNO being the best in the Islamic world and that they are the ‘Khalifah’s in coming up with such concepts of ‘Islam Hadhari’!
Does that mean , through the centuries , all the awliyas and the anbiyas i wal mursalin are idiots and didn’t know nuts about Islam? Such is the tendency of mankind to innovate and try to reinvent something that is already complete and perfect as testified in Rasulullah Sallalahu Alaihi Wassallam’s Final Khutbah to all Mankind!
Even Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta’ala tells Mankind that the deliverance of the matters concerning the Faith of Islam is complete and that we are to abide by all that the Prophet SAW has passed on to us as per these verse of the Surah Al Mae’dah Verse 3:
“This day the disbelievers despair of prevailing against your religion, so fear them not, but fear Me (God)! This day have I perfected for you your religion and fulfilled My favor unto you, and it hath been My good pleasure to choose Islam for you as your religion (5:3).
On that point, Tun Dr.Mahathir gets my support.
But that’s not the end of the story. The 22 questions being posed to Tun should get his attention and God willing, before Tun passes on to the Yaum Al Barzakh ( Realm of Life after Death), he should be man enough to face up to his fellow Malaysians and answer each and every of these reasonable questions.
I have went through the questions being posed and feel that maybe we the bloggers ought to discuss about them too one by one. As citizens , whether we like it or not, our lives have been subject to decisions taken by Dr.Mahathir’s premiership through the 22 long years of his being in power.
We have been affected by all his decisions and at this momentous period of our nation going through this ‘testing times ‘, we the people ought to be given the answers by Tun before he returns to the Creator of us all, Allah Azza Wa Jalla!
Let’s take a look at:
Question No.1.’ On Clean Government. You came to power in 1981 and introduced the slogan”Bersih,Cekap dan Amanah” which means ‘Clean, Efficient and Trustworthy’.
- What did you do to further that?
- Did you make the Anti Corruption Agency more independent and effective?
- Did you ensure that the Police and the Judiciary did their jobs properly and reduce corruption in their ranks?
- Did you ensure that Cabinet Ministers,Menteri Besar’s and Chief Ministers not have income beyond their legal means?
- How many ‘big guns’ were prosecuted for corruption offenses during your long tenure?
- What happened to ‘Bersih,Cekap and Amanah’?
Now, it is easy for Mr.Gunasegaram or any of us to pose such questions to Tun like this. The consideration is:
‘What will we have done if we were (just thinking aloud) in Mahathir’s shoes?’
You think it is easy to run a country? Some people can’t even manage themselves, what more a family, a small shop,a department, a company, an industry, a district, a state what more a whole country?
There are all kinds of people we have to deal with. Each with their own individual attitudes and personalities. Even in a family, there are all kinds of temperamental stuck up individuals we have to contend with. Some are so freaky that we wish we could strangle the living daylights out of them and some put on a false front of being Mr. or Miss Goody Two Shoes!
I can just visualise the kind of people manning all those government departments and offices.
Haven’t each and everyone of us faced the bloody stuckup attitudes of those annoyingly recalcitrant ‘Little Napoleons’ stubbornly delaying due process and progress of each application, procedure and implementation of things that border from the simplest need to apply for this or that in our daily lives to matters that concern tenders and contracts worth peanuts or up to whatever amounts per situation?
How do you expect Mahathir to answer for each and every bloody individual in all those government offices and departments? It’s all a matter of co-operation and delegation of authority.
In some departments, even though you have a decent head of department worth every sen or ringgit that he or she is being paid, there comes the reality of having to deal with all those useless ‘office politics’ and backstabbing, conniving, sucking up to the bosses, internal warfare and all kinds of shit spewing about those government offices and departments that mess up the system!
We conveniently call it ‘red tape’ or ‘bureaucracy’! Mahathir or any other person (that includes you and me ) can’t do nuts about the individual attitudes of all those hundreds of thousands of people who are called ‘civil servants’. I don’t see anything ‘civil’ in their bloody attitudes!
~~~ I will be following up on this. Gotta go to a meeting. 😛 Yeah…face up to the bloody redtape ! Wish me luck that I manage to cut through the mental block some are facing! 🙂
Catch you all later. Have a productive day. Really! I mean it .
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I think Mr. Guna isn’t as naive as that expecting everything to be perfect with the government.
I’m not going to guess what Guna’s intentions were.
But I believe that just as the questions posed by Mahathir to the present administration are questions that need to be answered, these 22 questions are equally valid. And I would like to know the answers to all 22 + 4(?). Every Malaysian ought to know.
Don’t ask silly questions such as “what will we have done if we were in his shoes”.
Mahathir, Badawi and whatever government is put into power by the people, supposedly on the promise that their governments live up to a certain ideal.
Guna didn’t offer himself to be government. He didn’t form government. He doesn’t need to.
Asking that kind of question is just like you a man on the street complaining that the wan ton mee you just had tasted so shitty. The wan ton mee seller then says, if so, why don’t you make a better one.
And he unable to deliver his promise on clean government, we can guess that he was either:
1. an incompetent manager incapable of getting his crew to stand by him; or
2. a liar that didn’t care about this
Or both.
Of course making wan ton mee or running the country and bureaucracy ain’t easy. Not everyone makes wan ton mee, and not everyone is fit to run govt. But you made promises and you are bound by that.
Simplistic arguments eh Lim?
First and foremost, you do not have the slightest idea as to why I am commenting on the 22 questions posed by Gunasegaram to Tun.
Instead of jumping to conclusions, would it be possible for you to let me complete my series before digesting it all and then coming to a proper assessment of what I am saying.
Just relax for a while and let me finish. I would surely appreciate it, peng yu aa. 😛
No, I may not have the slightest idea.
But, no. I also didn’t know I had to wait.
Don’t know about you Lim but I have business matters to attend to and right now am quite busy with closing a deal.
I blog when I can and at times am reduced to either coming online very early in the morning or sty up late into the night.
So, the comments that you and others pose to me only gets my attention during those ‘free’ times.
Hope that’s alrite with ya! 🙂