Dear Malaysians,
I do not know if this is too basic of a knowledge that I'd sound stupid trying to explain it. But from what I have observed, it seems like a lot of us (to my surprise, even the hosts on national TV) do not really know how to differentiate between a government and a political party.
First things first. BARISAN NASIONAL (BN) IS NOT EQUAL TO THE GOVERNMENT.
BN is a coalition of parties. Inside BN, there's UMNO, MCA, MIC, Gerakan, and another 10 parties.
Other than BN, we have Parti Keadilan Rakyat (PKR), Parti Islam SeMalaysia (PAS), and Democratic Action Party (DAP). These are of course just the famous few of many more parties that we have in Malaysia. And these parties have different ways to look at and deal with national issues.
Government, on the other hand, is a group of people/ministers formed by either a single party, or a coalition of parties. A government handles national matters and spends taxes paid by citizens and corporations to execute national plans. During election process, the citizens will look at all of the parties' offers on how to deal with national issues, and choose the party that we think have the best offer to form the government.
Therefore, a government can be formed by any party contesting in an election. It doesn't matter, BN, PKR, DAP, PAS, all of these parties can form a government individually or mixed. Our problem is, after having BN being our government for the past 50 years (and for the next 4-5 years), a lot of people seem to have been confused when to use the term government, where most of us call BN as the government. If in the next election PKR, DAP and PAS wins simple majority in the Parliament, then please, once and for all we need to stop calling the BN coalition-of-parties as the government.
So, in the recent election, it was not the government who lost the four states... BN lost the four states to the hands of PKR, DAP and PAS. And if we love BN, we should say we sokong BN instead of we sokong kerajaan.
I just hope this clears up if not many, some of the people's confusion. To be honest, I am somewhat disturbed when people are even using the term government when they are actually referring to the BN coalition (this was on national TV, during election).
To those who just learned this difference, please do educate your friends as well. Thanks.
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2 comments:
ahaha..
seriously..they confused with their own identity.." itulah yang jadi bila lebih 5 dekad duduk dlm tempurung nyior"..
btwn..aku br start blog..terlambat la..tapi nnt aku bg komen psl perkembangan politik malaysia dr perspektif student yg merasai kehambaran dan kehangatan GE 12 hari tu..
This is a good article. The confusion is worse when the parties spend Government money and claim that "they" are doing good.
We need people like you to continue educating the people that acts like giving FELDA settlers money etc., is not a great act, but it is just using people's money.
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