Let's address the terminal diseases, not just the pain

We must be serious for a change this time around. What we are facing now is too grave and without exigent change we are going through the same problems in perpetuity.  In actual fact we have been facing the current problems for decades but were not paid much attention by the ruling elites.  

The culture of making money while in power was traceable since the early eighties. There were many among the ruling group who were unhappy with the new but unhealthy culture that was setting in the ruling elites. I personally was active in UMNO and along the way I heard many leaders realized that the elements of greed were growing at a daring pace.

At least two of the distinguished ministers in the Cabinet were whispering to me in confidence during the tea break at the annual general assembly of UMNO, ‘young man! sekarang sudah ada yang mahu jadi orang kaya’.  Those years all the UMNO general assemblies were done at Nirwana ball room at KL Hilton before moving to PWTC Dewan Merdeka in 1986 when it was equipped for the annual assemblies.

There were lots of efforts taken by dignified and decorous leaders then to circumvent those ungainly cultures to spread including taking on the President of UMNO in the 1987 general assembly. However the move was not successful, but was more than formidable prove that there was something very wrong with the way government was run by the ruling leaders.

What was needed then was just another 22 votes to erase the thin majority votes of 43 gained by the disputed incumbent Dr Mahathir. Half of the Cabinet and UMNO supreme council were openly supporting the need for change then.

The challenger Tengku Razaleigh a gentleman that he is resigned instantaneously when he failed to get the mandate from the delegates and that was a real act of democracy. To him he had to resign as the contest against Dr Mahathir was an act of vote of non-confidence and he ought to resign.  The whole lot of ministers who were with him resigned to allow Dr Mahathir to choose his new lineup in the Cabinet.

Tengku Razaleigh since then stays outside the cabinet watching and witnessing all the pranks and shenanigans committed by the victor. From that moment one by one the democratic institutions were occupied by the executives under Mahathir and that was the starting point where the whole democracy was in ridicule until today.

No one knows what their functions are as everything is decided by the executives ie the cabinet which the PM leads. Mahathir claims that is the democracy of our own mold and this kind of democracy is practiced by the current leaders in the cabinet that annoys everybody including Dr Mahathir himself. It’s a situation like ‘senjata makan tuan’ as the adage goes. Mahathir and his like are now suppressed by his own mold that he personally designed and built.

The cabinet members were just passengers and rubberstamps to the PM. Any PM from Mahathir onwards makes used of the cabinet members to just rubberstamps and takes joint accountability on every decision made by the PM. If he goes everyone has to go. I keep on harping on this issue as we must understand problems up to specific before we even think of change.  We should stop addressing the pain. We should start to address the terminal disease first.

So morally and ethically can Muhyiddin qualify to be a substitution to Najib?  It’s an erroneous move isn’t it?