Bagan Pinang.

30.9.2009.

So it's settled. This Saturday Isa Samad, who held the adjacent State seat of Linggi for more than 2 decades, would be formally entered as the BN candidate for Bagan Pinang. Muhyiddin repeatedly asked the crowd "who's your choice ?", knowing full well what the crowd's answer would be - "Isa, Isa, Isa" the crowd shouted, also repeatedly, almost going berserk. Perhaps Muhyiddin should do this for all future selection of BN's candidates - let the crowd decide and BN's leadership abide by the crowd rule ! Maulud said he's never seen the likes of it. Zainal supported him and added there's no way Isa would lose. Zainal also said to Ramli Harun a few days earlier "what we want is to win." 

Apparently, according to Maulud, there was a banner put up earlier saying something to the effect that if Isa is not selected, the people of Bagan Pinang would make sure the alternative candidate would lose, but this banner was said to have been taken down before Muhyiddin arrived. 

And Najib is also said to have addressed the postal voters made up of the sizeable army people included in the constituency. High emotions aside, this bye-election's result is all sewed up, going by the word of mouth right now.

Well, Tiong Meng and I have said the winner is not a sure thing yet. The euphoria has to be translated to hard votes by the 13,000 people in the polling register. The bye-election record so far is something like 8-1 against BN. In spite of the 2004 landslide GE, only a short four years later, 2008 was totally unexpected by, and hugely disasterous to BN. 

There is talk now of the MIC's anger at UMNO. There is already attack by the DAP on Isa's tainted record. Mahathir had already repeatedly gone on record to say Isa would not be good for UMNO. Mahathir's words have not gone totally wasted in the past, including causing the eventual early end to Dollah's premiership. As with that case with Dollah, detractors have been many and quick jumping on Mahathir, who was simply being Mahathir, frank and brave (as opposed to all the rest who can also be frank, but not so brave.).

Maulud summed up, perhaps the mood of the day by saying "now where is Mahathir going to put his face !" As if this discarded advice from him is his biggest folly. There were also earlier retorts about a crime that was stacked up aginst Isa that nevertheless has been fully paid for, that Mahathir himself was sacked from UMNO, that Ali Rustam was also found guilty but allowed to continue to serve. It didn't seem to matter that Isa's punishment doesn't mean he's now not gulity, that Mahathir was sacked for criticising Tunku for the 1969 riots, that the Ali Rustam case underlines the whole corruption issue in UMNO, and made Isa the scapegoat when Ali was also implicated but escaped ?

How can it be so wrong to say that what UMNO needs now is to be fully committed at cleansing its national image ? Is it acceptible now to say that everybody does it in UMNO so why should "money politics" be a problem ? Who is committed enough to act upon, and brave enough to say it, about the political corruption in UMNO ? A corrupted constituency may very well carry the day and gets what its voters want to-day, but how is it to be viewed in the spoken undertaking that the Party's leadership has committed on the fight against this corruption ? Is this mere play-acting, that it's all "in the game", that "the means justify the end" ? Win this one, and the rest be damned ? That UMNO and BN are so "hard up" for a win that there is no choice but to field Isa ? And is Isa forgetting the fact that it was Mahathir, really, who retained him as MB for more than 20 years, in spite of all the rumours about even the Palace wanting him out once upon a time, and all the other accusations about favouring certain parties in the development of the State ?

Notice all these question marks ? Is it all B.S. ? The UMNO machinery better get busy giving the answers to all these questions, and endless others, and pronto. People are more open to arguements now. I mean no ill for Isa. I only hope we all do the right thing. 

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