A TALE OF TWO VISITORS

Anyone in the movie business in search of a script for a surefire runaway success would want to examine the scene at Langkat Golf. It does supply grist for interesting plots, sidebars, and character studies for the making of thrillers of the celluloid and print kind to distract from the controversy over Miss Singapore Rachael Kum's milk-bars or bag-susu!

It’s now widely believed that Umno hit the panic button when they saw the size and youth of the throng that took part in the Anti-ISA Rally in Kuala Lumpur on August 1. They were shocked that despite a menacing Police presence, so many young people braved the cordon to express their opposition to a law that deserves to be dumped down history’s trash chute. So panicky that they had to rig a Home Ministry poll. HERE

Umno would have noted that something like half a million Anak Bangsa Malaysia youths come of voting age every year and given Umno-BN’s lack of traction among them, its curtains and kaput or finito for them at GE13 (PRU13).

Hence the panic that took hold the very next day when birth-marked who aspires to be numero uno if not for the 2^nd lady, and Utusan Malaysia columnists began to spout venom against Anwar Ibrahim and sundry Malays who do not share their take on the supposed disaster looming before people and country.

Not just the usual cast of political characters is in panic. On the grapevine we hear that Umno’s corporate courtiers are also at panic stations. One corporate bigwig and his infamous counselor, who had blockbuster roles in a tape of judicial infamy, paid a visit to the unofficial ‘White House’ in Kuala Lumpur, residence of a man who with one move can remake the political landscape in Malaysia, but is loath to do so because he had one time left Umno and then come back and now does not want to leave, though for all the world to see he has no place in the party.

This Lone Dissenter, famously polite and courteous, must have received the visit of the corporate titan and his counselor in some fascination as to the motive. When it was disclosed – they had come to see if they could pave the Lone Dissenter’s way into PM Najib’s cabinet – he who is the epitome of courtesy, must have felt offended but did not show it. He politely declined and sent the two ambitious would-be fixers on their way.

It seems everyone in Malaysia, except the Lone Dissenter’s two erstwhile visitors, knows that he is not going to accept any position except PM of Malaysia which I was reliably informed, Anwar Ibrahim offered him in April 2008, a month after GE12, but it did not materialize because I heard it myself at the Mayor of Bungsar’s house and hence not a rumor that the Lone Dissenter’s demands escalated with every subsequent negotiation.

This episode of the visit just shows you how Umno and its lackeys view their prospects after the Anti-ISA demo. They are in hair-cloth panic at the youth wave that could easily become the PR wave, provided PR and its, admittedly, sometimes disorderly cast of characters don’t fluff their lines or spill the beans, as they have worryingly done at times in recent weeks.

Aside: luckily Hassan Ali and Ronnie Liu just hugged and did not proceed to the next stage of foreplay.