Kuli – The Voice of Reason

If there were just one politician from UMNO I would vote for, it most likely would be for Tengku Razaleigh. Another BN guy I like is our HR Minister Subra – why isn’t he MIC President? Back to Kuli, he stated on his blog:

I wish our leaders were in as great a hurry to prepare our people for the direst economic crisis the world has faced since the Great Depression.

Even those countries which have put their best brains to work on the problem, given it the highest priority and set aside tens or hundreds of billions of dollars in stimulus spending now find that they have grossly under-estimated its scale, depth and complexity.

I have been calling on our leadership to sit up and take note of the historic dimensions of this crisis since October last year. I reiterated this call in a speech last month. In the short time since, Malaysian industry leaders and economics bloggers have also been calling on the government to come out of their official denial that anything serious is going to happen to our economy.  Ratings agencies, brokerage houses, banks and researchers have all come out with growth estimates drastically lower than the government’s projected rate of 3.5% growth. The government should come clean on the recession we are entering, and on how we will face it with our already ballooning budget-deficit.

Economic numbers translate into jobs, livelihoods, opportunities, food on the table. Poor economic management has very real consequences in the lives of our citizens.

The public and the business and investment community must surely get a feeling of unreality around this administration.

Good one. And this is exactly what I have been asking over the last few days.

To me, it seems fairly obvious that the rakyat is secondary for BN. Little political strategems and one-upmanship is taking place in Perak. Little care or concern is placed on the economy, and news on the retrenchment and the things Dr. Subra is doing is shunted to the back of the newspaper (if at all), while beaming faces of BN leaders in Perak are blown up on the cover of newspapers.

Kuli’s blog is fair and full of wisdom, with hardly an ounce of irrational emotion, unlike some other political blogs.

Go Kuli!

And, by the way, Tengku Razaleigh says that Nizar is still MB.

HRH Sultan Azlan Shah, please take a read of Kuli’s wise words on the rule of law and click here for Zaid Ibrahim’s thoughts on HRH’s decision on allowing BN to take over.

Oh, by the way, Suhakam also calls for fresh polls.

And, interestingly, it has been reported that HRH Sultan Azlan Shah’s guest book has been deactivated. I wonder why…

Could it be because of comments like these?

Apa lebihnya sultan? Kenapa kau perlu disembah dan diagungkan? Kau bernasib baik dilahirkan dikalangan keluarga tersebut tapi pada hakikatnya kau tu manusia biasa saja. Tak ada apa yang kau nak banggakan. Aku takkan menyembah sultan tapi kau dituntut menegakkan keadilan. Malang sungguh kau telah mengkhianatinya. Disebabkan kau seorang, rakyat Perak derita kembali.

[What is the advantage of being the Sultan? Why should you be worshipped and glorified? You are just lucky that you were born in a royal family but the fact remains that you are only a human being and have nothing to be proud of. I will not worship a Sultan but you have been entrusted to fight for justice. It is unfortunate that you have betrayed it. Because of you, the people of Perak will have to suffer all over again.]

Read all about that here.

And thanks, Malaysiakini!