The chairman of my doctoral committee, Dr Peter B Vaill has a chapter in his book, Managing as a Performing Art , which is entitled, \’Winning is what we define winning to be!\’

Umno believes that winning must be achieved at any cost or at all cost, especially when they exemplified their leadership philosophy by fielding a proven corrupt politician to become their Adun.

Are we seriously supposed to address him Yang Berhormat now? Excuse me!

The government also has an explicit programme focused on improving integrity in public services, the private sector and civil society with the setting up of the Integrity Institute of Malaysia (IIM), chaired by the Chief Secretary and a list of senior public servants on the Board of Governors.

The list includes the Attorney General and Auditor General but I can only wonder what the agenda of their board meetings are like? It is said that the IIM is the only one of its kind in the world and probably deserves a Guinness Award, but maybe that is not kosher either.

I hope that it proves to perform better than the PKFZ board. Since winning is everything in the Umno leadership, maybe we may have to let our search for integrity and Good Governance go to the wind.

That appears to be Umno\’s only option but I wonder if that is also the choice of the Super Task Force on PKFZ whose composition looks like the board members of the IIM and one or two more.

I fail to understand why Umno and the BN would make winning the last by-election at all costs their primary goal. Are not good governance, transparency and accountability equally, if not, more important than winning that single battle but losing the war?

Why would they field a person proven to be guilty and corrupt by their own definition? To me, what is even more telling is the fact that at the recent Umno general assembly that issue was not even raised by the thousands of representatives of the grassroots and who voted within minutes to approve constitutional amendments which sought to kill the very sickness.

What then is the new meaning of winning for Umno elections in the future? As M Bakri Musa had written in Malaysia Today , when two of their prominent leaders who were said to be corrupt are re-endorsed for re-election, one has to assume, that their meaning of an Anti-Corruption Commitment Alliance and mine (and Bakri Musa\’s) must be very different.

Moreover, \”dishing out goodies\” the day before the by-election when a Tamil school had no place of their own for the last 52 years even under prominent MIC members of parliament.

Then all of a \”sudden Umno finds the political will for a solution,\” smells as badly, and as the manipulative will-power applied for positive behaviour conditioning of the simple Indians; as can only be learned from Pavlov\’s dog\’s and Skinner\’s mice experiments.

But then the Indians in Port Dickson are real human beings who have lived there for 52 years. What then is the winning that the people of Malaysia want in the future?

I think Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah defined it fairly accurately when he listed his 10 political aspirations for A New Malaysia. After all he is royalty, and a very senior Umno politician. He was finance minister when the BMF scandal broke.

Tengku Razaleigh\’s wish list

We must give him the benefit of doubt that he knows and understands what he talking about when he describes and ascribes recent political history of Malaysia (please read his speech delivered at UCSI University).

His wish-lists of 10 concerns are:

  • All political parties are required to include in their constitutional objectives, the equality of citizenship as provided for in the Federal Constitution.
  • An economic and political policy that political parties propagate must not discriminate against any citizen.
  • All parties shall include and uphold constitutional democracy and the separation of powers as a fundamental principle.
  • It shall be the duty of all political parties to adhere to the objectives of public service and refrain from involvement in business, and ensure the separation of business from political parties.
  • It shall be the duty of all political parties to ensure and respect the independence of the judiciary and the judicial process.
  • All parties shall ensure that the party election system will adhere to the highest standards of conduct, and also ensure that the elections are free of corrupt practices. Legislation should be considered to provide funding of political parties.
  • It shall be the duty of all parties to ensure that all political dialogues and statements will not create racial or religious animosity.
  • All parties undertake not to use racial and communal agitation as political policies.
  • To remove and eradicate all barriers that hinder national unity and Malaysian identity.
  • To uphold the Federal and State Constitutions and their democratic intent and spirit, the Rule of Law, and the fundamental liberties as enshrined in Part II of the Malaysian Constitution and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

I want to applaud him and support these 10 points as something that we the people can only wish and pray for to happen in Malaysia some day in the future. That can become our hope for winning; since winning is what we define winning to be!

What we sorely lack in Malaysia within the political realm is truth-seeking. Unless we are able \”to seek for truth as we yearn for silver and gold,\” such a truth will avoid us.

Politics in Malaysia is less about truth and more about power systems and alliances seeking to stay on in power. In fact, Ku Li stated that he subscribed still to the original vision of Umno, to serve the Malays and to usher prosperity into Malaya and then Malaysia.

But, as he also said, in recognition of all this and the impending complexities of different power systems within new and soon-to-be independent Malaya, the British who are masters of political diplomacy actually built a consensus vide the process of \”giving independence to the Malayans!\”

All relevant parties; whether royalty, the Malay leaders or the other Chinese or Indian leaders, or even the British Resident of the then British Malaya were all involved and were engaged by the Reid Commission to \”moderate the growing of independence in the Malayan nation.\”

All this was then included into our Federal Constitution, even if, it has since been adulterated and corrupted over the past many years by Umno.

Therefore, for the ordinary and simple Malaysians, this corruption by power systems needs to be appreciated and then turned into learning to respect and understand the spirit and laws of the original constitution for therein the spirit of Independent Malaya is contained.

May God grant us all the wisdom to learn and understand this document of destiny.