<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\nI am wary of doing the same thing.<\/p>\n
While it is during the Abdullah administration when the Malaysian society reclaims greater democratic space and effectively larger liberty stolen from it by the state, practically none of it is due to active action by Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi. The greater democracy is made possible through effort of various individuals willing enough to stand up and stare back at the state when the state stares at them.<\/p>\n
PM Abdullah has failed to reform anything. Each reform he initiated is going nowhere due to opposition from within his own party.<\/p>\n
It took free individuals to push organic reform agendas by pushing the frontier of an illiberal state away from suffocating free individuals. To have PM Abdullah enjoying the appellation denies the real contributors who stand in the front line to contest against an arm of the state, the police which is more interested in suppressing freedom rather than fighting crime.<\/p>\n
Having the PM as the “Father of Democratic Reforms” steals the honor from those who actually fought for greater democratic space, those that fought against the PM as well as the relentless machinery of Barisan Nasional. The victory is of individuals too many to list here and not of an ineffective personality as well as the machinery that maintains deep disdain for democratic space.<\/p>\n
If there is anybody that deserves that honor, it should be the individuals who fought for it. We do not have a “Father of Democratic Reform”. We instead have “Fathers of Democratic Reform” and the PM is not one of them.<\/p>\n
Dr. Koh is committing doublespeak for suggesting the sobriquet for the PM. Would we thank the Nazis for losing World War II? Would we thank PM Abdullah for losing the war in our backyard?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In The Malaysian Insider: KUALA LUMPUR, Oct 11 \u2014 Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi has been dubbed the “Father of Democratic Reforms” by Gerakan president Tan Sri Dr Koh Tsu Koon. In his opening speech this morning at Gerakan’s national delegates conference, Koh said that “as the Prime Minister, Abdullah has initiated reforms for good […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,8],"tags":[149],"class_list":["post-1810","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-liberty","category-politics-government","tag-doublespeak"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maddruid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1810","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maddruid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maddruid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maddruid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maddruid.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1810"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/maddruid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1810\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2465,"href":"https:\/\/maddruid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1810\/revisions\/2465"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maddruid.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1810"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maddruid.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1810"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maddruid.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1810"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}