By Martin Jalleh 

The Umno-dominated government stubbornly sticks to the same old tricks to try to sink the Opposition. One such stale attempt is to label as “traitors” those who refuse to suck up to its spent elite leaders.

And so Defence Minister Ahmad Zahid (AZ) who apparently ran out of steam to shut the Opposition up on the Scorpene submarines scandal, resorted to calling Nurul Izzah a “traitor”.
 
It seems that the Member of Parliament (MP) has stained the nation's image by revealing on 4 Aug. 2010 in an interview with Kompas, a newspaper in Indonesia, that the country’s first submarine cannot dive.
 
Below are his comments (in bold) followed by a response which when added up points to the ironic conclusion that it is the Defence Minister and Umno who could be the real traitors after all!
 
AZ: “The statement has damaged the country’s image in the eyes of the world.”
Strange, since when did the supremacists in Umno really bother about world opinion?
 
AZ: “She has undermined the country’s reputation.”
Bolehland already has such a bad reputation for her buckling economy, brain drain numbers, a “bunch of idiots” in the judiciary (N H Chan), bowed media and biased and brutal Police Force.
 
Added to that is the burgeoning bigotry, “bloody racists”, brute-majority parliament, buffoons in the MACC and a badly “screwed-up” AG Chambers! What is left of our “reputation” that Nurul can do more harm to?
 
AZ: “It is an act as that of a "penderhaka" (traitor).”
What about Umno’s self-serving sycophants who deceive, deny and deprive the poor Malays of what has been due to them, like the RM52 billion worth of shares allocated to the Malay community since 1971?
 
The Umnoputras betray their own race by bleeding this country dry and siphoning and stashing their ill-gotten gains overseas whilst making the non-Malays the scapegoat for the “failure” of the NEP!
 
AZ: “As a member of parliament, she should have been more ethical.”
Does AZ mean “ethical” as in a trumped up sodomy case without penetration, a life blown up by a C4 explosion, a tragic death by “self-strangulation” and a colossal RM12.5 billion case of daylight corruption?
 
AZ: “The manner in which she disparages the Malaysian armed forces is disgraceful.”
The Ministry of Defence (Mindef) does not need to be so defensive, for Nurul does not need to disparage the Armed Forces. With the help of greedy Umno cronies they often end up disgracing themselves.
 
Take for example, in 1985 Mindef bought 88 A4 Skyhawks from the US (which she used during the Vietnam War) and then left 35 of them parked in the Arizona desert. No one knows where they are now!
 
A defence attaché in the 80’s commented on the purchase of certain tanks and armoured personnel carriers: “I hope to God Malaysia never gets into a war. They couldn’t get out of their own footprints.”
 
It was an utter disgrace when PSC-Naval Dockyard, owned by UMNO crony Amin Shah Omar, failed to fulfill its 1998 contract to build naval vessels. Yet,the Finance Ministry overpaid it about RM1 billion!
 
In fact, Najib, as Defence Minister, left a “disgraceful” legacy of financial mismanagement, irregularities in procurement, wastage and even grave allegations of kickbacks, bribery and corruption.
 
In the 2002 acquisition of two Scorpene submarines for one billion euros (RM4.7 billion), the commission of 114 million euros was allegedly paid to Perimekar, a company of Razak Baginda (a close ally of Najib).
 
In 2003, Malaysia bought 18 Sukhoi fighter jets worth US$900 million. A commission of US$108 million was allegedly given to Umno stalwart Adib Adam the chairman of the local company handling the deal.
 
AZ must have found the disappearance of two F5-E jet engines worth RM50 million each from the Royal Malaysian Air Force (RMAF) base in Sungai Besi rather embarrassing and disgraceful.
  
Over the past 23 years, RM180 billion of the rakyat’s money has been spent on national defence! Yet our military capability is still in such a scandalous state today. Can anything be more disgraceful than this?
 
AZ: “She has put the security of the nation at risk.”
The real enemy is within. The country is at its greatest risk with Umno’s rogues, racists, religious fanatics and rabble rousing newspapers – all of whom are allowed to roam and run riot!
 
AZ: “Politicians should stop politicising national defence issues.”
Yes AZ, it is disgraceful for Umno to use national defence spending as a surefire money-spinner!
 
AZ: "Although we may have differences in opinion, we should stick to the truth…”
The truth is that Nurul was only reiterating what AZ had revealed in Parliament on March 17 that one of the submarines was not being able to dive because of technical problems. Surely AZ is not a traitor?
 
Nurul nipped the Minister’s nonsense (that her statement had threatened national security) in the bud by arguing that
·   the problems regarding the submarine were common knowledge
·   AZ had himself said that such technical problems were also faced by many other countries
·   information on the dive status of any submarine in the world was easily available.
 
She pointed out to the defensive minister: “If it is true that the minister is a patriot, why then is he not supporting the MACC’s probe on the commission paid to Perimekar Sdn Bhd…?”

She added that the navy’s revelation that it was only conducting its integrated navy exercise once, instead of three times a year in order to save cost (Bernama, 6 Aug.) was even a greater security threat!

Harebrained Home Minister Hishammuddin Hussein Onn jumped on to AZ’s bandwagon and added that Nurul’s criticism of Malaysia abroad “proved that PKR’s struggles were not accepted in this country”.
 
The Umno vice-president added that “the opposition pact clearly failed to win the hearts of the people to the extent that it had to go abroad to explain their struggles pertaining to national issues”.
 
Why then did the PM have to go to the US to explain his policies to Obama and why pay RM50,000 in an attempt to get his opinion-editorial article published in one of the major newspapers in the US?
 
In inferring that Nurul was a traitor, he forgot that his grandfather was a “good traitor” who had formed two parties to fight against Umno and so was his father who refused to join Umno Baru until his death!
 
Minister in the PM's Department Jamil Khir Baharom said that Nurul had “sinned” by tarnishing the country’s image. The ambitious Umno man forgot he had majored in many sins as a young major!
 
Alas, Nurul Izzah is a young MP who, by her own merit, is daring enough to dive deep in search for the truth and in spite of the uncertain implications. She just happens to be the daughter of Anwar Ibrahim.
 
In contrast, we have Umno’s “old” men whose statements betray their shallowness and who, in trying to keep Umno afloat, are bent on using their sillyscare tactics, sabre-rattling tricks and sinister theatrics.
 
(31 August 2010)