YOURSAY | Go out and vote, we have the last say

YOURSAY | ‘The die has been cast and the elections are about to be called.’

COMMENT | Harapan should welcome GE15

Scarecrow: “These pleas to emotion about how the monsoon season is an impediment to the democratic process are complete horse manure.

“All over the world, people who are living under far worse conditions have come out to vote because they truly believed that their futures were at stake,” writes Malaysiakini columnist S Thayaparan.

This is what I have been saying all along; finally, a mainstream writer put it into words, words which are admirably stronger than mine. While I use mild words like “fairytales” to describe the imaginative flood, the writer liberally uses much more stinging words like “horse manure”, words which likely get my comments deleted if used by me.

But I think Pakatan Harapan leaders and supporters still did not get the message and still live in their dreamland, thinking that Umno would hold elections at a time favourable and advantageous to Harapan. Dream on and pray harder for the flood.

Old Horse: This election is not about winning and losing; it's about voters’ turnout. If you hold election fully knowing that flood and rain would hinder the process, it is not democracy, it is bad intention.

Worst of all, someone is trying to hijack the process for his own agenda so he would not be prosecuted.

Arjun: An immediacy for an election makes much sense and would seem the appropriate moral and responsible initiative that is long overdue. The present hotchpotch government, fabricated originally at Sheraton Hotel, has had little legitimacy in the eyes of the public.

Part of those in the present government as ministers forsook and betrayed the coalition that had gained majority and electoral legitimacy. Another part of the present government, including Prime Minister Ismail Sabri Yaacob, are parliamentary members of a political party that lost the majority in the last national election.

All this may seem properly legal and appropriate in a fledgling democracy and legally also enabling in one which is pre-eminently a raced-based political mould. But such allegedly insidious manipulation of elections is no good legacy to leave behind in the interests of future generations.

It could be viewed as a laughable matter as the question of proper legitimacy should and could have been tested at the earliest occasion after the Sheraton complicity.

Possibly by then most of those who betrayed the elected government through defection would have been probably tarred and feathered and shunned by a disgusted electorate.

More responsible and decent leaders could have emerged from any number of political parties and we could have saved the nation of much of the disadvantages and agony it had endured in the last many, many months.

Milshah: You know Commander Thayaparan, during my free time, I play chess. I love strategies. And politics is about strategies. So, I love politics as well.

What you want Harapan to do, it has been done before. In fact, it has been done for every election except GE14. And the result has always been the same.

Harapan or Pakatan Rakyat, or whatever form the opposition takes, always loses. Thirteen times the opposition was doing what you want them to do in the coming GE, and 13 times they lost. Insanity is doing the same thing and expecting different results.

Only at GE14, Harapan did something different and only at GE14, Harapan won. Harapan finally got the winning formula then. Yes, you must compromise with former premier Dr Mahathir Mohamad and Bersatu.

That would have been better than now where Harapan must use delay tactics to avoid being wiped out. It’s embarrassing and pathetic. Now you are throwing out the GE14 formula and going back to the pre-GE14 formula with all the idealism and self-righteousness that goes with it.

The non-Malays’ standard is too high and very idealist, but then you lost 13 times; now going to GE15, with delay tactics, everyone expects Harapan to lose, it's such a pathetic strategy. Well, good luck with your idealism, and your three parties - PKR, Amanah and DAP.

MS: Umno president Ahmad Zahid Hamidi desperately wants to stay out of jail and spring the convicted felon with billions out of it too. Self-serving as he and his brood have always been.

Why should the rest of the country respond to his (and his 36 conniving crooks) machinations?

Remember, his 40 criminal charges were dropped not because he is innocent, not because he did not receive the millions in the dead of the night but because the prosecution was, as pointed out by the presiding judge, shoddy.

Be that as it may, the die has been cast and the elections are about to be called. The Malays by and large will do what suits their immediate needs and appeals to their congealed emotions and cultivated fears. Logic and reasoning will have no place, at least not those which sense and sensibility promote.

The non-Malays mostly will vote in their hope for a more equitable environment which, as we all know, does not align with the intentions of the supremacists and the thieves.

And given the quality of the politicians we know and mostly detest, anything is likely after everything is done and dusted. Horse trading, with lots of money changing hands, and/or charges dropped/positions offered will be the order of the day. We’ve seen it all before.

So GE15 may be a turning point in the country’s trajectory one way or the other. It will be a miracle though if it is for the better.

Chances are it will just continue to painfully hobble along, disabled by the normalised corruption of past and present “leaders”, by a compromised civil service in comatose, and by a parasitic elite class which nonchalantly enables the pillaging because they are, as always, the beneficiaries.

Which means the status quo could well be preserved.

Coward: The opposition knows that they have no say in the dissolution of Parliament. What they are doing now is not so much to stop the election during the monsoon, but to capitalise on the fact that the election might be held in the monsoon season to win votes.

Should they use this strategy? That's not our decision but theirs.

We all have a vote, and if you think this is not right, then you should put this into consideration before you cast your vote.

What I will say is this: Nobody or organisation is without flaws, and your choice should be the least of two evils.

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