Stand up and fight, that’s the call made by BN chairman who is Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak at the opening of Gerakan’s assembly last week. The call was appropriate and timely given the general election is around the corner and all preparations are almost ready…except of course…the component parties in BN.
For the oppositions, election preparation started immediately after the 2008 general election…well…they have nothing else to do becaquse they are not the government and in states they won, they are still not governing instead busy loooking for faults of previous BN government and leaders. So for the oppositions, governing is consider ‘alien’ to them and fulfilling their election pledges is something they have not thought of as they feel they do not owe the voters anything but the voters owe them a lot – most important allegiance.
Based on that, they have no qualms or guilt feelings towards the voters and their job is to find as many faults with the previosu administration and higlight them in every ways they can think of. Their strategy is simple – give BN hell and implant in the voters’ minds BN did not do a good job and they are there to rescue – so fulfilling promises and pledges have to wait until they have done all the so-call cleaning up.
Since after the 2008 general election, most of the component parties in BN faced an inferiority complex or rather felt very down and ashamed of themselves to the extent they did not want to appear confident nor want to hit back at all the onslaughts from the oppositions. Even some leaders of these component parties were thinking of ‘jumping ship’ or quiting.
Their spirit were down and they did not know what to do, particularly Gerakan as the party was practically ‘wiped out’. Najib took the lead in 2009 when he took over the BN helm and has been fighting all alone to bring back the dignity and credibility back – fighting the political war alone – as leaders of the component parties were still contemplating whether or not to go along.
After two years of fighting alone, showing the way to other component parties leaders on how to fight back, MCA and MIC began to appear, putting out their heads and began to open their eyes, flex their muscles and now they stand right behind Najib fighting the ‘war.’ So when Najib called on component parties leaders to stand up and fight, it is about time that these leaders and their parties are in good shape to go to the battle field. Gerakan especially must wake up and fight to the end as Penang was lost mainly due to the party’s weaknesses rather than BN because Umno still stood with most of the state seats.
Thus, now is the time for Gerakan and MCA to fight ‘tooth and nail’ as Najib has shown the way how to fight, how to win, because winning is not just sitting in an air-cond room and do charting on the table. Winning is about going down to the grassroots and meeting them, winning is about rebutting the oppositions’ manipulations using the same method they used, winning is about not being shameful to say out loud that they are not wrong but the oppositions have been manipulating the facts that made BN seems wrong. So the battle begins with Najib’s call for standing up and fighting back, not running behind and hiding in the shell.
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