Whole Picture
UMNO's 60th birthday
Mahathir has a gift
A long DVD attack on its leaders as 'lacking courage' and also
touches on ties with Singapore. Blogger Jeff Ooi.
May 12, 2006
Call
it coincidence, but timing couldn't be more perfect.
As
Umno celebrates its 60th anniversary today, a two-hour DVD
depicting former Umno president Dr Mahathir Mohamad criticising the
current crop of leaders for "lacking courage" makes it to the
market.
The
DVD is a recording of Mahathir's speech - titled 'Current Issues in
Malaysian Politics' - and Q&A with 100 Malay professionals last
December. It was a by-invitation-only event organised by think-tank
Institute of Economic and Political Studies (Ikape).
For
the record, Ikape is headed by former New Straits Times
editor-in-chief Abdullah Ahmad aka Dollah Kok Lanas
(DKL).
A
quote from Mahathir in the DVD:
"If you want things to be right, you have to take the risk. But
what I see now is a desire to avoid risks at all cost even if the
country goes to the dogs."
Going
to the dogs? You ain't heard nothing yet. "We are also not good at
negotiating," said Mahathir. Quote:
I want to tell you, we had wanted to buy Russian MiGs (fighter
planes). You know Russians, they are very inferior. Somehow or
other, it was wangled without my knowledge, that part of the money
(only to be used to purchase MiGs was also used) to buy (the
American made) F-18 (planes). The very good American aircraft costs
twice as much as the MiGs. And then, we acquired eight F-18s and 18
MiGs. MiGs are sold to us without any condition. If we feel like
bombing Singapore, for example, the Russians are not going to
object. Any Singaporeans here? Or ex-Singaporeans?
But this great aircraft called F-18 which we bought from America,
after buying it, after several months, I got to know that these
aircraft cannot be used for any attacks against any country even if
it is not Singapore, because the Americans sold the aircraft, but
the source code is kept by them. So you cannot plan anything, you
cannot fly them to carry out any bombing attacks against anybody
but you have this wonderful aircraft, which you can see at Lima
(the Langkawi International Maritime and Aviation Exhibition). So,
we spent this huge sum of money and they actually negotiated and
agreed to these terms.
So that's why I say we are not very good at
negotiating.
Mahathir
also said Umno members were afraid of putting their heads on the
chopping block and thus opted for silence when things went
wrong.
