Soi Lek wrong on Chinese support

Ong Kian Ming | Feb 2, 11

Malaysiakini

ANALYSIS

 Right off the bat, I’d like to state that the Tenang by-election result, including who voted for whom and at what percentage, is far less important than the property damage and hardship experienced by the voters in that constituency and in other parts of Johor as a result of the devastating floods.

Having said that, I still have the responsibility of analysing the by-election results. I had earlier predicted that the BN would win the by-election with a majority of 3,200, a 700-vote increase to the majority it got at the 2008 general elections.

The turnout assumption among the Malay, Chinese and Indian voters were 77%, 71% and 58% respectively and the support for the BN by ethnic group were 85%, 35% and 80%.

The eventual majority was 3,700 with the BN winning 70% of the popular vote on a lower than expected turnout of 67%.

One of the points of contention with regard to the election results has been whether or not the BN’s share of the Chinese vote has increased or decreased.

The DAP has said that Pakatan Rakyat’s share of the Chinese vote has increased to 70% based on the results in the 96% Chinese-majority Bandar Labis Tengah polling station. MCA has said that the BN’s share of the Chinese vote has increased to 45% based on the fact that the BN won three out of the four Chinese-majority polling stations.

At the same time, there is broad agreement that the Malay and Indian vote did indeed swing back to the BN, which explains the 1,200 increase in BN’s winning majority.

Is the DAP or the MCA right? Does it even matter?

Analysing voting patterns by race

The question of racial voting patterns should be of interest to elections analysts. It is also what I do after every by-election to ascertain where I went wrong (and on occasions, where I went right).

Estimating voting patterns by race is an inexact statistical exercise even under the best of circumstances. In the case of Tenang, I am hampered by a limited number of polling stations (only 12) which increases the variance of my estimates, especially for the Indian voters who comprise only 12% of the voting population, spread out over five polling stations.

This estimation exercise is a two-step process whereby I firstly estimate turnout by race and then use those turnout estimates to estimate voting by race.

Estimating turnout by race matters because significant differentials in the Malay, Chinese and Indian turnout rates will affect the effective ethnic composition of the constituency.

For example, in a constituency which is 50% Malay, 40% Chinese and 10% Indian, a turnout rate of 80%, 60% and 50% among the Malay, Chinese and Indian voters would change the ethnic composition of those who actually voted to 58% Malay, 35% Chinese and 7% Indian, which means that the Malay vote would count for ‘more’ than their share of the total electorate. (This would be significant especially in three Chinese-majority polling stations which were won by the BN)

The second stage of the estimation process, after obtaining turnout estimates by race, would be estimating voting by race. The estimation procedure I use was developed by Harvard statistician and political scientist Gary King. It uses the turnout, voting and ethnic composition of each polling station, weighted by the number of voters from each ethnic group to arrive at turnout and voting by race estimates.

For example, the three Felda polling stations – which are over 95% Malay and which also has the largest number of Malay voters – registered an average turnout rate of 80% and an average BN support rate of 84%. The figures would factor heavily in the estimation procedures calculation of Malay turnout and voting rates.

Similarly, the 56% turnout and 30% BN support rate in the 96% Chinese-majority Bandar Labis Tengah, which is also the polling station with the largest number of Chinese voters, would factor heavily in the estimation of Chinese turnout and voting rates.

Using this procedure, I estimate the Malay and Chinese turnout rates to be 79% and 55% respectively and their BN support rates at 86% and 32% respectively.

This means that the BN support among the Malays increased, as anticipated, and at the same time, the BN support among the Chinese, decreased which gives some statistical evidence to support DAP’s argument. (Of course, Chinese support for PAS was 68% rather than the 70% initial estimate given by the DAP).

The Indian turnout and voting rates are the most difficult to estimate given that they make up the smallest percentage of voters in this constituency, which means that my estimates of a 50% Indian turnout and 86% BN Indian support has the highest variance.

About 32% Chinese backed BN

Do these numbers make sense? How does it square with the fact that the BN won the majority of votes in three out of four Chinese-majority polling stations?

Let’s take the polling station of Bandar Labis Timur, a 63% Chinese, 26% Malay and 11% Indian polling station with a turnout rate of 62% and where 52.6% of voters voted for the BN (a 66-vote majority for the BN in 2011 as compared to a 71-vote majority for the opposition in 2008).

Adjusting for differential turnout rates among the different ethnic groups, the effective ethnic composition of those who actually voted in this polling station is 58% Chinese, 33% Malay and 8% Indian (the effective percentage of Malays increase because of the higher Malay turnout rates).

A Malay, Chinese and Indian BN support rate of 86%, 32% and 85% respectively would give us an overall BN support rate of 54.6%, not far from the actual 52.6%.

As it turn outs, the estimation procedure allows us to calculate point estimates of racial voting by polling station – 85% Malay, 29% Chinese, 86% Indian, in this case. We can do the same for the other two Chinese-majority polling stations – Labis and Tenang Station – and only in Tenang station do we find Chinese support for the BN to be higher at approximately 49%.

But because the number of Chinese voters in the Labis town centre (Bandar Labis Timur, Bandar Labis Tengah and Labis) outnumber the number of Chinese voters in Tenang Station by almost four to one, BN’s better performance in Tenang Station was only sufficient to pull the level of BN support among the Chinese to approximately 32%.

Of course, one could say that my estimates of the Chinese vote in Bandar Labis Timor and Labis overestimate the level of BN support among the Malays and Indian, therefore underestimate the level of BN support among the Chinese.

But if this is the case, one has to give a sound reason as to why these polling stations, which are located more or less in the same area as Bandar Labis Tengah, would exhibit significantly different voting patterns among not just the Chinese voters, but also the Malay and the Indian voters as well.

For the sake of argument, let’s say that my estimates could be wrong. But how far wrong can they be? Would they be so far off that the estimated Chinese support for the BN is actually closer to the 45% level which the MCA claims (according to reports in The Star).

For the MCA to support this claim that it won 45% of the Chinese vote, this must mean that it won approximately 55% of the Chinese vote in the three other Chinese-majority polling stations besides Bandar Labis Tengah. Does this claim seem likely or even possible? Let’s go back to Bandar Labis Timur, where the BN won 52.6% of the popular vote.

If the BN won 55% of the Chinese vote in this polling station, this means that the Malay and Indian support for the BN in this same polling station would be approximately 50%, which is at least 30% below what level of Malay and Indian support in the other polling stations.

One would have to ask what was it which MCA did which was not only effective in winning 55% of the Chinese vote in Bandar Labis Timur but also in alienating the Malay and Indian vote to the point that they abandoned the BN in droves in this polling station? The same question would also have to be asked in the polling stations of Labis and to a lesser extent Tenang Station.

With these numbers to back me up, I’m positive that the BN support among the Chinese voters was less than 40%. There is a possibility that the BN may have increased their share of Chinese vote from the 35% it obtained in 2008 to perhaps 38% or 39%.

This is within the margin of error. But to say that the BN managed to obtain 45% of the Chinese vote is a stretch of the imagination, to say the least, as well as a stretch to my limited Math ability. (I’ve made this offer before and I’ll make it again. If MCA chief Chua Soi Lek wants me to explain this to him in person, all he has to do is to buy me a ‘teh tarik’).

Low turnout makes little difference

One more quick note: If the Chinese and Indian turnout were 71% and 58% respectively instead of 55% and 50% respectively, the BN majority would have decreased by approximately 213 votes (assuming that the Chinese and Indian levels of BN support among those additional voters were also 32% and 86% respectively) which would have resulted in a BN majority of approximately 3,500 votes.

This is of course, not to miss the forest for the trees. The fact remains that the BN managed to increase its majority by 1,200 votes. The fact remains that the by-elections in 2010 as well as the Tenang by-election show a national pattern of the Malay as well as the Indian vote returning to the BN. Pakatan Rakyat should be concerned about these trends and needs to be pro-active in trying to reverse this trend.

Continuing to harp on the Chinese vote and to put pressure on the beleaguered MCA president may be necessary to prevent MCA from re-gaining any political momentum among Chinese voters but it does very little to put Pakatan on track to win the next general election.

ONG KIAN MING holds a PhD in Political Science from Duke University. He is currently a lecturer at UCSI University. He can be reached at
[email protected]
.

                This entry was posted on Wednesday, 2 February 2011, 10:59 am and is filed under
DAP
,
Elections
,
Johore
,
MCA
,
Pakatan Rakyat
,
PAS
. You can follow any responses to this entry through
RSS 2.0
.


Egypt protesters react angrily to Mubarak’s televised address

‘How dare he talk to us like children?’ say demonstrators. ‘If he’s here until September then so are we’

 by
Jack Shenker and Peter Beaumont in Cairo, and Harriet Sherwood in Alexandria

The Guardian, Wednesday 2 February 2011

The crowd had rigged up a huge screen to show al-Jazeera. Mubarak’s speech was broadcast live. As he announced that he would not be standing for another term, the rally exploded in anger.

The screen was pelted with bottles and the cry “Irhal, irhal” went up repeatedly: “Leave, leave”. It was taken up by the hundred thousand people who thronged Tahrir Square. At one point demonstrators held up their shoes to the screen – an insulting gesture in Arab culture.

None of them were appeased by Mubarak’s announcement. If anything, they were emboldened to step up their protests and to push their demands further. Many were saying that not only must Mubarak leave immediately but that the whole of his National Democratic party regime had to go and should be put on trial.

“If he’s here until September then so are we,” said Amr Gharbeia, an activist who is camping out in the square.

“Perhaps this would have been enough to appease people a few days ago but it’s much too late now. He has to leave and he has to leave today,” added Ibraheem Kabeel, a 26-year-old physician.

“This has only made us angrier. He must leave today. He can’t wait until September. Mubarak’s plane is ready,” said Ahmed Defouki, a 30 year old pharmacist. “Everybody here has different opinions politically but on this issue we are united: Mubarak leaves today.”

A new energy infused the crowds. People seemed more excited, sensing that they could bring Mubarak down. Another protester added: “This is the Tunisian scenario, where Ben Ali promised to stand down eventually but was quickly removed.”

A prominent liberal dissident, Gamila Ismail, dismissed the president’s overtures. “He gave us nothing concrete,” she said. “You can’t have clean elections and a fair parliament until you have a political system untainted by emergency law.

“You can’t have political justice while the state security holds the political apparatus in its grip. Mubarak danced around these issues, preferring instead to show off his muscles to us. He’s trying to intimidate us.

“He did not mention the citizens who have died from the bullets and bombs of his police force. This will provoke us even more. He wants this country to be burned down. This is a president playing with fireworks.”

Karim Medhat Ennarah, a 27-year-old worker, said: “I watched this speech in a coffee house downtown where everybody was winding down after a long day’s protest but when the speech ended the whole coffee house rose as one and began marching back to Tahrir Square. He’s a man trying to bargain without realising that he has nothing left to bargain with.”

Another demonstrator, Abdallah Moktar, caught the mood. “This speech has angered us much more now. How dare he talk to us like naughty children? He must go immediately,” he said.

Egypt protests: In Alexandria, anti-government demonstrators clash with Mubarak supporters Link to this video

In Alexandria, however, following Mubarak’s broadcast his supporters clashed with protesters occupying the main square. Sticks were brandished and rocks thrown. Bursts of gunfire were heard, thought to have been soldiers shooting into the air in an attempt to separate the two factions. There were no immediate reports of casualties.

There were similar, small-scale confrontations in central Cairo. Hundreds of pro-Mubarak activists, some on motorcycles, tried to march on Tahrir Square following the speech but were repelled by the demonstrators. Some, carrying sticks, were chanting: “We love you Hosni” and “We will defend you with our blood and souls.”

Earlier hundreds of thousands of people had crammed into Tahrir Square to call for an end to Mubarak’s three decades in power. Government security forces were nowhere to be seen.

The protesters hung vast banners from buildings, beat drums and chanted, they picnicked with their children on patches of scrubby grass, and walked round the square holding up vast Egyptian flags.

Most of all they called for their president to go in a multitude of different ways. “Wake up, Mubarak, this is your last day,” they chanted. “We won’t leave until you do.”

Their banners – in Arabic, English, French and Spanish, a nod to the international audience watching this extraordinary uprising unfold – said “Game over” and “Leave now and we’ll leave you alone”.

Above the crowd a helicopter circled, feeding live images to Mubarak’s senior security officials.

They will have seen the crush below, but not the detail in it: families and friends, bearded Islamic students, work colleagues, the rich, the middle-class and the poor putting hands on shoulders to move through the vast press of bodies in snaking lines.

They won’t have seen the happy chance meetings of friends and colleagues; the intense pockets of debate about the future of the revolution that broke out on dozens of street corners; the faces lit up with the exhilaration of free expression and free assembly, as exciting as for any crowd at a football match or a rock concert. It was, as one banner had it, a festival of freedom. But what was truly extraordinary about this gathering was how far Egypt has come in a week.

People who once would not have thought of coming to protest, who would never have thought of speaking ill of a president who has ruled for 30 years or given their names to foreign journalists, have found a voice.

So they filed in their hundreds and thousands through checkpoints run by the army and checkpoints run by volunteers – who frisked all male protesters, checking their IDs to ensure that no plain clothes police officers could infiltrate the crowd. The volunteers passed out printed leaflets from soldiers asking for a peaceful assembly. Young men came with free boxes of mango juice and water to hand out, round bread and biscuits, cheese and dates. Others moved through the throng collecting litter and holding up signs for the camera.

It was a victory over fear that was assisted by a declaration from Egypt’s army last night that it would not use force against those who came out on the streets today.

So they came in numbers vaster than anyone had predicted, gathering not only in the capital, but also in Alexandria, Suez and other major cities. The march of the million, Egypt’s protest movement called it.

Even if it is not certain whether they reached that figure, it is clear that a transformation has taken place.

In Alexandria, at the height of the demonstration, the crowd went wild as a man in army fatigues was hoisted on to shoulders and carried into the square. He brandished his ID card and waved a national flag before the cheering masses. Was he a soldier? “Of course,” said Marwa Massoud, 34. “We are the army and the people, united.”

The reasons protesters gave for their presence varied only in the words they chose, not their substance. “Mubarak has lost the legitimacy of his people. It is the end of 30 years of dictatorship,” said Khaled Mohammed, 52. “We want the same as every civilised nation, fair elections.” A man in a wheelchair grinned and gave a thumbs-up: “Egypt! Egypt!”

A group of doctors in white coats unfurled a banner demanding the fall of the president. Almost all the signs were scrawled on cardboard ripped from cartons, a sign of a grassroots revolt. The crowd roared: “Wake up, Mubarak, today is your last day.”

The streets belonged to Mubarak’s opponents; those with different views kept their heads down. “Not everyone wants him out,” said a taxi driver. “He’s not all bad. These people are crazy.”

Commenting on the military’s assurances regarding protesters’ security, Muhammad Warsi, a 60-year-old surgeon, in Cairo said: “The high command of the army delivered a hidden message.

“It is the same message that the elites of the country’s society are delivering. They’re saying [to Mubarak], ‘We loved you 30 years ago. We don’t want to humiliate you. We don’t want you to end like [Romanian president] Nicolae Ceausescu. Go in peace.'”

Admiration for Egypt’s youth was a common theme running through the crowd.

“I’m ashamed of my generation. We old people sat back and lived through decades of corruption without lifting a finger,” said Aza el-Hadari, a 63-year-old bookshop owner. “This new generation has given me the best years of my life back.

“I feel sorry that Mubarak, who was after all a hero of the 1973 war effort, should be reduced to leaving with such little dignity, but he has brought this upon himself.

“Mubarak will go down in Egyptian history as the president who ordered security forces to fire live bullets into the bodies of his sons and daughters. There’s no way back from that.”

Mohamed Warsi was sitting on a bench waiting for his daughters, like many other recent additions to Egypt’s burgeoning revolution. He told a joke doing the rounds. “OK,” he says, “So Hosni Mubarak is lying on his death bed and his doctor comes and says: ‘Hosni, you have to prepare a message to say goodbye to your people.’ ‘For my people?’ asks Mubarak. ‘Why? Where are the people going?'” Today the answer came – to Tahrir Square, to bid their president of 30 years goodbye.

                This entry was posted on Thursday, 3 February 2011, 1:41 am and is filed under
Egypt
. You can follow any responses to this entry through
RSS 2.0
.


Tahrir Square protests: ‘For everyone here, there’s no turning back

 ‘Booker prize-nominated author of The Map of Love says Egypt’s anti-government protesters are proud of what they have done

by
Ahdaf Soueif, Tahrir Square

guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 1 February 2011

A great cry goes up from the square: “Irhal! Irhal!” (Leave! Leave!) Everybody is looking in the same direction. You follow their gaze to see a long banner unfurling, falling gracefully from the sixth-floor balcony of an art deco building. We read: “Do us a favour: leave!” Holding it from the balcony is a young woman with big hair. She is jumping up and down and holding up her hand in a victory salute. The crowd salute back: “Irhal! Irhal!”

Four generations, more than a million people (according to the army count at 2pm) are here. They are all doing what they have not been able to do for decades; each and every one is having their say in their own way and insisting on being counted. Their dominant demand, of course, is for Mubarak to step down.

In the regime’s response to this people’s revolution they have displayed the same brutality, dullness, dishonesty and predictability that have characterised their 30-year rule. They have shot and gassed their citizens, lied to them and about them, threatened them with F16s, tried to foist a “new” cabinet on them – everything except the decent thing: go.

Meanwhile the citizens on the ground have come into their own. Tahrir is about dignity and image as much as it is about the economy and corruption. People are acutely aware of how much their government has messed with their heads, worked to divide them, maligned them to the world. “She says we only care about a slice of bread,” a young labourer says, “We care about bread. But we also care about pride.” A bearded man with a wife in a niqab says: “We’re all Egyptian. Was I born with a beard?” He grins: “When Mubarak leaves I’ll be able to afford a razor!”

Together, in the square, over the last four days, people have rediscovered how much they like themselves and each other and, corny as it may sound, how “good” they are. They offer each other water, dates, biscuits. Young men are constantly collecting the litter. I sneeze and someone passes me a tissue. And all the time the chant continues, the demands are articulated, options for the future are discussed.

It is not possible to say what will happen next. Everything is up in the air, our communications are still cut (but you can still follow us online). Mubarak has said he will leave but more than two million of us are occupying the main squares of Cairo and a further two to three million are occupying other Egyptian cities. For every person in this revolution there is no turning back.

Tanks surround Tahrir Square but the army has declared it will never attack the people. Young Egyptians surround the tanks, chatting with the soldiers. Last night there was a football game – “the people versus the army” – with a tank as the prize. The people won. They did not get the tank. But then one of the most popular chants in Tahrir today is: “The people, the army as one hand”.

I would not have thought a scenario possible where we welcome military intervention but the Egyptian army is very much part of the fabric of Egyptian society. And in both 1977 and 1985 it refused direct orders to fire on Egyptian demonstrators. An oath taken by every soldier is that he will not shoot Egyptians. So at the moment the army is securing for us this space in our country where we are carrying out our peaceful, democratic, young, inclusive, open-source, grassroots revolution.

I write this sitting on the grass under a variety of banners. A bank of loudspeakers has gone up at one end of the square and we are waiting for a concert by the popular band Eskenderdella. We are all happy and we are proud to be here.

Ahdaf Soueif is the author of the Booker prize-nominated novel The Map of Love. She lives in Cairo and London

                This entry was posted on Thursday, 3 February 2011, 1:52 am and is filed under
Egypt
. You can follow any responses to this entry through
RSS 2.0
.


Civil war in Egypt? Hosni’s men, foes fight for every Cairo square

Indian Express

Feb 4, 2011

Agencies

Menacing gangs backing President Hosni Mubarak attacked journalists and human rights activists on Thursday in an ugly turn in Egypt’s crisis as government opponents pushed supporters out of Cairo’s main square in the second day of battles. Organisers called for protesters trying to topple the regime to fill every square in the huge capital on Friday.

The new vice president, widely considered the first successor Mubarak has ever designated, fuelled anti-foreign sentiment by going on state television and blaming outsiders for fomenting unrest. The government has accused media outlets of being sympathetic to protesters who want the president to quit now rather than serve out his term, as he has vowed to do.

The Obama administration, meanwhile, was in talks with top Egyptian officials about the possibility of Mubarak immediately resigning and the formation of an interim government that could prepare the country for free and fair elections later this year, US officials said Thursday. The talks were first reported by The New York Times.

The creation of a military-backed caretaker government in Egypt is one of several ideas being discussed as anti-Mubarak protests escalate in the streets of Cairo and other Egyptian cities, said the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive diplomatic talks that are continuing.

White House and State Department spokesmen would not discuss details of the discussions U.S. officials are having with the Egyptians.

“The president has said that now is the time to begin a peaceful, orderly and meaningful transition,” said White House national security spokesman Tommy Vietor on Thursday night. “We have discussed with the Egyptians a variety of different ways to move that process forward.”

Mubarak, 82, told ABC television in an interview that he was fed up and wants to resign. But he said he can’t for fear the country would sink into chaos. He said he was very unhappy about the two days of clashes in central Tahrir Square.

“I do not want to see Egyptians fighting each other,” he was quoted as saying.

The violence that had been concentrated in Tahrir spread around the city of 18 million, with a new wave of arson and looting.

Soldiers, mainly protecting government buildings and important institutions, remained passive as they have since replacing police on the streets almost a week ago. Few uniformed police have been seen around the city in that time, and protesters allege some of them have stripped off their uniforms and mixed in with the gangs of marauding thugs.

“When there are demonstrations of this size, there will be foreigners who come and take advantage and they have an agenda to raise the energy of the protesters,” Vice President Omar Suleiman said on state television.

Pro-government mobs beat foreign journalists with sticks and fists Thursday. The Committee to Protect Journalists said 24 reporters were detained in 24 hours, including representatives of The Washington Post and The New York Times. Twenty-one journalists were assaulted, including two with Fox News.

One Greek journalist was stabbed in the leg with a screwdriver, and a photographer was punched in the face, his equipment smashed.

The Arabic news network Al-Arabiya pleaded for the army to protect its offices and journalists, and Al-Jazeera said four of its correspondents were attacked. The BBC’s foreign editor said security forces had seized the network’s equipment in a hotel to stop it broadcasting.

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs denounced reports of “systematic targeting” of journalists and the State Department described it as a “concerted campaign to intimidate.”

“I think we need to be clear that the world is watching the actions that are taking place right now in Egypt,” Gibbs said.

Human rights activists were also targeted. Military police stormed the offices of an Egyptian rights group as activists were meeting and arrested at least 30, including two from the London-based Amnesty International, Amnesty spokesman Tom Mackey said. New York-based Human Rights Watch said one of its activists was also among those arrested.

Amnesty’s secretary-general Salil Shetty demanded their immediate release saying they should be allowed “to monitor the human rights situation in Egypt at this crucial time without fear of harassment or detention.”

Mubarak’s top ally, the United States, has pressed him to quickly transition to a democratic government but has said his earlier gestures, including forming a new government, were insufficient.

The crisis that began on Jan. 25 when protesters launched the biggest challenge ever to Mubarak’s 30-year rule has grown perilous. The day after Mubarak went on television late Tuesday and refused to step down, thousands of his supporters attacked anti-government protesters in Tahrir Square, where they had held a peaceful vigil for days.

The Mubarak supporters started fierce battles with firebombs, machetes and chunks of pavement that lasted throughout the night and all day Thursday.

After nightfall, the fighting died down with protesters’ hold on the square and nearby streets unbroken. Nearly 10,000 remained, some dancing and singing in victory as others — battered and bandaged — lay down exhausted to sleep or drank tea in the center of the rubble-strewn roundabout. Throughout the day, they gained in numbers and got supplies of food and medicine.

“Thank God, we managed to protect the whole area,” said Abdul-Rahman, a taxi driver who was among thousands who stayed in the square through the night, hunkered down against the thousands besieging the entrances. “We prevented the pro-Mubarak people from storming the streets leading to the square.” He refused to give his full name.

At least eight people have been killed and about 900 injured in the two days of fighting around Tahrir.

Many of the square’s defenders had cotton padding and grubby bandages dangling from their faces, arms and legs. Others had chunks of rock stuck to their hair and clumps of dust in their beards. Many had the trimmed beards of Muslim conservatives, a sign of the Muslim Brotherhood’s role in the fight. The Brotherhood is the country’s largest opposition group but secular groups have led the protests.

Under an onslaught of international condemnation for Wednesday’s assault on protesters by pro-Mubarak rioters, the government offered more concessions to the protesters, but that did nothing to calm the fury.

The anti-Mubarak movement has vowed to intensify protests to force the president out by Friday. The Facebook page that started the protest movement said supporters should gather at noon Friday on all Egyptian squares “so that we can put the last nail in the regime’s coffin, and declare the victory of the Jan. 25 revolution.” Friday is the weekend in Egypt and millions attend prayers at noon in thousands of mosques across the city.

Last Friday, there were fierce clashes between protesters and police after prayers. The hated police largely disappeared from the streets of Cairo after the clashes for reasons that remain mysterious. Mubarak, his new vice president and prime minister all promised to get to the bottom of their disappearance.

The attorney-general indicated that the former interior minister, Habib el-Adly, who was in charge of the police force when they left the streets, is a suspect in the investigation. He ordered an asset freeze and travel ban against el-Adly and the former housing and tourism ministers, who were among the unpopular millionaire businessmen who dominated the government Mubarak dissolved early Saturday.

In the capital on Thursday, a new wave of looting and arson began, after easing since the weekend. A fire raged in a major

supermarket outside Sheikh Zayed, a suburb of the capital, a d looters ransacked the building. A residential building neighboring a 5-star hotel on the Nile River corniche burned blocks away from Tahrir. Other fires erupted in the Cairo district of Shubra, north of the center, security officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the media.

The military and the security forces appeared to be doing little to stop the looting or the Tahrir clashes. In the interview,

Suleiman said without elaborating that the police had “lost some of its capabilities” and that the army was struggling to fill the void.

Protesters accuse the regime and the ruling party of organizing a force of paid thugs and police in civilian clothes to attack them Wednesday afternoon, sparking the violence that raged until Thursday night.

The prime minister apologized for Wednesday’s assault and acknowledged it may have been organized, though he said he didn’t know by whom. Suleiman promised that Mubarak’s son Gamal would not run in presidential elections in September. Before the protests, Mubarak was widely expected to try to pass his power to his son in a hereditary succession, despite significant public opposition.

Suleiman also offered to hold negotiations on the country’s future even with the regime’s biggest domestic enemy, the Muslim Brotherhood. But he also accused the Brotherhood of inciting the violence.

Mubarak’s regime has long rejected any talks with the Brotherhood, which calls for an Islamic state in Egypt, and has arrested thousands of its members in the past. The Brotherhood is among the many disparate anti-Mubarak groups organizing the protests, though secular activists have so far dominated the movement. All have rejected any dialogue with the government before Mubarak steps down.

The government’s latest concessions would have been stunning just two weeks ago. But on Thursday they were drowned out by the chaos.

“Hosni Mubarak’s every breath is a lie,” said Assem Moussa, a 40-year-old businessman among the protesters. “All the promises and the concessions are part of the lies. He is trying to deceive the people.”

Moussa pulled a white cloth out of his pocket, saying, “This is my funeral shroud. If I die here, I will die for our freedom.”

During Thursday’s fighting, bands of Mubarak supporters moved through side streets around Tahrir, trading volleys of stone-throwing with the protesters and attacking cars to stop supplies from reaching the protest camp. One band stopped a car, ripped open the trunk and found boxes of juice, water and food, which they took before forcing the driver to flee.

Fighting centered on and below a highway overpass 500 yards (meters) north of Tahrir’s center that regime supporters had used as high ground to pelt the crowds. Protesters swept over the bridge in stone-throwing battles.

At one point, a police truck barrelled wildly through the crowds under the bridge, mowing down several people in its path, according to footage aired on Al-Jazeera. Heavy barrages of gunfire were heard from time to time.

The morning saw a brief attempt by the military to stop the fighting – its first since the melee started Wednesday. But the troops stood aside when clashes resumed in the afternoon, moving inside their tanks and armored vehicles without intervening.

The Mubarak backers seethed with anger at a protest movement that state TV and media have depicted as causing the chaos and paralyzing businesses and livelihoods.

“You in Tahrir are the reason we can’t live a normal life,” one screamed as he threw stones in a side street.

The anti-Mubarak youths posted sentries on the roofs and balconies of buildings around the square to raise the alert of any approaching attackers and rain stones on them. Other lookouts in the streets banged metal poles against pedestrian barriers alarm when they sighted incoming Mubarak backers.

One sentry waved his arms in the air like an airport runway traffic controller, directing defenders carrying piles of stones as ammunition to a side street to fend off an assault. But then another sentry waved a hand across his chest horizontally in a new signal.

The crowd understood: false alarm, and they melted back into the square.

An exodus of foreigners, meanwhile, continued for another day with the U.N. evacuating much of its staff. The vice president said 1 million foreign tourists have fled the country, costing $1 billion in lost revenues from one of Egypt’s most important industries.

                This entry was posted on Friday, 4 February 2011, 1:55 pm and is filed under
Egypt
. You can follow any responses to this entry through
RSS 2.0
.


Pakatan wants Najib’s reply to Dr M’s Tanah Melayu remarks

By
 Shazwan Mustafa Kamal

The Malaysian Insider

KUALA LUMPUR, Feb 4 — Pakatan Rakyat (PR) lawmakers have demanded that Datuk Seri Najib Razak respond to Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad’s latest remarks that Malaysia belongs to the Malays and other races are expected to respect Malay sovereignity.

They want the prime minister to state his stand and views on the matter, and whether he subscribes to Dr Mahathir’s views or feels otherwise.

Opposition leaders said Dr Mahathir’s statement was a direct contradiction to Najib’s 1 Malaysia concept of equality.

“Najib cannot maintain an elegant silence over this, he has to respond to Dr Mahathir’s remarks. It’s important to see what stand Najib will take, and whether or not he is afraid of the repercussions should he not agree with Dr Mahathir,” Datuk Mahfuz Omar told The Malaysian Insider.

The PAS vice-president pointed out that those within Barisan Nasional (BN) who disagreed with the former prime minister ended up having very shortlived political careers, saying that Dr Mahathir did not take criticisms lightly.

Citing Dr Mahathir’s attacks against Tun Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, Mahfuz claimed that the veteran politician had consistently shown that he opposed Najib’s policies such as his 1 Malaysia concept.

“We can definitely see that Dr Mahathir is unhappy with Najib. Najib, on the other hand, has failed in making people understand his 1 Malaysia concept. If Dr Mahathir cannot accept or understand it, how then do normal folk?” said Mahfuz.

He stressed that PR did not recognise or support any views which did not recognise the rights of all races and did not contribute towards the nation-building process.

DAP national publicity secretary Tony Pua called Dr Mahathir’s views “supremacist”, saying there were no provisions in the Federal Constitution which supported Dr Mahahir’s views.

“Najib and Mahathir should perhaps enlighten Malaysians where Mahathir’s supremacist concept is found in the Federal Constitution as designed by our forefathers.

“Najib will also have to explain how his 1 Malaysia fits into Mahathir’s scheme of things,” Pua told The Malaysian Insider.

According to another DAP leader, Lim Kit Siang, Dr Mahathir was “contradicting” himself as his remarks went against not only the 1 Malaysia concept, but also the “Bangsa Malaysia” concept bandied around during the Mahathir administration.

“What he said was full of contradictions… it contradicts his (Dr Mahathir’s) own Bangsa Malaysia concept and 1 Malaysia.

“The aim for Vision 2020 was to create a Malaysia full of people committed to the nation, all races working together on the same platform,” the DAP parliamentary leader told The Malaysian Insider.

In a speech on Tuesday, Dr Mahathir told Malaysians to admit that the country belonged to the Malays and that they had to accept the culture and language of the dominant community.

The former prime minister said that the country’s forefathers gave the Chinese and Indians citizenship because they expected the communities to respect Malay sovereignty.

“This country belongs to the Malay race. Peninsular Malaysia was known as Tanah Melayu but this cannot be said because it will be considered racist.

“We must be sincere and accept that the country is Tanah Melayu,” he said.

He also said the administration must be clear on what is 1 Malaysia.

In a poll conducted by the Merdeka Center last year, only 39 per cent of non-Bumiputeras accepted the 1 Malaysia concept despite the fact that it had been introduced for over a year.

Forty-six per cent out of 3,141 respondents interviewed felt that 1 Malaysia was only a “tactic to win over non-Malay support” while another 16 per cent had either refused to answer the poll questions or claimed to have no understanding of the concept whatsoever.

Respondents were undecided on whether Malaysia had become more united under the Najib administration, with 48 per cent saying “yes” and 43 per cent claiming that the country was still disunited.

Veteran Umno politician and one-time Finance Minister Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah also agreed and said that the 1 Malaysia slogan was “hollow” and had lacked direction and vision and even compared it to Dr Mahathir’s Vision 2020.

                This entry was posted on Friday, 4 February 2011, 2:13 pm and is filed under
1Malaysia
,
Mahathir
,
Najib Razak
,
nation building
. You can follow any responses to this entry through
RSS 2.0
.


Guan Eng blames Umno for ‘misleading booklet’

By
Adib Zalkapli

The Malaysian Insider

February 05, 2011

KUALA LUMPUR, Feb 5 — Lim Guan Eng denied today that his Penang administration was behind a tourism booklet which Umno claimed has challenged the early existence of the Malays in the island.

The Penang chief minister also demanded that the Pulau Betong assemblyman Muhammad Farid Saad to apologise within a week for blaming the state government had distributed the “My Balik Pulau” booklet.

“To make matter worse, the Pulau Betong assemblyman and Utusan Malaysia through its reports have attacked the Pakatan Rakyat (PR) state government accusing us of publishing material containing historically misleading facts and insulting the Malays when it was Umno and the federal government that should be made responsible,” said Lim in a statement.

In an Utusan Malaysia’s report on February 1, Farid reportedly accused the Penang state government of twisting historical facts in an attempt to mislead the younger generation.

The Malay daily said that the booklet was published by the Penang Arts Education Society and sponsored by the Penang Education Council, which Utusan Malaysia claimed to be an advisory body for the DAP’s state government.

On February 3, the Umno-owned daily carried another report calling the My Balik Pulau booklet as dangerous.

The report quoted Penang campus of Malaysian teachers institute alumni president Abdul Said Hussain who claimed that the booklet was aimed at convincing the Chinese that their ancestors were the first to settle in Balik Pulau and not the Malays.

Lim  revealed today that among the sponsors for the tourism booklet were Farid’s resource centre and other Balik Pulau Umno leaders.

“However all pro-Umno media and Utusan Malaysia continue to spread lies, accusing the PR state government of discriminating against the Malays,” said Lim.

The DAP secretary-general also vowed to take action against Farid if he refuses to retract his statement and apologise to the state government.

“The state government will not keep quiet and be blamed for others’ mistakes especially the mistakes of the evil Umno,” said Lim.

“The Umno assemblyman for Pulau Betong must retract his statement and apologise publicly for his lies. If he fails to do so next, a stern action will be taken against him,” he added.

Lim also did not rule out the possibility of bringing up the matter to the state legislative for what he claimed to be Farid’s racist game.

“Umno’s politics of racism and hatred to cover their scandal and corrupt practices must be fought against,” he said.

Lim has had numerous run-ins with Umno-owned media especially after capturing the state in Election 2008. He has banned Utusan Malaysia from covering his events, saying the paper had misreported and refused to give him a right of reply.

He has also initiated suits against the Malay daily for what he called lies in their reportage. Critics have said that Utusan’s partisan reporting has resulted in declining circulation and readership over the years.

                This entry was posted on Saturday, 5 February 2011, 3:51 pm and is filed under
Lim Guan Eng
,
Media
,
Penang Government
,
UMNO
. You can follow any responses to this entry through
RSS 2.0
.


What Mubarak must do before he resigns

By

Hossam Bahgat and Soha Abdelaty

Washington Post

Saturday, February 5, 2011

CAIRO

As Egyptian citizens and human rights defenders, we have been on the streets here, including in Tahrir Square, since Jan. 25 to demand dignity and freedom for all Egyptians. There is nothing we want more than an immediate end to the Mubarak era, which has been marred by repression, abuse and injustice. We are heartened by the international community’s shift from demanding “restraint” and “responsiveness” to echoing our call for Hosni Mubarak to step down and for an immediate transition toward democracy.

But for a real transition to democracy to begin, Mubarak must not resign until he has signed decrees that, under Egypt’s constitution, only a president can issue. This is not simply a legal technicality; it is, as Nathan Brown recently blogged for ForeignPolicy.com, the only way out of our nation’s political crisis.

Egypt’s constitution stipulates that if the president resigns or his office becomes permanently “vacant,” he must be replaced by the speaker of parliament or, in the absence of parliament, the chief justice of the Supreme Constitutional Court. In the event of the president’s temporary inability to exercise his prerogatives, the vice president is to take over as the interim head of state. In both cases a new president must be elected within 60 days. Significantly, the constitution prohibits the interim president from introducing constitutional amendments, dissolving parliament or dismissing the cabinet.

If today Mubarak were no longer available to fulfill his role as president, the interim president would be one of two candidates. If he chooses to leave the country, say for “medical reasons,” the interim president would be Omar Suleiman, the former intelligence chief who was recently made vice president. Egyptians, particularly those of us calling for an end to Mubarak’s three-decade rule, see Suleiman as Mubarak II, especially after the lengthy interview he gave to state television Feb. 3 in which he accused the demonstrators in Tahrir Square of implementing foreign agendas. He did not even bother to veil his threats of retaliation against protesters.

On the other hand, if Mubarak is pushed to resign immediately we would have an even worse interim president: Fathi Surur, who has been speaker of the People’s Assembly since 1990. Surur has long employed his legal expertise to maintain and add to the arsenal of abusive laws that Mubarak’s regime has used against the Egyptian people. Since neither Suleiman nor Surur would be able to amend the constitution during the interim tenure, the next presidential election would be conducted under the notoriously restrictive election rules Mubarak introduced in 2007. That would effectively guarantee that no credible candidate would be able to run against the interim president.

So before Mubarak resigns he must sign a presidential decree delegating all of his authorities to his vice president until their current terms end in September. Mubarak issued similar decrees, transferring his powers to the prime minister, when he was hospitalized in 2004 and 2009. In addition, Mubarak must issue decrees lifting the “state of emergency” that has allowed him to suppress Egyptians’ civil liberties since 1981 and ordering the release or trial of those held in administrative detention without charge – estimated to be in the thousands.

Also before Mubarak resigns, an independent commission of respected judges, constitutional law experts, civil society representatives and all political movements should draft language to amend the constitution to ensure that presidential elections are open to all credible candidates; that Egyptians abroad are allowed – for the first time – to vote; that any elected president is allowed to serve only two terms; and that the elections are supervised by judicial and civil monitors. Most of this will be a matter of undoing the damage Mubarak inflicted with his constitutional changes in 2007.

These amendments must be introduced in parliament and put to a public referendum immediately. Suleiman’s claim that time is short is unfounded and disingenuous; four years ago, Mubarak and his ruling party amended 34 articles of the constitution in only two months.

Next, a diverse caretaker government must be appointed to serve the people until a president is elected and, importantly, to oversee the interim president. This broad-based cabinet must include well-respected representatives of all the country’s political forces. Once a new president is elected, we can move toward drafting a constitution that ensures Egypt’s transformation from a dictatorship to a democracy and enshrines full equality and human rights. Free and fair parliamentary elections would follow.

Three additional elements are key for the transition to succeed: First, civilian oversight of the police and security forces will deter abuse, hold abusers accountable, and help ensure the safety of those participating in the democratic uprising. Second, establishing an independent board of trustees for state television and radio would ensure neutrality in programming and representation of all political views. Third, a strong commitment by the army to act as a neutral custodian of the transition, serving the interests of the people and not the delegitimized regime, is critical.

Egyptians have paid a heavy price the past three decades and an even steeper one since this revolution started. Let’s end Mubarak’s rule the right way so we can start building a better future.

Hossam Bahgat and Soha Abdelaty are, respectively, executive director and deputy director of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (www.eipr.org)

                This entry was posted on Saturday, 5 February 2011, 11:28 pm and is filed under
Egypt
. You can follow any responses to this entry through
RSS 2.0
.


Withdraw sedition charge against Shuhaimi – first step to demonstrate Najib can learn from the lesson of Egyptian crisis

Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak has assured Malaysians that his administration will always put the interests of the people first, saying that the events of Egypt are a lesson for all.

He said in a democratic system “we must give priority to the people” who are empowered through globalization and ICT (information and communication technology).

Najib should show that his administration is capable of learning from the lesson of the Egyptian crisis by winding down and ending political repression in the country, starting with the withdrawal of the sedition charge against Selangor PKR Assemblyman for Sri Muda Shuhaimi Shafie, who is slated to be charged in the Shah Alam Sessions Court on Monday.

One important lesson for Najib from the Egyptian crisis is the top priority he must give to  restore public confidence in the efficiency, independence, impartiality and professionalism of the key national institutions in the country, in particular Parliament, the judiciary, the public service in particular the Attorney-General’s Chambers,  Police, the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission, the Election Commission etc.

For too long, the administration of justice whether judiciary or the  the Attorney-General’s Chambers have suffered under a cloud that  they are not independent or professional but  have to do the political bidding of the powers-that-be, and the sedition charge against Shuhaimi is the latest reminder that the Attorney-General’s office has continued to serve the political interests of  masters in Putrajaya rather than the larger and longer-term interests of Malaysians at large.

The Attorney-General had proven to be very quick on-the-draw to respond to police reports of sedition lodged against Pakatan Rakyat leaders – like the case of DAP National Chairman and MP for Bukit Glugor Karpal Singh who had been acquitted last June on the charge of allegedly uttering seditious words against the Sultan of Perak but still facing an appeal to the Court of Appeal by the AG’s Chambers – while ignoring heaps of police reports of sedition against Barisan Nasional personalities.

If  the Najib administration is to learn from the lesson of the Egyptian crisis, there are many things it would have to do – but let it  start with the tiny  step of withdrawing the sedition charge against Shuhaimi on Monday to demonstrate that the Najib administration has  the political will to walk the talk of learning the lesson from the Egyptian crisis!

                This entry was posted on Saturday, 5 February 2011, 3:38 pm and is filed under
Court
,
Egypt
,
Najib Razak
. You can follow any responses to this entry through
RSS 2.0
.


In praise of secularism

By
AB Sulaiman

In my earlier but one commentary, I stated that the Malay problem is the root cause of the nation’s problems. Soon after it was published on Jan 6, a dear friend and former office colleague sent me a note.

Ali (not his real name) agreed with my observation but disagreed strongly with my suggestion that one of the ways of solving ‘the Malay problem’ would be to secularise the Malay mind. He seemed to be saying, “Yes I agree with all your observations so long as you don’t ask the Malay to secularise his thinking”.

His reaction was all too familiar, for secularism is considered a dirty word, amounting to blasphemy and apostasy, to the Malay community – a major sin in orthodox Malay reckoning.

But Ali, and those who think like and agree with him, can be no more wrong. Here’s why:

What does secularism mean in the first place? A noted British sociologist, Bryan Wilson, defines it as “The process whereby religious thinking, practices and institutions lose social significance.”

I’d go back to the time when nation states were developing in Europe to appreciate this definition a bit more.

In the early formation of the state, power was concentrated in the Church, hat is, in the hands of the clergy or priestly class. Religion was so powerful that not only the people but even the King was under its centralised control. (Note: The word ‘Church’ of course is symbolic of ‘religion’, specifically Christianity; and ‘King’ of ‘state’).

But I suppose the individual human spirit is born free, and did not quite accept the perpetual bondage of religion. So, in the course of history, the people were getting increasingly tired of the Church. In the Reformation period (about the 16th century onwards) they rebelled against it.

The rebellion came from two quarters, the intelligentsia on one part and the King on the other. Some of the followers of the Church, like John Calvin and Martin Luther, developed their own interpretation of the Christian scriptures. They ‘rebelled’ against the Catholic orthodoxy and formed their own denominations. They are generally called Reformists.

In the case of the King, I take Henry VIII as an example. He wanted the Church to annul his marriage with Catherine of Aragon to marry Anne Boleyn, but the Church refused. Henry VIII ‘rebelled’ by creating the Protestant church, divorcing Catherine and marrying Anne Boleyn.

Transfer of power to the people

The effect of this rebellion saw state power transferred from the clergy to the monarchy and people.

But the King, a mere human, soon got involved in excesses he used to practise even before his escape from the priestly clutches.

He was, after all, the absolute monarchist in a feudal setting. This made the people angry all over again. Soon they rebelled against the King. Just look at what happened in France in 1789. They guillotined the royalty and nobility in the streets of Paris while the people cheered!

The effect this time was that the monarchy was sidelined; state power from then on was completely transferred to the people. For the first time in human history, the individual experienced and enjoyed complete freedom from religion and the state.

Secularisation in other words split the people on two quantum occasions: one, from the clutches of the church, and two, from the monarchy. State power then belonged to the people.

President Lincoln of the US recorded and described it as ‘the government of the people, by the people and for the people’. Note that religion and King were not even mentioned in this classic definition.

Individual freedom

The personal freedom brought about by the clergy-monarchy-people split brought with it the sense of the individual to the fore.

It allowed the growth and maturing of the spirit of the individual. He is responsible for his own progress, his freedom and his opportunity to develop his own talent, skills and individual spirit; so long, of course, this is done within the confines of the law.

This spirit enables a person to develop his own sense of pride and dignity, his own mertabat (dignity and honour); and find satisfaction and happiness in his own accomplishments.

What this means in turn is that it places the value, autonomy and benefits of the individual over that of the group (or race), society or nation. It makes the individual the prime unit in a social system. He is his own boss.

The independence of the individual gives rise to the development of human rights. He has the right of speech and expression, of religion and marriage, and to seek his own happiness. Mainly, it gives the person the ability to think independently make decisions based on the best alternatives available to him.

Scientific knowledge

The growth of the personal freedom of the individual, and of individual thinking, coincides with the growth of human knowledge, especially in science or scientific knowledge.

Science in turn is understanding nature. For example, science tells that lightning is electricity, not a sign of an angry God way up in the sky. It says that all living things have shape and size, ‘body’ temperature, and move about no faster than the speed of light.

All living things exist following the laws of physics, and that this law operates independent of a god. Gravity, for example, operates whether god exists or not.

An increasing understanding of nature leads to human control over it. To illustrate, matter when heated expands, and water expands into steam. With this knowledge, the steam engine was invented.

There was the rise in technological advancements. There was the rise in invention of new tools and implements, like the microscope and more powerful telescopes.

Early trains were powered by the steam engine. The combined harvester could plough huge acreages of wheat fields, so much so that large-scale farming was made possible. And today. we have the amazing computer.

The rise in scientific knowledge and the invention of tools have given the human civilisation the ability to look deeper into the minute world and further into the length and breadth of the universe.

Democratic principles

There are several other principles and tenets of democracy worth mentioning here. The first is the development and rise of the rule of law. The rule of law must prevail in society, otherwise there will be chaos.

Second, there is the system of check-and-balance between the legislature, executive and judiciary.

Third, there is the election process of identifying and appointing political leaders in a democratic system of government.

Fourth, there is the full participation of the people in the running of the country. The general population is given the opportunity to participate in the debate for the formulation of public policies. This is done via the conduit of the civic societies, the mass media or by direct communication with the people’s elected representatives.

Engines of growth

It turns out that the combination of the individual spirit (I), the progress and development of scientific knowledge (S) and the development of democracy (D) have pushed human civilisation to faster and greater progress.

In other words the ISD combination is the engine of growth of the human civilisation. I am therefore making the assumption here that there is a high correlation between ISD countries with the progress and development of the human civilisation.

Consider the following:

All of the early European nations experiencing the Industrial Revolution were experiencing the development of the individual spirit and the scientific progress, for example the UK and Germany.

All developed and advanced economies are democratic. Today there are few non-ISD developed countries. China, being socialist, is non-ISD, However, one can testify to the mushrooming number of entrepreneurs and capitalists there.

Their peoples are highly literate, knowledgeable and comfortable with science and technology.

Today, virtually all highly developed nations are ISD. Just look at the US, Western Europe, Australia, Japan and South Korea.

People power

Critics might say that for a country to progress, there must be many factors existing in the economic make-up. There must be sufficient infrastructure, for example roads and bridges, schools and hospitals existing in the country.

There must be sufficient raw materials like coal, oil, iron, and such. There must be people with fairly high purchasing power to start the consumer base of the economy.

But while admitting that the availability of raw materials and infrastructure are essential, they can never equate the ‘I’ (namely the enterprising human spirit) as part of the ISD equation.

Look at Japan. It is a group of hilly islands with poor raw material resources. It had hardly anything but people, people and more people. Before the World War II few would guess it would become an economic behemoth from the 1960s till to-date. It has been able to do so because of the quality of its human resource, its high ‘I’ factor.

South Korea’s is a similar story. Again after the World War II, few could imagine it would become the economic superpower it is today. The country is basically barren and does not have any raw materials in any meaningful quantity. Yet, like Japan, they delivered their country as a member of the highly economically productive ISD nations.

Then, take the case of little city-states that have nothing but people, people and more people, as in the cases of Hong Kong and Singapore. They have developed a dynamic economy out of nothing but the spirit and enterprise of their people.

Malay experience

Malaysia is a most sorry case of economic non-performance in the world community of nations. In the early Sixties, we were at an even level with modern power-houses like Singapore, Japan, Korea and Taiwan.

We had all of the prerequisites of development some of them did not have. We have the land, the people, the system of administration, the raw materials and perhaps even the capital to compete and shine in the world arena.

Today, these countries are in the ISD league, but we are trying to join them, not now, but in 2020. Judging by the look of things, we are not about getting there. Why?

Because we have been led by the Ketuanan Melayu (KM) polity which, unfortunately, has the following European pre-Reformation features:

The general Malay person has little sense of the individual. His focus is towards communal (call it racist) interest and solidarity. He lacks confidence and considers himself weak, thereby dependent on government largesse.

KM created an education system focussing not on science and technology, but on principles like morality, cultural values and religion.

Malay political leaders consider it to their advantage to retain the feudal monarchical system of government. Democracy in this country is nothing more beyond a general election every four or five years.

The KM polity operates on the platform of untuk agama, bangsa dan negara (for religion, race and nation). These are ‘un-ISD’ principles.

Catch-22

Malaysia has not yet experienced the ISD reformation, because:

 The Malay individual is still expecting special treatment to cure his lack of confidence. It looks like the New Economic Policy and its successors are here to stay. He is protecting his mertabat at other people’s expense.

Religion is not for the individual to choose, but the government ‘chooses’ it for him or her.

The people are fragmented into ‘Malays’ and ‘non-Malays’. This is no way of creating a one-race, one-nation, 1Malaysia political entity.

Good, young and talented people are running away to other countries. One, Singapore, is very happy with this.

Foreign investment is low, while domestic capital is running away. The recent Global Financial Integrity revelation that between 2002 and 2008 as much as US$291 billion have been illegally siphoned out of the country would just make this issue dire.

Public institutions are breaking down. The education system is such that the universities are producing graduates who can’t think or able to have meaningful communication or other social interaction. The legal system is an international joke.

Don’t talk about the essence of democracy in this country: the rule of law has become the rule of men. Equality and fairness is for the connected. Belief in religion (Islam) is mandatory.

Corruption is epidemic. as hinted by (iv) above.

How can Malaysia get out of this rut? It’s a complex question with no definite answers. But I propose one possible solution – by it becoming an ISD nation!

So, to my friend Ali and others with similar thinking, there is, after all, something to be said for the Malays to begin accepting secularism as a cure for this ‘Malay problem’.

——

AB SULAIMAN is an observer of human traits and foibles, especially within the context of religion and culture. As a liberal, he marvels at the way orthodoxy fights to maintain its credibility in a devilishly fast-changing world. He hopes to provide some understanding to the issues at hand and wherever possible, suggest some solutions. He holds a Bachelor in Social Sciences (Leicester, UK) and a Diploma in Public Administration, Universiti Malaya.

                This entry was posted on Monday, 7 February 2011, 4:26 pm and is filed under
nation building
. You can follow any responses to this entry through
RSS 2.0
.


Malaysia in the Era of Globalization #52

By
M. Bakri Musa

Chapter 7:  Enhancing Human Capital

People are the real wealth of nations.

—
UNDP Human Development Report 2001

One surprising observation following the American stock market meltdown of October 1987 was that there was very little change in the behavior of American consumers.  The Dow Jones Index may have dropped by over 40 percent but stockbrokers and their clients did not jump off the skyscrapers on Wall Street.  Citizens did not hoard food or withdraw their savings as they would when faced with major uncertainties.  Nor did they withhold spending in anticipation of tough times.  To be sure the sales of luxury cars and yachts were dampened, but by and large there were minimal changes in the economic behavior of Americans.

            Citizens’ reactions in Malaysia to the much more severe economic crisis of 1997 were also similar to the Americans’.  Both were in marked contrast in nearby Indonesia, where the nation was nearly ripped apart because of the economic crisis.

            The reason for such a wide difference in reaction is that for a modern nation like America and Malaysia, wealth resides less in such tangible assets as stocks, real estate, or material goods but more with its human capital.  Stocks may plummet and real estate slump, but engineers can still build, doctors heal, and architects design.  These precious skills and assets are not lost or affected by fluctuations in the market.

            Indeed the most important asset of a nation is its human capital; not its fancy infrastructures, gleaming skyscrapers, or national airline.  This wealth consists of the present and future earnings as a result of education, training, knowledge, skills, and health of the citizens.  Because of this dominance of human capital in the aggregate wealth of a nation, large changes in the value of the stock market, currency value, and other physical assets will not greatly influence the behavior of citizens.

            The quality, and thus value, of the human capital can be assessed in many ways.  Intuitively one can be easily persuaded that workers in Silicon Valley, California, are of higher quality than those of Papua New Guinea.  The former, being well educated and highly skilled, produce premium goods and services.  Consequently they are well paid and highly valued.  Not so with the folks in PNG.

            The most interesting aspect is that humans are either assets or they are by default, liabilities.  They either contribute to or are a drain on the economy.  There is no neutral zone.  If they are productive, the country benefits in two ways.  One, they contribute to the economy, and two, the state would not be expending resources on them.  Non-producers not only do not contribute but the state has to expend resources on them.

            Non-producers come in many forms: criminals, drug addicts, the sick and disabled, and the unskilled.  Criminals are not only destructive to society as a consequent of their criminal activities but they also cost a bundle to prosecute and incarcerate.  Drug addicts consume resources in terms of their medical care, and they do not give back anything to society.  In Western societies with their generous social safety net, unemployed workers not only do not contribute to the country’s coffer, but the state has to pay them unemployment, welfare, and other benefits.

            America has elaborate programs to train the mentally challenged through special education and sheltered workshops, all in an attempt to turn them into productive citizens.  Visitors to America may consider such expenditures wasteful, but it is not.  Even if these handicapped workers end up doing the simplest menial job, they are still contributing and more importantly, no longer a drain on the system.  These individuals work in special environments outside the usual rules and demands of the normal workplace.  They perform simple jobs like packaging toys and non-demanding assembly work.  Even considering such programs from the humane point of view, it is still a worthwhile investment.  One needs only look at the faces of these individuals in their sheltered workshops to appreciate how happy they are to be useful and productive.

            Granted, the opportunity costs of such intensive training are high.  In a country with limited resources, it would make more sense to spend them on educating the best and brightest.  But when you do have the extra funds, as in America, the money used to train these “slow” workers is indeed well spent, a true investment.

            I will illustrate the value of a well-trained workforce by relating three anecdotes.

            When working in Malaysia, I used to complain about the poor quality of my clerical staff.  Having worked in the West, the difference was glaring.  I was lamenting this to my father one day but he was not impressed.  “What is there to answering the phone?” he sniffed. “When it rings, pick it up and speak to the mouthpiece.  What specialized training do you need? Really!”

            Many Malaysians share exactly that attitude.  Such low-level jobs, they believe, do not need any training.  But there is much more to answering the phone than merely picking it up.  Far too often my Malaysian secretary would simply respond, “Dr. Musa is not in the office.”  End of conversation!  Well, if she simply ignored the ring, then the caller would indeed know that I was not in.  There is no need to pay someone to say the obvious.  My secretary did not add any value in answering the phone that way.

            In contrast, my efficient American secretary would answer it differently.  In a clear voice she would first identify herself and the office:  “Dr. Musa’s Morgan Hill office.  Vicky speaking, may I help you?”

            Short yet informative.  If the caller had mistakenly dialed my office instead of the pizza place, he or she would know immediately.  And if I were not in, she would not just simply state that fact but would add, “He is in surgery and not expected in until 3 PM. May I help you?”  If the caller is simply enquiring about her bill, my secretary would be able to help accordingly.  And if it is from a pesky salesman, she has protected me from wasting my valuable time in taking the call.

            If the caller is someone important, such as a doctor wanting to refer a patient, she would add, “I can have him call you right away.”  Then she would page me and I would call that referring doctor immediately.  In that way I would not lose any potential referral.  My secretary knows only too well that her job depends on whether I have patients.  Hence she would treat every phone call as if it is coming from a potential customer.  She cannot afford to simply dismiss it by saying, “The doctor is not in!”

            Unfortunately the typical phone conversation in a Malaysian office goes something like this:

Caller: “Hello! Huh! Hello!”

Secretary: “Hello! Huh, who is this?”

Caller: “Huh, who is this? Is Aziz there?”

Secretary: “Aziz who?”

“Is this the right number?”

“What number do you want?”

“849 0338”

“Yes, you got that”

“Is Abdul Aziz, your purchasing officer, in?”

            After a long nonproductive preamble, comes the answer, “Encik Aziz is not in!”  Minutes were consumed and yet no useful information was communicated.  As to Aziz’s whereabouts, you would not dare start on another game of 20 questions!  Even to relate this typical phone conversation took valuable space from my page.  Imagine the wasted time and unnecessary aggravation!  And that is assuming you have the right number in the first place.  If you do not, you have to start the whole darn process all over again.

            Back to my father, he could hardly contain himself when I remarked that my wife taught just that sort of much-needed telephone skills in her business class.  Companies send their employees to such classes to learn effective communication skills.  The person answering the phone is not simply mechanically doing it, for if she is doing her job well, she will be providing a valuable service.  She would give the first impression a customer would have of that establishment.  She is an advertising agent, a salesperson, and an information resource officer for that office.  That is why my secretary gets paid well while her Malaysian counterpart earns minimum wage.  Further as my secretary in Malaysia was a civil service employee, she was not answerable to me.  Thus she could afford to blithely ignore my suggestion that she improve her skills.

            Robert Townsend, the former CEO of Avis Rent-A-Car, related in his book Up the Organization how whenever he was on a road trip he used to phone his headquarters and also the local franchise pretending to be a potential customer.  That was the best way for him to get a pulse of his company and also to experience what a potential client would have to endure.  Under his leadership, Avis lived up to its advertising jingle, “We Are Number Two!  We Try Harder!”

            Many companies now use voice mail.  Phone calls are mechanically answered thus, “ABC Corporation…Your call is important to us…Press one for sales, two for repairs, ….”  To me, voice mail is irritating and offensive.  I do not use it and I stay away from businesses using such devices.  If they think that my call is important, then they should put their money where their mouth is – have a real live person to take my calls.

Next:   Adding Value to a Routine Airport Taxi Ride

                This entry was posted on Monday, 7 February 2011, 10:38 am and is filed under
Bakri Musa
,
globalisation
. You can follow any responses to this entry through
RSS 2.0
.


Petition to reform history education: act now

By
CPI

We urge CPI readers and others to sign this important petition by a courageous parent.  The petition calls on the authorities to act immediately to address the bias and shortcomings plaguing the Malaysian history syllabus and textbooks.

Our younger generation deserve a broad, impartial and fair history in their education.  They do not deserve narrowly blinkered history textbooks and a syllabus that are bent on propagandizing parochial ethno-nationalist and religiously biased perspectives and knowledge.

All parents and taxpayers in the country should be concerned with the current situation of history education which is providing our children with selective and biased views and knowledge that can only further polarize and divide the communities and nation rather than serve to unify us on the basis of a fair and accurate representation of our past and that of all civilizations.

***********************************

THE PETITION

CALL FOR REVIEW OF HISTORY SYLLABUS IN MALAYSIAN SCHOOLS AND INSTITUTIONS PETITION

We, concerned parents and citizens of Malaysia, note with great concern the following weaknesses and problems in the history textbooks in our nation.

They:-

(a) are filled with many historical errors and half truths;

(b) fail to reflect fairly on the contribution of all races in the development of the nation;

(c) are written from a narrow world perspective and has a strong bias towards certain religious civilization and belief.

In view of the great impact the history textbooks have on the minds of our young children, we call upon our Government and the relevant authorities to undertake an immediate and comprehensive review and rewriting of the history syllabus and textbooks in schools and all other institutions of education in Malaysia.

We propose that this review and rewriting of the syllabus and textbooks be undertaken by a panel of qualified historians . They should be representative of all the major races in the nation.

The objective of the review should be to introduce a liberal and progressive history syllabus and textbooks. These should:-

(1) equip our students with a broad and balanced perspective of the major civilizations and events in world history;

(2) not contain undue emphasis on any particular civilization or religion;

(3) accurately record historical facts from an unbiased viewpoint;

(4) give due and fair recognition  to the contributions of all races towards the historical development of the nation;

(5) focus on historical facts and processes, and not contain any religious or political agenda.

To sign petition click here…

                This entry was posted on Monday, 7 February 2011, 10:41 am and is filed under
Education
,
History
. You can follow any responses to this entry through
RSS 2.0
.


Egyptian opposition cautious after vice-president Suleiman opens talks

Government offers concessions to groups including Muslim Brotherhood – but critics say proposals do not go far enough

Chris McGreal in Cairo and Julian Borger in Munich

The Guardian

Monday 7 February 2011

The Egyptian government has offered a series of concessions at the first talks with opposition groups, including the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood, in an attempt to end the mass pro-democracy protests across the country.

But opposition leaders said that Egypt’s vice-president and longtime intelligence chief, Omar Suleiman, did not go far enough in his proposals for greater political freedom and pledge of free elections.

In Cairo, demonstrators again packed Tahrir Square to demand President Hosni Mubarak’s immediate removal from office as a prerequisite for any deal, undermining the government’s attempts to get people back to work because of the huge economic losses caused by the crisis.

While the mood was relaxed in the square for much of the day on Sunday, with even a wedding taking place, the army fired warning shots after dark in an apparent confrontation with some protesters. There are concerns that demands by the military to remove barricades blocking roads are a move towards breaking up the demonstration.

A government statement said that Suleiman, who is apparently playing an increasingly powerful role, agreed to a number of measures including the formation of a committee of political and judicial figures to oversee changes to the constitution which would scrap provisions that limit the ability of the opposition to run for the presidency.

The government said it will also immediately release “prisoners of conscience of all persuasions” and end legal restrictions on the press. However, it gave only a partial commitment to lift the state of emergency, which gives the president considerable powers and has been used to jail opponents, saying that it will be rescinded “based on the security situation and an end to the threats to the security of society”.

The meeting was greeted with scepticism by Mohamed ElBaradei, the former head of the UN’s nuclear watchdog, who is now a prominent opposition voice.

“The process is opaque. Nobody knows who is talking to whom at this stage. It’s managed by Vice-President Suleiman. It is all managed by the military and that is part of the problem,” he said on NBC.

Another member of ElBaradei’s group, the National Association for Change, who attended the talks with Suleiman, said they had been “positive” but did not go far enough.

“We demanded a full democratic transformation and not partial reforms,” said Mustafa Naggar. “But Suleiman responded: ‘Democracy comes in stages and I am keen that there is a peaceful transitional period and civilian rule.'”

Suleiman held separate talks with Muslim Brotherhood, currently banned by the government. The Islamist organisation said it did not regard the meeting as negotiations but as an opportunity to hear the government’s position. A Muslim Brotherhood leader, Abdel Moneim Aboul Fotouh, said it was not pleased with the results because Suleiman had failed to respond to the central demand that Mubarak resign. He also said that if the government was serious about political reform it should immediately dissolve parliament, which was elected in a tainted ballot from which the Muslim Brotherhood was banned. The group said it would meet on Monday to decide whether to continue the talks.

The Egyptian prime minister, Ahmed Shafiq, has said that Mubarak would not resign before elections in September.

Washington has backed the talks, with the US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, “cautiously welcoming” the meeting between Suleiman and the Muslim Brotherhood. But many pro-democracy activists are suspicious of US involvement, fearing that Washington, which backed Mubarak for 30 years as a force for stability in the Middle East, is seeking to perpetuate that policy with its support for Suleiman’s oversight of the political transition.

That view was reinforced by remarks over the weekend by the US special envoy, Frank Wisner, who argued that Mubarak should stay in power through the transition to democracy. The fond tone of his comments, claiming that Mubarak “has given 60 years of his life to the service of his country” and therefore deserved a chance to shape its future, was seen as particularly damaging.

The US state department insisted the remarks, made to an international security conference in Munich, represented the personal opinion of the 72-year-old retired diplomat. But European officials said they seemed to reflect a real shift in Washington’s policy towards acceptance that the transition would be managed by the Egyptian government according to a timetable followed by Suleiman.

Egyptian banks opened for the first time in a week on Sunday, drawing long lines of people desperately short of cash for food and other essentials. But despite the government’s appeal for a return to normality, many shops and factories remained closed, and a plan to open the stock exchange on Monday was called off.

The government estimates that the crisis has cost the country more than $3bn, a large part of it because more than 1m tourists have left.

                This entry was posted on Tuesday, 8 February 2011, 3:11 am and is filed under
Egypt
. You can follow any responses to this entry through
RSS 2.0
.


Perkasa hijacked NEM, says NEAC man

Aidila Razak | Feb 8, 11

Malaysiakini

Malay rights NGO Perkasa’s fierce objections to aspects of the first part of the New Economic Model (NEM) forced its second part to be watered down.

Revealing this today, National Economic Advisory Council member Zainal Aznam Mohd Yusof said Perkasa and other right wing groups were up in arms particularly over the NEM’s rejection of 30 percent bumiputera equity and the proposal of an equal opportunities commission.

“(These suggestions) were lambasted and strangled by right wing groups led by Perkasa. They wanted to burn part one (of the NEM).

“…Perkasa said we did not have roh Melayu (the Malay spirit),” he lamented.

Speaking at a forum organised by think-tank Institue of Democracy and Economic Affairs (Ideas) in Kuala Lumpur, Zainal Aznam added that listening to the right wing groups meant that the cabinet had failed the test on reforms.

“This was the government’s litmus test and at this time, I have to say that there is no political will,” he said.

NEM I was also heavily-edited

Interestingly, Zainal Aznam, who claimed reluctance to join the council, said that the first part of the NEM which was so objectionable was in fact already heavily censored.

“I joined NEAC with hesitancy… I had serious doubts over how far the BN government is willing to go out (to reform).

“Nine of us (from the council) sat and gave our proposals, and even this was after heavy editing with the council and secretariat,” he said, adding that some council members were unhappy about removing the 30 percent bumiputera equity.

To a question from Kita president Zaid Ibrahim, who was in the audience, the economist who confessed to looking forward to the council’s dissolution in June, noted that political reform too was to be included in the NEM, but did not make it to print.

Softening Zainal Aznam’s hard-hitting comments was Performance Management and Delivery Unit (Pemandu) representative Chris Tan, who said that what we need to do now is to celebrate small wins on the reform path.

“The passing of the Whistleblower Act is a milestone achievement which did not get as much airplay. I am younger than you so I believe there is time,” he said, responding to the economist’s assertion that reforms are taking too long.

‘ETP is an investor prospectus’

Speaking to reporters at a press conference later, Tan said that the much lauded Economic Tranformation Programme in in fact very much like an investor’s prospectus.

The idea, he said, is to focus on the twelve selected economic areas and detail the government’s promises in terms of infrastructure and policy in those areas to attract investors.

“We are giving business examples. We are saying this is our top 12 recommendations for you to invest and these are the government’s promises,” he said.

Today’s forum, ‘Celebrating the thoughts and vision of Tunku Abdul Rahman Putra’ was organised in conjunction with Ideas’ second anniversary, which falls on the same day as the first prime minister’s birthday.

The institute, which aims at promoting libertarian ideals, was recently ranked as the 18th best new think-tank in the world, out of 6,480 think tanks surveyed by the University of Pennsylvania and the United Nations University.

It is one of three Malaysian think-tanks to make the list, and was ranked second in Asia.

Also part of the panel were UKM political science student Woon King Chai and Maybank Investment chief executive officer Tengku Zafrul Tengku Abdul Aziz.

                This entry was posted on Tuesday, 8 February 2011, 4:20 pm and is filed under
NEM
,
NEP
. You can follow any responses to this entry through
RSS 2.0
.


The Price of Malaysia’s Racism

Slower growth and a drain of talented citizens are only the beginning.

By
JOHN R. MALOTT

The Wall Street Journal

Feb 8, 2011

OPINION

Malaysia’s national tourism agency promotes the country as “a bubbling, bustling melting pot of races and religions where Malays, Indians, Chinese and many other ethnic groups live together in peace and harmony.” Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak echoed this view when he announced his government’s theme, One Malaysia. “What makes Malaysia unique,” Mr. Najib said, “is the diversity of our peoples. One Malaysia’s goal is to preserve and enhance this unity in diversity, which has always been our strength and remains our best hope for the future.”

If Mr. Najib is serious about achieving that goal, a long look in the mirror might be in order first. Despite the government’s new catchphrase, racial and religious tensions are higher today than when Mr. Najib took office in 2009. Indeed, they are worse than at any time since 1969, when at least 200 people died in racial clashes between the majority Malay and minority Chinese communities. The recent deterioration is due to the troubling fact that the country’s leadership is tolerating, and in some cases provoking, ethnic factionalism through words and actions.

For instance, when the Catholic archbishop of Kuala Lumpur invited the prime minister for a Christmas Day open house last December, Hardev Kaur, an aide to Mr. Najib, said Christian crosses would have to be removed. There could be no carols or prayers, so as not to offend the prime minister, who is Muslim. Ms. Kaur later insisted that she “had made it clear that it was a request and not an instruction,” as if any Malaysian could say no to a request from the prime minister’s office.

Similar examples of insensitivity abound. In September 2009, Minister of Home Affairs Hishammuddin Onn met with protesters who had carried the decapitated head of a cow, a sacred animal in the Hindu religion, to an Indian temple. Mr. Hishammuddin then held a press conference defending their actions. Two months later, Defense Minister Ahmad Zahid Hamidi told Parliament that one reason Malaysia’s armed forces are overwhelmingly Malay is that other ethnic groups have a “low spirit of patriotism.” Under public pressure, he later apologized.

The leading Malay language newspaper, Utusan Melayu, prints what opposition leader Lim Kit Siang calls a daily staple of falsehoods that stoke racial hatred. Utusan, which is owned by Mr. Najib’s political party, has claimed that the opposition would make Malaysia a colony of China and abolish the Malay monarchy. It regularly attacks Chinese Malaysian politicians, and even suggested that one of them, parliamentarian Teresa Kok, should be killed.

This steady erosion of tolerance is more than a political challenge. It’s an economic problem as well.

Once one of the developing world’s stars, Malaysia’s economy has underperformed for the past decade. To meet its much-vaunted goal of becoming a developed nation by 2020, Malaysia needs to grow by 8% per year during this decade. That level of growth will require major private investment from both domestic and foreign sources, upgraded human skills, and significant economic reform. Worsening racial and religious tensions stand in the way.

Almost 500,000 Malaysians left the country between 2007 and 2009, more than doubling the number of Malaysian professionals who live overseas. It appears that most were skilled ethnic Chinese and Indian Malaysians, tired of being treated as second-class citizens in their own country and denied the opportunity to compete on a level playing field, whether in education, business, or government. Many of these emigrants, as well as the many Malaysian students who study overseas and never return (again, most of whom are ethnic Chinese and Indian), have the business, engineering, and scientific skills that Malaysia needs for its future. They also have the cultural and linguistic savvy to enhance Malaysia’s economic ties with Asia’s two biggest growing markets, China and India.

Of course, one could argue that discrimination isn’t new for these Chinese and Indians. Malaysia’s affirmative action policies for its Malay majority—which give them preference in everything from stock allocation to housing discounts—have been in place for decades. So what is driving the ethnic minorities away now?

First, these minorities increasingly feel that they have lost a voice in their own government. The Chinese and Indian political parties in the ruling coalition are supposed to protect the interests of their communities, but over the past few years, they have been neutered. They stand largely silent in the face of the growing racial insults hurled by their Malay political partners. Today over 90% of the civil service, police, military, university lecturers, and overseas diplomatic staff are Malay. Even TalentCorp, the government agency created in 2010 that is supposed to encourage overseas Malaysians to return home, is headed by a Malay, with an all-Malay Board of Trustees.

Second, economic reform and adjustments to the government’s affirmative action policies are on hold. Although Mr. Najib held out the hope of change a year ago with his New Economic Model, which promised an “inclusive” affirmative action policy that would be, in Mr. Najib’s words, “market friendly, merit-based, transparent and needs-based,” he has failed to follow through. This is because of opposition from right-wing militant Malay groups such as Perkasa, which believe that a move towards meritocracy and transparency threatens what they call “Malay rights.”

But stalling reform will mean a further loss in competitiveness and slower growth. It also means that the cronyism and no-bid contracts that favor the well-connected will continue. All this sends a discouraging signal to many young Malaysians that no matter how hard they study or work, they will have a hard time getting ahead.

Mr. Najib may not actually believe much of the rhetoric emanating from his party and his government’s officers, but he tolerates it because he needs to shore up his Malay base. It’s politically convenient at a time when his party faces its most serious opposition challenge in recent memory—and especially when the opposition is challenging the government on ethnic policy and its economic consequences. One young opposition leader, parliamentarian Nurul Izzah Anwar, the daughter of former deputy prime minister Anwar Ibrahim, has proposed a national debate on what she called the alternative visions of Malaysia’s future—whether it should be a Malay nation or a Malaysian nation. For that, she earned the wrath of Perkasa; the government suggested her remark was “seditious.”

Malaysia’s government might find it politically expedient to stir the racial and religious pot, but its opportunism comes with an economic price tag. Its citizens will continue to vote with their feet and take their money and talents with them. And foreign investors, concerned about racial instability and the absence of meaningful economic reform, will continue to look elsewhere to do business.

Mr. Malott was the U.S. Ambassador to Malaysia, 1995-1998.

                This entry was posted on Tuesday, 8 February 2011, 2:58 pm and is filed under
1Malaysia
,
Najib Razak
,
nation building
. You can follow any responses to this entry through
RSS 2.0
.


Mahathir blames police over Ops Lalang

Regina Lee | Feb 9, 11

Malaysiakini

Former prime minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad had pointed at the direction of the police over Ops Lalang, which saw 106 people arrested including top political dissidents under the Internal Security Act in 1987.

In the most recent book on Mahathir, ‘Doctor M: Operation Malaysia – Conversations with Mahathir Mohamad’, the former premier of 22 years revealed that he was furious over the mass crackdown.

“Well, I would have handled it differently, except that the police wanted to do these things because they say it is necessary…

“I actually met all of the opposition members (beforehand) and assured them that they would not be arrested. And you know what the police did? They arrested them. My credibility is gone,” he said.

“You must have been furious!” retorted Tom Plate, the interviewer and author of the book.

“Yeah, but what can I do? You see, I have to accept that they are the people on the ground that makes a decision. I give general authority to them,” continued Mahathir, who was known as a strongman who brook little dissent.

Regrets, I’ve had few

In the 1987 crackdown on Oct 27, over one hundred people – mostly opposition and a handful of MCA and Umno politicians – were arrested while the publishing permits for The Star and Sin Chew Jit Poh and Watan were revoked.

The government had explained that the second largest ISA swoop since the May 13 racial riots were ‘necessary’ to contain rising ‘racial tensions’ from the protests over the appointment of non-Chinese educated principals to Chinese vernacular schools.

In response, Umno held a counter protest, where notably then Youth chief Najib Abdul Razak led a mammoth rally in Kampung Baru days prior to the arrests.

Mahathir, who was the PM at that time, also said that in retrospect, he may have had some regrets over the clampdown.

“Yeah. Regrets … I mean you have to trust the police, because you have to work with them. They are the people who have to look after security, and when they advise you that the tension is very high, that it might explode into racial riots, and they need to take this action, you can’t tell them no.

“You don’t, you see, because you know less than they do. See, and you have to trust the people who are the implementers. I have no means of verifying everything that they say,” he said.

You don’t argue with men with guns

Later on in the book, Mahathir betrays a hint of timidity with the police force.

When Plate asked whether Mahathir’s control over the police, even as a powerful prime minister, was not absolute, the elder statesman agreed.

“No, not absolute. You have to learn to live with the people with guns,” he said.

“But then, does that make you to some extent a hostage of the people who have guns?” asked Plate.

“To a certain extent… everybody is. You see, you have to give people the means to enforce, and then of course they are better equipped than you are. You have to accept the fact that when they tell you that certain things need to be done, you have to respect them.

“If you keep running them down – there have been instances where they were run down by the government as being incompetent, corrupt and all that – what happens then?” he asked, hinting that the police may in the end go on strike.

Choosing the ‘wrong’ successors

While recounting his previous experience with former protege and deputy prime minister Anwar Ibrahim – whom Mahathir would later sack from the cabinet in 1998 – the former PM conceded that he had problems picking his successors.

“I got my blind spots, you know. You could say that I choose all of the wrong successors,” he said.

“One of my biggest mistakes was choosing my successor,” Mahathir repeated himself later.

Mahathir had quarrelled with most of his anointed deputies, including former deputy premier Musa Hitam.

After stepping down from power in 2003, he appointed Abdullah Ahmad Badawi as the fifth prime minister. However, the two too quickly fell out of favour.

‘Conversations with Mahathir Mohamad’ is based on a series of interview by veteran American journalist Plate.

                This entry was posted on Wednesday, 9 February 2011, 10:42 am and is filed under
ISA
,
Mahathir
,
Police
. You can follow any responses to this entry through
RSS 2.0
.