Choosing among the ‘devils’

Both Bn and PR have given their  ‘political’ budgets, so how are we going to choose?

As a voter, we should not be partisan but rather we should look at a number of things before we cast our support to one side.

If both sides give deficit budget, then we must look at other areas , like how much leakages are to be tightened and how much of the borrowing to fund the deficits would go to individuals pockets through such leakage.

If there is no 308, and there is no risk of losing the next election, like in the past few decades prior to 308, would there be reforms and handout budget such as these 2 prepared by the 2 sides?

Had BN retained their 2/3, would ISA be repealed? I was once inside Gerakan and was near to the corridor of power , and had even met PM and voiced out directly to him. An example: i had been pushing very hard for ISA abolition. What I got is the promise that certain clauses would be reviewed, and that was quite some time ago.

It is only when BN is now facing the prospect of losing, and PM’s own position is not firm in the BigBrother, that reforms are being carried out, as a last resort to consolidate his position.

It is just like without the Arab spring, there would be no reforms as those promised by some of the Arab countries now..

History has shown us again and again that The powers-that-be are forced to concede to popular demand ONLY when there is a risk of losing power. Histoy has also shown us the trend of dominant government bending to people’s wishes, ONLY when there is a risk of losing power.

So do we still want a dominant government , or is it better to have a government that is more responsive to the rakyat’s wishes? would a dominant government or a 2 party system listen tot he ground more?

These are thoughts that should be considered..

What is the central ill of the present government? the culture of corruption and mindset of greed.. It is a culture of ‘what you can do for me and not what I can do for you”..

Will the alternative be any better? we wont know until we try.. We may get the same thing, we may get even worse, but then if we choose the alternative, we would have establish a 2 party system, and break the myth of invincibility and dominance of a old system..

What happens if the alternative is as corrupt? We throw them out after another round.. It is the only way for the Big Brother to cleanse himself.. Even many UMNo moderates have voiced that it would not be a bad thing for big brother to lose one term.. Then perhaps, the corruption and the race based biase , which is actually used to perpetuate BigBrother’s hold onto power and thus money supply for its warlords, would be slowly done away, so will structural distortion in our economy. Similarly, many veteran MCA and Gerakan members, some of them my personal friends and i can tell you that they really love the parties (it is almost everything to them after spending their whole lives inside the parties), believe that it would in fact be good for BN to lose one term and for MCA and Gerakan to really be reformed and rebuilt by casting out the greedy and ‘cari-makan’ ones ( these greedy ones would be the first to leave if BN loses power).. It is like when you love your children so much, and you know that they would be better to experience a fall (figuratively speaking), you won’t mind letting them fall once in awhile; it is ironic but actually true that if you love a person so much, it may be good for that person to go through certain trial and tribulations of life, instead of giving him silver spoon  in the mouth and golden platter his whole life.

Unless there is drastic reform from the present government to do away with the corrupt practises, and everything being equal, I would not mind trying the other side for once.. Just to set the precedence and consolidate the 2 party system so that the voters got to be the Boss.

So everything being more or less equal, the side that would promise to cut leakage and wastage and used the saving for the rakyat would get my support. Not that I love them more , but rather it is the choice of choosing a POTENTIALLY (It may or may not happen) more prudent devil over the old corrupt devils that we know..

Unless of course the Old corrupt devil can really prove to me that it is really serious to cleanse itself of the wasteful and corrupt mindsets, and undergo drastic surgery to rid the greed culture and biased system ( it would be a monumental task, no doubt)…I will then be more than happy to cast my vote  to the old devil..