Sunday, January 28, 2007

Hiding Behind The PM

Pak Lah attacks bloggers in NSTP papers
It pains me to see my Prime Minister being dragged, wittingly or unwittingly, into the war being waged by the NSTP and its 4 operatives with Ahirudin Attan and Jeff Ooi.
As I've said before, the 4 (one is a former operative, actually) have the right to sue the Rocky's Bru and the Screenshots bloggers. I do not agree that they should drag the NSTP to fight their battle.
I certainly don't like them using Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi as a shield, a cover.
I have the highest regard for the office of the Prime Minister of my country.
It pains me more because I have known Pak Lah for a very long time. Certainly longer than any of his (present) close advisers. And yes, longer than any of the plaintiffs, one of whom has written in the NSTP to brag that he is a close friend of the PM.
I, however, cannot say that I am his close friend. Let's just say he knows me well enough as a journalist of some experience.
So did Kak Endon, his late wife. But not just as a journalist. We also happened to have grown up in the same Petaling Jaya neighbourhood and whose sisters are friends of mine as we used to study in the same school.
That's not bragging, That's a fact.
I have always had a fondness for Pak Lah because the man I have known through the years, is a nice guy.
The last I met him was at the Umno general assembly in 2005 when he visited the media centre.
As usual, he would stop for a chat with journalists at work there.
He never failed to ask me about me, my father and my family.
He calls me "No'Aina", for which most northerners (orang utara) seem to have a fondness.
As a young reporter in the early 80s, he was one of my favourite subjects who had given me many scoops in the education beat.
I would wait for him outside his office until his last guest/visitor left. Rosni (his Press officer then), would let me in and Pak Lah would indulge me -- answering my questions about current issues pertaining to his ministry. He was really cool.
I remember, years ago during the Umno (team A/team B) debacle in the mid 80s, he got pretty upset over an article I did.
He met me in Parliament and asked me ever so sweetly : "No'Aina, No'Aina, who are your sources? " I felt so bad I almost wanted to make a grovelling apology. How could I have upset this nice man?
Now this nice man is a subject of ridicule.
Yes, as he said in the New Sunday Times interview -- r i d i c u l e.
The case between the NSTP/4 operatives and Rocky has already been brought to the High Court. Why would the editors of the NST and the Berita Harian want to publish the PM's quotes about "lies after lies" of the bloggers, which may be seen as prejudicing the case?
They have ridiculed him further.
Soon, if his coterie of not-so-wise advisers go about their merry unthinking way, they would have him be cited for contempt of court.
No. Mr Prime Minister Sir. I am most disagreeable with what they have been making you do.
They should start fighting their own battles.

Note: Rocky goes back to the High Court tomorrow (Monday, Jan 29) at 9 am to inform the learned Judge about his position with regards to comments left on his postings after he had been served the writ by the Plaintiffs. The lawyers for the Plaintiffs said last Thursday those comments could be seen as prejudicing the case.

24 comments:

Anonymous said...

He was a nice man and i have great respect for him before he became the PM. the last three years, he has shown his true colours; talking one thing and doing exactly the opposite. He talks about transparency, anti-corruption drive, frugality. Look what he has been doing. OSA for toll and water concessions. he supports the suit by NSTP and the four buggers against the bloggers who has been giving him the heat thru their revelations. That's advocating transparency? RM600 million for 191 UMNO divisions to be spent within 2 months. That's anti-corruption? RM20.0 million to renovate his residence and now the RM200.0 million plane. That's being frugal?

Please, he is not that stupid. To become the PM, you need some grey matter. He is just insincere and greedy now. To me, they are using each other.

Please for goodness sake, dont blame the bloggers, Mr PM. Its you and because of you I have started to post now to air my unhappiness. You are detached from reality and from the people who gave you the landslide majority. That's the main cause of the people's distrust and anger. Period.

Good luck M'sia. you need a huge dose of it with such people and his cronies helming the country.

Anonymous said...

Hey! What is the plaintiff doing interviewinh PM on blogs? Did he set the man up to say what he said? He should be sacked!

How can .. no fair la NSTP.

Btw, was interview done for BH and translated into English? Who did translation? Manja can't write English. Kadir can't either. Plaintiff can't write, full stop.

Anonymous said...

Kak Nuraina, saya tak terkejut. Orang yang takut memang akan mintak perlindungan orang lain yang lebih besar dan berkuasa. Macam PM. Kalau berani tak buat cam tu. Dan seseorang itu akan rasa takut hanya kerana suatu sebab, iaitu sebab dia dah buat salah. Berani kerana benar.

Anonymous said...

dear nuraina

give them enough rope, then they'll hang themselves.

i am not sure any of the people doing the interview knows what subjudice is.

me said...

Well this seems to be shifting all blame away from him. His quotes need not be published if he never said them.

From the start, he should have realised his position in the Executive and try as best as he can to not utter a single sentence that may or may not prejudice the case.

With some hope, he could learn from retrospection that a man of his office has more weight in his words than he previously thought.

Remember PM, if rumours are heavy enough to distract you, they're no longer mere distractions. Dealing with them (with the Truth) is part of the job, where you must defend the integrity of the office.

Or what's left of it.

cheers

Anonymous said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Anonymous said...

Ya, he was a nice man. I still prefer to think he was misled or misinformed. But, with all the clowning going on right under his nose, how to expect the people to keep quiet.

Anonymous said...

Politicians are smart. Their perceived niceness is selectively applied; they would be nice to certain groups to curry favour, or appear to give special confidence to some to project a favourable image. Niceness is a wonderful tool to employ in politics, at the right places and with the right people, in order to climb up the political ladder. I understand how it is easy to be enamoured by people in high office who are nice to us. True, when a person treats us nicely (be it a politician or any other), we should indeed appreciate it and reciprocate. This should never detract us from objectively holding them to account for their decisions, actions, responsibilities (are they carrying out their job well? are they hitting national management targets?). Our allegiance should be towards our country, its environment and its people (rakyat), rather than to the government of the day or its politicians, who are after all voted in and entrusted by the people to help look after public welfare.

Anonymous said...

Dear Aina,

He was the man you, I and many others knew before he bacame the PM. Well now it's a different story....

Anonymous said...

If everyone must be reminded...
Abe Lincoln said "all men can withstand adversary...to know a man's character give him power.."
Enuf said...

retired journalist, now dok sepak kertas di Aloq Setaq...

Anonymous said...

ena, we all know how nice a man he is. so approachable and ...what's the word? Nice! we could ask him for an interview anytime, talk abt anything and he'd make us feel at ease. That's what he is ..a nice man.

Anonymous said...

Dear Sis,

I agree with you when you said PakLah is (was) a nice man. I used to have a friend- a very nice friend-soft spoken, good listener. Indeed , Pak Lah reminds me about him. But his 'nice man' is also accompanied by his naivety, mentally-challenged, short attention span, laziness, snooze lover and very 'allergic' towards beutiful ladies.

Again, Pak Lah reminds me abt him.

Anonymous said...

To anonymous( 823PM )

I think the word ur searching for is "affable" or "amicable"- no I'm not being an ass for providing that word. Coincedentaly, just prior to this i was with somebody who used that word to describe the said individual and i thought i might as well start on that basis.

yes he was that, and we were stupid enough to support potential public office holders on that basis. Actually, we shouldnt be blaming him but ourselves- after all one should support a leader not simply because he is nice but rather whether he is competant- and in this regard we have a wealth of public track record to guide our eveluation.

Can you sincerely tell me, in all the differant ministries that he headed over so many years, any example of him proving that he understands what top level desision making is all about?

I cant and from solicating the opinions of so many top ranked individuals whom had the oppurtunity to work with him, all are in agreement that he was mediocre at best.

And they were being polite.

even his staunchest supporters cant provide any strong example of his intellect and competance. Actually all the hype was on exactly the thing we talked about, ie-"how nice he is or rather, was"

Can u recall any top leader in history who was top simply because he was nice?

So since we as Malaysians( maybe ur not included) dont give support on the proper basis, than this is what we get.

Our predictment is our own making thus, in the same vein,there is no one to blame but ourselves.

Or maybe Mahathir, for consistantly shrinking the pool of credible potential leaders during his tenure.After awhile, it was just choosing the lesser between many evils.

That's Mahathir for u- The poison and the cure for Malaysian all at the same time.

Vivek Muniappan said...

hie thanks for visiting my blog and yeah we ought to defend our rights in the cyberspace..as the saying goes i may disagree with you, but i will defend your right of disagreeing until my last breath..lets have a healthy debate and discussions instead of defamations and libel suits..

~ p E a C e ~

Anonymous said...

Assalamualaikum Warahmatullahi Wabarakatuh Puan Nuraina, apart from Puan Adibah Amin, you are now my favourite writer of English amongst Malay-speaking 'icons'.

Flattery won't get me nowhere so straight to the point: Don't you think our good old macho-looking blogger, 'Rocky' ought to trim his pony-tailed hair a bit short for his court appearances? It is said that Prophet Muhammad Sallallahu Alaihi Wassalam (peace be upon him) did keep his hair until shoulders' length whenever he went to war but Rocky's a bit too long, don't you think? Change of image may just win him the case, maybe?

Anonymous said...

He has to comment. NST is owned by UMNO and he is the President. Directly or indirectly he must have consented the action or have no objection.

Mac Chung Yew said...

you know, hindsight is 20:20 ... imagine a future article with an excerpt like this ...

"pak lah was just what the adolescent malaysia needed when he took power, it was a time when malaysia consolidated from the excesses of the 90's and laid a foundation with strong fundamentals that has allowed this country to find it's way after the asian crisis into a peaceful, mature and innovative society. not so different from when a teenager simply needed a calming hand to guide her to adulthood, nothing fancy just good old fashioned manners and methods. not always understood, nor always correct, many still wonder if things would have been different at that time with a more dynamic, strong hand one that wielded a more autocratic hand, a manager that had a hand in everything?

he is however regarded by many as one who steadied the ship, released the sails that caught the wind. his legacy was one of much needed soberness after 30 years of drunken stuper, but the party started again in 2007 as the excesses were worked out of the system and malaysia is once again booming with services leading the economy and the agricultural sector much smaller than before in it's share of the gdp but due to technology producing much more."

dreaming allowed, aloud.

Anonymous said...

Nice man yes.Good leader, NO!!

If Pak Lahis so serious and concern about lies, why has he not sued the turkish paper for defamation on the yacht story? Why?

Practise what you preach nice man. Don't NATO. Semuanya temberang macam manifesto BN 2004.

LUBOK MELAYU said...

Tiada apa yang dapat kukatakan. Jika perdana menteri suka berfoya, biarlah malam yang gelap gelita, menemani negara meneroka sebuat future, yang porak yang peranda.

Aku seorang rakyat biasa, kerja ku mennurut bukan menderhaka, tapi Hang Jebat takkan kembali, taming Sari merobek isi dan usus perut terbarain bertaburan bagai bintang

Anonymous said...

Dear Ms. Nuraina,

Yes, he does have some good points but lately, the bad far outweigh the good. And he has become so detached that he can no longer connect with regular folks like us. Yet it wasn't so long ago that we thought he was the breath of fresh air. How gullible we were. Maybe it's true after all: "You can fool some of the people all of the time and all of the people some of the time and that is sufficient." Sigh.

Anonymous said...

Many people confuse abt nice man. About being nice. About try to be nice.

That is not the point.

We have to be a man with honor.
With integrity.

I have a bad experience with so called a 'nice man'.

Use the title 'Nice man' to hide weakneses.

MayBe we should call this species as a STUPID NICE MAN.

Teach our children to be a man with integrity, honor and adab budaya. The 'Nice Man' will automatically attached.

Anonymous said...

i like to inform u of a website forum created by a malaysian guy to exchange information about commercial sex places in malaysia. www.mamakspecial.com is the address.

sani said...

quote what rocky said "Semuanya temberang macam manifesto BN 2004"...did he realised it b4 or after 2004...bcz i shed a lot of tears on the day when they announced the election results back in 2004, what a mistake that a lot of my fellow rakyat plus hantu did...i've been thought not to vote BN since my akil baligh...but still i'm sengsara...

Unknown said...

Politics corrupt even the purest soul, what more that of a certain nice but spineless son of an imam.