Thesun 2009-01-20 Page12 Reality Check Not Just Yet

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theSun

| TUESDAY JANUARY 20 2009

speak up!

Reality check not just yet Scene: Café Milano, KLCC MOHAN: So BN lost Kuala Terengganu. Not unexpected. Almost everyone I talked to after nomination day said the BN was either going to lose or that it didn’t stand a chance of winning. Chong: Or that it was tough going. The outlook was already gloomy for the BN from the start. To the ordinary rakyat the logic was simple. Kuala Terengganu has four state constituencies. PAS won three in the general election last year. BN won one, Bandar, through the MCA. And it’s a by-election. Mohan: Very few of them changed their mind despite the newspapers saying all along and all the way that BN had the edge over PAS. Chong: It was certainly statesmanlike for Deputy Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak to concede defeat immediately after the result was announced. The BN, he said, bowed to the people’s wishes. Mohan: From the reports so far only one person says that the result was unexpected: Umno Youth leader Datuk Seri Hishammuddin Hussein. Chong: The BN expected to win? I thought, when you called us from Kuala Terengganu, you

WhatTheySay by Zainon Ahmad

said only very few BN leaders believed BN was going to win. Azman: In that case Hishammuddin must be one of them. A loyalist to the very end. Yes, Chong? Chong: Sorry. I was about to say that other people must have thought so too. Otherwise how do you account for the 35-table buffet dinner that was prepared in the compound of the mentri besar’s house. It indicated that a victory was expected. Zain: Not really, Chong. I don’t think the dinner was prepared because the BN expected to win. People have to eat, win or lose. It was probably meant for the party workers. For the BN leaders to thank them for their hard work. Chong: Could be Cikgu. Mohan: Cikgu, as an old Umno member, what do you think of

Cuba stands tall but poor 50 years after by Eric S. Margolis

HAVANA: I came to Havana to cover the 50th anniversary of the Cuban revolution because this beautiful island holds a big place in my heart. My parents used to bring me to Havana each winter, and we often joined Ernest Hemingway at the fabled Floridita Bar. He was a big, vivacious man with a white beard and rumbling laugh. I still have one of his books, inscribed, “to Eric, from his friend Ernest Hemingway, Havana, 1951”. Eight years later, a Communist lawyer named Fidel Castro Ruiz stormed ashore with 81 men to begin a guerilla war against the US-backed Batista dictatorship. Cuba was then a virtual American colony: Americans owned 60% of Cuba’s farmland and industry. On Jan 1, 1959, Castro’s guerilla fighters arrived in Havana and proclaimed a revolutionary republic. For the first time in its long history (Havana is 50-70 years older than Quebec City or New York), Cuba was genuinely independent of foreign rule. Once Castro was in power, his comrade, Ernesto “Che” Guevera, an icon of romantic revolution to the uninformed, ordered the execution of over 600 “bourgeois”, then got killed leading a farcically inept revolution in Bolivia. In an era when America bullied and exploited Latin America, Castro’s revolution was a triumph. His resistance to 50 years of US efforts to overthrow or as-

sassinate him, and a near-lethal embargo, was epic. US attempts to topple Castro nearly led to nuclear war with the USSR in 1962. The crisis was resolved by Moscow withdrawing missiles it brought in to defend Cuba in exchange for President John Kennedy agreeing not to invade Cuba and pulling US missiles from Italy and Turkey. The crisis was a victory for Cuba and the USSR but Kennedy got the kudos. The cost of Cuba’s independence and dignity was poverty, dictatorship, and becoming a Soviet satellite. Today, only oil-rich Venezuela and Canadian tourists are keeping battered Cuba afloat. Havana, once called “the naughtiest city on earth”, is a museum of the 1950’s: decaying, melancholy, dark. Cuba has Latin America’s best medical and education system, and highest literacy. But life in Cuba is grim: food and power shortages, endless queuing, grinding poverty and constant supervision by secret policemen and Communist party informers. Castro blames this misery on the US embargo. The US blames Castro’s rickety Stalinist economics. Both are responsible. Cuba has suffered 50 years of the kind of collective punishment that Gaza is now experiencing. The US has maintained its crushing boycott under the pretext that Havana holds 200 political prisoners and is communist. Yet the US cheerfully deals with

the outcome. Zain: Umno deserves to lose. Chong: Wow! Why do you say that? Zain: Look at what Prime Minister Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi said in Bahrain when he was asked about the outcome. He said BN and Umno would conduct a post-mortem of the by-election result to identify weaknesses and rectify them. In the first place have they conducted a post-mortem on what happened last March 8 when the BN lost power in five states and lost its two-thirds majority in Parliament? Mohan: You mean almost a year after March 8 they haven’t sat down to try to pinpoint the causes of their near-rout? The trails could be getting cold. Azman: I thought they had. Chong: Apa lah you Azman. You are a journalist and you don’t know. If I am not mistaken there is going to be one next month. However, I don’t believe a correct picture would emerge just yet. Zain: I agree with you. That can only emerge after March when Abdullah is gone. Anyway, I hope so. And then BN and Umno must embark on reforms, restructuring and re-alignment of objectives and strategies. New basis for continued coalescing must be worked out too. Otherwise I am not sure BN and Umno can hold on to power at the federal level and in the rest of the states that are not governed by Pakatan Rakyat beyond the next few years. If they had done their post-mortem earlier, perhaps a newer approach could have been taken when defending Kuala Terengganu. Chong: MCA did better. Zain: That was because the party examined itself earlier

communist China and Vietnam, and itself holds 36,000 Iraqi political prisoners, not to mention Guantanamo. I hope one of President Barack Obama’s first acts is to demand Congress end the hypocritical, idiotic embargo. Even half of Miami’s once fanatically anti-Castro Cubans now support ending it. Obama could neatly break the Cold War ice by flying down to Cuba for a round of golf. Or let Canada, which is hugely liked in Cuba, open the doors. It’s high time the West Indies’ largest island was welcomed back to this hemisphere and given civilised treatment. Equally important, Chinese influence is moving into Cuba, and Russia is reasserting its strategic presence. Moscow plans to rearm Cuba’s military. So the US has little time to lose. First Fidel, and now Raul Castro, have been happy to keep the US at arm’s length. An end to US-Cuban hostility could bring up to two million US tourists. The dying communist control system could not withstand this invasion. So the party, which refuses to implement Chinese-style reforms, may keep Cuba frozen in time. The age of ham-handed Yankee imperialism in Latin America is over. Cuba raised the banner of revolt, and paid the price. We should now help Cuba rejoin the polity of Latin American democratic nations and hope Washington will have learned to tread lightly in Cuba and show more respect. Eric S. Margolis is a contributing editor to the Toronto Sun chain of newspapers, writing mainly about the Middle East and South Asia. Comments: letters@thesundaily. com

and decided early what were the reasons for the Chinese to give up on it. And now the leaders are more truthful and open when talking about the party’s relations with Umno. The Chinese may be rallying behind it again. Chong: I agree with you that the outcome in Kuala Terengganu could have been different had the BN adopted new approaches and strategies. Zain: The BN used the same approach and strategies in Permatang Pauh and Kuala Terengganu as it had used in the by-elections after 2004. After March 8, those approaches and strategies are no longer valid, practical and acceptable. Things have changed. A new grouping, Pakatan Rakyat, has emerged and is challenging the BN. It is vying for power and is constantly reminding Malaysians, through all kinds of means and tactics, that it has not given up hope of capturing the federal government even before the next general election. In that kind of a situation, how can you use the old and tired ways? Anyway you can be certain that the victory in Kuala Terengganu is going to be flogged by the leaders for whatever propaganda advantage the new coalition could get. BN and Umno must change if they are to retain power and win the next general election. Azman: Can the Pakatan Rakyat truly coalesce? They are fighting each other most of the time. PR may not survive. Zain: I think it can. They have problems, sure, but these, I think, are teething problems. I remember the Alliance, the forerunner of the BN, almost broke up in the early stages. As an Umno member I am still hoping for BN to improve itself to be a credible ruling party again.

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Let retirees decide on withdrawals I CAN only guess at the reasons behind the government’s proposal to mandate a monthly withdrawal of EPF funds upon retirement, as opposed to a lump sum that is usually doled out. My best guess is the concern that retirees would mismanage the funds quickly. Though the concern is real, the real solution is in education. Our educational system does not equip us with the knowledge of money and how it works. As a result, most schoolleavers graduate knowing mathematics but not of the time value of money, or why keeping all the savings in the bank is not sound financial advice (especially when inflation is higher than the average savings rates). As a short-term action, I urge the government to hold seminars on the basics of financial knowledge, with a focus on the EPF withdrawals. Focus should be in the kampungs and rural areas, not only the large towns and cities. A longer-term solution is to teach subjects on finance in schools – and for all students, not just those who pick accounting subjects. Forcing retirees to accept monthly withdrawals is a kneejerk reaction to a real problem and is myopic at best. Let the retirees decide what they want to do with their money. Making that decision for them is a step back in governance. V. Vijayandhran Petaling Jaya