ELECTION IN AMERICA

As posted by Dr. Mahathir Mohamad at Che Det on August 13, 2012

1. I wonder whether people notice it or not, but Presidential candidates of the United States of America, the sole superpower, have all to seek approval from Israel.

2. Mitt Romney, Republican candidate for President has just made the pilgrimage. And he has made a public pledge that he will be even tougher against the Palestinians and Iran than Obama.

3. Soon I am sure Obama will make this pilgrimage and will make more promises to fight for Israel.

4. I think this is odd. What if Malaysian candidates for elections have to visit a neighbouring country to pledge our friendship or support for it? We Malaysians would not think this proper. Our elections are about gaining the support of Malaysians for the party that will form the Government. What other countries think of our Government’s policies is irrelevant.

5. Apparently it is not the case with America. All candidates must literally pledge loyalty to Israel or risk losing the elections. It is not about what is good for the Unites States which counts.

6. One can imagine the policies that will be adopted by whichever Government or President wins. If accusation is made that Israel rules the world by proxy, it would appear that there is substance to that allegation. Clearly the United States cannot ignore Israel’s views when reacting to anything of concern by Israel.

Looks like the tail is wagging the dog.

THE RACE FACTOR

As posted by Dr. Mahathir Mohamad at Che Det on August 07, 2012

1. Many have asked me why we cannot do without race-based politics in Malaysia.

2. The short answer is that we all want to remember and be recognised according to our racial origins, the countries of our ancestors came from, the languages we speak, the cultures we belong to.

3. We really don’t want to say we are just Malaysians and nothing else.

4. If it is pointed out to us that in many countries where people of different racial origins live, there is no racial politics, no identification of the citizens with the countries of their origin; we will say that we are different. You cannot compare them with us. Yet on most other issues we compare ourselves with them.

5. But are we so different from them. There are actually a lot of people of foreign origins in Malaysia who seem to have forgotten their origins. These are the people of Indian, Arab, Indonesian and even Turkish and European origins who are accepted as indigenous people by all of us. They have been so accepted because they identified themselves fully with the indigenous people. They speak the language of the indigenous people habitually, practice the customs and traditions of the people they have been assimilated into and incidentally they are Muslim.

6. According to the Federal Constitution these people are Malays and are therefore indigenous and not foreign in origin.

7. There is a row in Sabah because of the number of people who have been made citizens. Some of those people had been expatriated although many returned illegally.

8. But most of these people qualify to be citizens. They have been staying in Malaysia (Sabah) for decades. They and their children speak Malay, the national language.

9. On the basis of length of stay and mastering of the national language, they qualify to be citizens of this country. And so the acquired citizenship.

10. By comparison we have many citizens who cannot speak the national language who were accepted as citizens. And we are still giving citizenship to foreigners who wish to be Malaysians on condition they have been living in this country for 10 out of the last 12 years, speak the national language and take the oath of allegiance to the country. So why cannot the migrants to Sabah who have all these qualifications be accepted as citizens? The objections for them being accepted seem to be political.

11. And so the racial factor crops up again. There was a time in the distant past when parties based on ideology contested in elections. They were all rejected in favour of race-based parties.

12. If we don’t want our politics to be race-based, then we must forget our racial origins, speak the national language as our mother tongue and swear allegiance only to this country. We can retain our religion however.

13. Maybe one day this will happen. But for the present our politics will be race-based despite our protestations that we are not. We must not even say we are multi-racial as this implies consciousness of our racial differences.