Zombieland - where the likes of PPP, Gerakan, MIC, MCA, SNAP rule

Written by Ismail Dahlan, Malaysia Chronicle

The curious thing about zombies is that they don't always know that they're dead. Or some of them know it, but are in denial. Which may explain the proliferation of these zombies in Malaysia of late, particularly since 2008, entire parties of them.

The PPP is the oldest of these zombie parties. They have no excuse for staggering about in such a rotting state; they have been dead long enough to know it for sure. Whatever are they fighting for? If asked, they will claim to be fighting for the people.

But what they are actually doing is fighting for one of them to be a deputy minister. Even when they do not have a single seat, because they have been thoroughly rejected by the people whom they claim to be fighting for. What garbage-pickers! Disband your silly party, sirs, and spare us your stench!

Then you have Gerakan, another party roundly rejected in the only state where they had any sway, Penang. In the 12 state seats they contested in Penang in 2008, they won zero, and lost every one by large majorities. Their 10 Parliament seats were reduced to 2. They are a Chinese PPP now. But there they are, still strutting about making pompous statements.

Koh Tsu Koon unblushingly accepts a Cabinet post, despite having lost his own seat, but then proved so incompetent that he had to be replaced by Idris Jala. Of which fact he pretends to be blissfully unaware, collecting his redundant salary every month, borne by the struggling Malaysian taxpayer.

If the Gerakan wasn't sure after the 2008 election that they had joined the ranks of the walking dead, they should surely know by now. But still they hang around, making feasts of the scraps and bones thrown to them by Barisan. Another bunch of garbage-pickers!

Soon to be joining them is the MCA, clearly forsaken of popular support, even before an election is called. Its members, having learnt no lessons from 2008, decided that it was a good idea to elect a scandal-tainted politician as their President, who was thick-skinned enough to later talk about morality.

At a loss for ideas on how to regain support, they resorted to threatening their own voters that they would not accept any seats if they lost, meaning there would be no representation in the Cabinet for the Chinese.

They forget that Malaysian have the power to dump the entire Cabinet, by electing a new government. We have yet to see the MCA giving up any posts. They bark at the people, and wag their tails for their masters.

And marching right beside the MCA, his arms thrust straight out in front of him, like any self-respecting zombie, is Palanivel, the MIC's mostly-silent President who advises the Indians to go back to the estates, while promising to make them millionaires, all in the same contradictory breath.

The MIC is constantly proclaiming that the Indian vote is returning to the Barisan. Of course they have to say this, otherwise what use are they to the Barisan. Their functions without fail involve handing out clothes (cheap ones of course) or other inexpensive goodies to those who turn up. These rent-a-crowd tactics are their basis for claiming returning support.

The tragic bit is every Indian who turns up to receive such miserable hand-outs from the MIC, is a living example to their failure for the past 50 years. Nay, it is more than failure that they are guilty of, it is criminal neglect of their constituency, and worse.

If they are not busy neglecting their constituents, they quarrel among themselves for the spoils of their mean politics. Witness the recent MIED drama, where one of them sues Samy Vellu, because, of course, he is 'fighting for the people'. And then he queitly withdraws his suit. By ‘co-incidence’, he now has a seat on the board.

Samy Velu, despite having no position in the party, holds the equivalent of a Ministerial post, paid for of course, by you. (Oh, and by the way, we're cutting your subsidies because they cost too much. We can't cut the government's bloated RM18 billion administrative cost, because if we did, who would pay the Samy Vellus and the Koh Tsu Koons and all the other freeloaders?)

The MIC continues to dance, locked in embrace with Barisan, even though it is without doubt, their last song.

And in Sarawak there is SNAP. Why would they still hang around, contesting every other seat? And how could they possibly afford to? In the event, they made no difference. But do they give it up? No, they hang around, perhaps to make no difference in the next elections. Making no difference can also, apparently, be a lucrative pursuit.

And Malaysians can only sit and watch bemusedly, at all these lurching, putrefying zombies wearing fancy suits, dining in 5-star hotels, driving expensive cars, and of all things, standing for elections. Not only do dead men vote in Malaysia, they contest seats!

It really may be time to be rid of them. - Malaysia Chronicle