November 10, 2012
Time to Own Up to Reality
by Josh Hong (11-09-12)@www.malaysiakini.com
Park Geun-hye during initial thought using for President would be a cakewalk for her. Should her dreams come true, she would turn a initial womanlike conduct of state in a complicated history of a Korean Peninsula.
South Korea's antithesis parties were not able to present a challenger of tall calibre, while a mercantile boom over a last couple of years underneath President Lee Myung-bak who comes from a same statute celebration as Park's appeared to emanate a feel-good factor which refused to go away.
Her presidential aspiration was additionally accoladed by her being a daughter of Park Chung-hee, a military strongman who oversaw a most fantastic transformation of an mercantile backwater in to an industrial powerhouse in a 1960s by a 1970s.
Not until a series of corruption allegations against her tighten aides emerged, which triggered a vast internal struggle as is so mostly a box in South Korean politics. Adding to a irregularity in Park's domestic campaign is a speak of dual alternative possibilities fasten forces to safeguard a liberal stay would prevail.
Park has since been using neck-and-neck against her rivals in perspective polls. Forced in to a corner, she had no choice though to publicly apologize for all a wrongdoings committed by a state during her father's economically supernatural though politically rough rule.
For most comparison South Koreans who lived by a White Terror between 1961 as good as 1979, Chung-hee was a cruel leader who tolerated no gainsay as good as showed no qualms in flexing his own iron fist if necessary.
Among his most distinguished targets of gangland slaying was Kim Dae-jung, who was to turn a initial democratically elected president from a antithesis stay in 1997.
Controversially, Chung-hee (right) is additionally widely credited with paving a firm substructure for South Korea's destiny ascent as a grown nation. When a single buys a Samsung, Hyundai or LG product today, a single ought to know it was Chung-hee who was instrumental in making these domestic business entities global giants of a 21st century.
His legacy as such was so sorely longed for which Time magazine declared him between a top 10 Asians of a Century in 1999.
Taking a dignified tall ground
By as good as large, a jury is still out upon Chung-hee's scarcely dual decades of iron rule, though his tellurian rights violations have finally caught up with his daughter, who is right away constrained to have a clean mangle with her father's past, something indeed extraordinary in a deeply dutiful as good as Confucian society.
Up until then, she had remained wordless upon a issue though has done so to have up for her lack of democratic credentials. In alternative words, her reparation is meant to regain a dignified tall ground over her opponents.
While not quite a answer to Park, during least not in terms of electoral politics, there is no dispute which Marina Mahathir is a single of a superb open total Malaysians have seen. Her steadfast quarrel against stigmatisation of HIV victims is good acknowledged, as good as she does not chop her difference whenever a domestic scene becomes nauseous as good as idiotic, her solidarity with Bersih co-chairperson Ambiga Sreenev! asan whe n a latter came underneath a disrespectful attack from PERKASA as good as alternative UMNO members as good as bloggers, for instance.
My rarely as good as most would say self-indulgently vicious view of former Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad (above) is good known. Still, we would never question a fact which Mahathir loves his own young kids dearly, as good as which his mother Siti Hasmah has been a model prime minister's mother as good as is additionally an superb Malay woman who always knows her place as good as never oversteps her boundaries, unlike we know who.
But which is in a private sphere of family life. Publicly, however, Mahathir remains a male who has done Malaysia beyond recognition over his 22-year rule, as good as a negative stroke of his policies usually started to aspect after he stepped down.
Down, though not out. Mahathir is so fearful of even a diminutive reversal of his policies which he has been making a single irresponsible, divisive as good as most a time extremist matter after another, seeking to rip a nation detached with a vengeance as good as looming to be a a single pulling a strings behind UMNO's thick veil of complexities.
Mahathir during a heart of Malaysian malaise
In her recent interview in Singapore, Marina Mahathir talked candidly 
about what she considers has gone wrong in Malaysia: a education system, censorship, income governing body as good as a resort to sex in a domestic scene.
I am certain her views as such! relate Malaysian open sentiments, though in selecting to downplay her father's influence in her position today, we cannot assistance regretting which she is still not facing up to a realities.
Extensive erudite investigate has confirmed it was Mahathir's prolonged as good as peremptory order which bred cronyism, corruption, a suffocation of gainsay as good as a malfunctioning of a legal as good as domestic institutions.
From Khoo Boo Teik's 'The Paradoxes of Mahathirism', Jomo Kwame Sundaram's as good as Terence Gomez's 'Malaysia's Political Economy: Politics, Patronage as good as Profits', Diana K Mauzy's as good as R S Milne's 'Malaysian Politics Under Mahathir', Ahmad Mustapa Hassan's 'The Unmaking of Malaysia' as good as Barry Wain's 'The Malaysian Maverick: Mahathir Mohamad in Turbulent Times', it has been proven time as good as again which Mahathir is during a really heart of a Malaysian malaise today.
Among them, Wain has written maybe by distant a most critical book upon Mahathir as good as claimed additionally which a strongman had wasted or burnt up to RM100 billion upon grandiose projects, corruption as good as currency speculations, an claim which Mahathir himself fails conspicuously to refute.
Hence, how can Marina Mahathir simply boot her father's domestic stroke upon a republic by saying "often people done me feel we had to be responsible for all he did", as good as "sometimes we became a surrogate for criticism"?
Of course she should not be hold responsible for Mahathir's power of terror, though she contingency additionally remember she is who she is currently largely due to her father's powerful participation in a country.
Put differently: why were PERKASA as good as UMNO ultra quick to pick upon a BERSIH committee members as! good as alternative antithesis leaders though were shy to go against her? Would her fate have been vastly different if her father was not Mahathir Mohamad though Muthu, Ah Beng, Ali or David?
Or a single may additionally ask if her siblings Mukhriz, Mokhzani as good as Mirzan would have been super rich if they did not lift a name Mahathir.
Who, as Education Minister, effectively killed off an initially colourful campus as good as tyro politics? Who saw it convenient to play up a patriotic card as good as latter lamented (and continues to lament) a abominable standard of English between Malaysians?
How most leaders in a universe have ever demonstrated a rare show of insolence by sacking three Supreme Court judges as good as suspending 5 others in a single go? And, most crucially, who set off a greatest domestic crisis in Malaysia by mercilessly persecuting Anwar Ibrahim by way of unfounded sex scandals, formulating a meridian of fear upon a partial of a lesbian, gay, bisexual as good as transgender (LGBT) communities as good as turning a nation in to an international laughing stock?
'Hope she habours no domestic ambitions'
I am not here to judge Marina Mahathir personally, for we do await most of a good causes which she champions as good as conclude her timely await for BERSIH as good as alternative just-minded amicable movements.
My perspective is simply which she cannot go upon criticizing all which has gone awry underneath both Abdullah Ahmad Badawi as good as Najib Abdul Razak , but additionally receiving a low demeanour during what preceded them.
Knowing which she will keep quiet, we can usually goal which she harbours no domestic ambitions, or her father's prolonged ! as good as dim shade might show up her as is a box of Park in South Korea.
After all, it is not easy being a daughter of a strongman, especially a single who has scarcely broken all a open institutions in a nation in a name of race, religion, nationalism as good as development.
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