Spirit of adventure

By
 A. Razak

June 06, 2011 | The Malaysian Insider

JUNE 6 — I left Malaysia many years ago in the spirit of adventure. I went simply because the idea of doing something new in unfamiliar territory sounded like a lot of fun. I have now lived in the UK for 10 years.

Here in the UK we live a life of “relative isolation.” My wife is the third of seven siblings while I am second of five. My kids are two of 11 grandchildren. When you include uncles, aunties and family friends, life becomes a circus of birthdays, weddings and family functions. When you live thousands of miles away from your relatives, weekends are exclusively for your precious little family.

Yes, you miss your parents and siblings. But they visit. In our situation, quantity is substituted with quality. They are here for a week, sometimes two. My parents love shopping while my in-laws love sight-seeing. Bicester Village for the former is Buckingham Palace for the latter. Our parents dote on the little ones and they in turn absolutely adore their grandparents! For a week or two, we will have dinner together at home or at a restaurant as a family. Pure bonding over food and chit-chat, uninterrupted. Each visit is extremely special for us and we count the days to the next.

Brits talk about the weather all the time. I have lived here long enough to really understand their fixation with the weather. Summer here is simply gorgeous. Spirits go up a notch. Cycling in the park with children in tow, wading in the public fountain and rummaging through Diana’s shipwreck in Hyde Park. There is simply no substitute.

Winter is miserable for many but for me it’s absolutely beautiful. I can recall the first time I held snow in my hands. Waking up on a cosy winter’s morning, with the world outside the window blanketed in virgin snow. A sight that never fails to bring a huge smile to my face. And our children. They have built countless snowmen, each one growing a little bit taller over the years.

My eldest child is now at school. It is great watching her interact with her school friends who come from all over the world. Last Christmas, she took part in her first Nativity Play. I sat in the audience with other proud parents, to watch her playing the part of a cute little sheep. Out came the shepherd and the farm animals. Then came the bit where they sang praises to Jesus. As a not very pious but responsible Muslim father, that was the moment when I figured that I have to close the curtains on this chapter of my family’s adventure.

It has been a great 10 years. I love this country to bits. And I love the super fantastic gorgeous city of London. I am sure there will be more snags along the way should I continue here, as life is not one happy clapping ride to Nirvana. But we are already looking forward to our next adventure and planning our next move. Maybe back to Malaysia? Singapore, Oz or Dubai perhaps? Who cares where really! Another adventure beckons!

Quit moaning and live your life!

                This entry was posted on Monday, 6 June 2011, 12:40 pm and is filed under
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There’s nothing to stop us from being Malaysian first

By
Deborah Loh

6 June 2011 | The NutGraph

THE vocal and articulate Lim Kit Siang many of us know in Parliament, through his blog and from news reports, is reticent when it comes to talking about himself. The veteran politician is slow to reveal what makes him tick or where he draws his ideals and inspirations from. Yet, Lim himself has been called an inspiration by many and is cited as the reason they joined the DAP.

What comes through however, even during a brief interview, is Lim’s unwavering devotion to change things for the better. This was Lim’s passion even as a teenager, when he published a school magazine with his friends where they would often write articles questioning the status quo.

Freedom of expression is one human right Lim has never wasted. Exercising it got him detained without trial twice under the Internal Security Act (ISA); in 1969 for 18 months and in 1987 for 17 months. He was also charged with breaching the Official Secrets Act for exposing corruption in a government arms deal.

After a short stint as a journalist, Lim stood for election in the Kota Melaka parliamentary seat in the third general election in 1969, and won. Since then, Lim has stood in every general election in different constituencies, winning every time, except for 1999. He has also been a state assemblyperson concurrently during some of these parliamentary terms. He has been with DAP since it was registered in 1966, and was its secretary-general from 1969 until 1999. He was then elected national chairperson and served until 2004, when he refused re-appointment and was succeeded by Karpal Singh.

In an interview at his office at DAP’s national headquarters in Kuala Lumpur on 23 May 2011, Lim tells The Nut Graph about being Malaysian first.

TNG: When and where were you born?

I was born in Batu Pahat, on 20 February 1941.

What are some memories you have of your childhood in the place where you grew up?

(Long pause). Batu Pahat was a quiet town. With [some Form Two] classmates, we did what we thought worthwhile doing. [We started a class magazine to exercise self-expression]. Inevitably, we faced obstructions and obstacles along the way. [Editor’s note: In The Right to Differ: A biographical sketch of Lim Kit Siang, Lim said the magazine initially started as an annual publication, then was produced bi-monthly by the time he and his friends were in Form Four. Their enthusiasm in producing the publication led to clashes with the school principal.]

Then, there were the usual picnics and school excursions.

In my family, I was the youngest child. I had two older brothers and an older sister, who was about 15 years older than me. I’m not sure but there might have been one other child who was given away. As a family we did not go out much or do many activities together.

What did your parents do?

I have [always] had difficulty describing my father’s occupation. I would say that he was an “agriculture technician”. That is, he castrated pigs and poultry so that they could grow faster for consumption. There were no steroids in those days, so castration was the natural thing to do.

My mother was a housewife.

I’ve heard a story about how your mother taught herself to read. Do you remember how she did it?

She taught herself how to read Mandarin, but I don’t know the details.

Do you have any memories of living through World War II as a child?

I do remember the planes. A most memorable scene was one of soldiers marching down the main street in Batu Pahat town. I just remember the many planes flying above and the marching soldiers associated [with that]. I was only about four at the time.

Can you trace your ancestry? What generation-Malaysian are you?

I’m first-generation. I was born here. [My ancestors] came from a place [in China called] Dongshan [in Fujian province], which I visited about two or three years ago. It was a very poor, backward place. [Editor’s note: Lim and his son Guan Eng visited their ancestral home in Fujian in Nov 2008, and this was reported in the Malaysian Chinese-language press.]

Was this on your father’s side? What about your mother?

I think they might have been from the same area.

Did they tell you why and how they made the journey to Malaya?

No, they never told us why they came here.

What stories by your parents, grandparents or older relatives do you still remember and hold to?

Not much.

Growing up, how and when did you first become conscious of race?

In school, the concept of race was not of much salience. There was no race consciousness. It didn’t really impinge on our consciousness. But over a period of time, following political developments, there was a sense that the politics of race was becoming more and more significant, and you became more conscious of it. But as a youth in school, it had no salience.

So you lived through 13 May 1969, and that was the same year you won the Kota Melaka parliamentary seat in the general elections. What are some significant memories of that time?

The election was on 10 May, a Saturday.  The 13th was a Tuesday. I was not in Kuala Lumpur (KL), I was in Sabah. So I was not fully attuned to what was happening in KL because it was not the hub of my political activities, although I did come up to campaign.

The riots of 13 May came as a total shock and surprise. The first time I heard of it was at a rally in Kota Kinabalu. Somebody whispered to me that trouble had broken out in KL and that there was a curfew but we didn’t have the details. I had flown to Kota Kinabalu on the morning of the 13th to help other candidates there, because elections in Sarawak were to be held two weeks after 10 May. The elections in Sabah and Sarawak were suspended and postponed because of the riots in KL.

[Editor’s note: Lim was detained under the ISA in 1969 upon arriving at the then Subang airport after flying back from Kota Kinabalu via Singapore a few days after the riots. He had been warned not to return to Peninsular Malaysia as he had been marked for arrest.]

The sense of shock you and others had — wasn’t there already economic disparity and racial alienation in the run-up to 13 May?

The riots and killings were completely unimaginable. Yes, there was already a sense of economic disparity and alienation, but still, that was no reason for racial riots to happen. Something like that should not have happened. Up till now nobody knows the actual causes of 13 May, although I have been accused of being one of the ring leaders, as if I was there, which is completely untrue. As you know, I was in Malacca, where I ran for a parliamentary seat.

Until now, we have not learnt the lessons of 13 May. There is a need to find out how and why it happened. Not because we want another 13 May, because nobody will gain anything out of it.

How has Malaysia changed since 1969?

There are pluses and minuses, and in some aspects, there is progress, while in other aspects, we’ve moved backwards. We may be economically more developed now, in terms of Gross Domestic Product per capita and by other material indicators. Yet, we have allowed other countries to overtake us. [We have not] fully exploited our national resources and potential.  The subject of the day is the brain drain. It is not just a question of talent or Malay [Malaysians] leaving the country but of losing Malaysians who could have helped develop this country. Why is this happening? It is hampering our growth.

The question of national unity — there is a big question mark. Are we more united or divided? In the days before Merdeka, the saliency of race was not felt. Now [race] is [part of] every [aspect of our] consciousness. I think it was from the 1970s onwards, that the sense of whether one is a Malay [Malaysian] or not, a bumiputera or not, began to hit home because of issues such as [the awarding of government] scholarships, education opportunities and employment.

What will it take for Malaysians to move beyond race?

We need to respect and recognise each other and to accept each other as fellow human beings and fellow citizens. There must be political will to do so, only then will the right structures fall into place. Otherwise, the structures will continue to crumble. Our key institutions are coming apart. There must be political will to save Malaysia from going down the slippery slope.

What does your Malaysian identity mean to you?

I’m a Malaysian, first and last. I’m proud to be a Chinese, and as I’ve said in Parliament, I’m proud to be a Chinese, but a Malaysian, first of all.

Nobody is suggesting that anyone should give up their ethnic identities, but we should have this common bond where we agree that we are first of all, Malaysians. I will accept the definition of 1Malaysia as being Malaysian first, then race, religion, or geographical origin second. My quarrel with 1Malaysia is not that it is wrong but that it is empty sloganeering.

What aspects of your identity do you struggle with as a Malaysian, if any?

None. I don’t think any Malaysian should have to struggle with aspects of their composite identities. There is nothing that should bar you from being Malaysian first.

What are your hopes for Malaysia?

I still hope it’s not too late to save Malaysia because Malaysia is a country of great promise and potential. Malaysians of all races and religions should come together to build a progressive nation which can then make its contribution to international society.

                This entry was posted on Monday, 6 June 2011, 5:39 pm and is filed under
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Umno’s nightmares are becoming reality

By
Sakmongkol AK47

June 05, 2011 | The Malaysian Insider

JUNE 5 — Umno’s worse nightmares are now becoming a reality. PAS is transforming itself into a credible and viable alternative. If it links up with likeminded people from other parties and the combined forces are led by someone with stature, they will form the next government.

Will PAS implode? It will only if it has the Umno culture. What differentiates PAS from Umno is the existence of an eternal idealism. To see the application of more Islamic content in the running of the country wherever and whenever they are applicable.

The recent victory of the Erdogan faction in PAS is also a reflection that PAS has succeeded in attracting more libertarian members into the party. The change in leadership character in PAS can only be possible as a result of a change in the character of the men and women who have become PAS members. If they have enlisted into the PAS army, then Umno has lost people of this calibre from its ranks.

What will happen to Umno? Very soon, Umno members will consist of the riff-raffs and contract hungry divisional leaders and class F contractors. Umno will continue to be dominated by leaders and followers who make high pitched noises when they can’t get something out of the MRT and Pudu Jail redevelopment projects.

PAS is showing it’s ready to take the bull by its horns. It shines where Umno leadership falters. PAS doesn’t fear leadership transformation. Umno shows it does.

Umno talks but its PAS who walks. The party is now made up of more professionals. They are trained in the secular skills but the people with the skills have spiritual credentials. Plus, they are younger and are being groomed to take over PAS leadership.

Umno reins in its young fearing backlash from powerful warlords in the party. It doesn’t even have the stomach to fill in positions with elected members. Some who lost in the last elections continue to be given positions in government. For all the talk about transformation, the party has shown it’s all just rhetoric.

The Umno president can only offer a meek excuse that Umno members do not want Khairy and therefore he is let out to pasture. Which members?

In the meantime, the young and restless will continue to be drawn to PAS now that more people with libertarian views are going to PAS. Those not moved by PAS will continue to shy away from Umno. Because Umno hasn’t shown it’s ready to jive in with young. It misleads itself into believing giggly young girls rushing to shake the hand of the PM will convert into votes that will ensure Umno stays in Putrajaya.

Who in Umno can speak to the young with credence? Let’s be realistic enough. Khaiiry Jamaludin with all his imperfections and perhaps impetuousness can link up with the young. No other Umno leader can provide the emotional tie up. He is articulate and highly intelligent. His character flaws can be corrected if the Umno leadership shows more maturity and coolness in decision making. The Umno president underestimates his own influence on Umno psychology. If he decides KJ to be given a position in government, the others will follow.

Instead he follows the whispers that blow in the wind. They come from Pro Umno bloggers who may not be and are not even Umno members and whose Malayness are questionable. These people continue to berate and cast aspersions on the character on the one person capable of galvanizing the young and capturing their emotions.

Instead the Umno president relies on people like Mukhriz Mahathir whose support comes mainly from conceited MRSM alumnus who think the hell about themselves. The only semblance of intelligence that Mukhriz has is his receding hairline, fitting the conventional description of professors with balding heads. Well, you can get balding heads by placing your head consistently on a strategic location of the human anatomy of the opposite sex.

Umno talks about transformation but PAS is the party that converts that into action. Umno does not even dare hold its party elections fearing that the party will be more divided. Umno hasn’t got the stomach to get rid of its old blood. If PAS doesn’t break up despite having party elections, the Umno leadership will have a tough time defending why its postponing party elections.

Even Umno people will go away convinced that holding back elections is really an excuse by the Umno leadership to self-perpetuate. Hence all the cock and bull story about disunity and all that.

It’s strange to get the impression that Umno can stay in power provided the ulamas dominate PAS. Since when is Umno so chummy to people of the robes? Such reversal of affection can only suggest that Umno hasn’t got a soul. Or it can also suggest the plight of a person going into old age and conscious of his mortality and who now mourns for spiritual salvation.

Does ageing Umno see spiritual salvation in PAS? If it does, there’s no future for people like Ibrahim Ali.

*
Sakmongkol AK47
is the nom de plume of Datuk Mohd Ariff Sabri Abdul Aziz. He was Pulau Manis assemblyman (2004-2008).

                This entry was posted on Monday, 6 June 2011, 8:32 am and is filed under
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Utusan bohong lagi, DAP tak campur tangan masjid

In
Roketkini

6 June 2011

GEORGETOWN, 6 JUN – Pembohongan terbaru Utusan Malaysia cuba mengaitkan DAP dengan cadangan mengadakan pemilihan bagi jawatankuasa masjid di Pulau Pinang.

Laporan berita Utusan mendakwa kononnya pemilihan itu “dilihat bakal menjerumuskan institusi masjid ke kancah politik kepartian”.

Berita Utusan itu menambah, “jika dilaksanakan sepenuhnya, ‘pilihan raya masjid’ itu yang dijangka bermula pertengahan bulan ini akan menjadikan Pulau Pinang sebagai satu-satunya negeri yang pernah melaksanakan kaedah pemilihan seumpama itu”.

Setiausaha Politik kepada Setiausaha Agung DAP Zairil Khir Johari berkata DAP tidak terlibat sama sekali dengan soal pengurusan masjid di Pulau Pinang yang berada di bawah pentadbiran Majlis Agama Islam Pulau Pinang.

“DAP tidak ada wakil yang menduduki MAIPP. Jika MAIPP sendiri yang berpendapat langkah itu sesuai, ia terpulang kepada MAIPP dan umat Islam di Pulau Pinang. DAP tidak ada sebarang penglibatan dalam usaha itu,” katanya kepada Roketkini.

Sebaliknya, beliau menjelaskan, kerajaan negeri Pakatan Rakyat di Pulau Pinang yang dipimpin oleh Ketua Menteri Lim Guan Eng telah sedaya upaya mengangkat martabat Islam sebagai agama Persekutuan dengan memberi lebih peruntukan kewangan berbanding dengan pentadbiran Barisan Nasional dahulu.

Menurutnya, peruntukan bagi hal-ehwal agama Islam telah berganda dan kian meningkat setiap tahun sejak pentadbiran Pakatan Rakyat mengambil alih negeri pada 2008.

Perbandingan peruntukan Kerajaan Negeri untuk hal-ehwal agama Islam

2008 (BN)
RM 12.5 juta

2009 (PR)
 RM20.5 juta

2010 (PR)
RM 24.3 juta

2011 (PR)
RM 33.33 juta

“Sekolah agama rakyat dan sekolah tahfiz juga diberi peruntukan tahunan di mana kerajaan BN dahulu tidak begitu bersungguh-sungguh melaksanakannya. Di samping itu, kerajaan negeri Pakatan juga memperuntukkan elaun tambahan sebanyak RM100,000 setahun kepada guru-guru KAFA,” tambah beliau.

Menurutnya, laporan Utusan itu hanya mencerminkan sikap tuan mereka UMNO yang terus mencari jalan untuk membangkitkan kemarahan orang Islam dengan mengaitkan DAP yang dituduh mereka sebagaii cauvinis Cina, mahu campur tangan dalam hal-ehwal masjid.

Sebelum ini Guan Eng telah dituduh mengeluarkan nama Yang di-Pertuan Agong dari khutbah jumaat, menyembelih lembu Hari Raya Korban dan mengharamkan perarakan Maulidur Rasul. Semua tuduhan itu dibuktikan palsu.

Zairil berkata orang ramai terutamanya umat Islam supaya tidak mudah percaya dengan dakyah Utusan yang sanggup bermain dengan fitnah demi kepentingan politik UMNO.

“Sikap bijak dan berani yang ditunjukkan oleh pemimpin dan ahli PAS yang tidak percaya kepada Utusan yang cuba campur tangan dalam pemilihan parti itu baru-baru ini patut menjadi contoh kepada semua rakyat khususnya orang Melayu,” tambahnya. – Roketkini.com

                This entry was posted on Monday, 6 June 2011, 6:08 pm and is filed under
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We who left should not be seen as such

By
Zewt

June 06, 2011 | The Malaysian Insider

JUNE 6 — Migration and the brain drain phenomenon seem to be the talk of the town at the moment. And when I read the comments on various articles here, I observe that people like me are being labelled in a certain manner.

Yes, I am one of those who left to ply my trade elsewhere. I don’t consider myself a migrant, though I would not rule out this possibility entirely.

“Unpatriotic” is probably the most common label — I wouldn’t want to deny this. Not that I agree with it, just that it is a never-ending argument.

“Greedy and selfish” is probably another thing we are called. Again — not that I agree, but I do not want to debate on this for now. And there are many more…

However, there is one label that I cannot accept, when we are called “cowards who took the easy way out” because we refused to stay and “fight.”

Make no mistake, those of us who left are not exactly having a party outside Malaysia.

We left a familiar environment to step into the unknown, most actually gave up a relatively “luxurious” lifestyle to endure a tougher living environment.

Those who left in the name of career enhancement (like me) are effectively abandoning the environment where we have proven ourselves, to once again substantiate our worthiness.

Often, this happens amongst a legion of competent individuals. Let me tell you that it is stressful and certainly not easy.

Some even gave up an established background to literally start from scratch.

So those of us who did all that and chose to live in countries where if we drink and drive, we will land ourselves in jail are cowards, while those who chose to live in a country where if you drink and drive — you can get away with a “Saya boleh tolong you” solution are… patriotic?

Wait… my apologies. Those who are staying are trying to change that. I trust these people will not choose the easy way out. I trust these people will pay the hefty summons that comes with the offence, right?

Indeed, we may get better remuneration, we may enjoy a better standard of living, we may get better social welfare, we may no longer need to care about what happens back home because we chose to leave instead of fixing it. But all these come with a price. It does not come easy.

I can go on to talk about who I think are the cowards, who are those I think are “choosing the easy way out.” But my point today is — those who left should not be categorised as such.

You may be asking the question right now — why leave then when life is so tough somewhere else?

Now, doesn’t that tell you something?

                This entry was posted on Monday, 6 June 2011, 4:27 pm and is filed under
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Why I joined the Malaysian diaspora

by
LHC

June 06, 2011 | The Malaysian Insider

JUNE 6 — I was born to parents who were themselves born, and lived their entire lives, in Malaysia. Yet, solely due to the colour of my skin, I was called a “pendatang” (immigrant) by the Malaysian government, whereas someone who hails directly from Indonesia would be welcomed as a “Bumiputera” (“prince of the soil”) and be accorded the unfair privileges that came with that title.

I was, however, more fortunate than many of my other non-Bumiputera compatriots, because my parents were middle-class professionals who could afford to send me overseas to further my education. I obtained my medical degree from the British Isles, following which I was faced with the decision either to return to Malaysia, or continue my stint overseas.

After much soul-searching, I decided to do the latter. That was 15 years ago. I am now happily married, financially secure, and live a fulfilling life in the heart of the Silicon Valley in the US. I voted in the last US general election for Barack Obama not because or despite of the colour of his skin, but because I thought he was the best person for the job.

Why was I in a dilemma 15 years ago? After all, wasn’t I a second-class citizen in the country of my own birth and not welcomed there, while the Irish and British treated me so much better and offered me an equal opportunity to progress in my profession, based only on my skills and competence? The reason for the dilemma was because I retained an emotional link to the country of my birth — my childhood memories were memories of my time in Malaysia, and my parents and most of my close childhood friends who were still in Malaysia at that time.

However, I knew then that the entrenched government practice of racial discrimination was not about to change for the better anytime soon, and I could not endure a lifetime of discrimination when I had a much better alternative. I never would have imagined then that racial discrimination would actually worsen, extremist racial rhetoric would be allowed to go unchecked, inexplicable deaths would happen under police custody, mainstream media would be silenced into compliance, and blatant corruption in the hundreds of billions of ringgit would consume the entire nation.

Now, in retrospect, I know that I have made the right decision for myself and my family. The US is now my home, but Malaysia can be my second home. I remain passionate in advocating for equal rights and an end to corruption in Malaysia.

There is a lot that I can do outside of Malaysia, including highlight the injustices and corruption to my Congressman and to a worldwide audience via the Internet, and provide financial support to organisations that seek to restore equal rights to my Malaysian brothers and sisters.

Like the lyrics of the Wolfe Tone song “Flight of Earls” that goes: “… but if we see better days; Those big airplanes go both ways; And we’ll all be coming back to you again”, I now make up one of the many in the Malaysian diaspora who shall be willing to return to Malaysia to help reconstruct the nation if or when a new, all-inclusive government of the people is finally installed in Putrajaya.

I hope I live long enough to see that day.

                This entry was posted on Monday, 6 June 2011, 3:17 pm and is filed under
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Aku Melayu keliru

By
Ezlan Mohsen

June 07, 2011 | The Malaysian Insider

7 JUN — Aku belia Melayu, rakyat Malaysia. Ibubapa aku dua-dua Melayu, rakyat Malaysia.

Masa aku kecil, ayah aku selalu cakap, bila aku sudah besar nanti, mesti tolong bangsa aku. Tapi dia juga cakap, tolong dengan cara majukan bangsa sendiri, dan jangan jatuhkan orang lain. Tapi bila aku sudah besar, banyak aku tengok pemimpin negara aku cuba nak tolong bangsa aku, tapi mereka sekat peluang bangsa lain. Aku keliru.

Ibubapa aku cakap sekolah itu penting, dan perpaduan juga sangat penting. Bila sudah besar, aku dapat masuk sekolah asrama penuh, ada Melayu, India, dan Cina. Siam pun ada. Aku tiada masalah nak bergaul. Aku jarang dengar pasal masalah perkauman, cuma  daripada buku teks sejarah. Tapi bila aku keluar, aku jumpa ramai kawan lain. Bila borak-borak, mereka kata sekolah mereka dipenuhi satu bangsa saja, sama ada Melayu, Cina atau India. Mereka jadi terlalu selesa bergaul dengan bangsa sendiri.  Aku keliru lagi.

Bila cerita pasal dakwah, aku bukanlah mahir. Tetapi yang aku faham, dalam dakwah, Muslim mengingatkan sesama muslim tentang Islam, dan menceritakan kepada yang bukan Muslim tentang keindahan agama ini. Betapa indahnya konsep ini. Namun, bila aku sudah celik mata, lain yang aku nampak. Jarang dilihat rakan sebaya aku yang kuat berdakwah rapat bersama rakan kaum-kaum lain. Sebahagian mereka hanya hidup sesama mereka, hanya segilintir sahaja yang muncul kehadapan, berkongsi idea dengan rakan-rakan daripada agama yang lain. Aku jadi keliru.

Kini aku belajar di United Kingdom atas budi tak terhingga oleh MARA.  Dalam isu biasiswa, ramai pihak, terutamanya kaum bukan Bumiputera, ingin melihat sistem meritokrasi digunakan dengan lebih meluas dalam pemilihan pelajar. Ada juga mempertikaikan kewujudan MARA yang membantu Bumiputera namun tiada agensi untuk membantu kaum-kaum lain. Namun sejak kecil lagi, aku difahamkan pembahagian kuota untuk biasiswa adalah penting untuk mengurangkan jurang ekonomi di antara Bumiputera dan kaum-kaum lain.

Yang buat aku keliru adalah kenapa ada rakan Bumiputera aku yang bijak akademik dan tinggi sahsiah diri tidak mendapat biasiswa untuk perubatan ke luar negara, tapi ada kenalan Bumiputera yang sederhana akademik dan mempunyai pelbagai masalah disiplin mendapat biasiswa untuk pilihan yang sama?

Bila cakap pasal bangsa dan peluang, tak habis-habis debat sama ada pertolongan patut diberikan mengikut bangsa atau mengikut keperluan. Kalau ikut bangsa, kononnya kena adil dan tolong Bumiputera. Kalau ikut keperluan, mesti tolong siapa-siapa yang memerlukan tanpa mengira bangsa. Tapi berdasarkan fakta kemiskinan tahun 2009, semestinya jauh lebih banyak Bumiputera yang miskin (5.3 peratus) berbanding kaum Cina (0.6 peratus) dan kaum India (2.5 peratus).

Jadi, di kalau kita memberi pertolongan mengikut keperluan, sememangnya pertolongan ini akhirnya akan diberikan kepada Bumiputera juga. Maka apa lagi halangan untuk kita untuk dengan terbuka memberi bantuan ekonomi, kepada yang miskin terutamanya, berdasarkan siapa yang memerlukan? Oh mungkin pertolongan yang dimaksudkan adalah untuk Bumiputera yang sudah kaya untuk jadi lebih kaya. Aku jadi keliru.

Namun begitu, harapan masih ada untuk Malaysia. Masih ada Melayu yang percaya bangsanya perlu digalakkan untuk berjaya, bukan hanya disuap semata-mata. Ada juga Melayu yang sentiasa memperkasakan diri supaya mampu menjadi pemimpin bagi semua bangsa. Ada juga Melayu yang tidak hidup dalam kepompong Melayu dan rapat dengan rakyat Malaysia yang tidak berbangsa Melayu.

Namun, tindakan sesetengah mereka yang terlalu liberal hingga melakukan aktiviti-aktiviti yang haram di sisi Islam menjadikan mereka terlalu asing untuk dicontohi masyarakat Melayu konservatif. Aku bukanlah alim ulama dan aku sedar perkara ini tidak salah daripada segi kebebasan individu, namun secara jujurnya, sikap ini akan sedikit sebanyak mencacatkan imej mereka yang sepatutnya dicontohi.

Lebih teruk, imej kurang elok ini dianggap imej ideal untuk dicontohi masyarakat Melayu yang lain. Arak dijadikan wacana untuk bersosial dengan kaum-kaum lain walhal banyak lagi cara yang lebih dihormati.

Aku dilahirkan dalam keluarga yang konservatif. Berlandaskan kepada faktor sejarah dan demografi, aku percaya negara ini perlu di pimpin oleh Bumiputera beragama Islam. Perlu, bukan wajib. Namun, untuk merealisasi perkara ini, Malaysia memerlukan pemimpin-pemimpin Bumiputera Islam yang boleh menjaga kebajikan bukan sahaja Bumiputera Islam, namun juga kepentingan bangsa-bangsa lain. Konflik kepentingan antara kaum akan sentiasa wujud, tetapi aku percaya, jika Malaysia dipimpin oleh pemimpin Bumiputera yang adil, bebas rasuah dan juga tidak mementingkan diri sendiri dan juga keluarga, pemimpin ini akan lebih dihormati dan dapat menyelesaikan konflik-konflik vital ini secara muhibah.

Siapa kata konsep 1 Malaysia jadikan aku bangsa Malaysia?

Aku bangsa Melayu, rakyat Malaysia. Aku sayang bangsa aku, aku hormat semua rakyat Malaysia, jika mereka saling hormati aku.

* Ezlan is a 2nd year medical undergraduate at Queen Mary, University of London.  He tweets at @ezlanmohsen.

                This entry was posted on Tuesday, 7 June 2011, 9:22 am and is filed under
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Anwar stresses ‘twin pillars’ of religious concordat

By
Terence Netto

Jun 7, 11 | MalaysiaKini

COMMENT
Cynics may scoff but Anwar Ibrahim’s tack with regard to the rights of non-Muslims in Malaysia remains consistent, as the latest meeting between the PKR leadership and representatives of the Malaysian Consultative Council of Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Sikhism and Taoism (MCCBCHST) indicated.

Some attendees at last night’s meeting in Kuala Lumpur could not help but recall a similar encounter between PKR and MCCBCHST in Petaling Jaya in December 2007 that dealt with the same issues but was held in a less fraught atmosphere than presently prevailing.

Then, matters to do with forced conversions, temple demolitions and the incipient rise of the ‘Allah’ issue brought furrows to non-Muslim brows.

Now these issues have abated somewhat, not so much from the application of legislative or administrative nostrums as from an apparent let-up in the zeal of state functionaries intent on enforcing the letter more than the spirit of the law.

However, in the apparent lull, have risen conspiracy theorists, conjuring sinister plots about one religious community’s aim to supersede Islam’s special place in Malaysia’s constitutional order.

Few things can be more baleful than a vacant, desperate disposition with idle time to spare.

Anwar Ibrahim, who has plenty to be desperate over these days, but unlike conspiracy theorists has a stored mind for resource, has come up with the ‘maqasid syariah’ as response to the scare tactics of desperados.

In Anwar’s formulation, the ‘maqasid syariah’, said to be the higher objectives of Islamic law, is almost Jeffersonian in resonance.

Al-Shatibi, the 12th century Islamic jurist who first enunciated the maqasid syariah as the protection of religion, life, property, intellect and human dignity, in Anwar’s telling, appears to have been an ideological precursor to Thomas Jefferson whose incandescent “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” defined the American search for self-fulfillment.

Anwar spoke at last night’s meeting with the MCCBCHST representatives about the twin pillars of PKR’s stance towards the religious question: uphold the status of Islam as the country’s official religion and respect for the rights of non-Muslims to freedom of worship.

Anwar said the charter of the maqasid syariah would be the guiding light of PKR’s adherence to the twin pillars.

As if in intuitive corroboration of this stance of the PKR leader, two newly-empowered PAS leaders, Dr Siti Mariah Mahmud and Dzulkefly Ahmad, sauntered into the meeting after it had started and were immediately made welcome, a healthy sign of emerging convergence between PKR and Pas on religious questions.

Siti Mariah, MP for Kota Raja, was elected deputy chief of Wanita Pas and Dzulkefly polled strongly in the election for the party’s central working committee.

Both federal legislators belong to the wing of PAS that wants broader engagement with non-Muslims, a stance Islamic supremacists disdain because it implies parity between Islamic and non-Islamic religions.

The MCCBCHST wants to engage with the newly-elected PAS leadership as part of ongoing efforts to build consensus on a broad range of issues.

The MCCBCHST has also gone on record as wanting to talk with the right-wing Malays rights body, Perkasa, which has caused widespread unease with its strident calls to Malays to wake up to alleged erosion of their rights and privileges.

Anwar and the loose opposition coalition, Pakatan Rakyat, he leads have navigated the potentially treacherous shoals between the non-Muslim demand for rights and Muslim constitutional imperatives by talking up the paramount importance of justice as an Islamic value.

By introducing the anodyne of the maqasid syariah, Anwar and Islamic intellectuals in PKR, joined hopefully by the outward-looking leaders PAS had endorsed at party elections last weekend, would be able to raise the level of dialogue on the vital questions of the day in Malaysian society.

The MCCBCHST emphasised at its meeting yesterday that it was concerned not just with religious rights per se, but with a host of issues – poverty, education, gender equality, institutional decay, etc – that periodically sizzle in the national arena.

As Reverend Thomas Phillips, current president of MCCBCHST, said in preliminary remarks at yesterday’s meeting that his organization wanted to explore the opinions of political leaders across the ideological spectrum in Malaysia “so that we can know what they feel and they can know what our views are.”

Dialogue, he said, was the best way to a “better future for our country”, a sentiment that Anwar expanded on when he offered his view that “extremism and a narrow parochialism” endangered the “twin pillars” of the Malaysian concordat on religion – Islam’s official status and non-Muslim freedom of worship.

He assured his interlocutors that PKR and Pakatan’s conception of Islam would not countenance the deprivation of the right of non-Muslims to practice their faith.

His interpretation of the maqasid syariah forbade the violation of human dignity such a deprivation would entail.

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Asia leads the world’s recovery, but high food and fuel prices threaten gains

By
Noeleen Heyzer and Nagesh Kumar

June 07, 2011 | The Malaysian Insider

JUNE 7 — Asia and the Pacific, more than any other region in the world, will experience greater transformation and change in the coming years, as the region’s economic strength plays a greater role in the global economy and as its population centers struggle to overcome the burdens of poverty, hunger, natural disasters and social inequalities.

The region’s economic growth figures, recently released in the UN ESCAP Economic and Social Survey of Asia and the Pacific 2011, indicate just how powerful Asia’s economy is for the world already.

The Asia-Pacific region recovered strongly in 2010 from the global financial crisis and recession of 2008-09 with the region’s developing economies growing at 8.8 per cent. In 2011, growth in developing economies of the region is forecast to be 7.3 per cent — lower than 2010’s high growth which represented a recovery from the low base of the 2009 recession.

Asia-Pacific remains by far the most dynamic growth region in the world, according to ESCAP, and the locomotive of global growth. Its growth rate this year will be nearly one and a half times more than any other region.  While the region is led by the powerhouse developing economies of China and India, growing at 9.5 per cent and 8.7 per cent respectively, growth in 2011 is broad based at more than 5 per cent across Asia-Pacific’s sub-regions.

Despite these promising economic growth figures, Asia-Pacific still remains vulnerable to the risks posed by volatile short-term capital flows and the resurgence of food and fuel price inflation, and, as the tragic 11 March disaster in Japan underscores, natural disasters.

High food prices have direct impact on the region’s poor. ESCAP estimates show that as many as 42 million additional people in the region are impoverished by 2011’s high food and energy prices.

High oil prices could significantly reduce economic growth – lowering predictions by up to one percentage point for some Asia-Pacific economies in 2011, especially vulnerable economies are Singapore, Thailand, Philippines and India.

For the poorest and most populated countries, high food and fuel prices will slow the effects of high economic growth helping families out of poverty.  Achieving the Millennium Development Goals for poverty alleviation by 2015 could be delayed by five years in many countries, especially in Bangladesh, India, Lao PDR and Nepal.

Countries can take immediate policy steps to moderate the impacts of rising food and fuel prices on our region’s poorest people:

At the national level, lowering tariffs and taxes will reduce prices and social protection measures should be undertaken in the form of food vouchers, income transfers and school feeding programs to reduce the burden on the poor. Government buffer stocks of commodities should be utilised when market supplies are low.

Over the longer term, all countries must focus on enhancing support for agricultural R&D and rural credit for fostering a new, knowledge-intensive green revolution. Such strategies will not only boost food supplies, but will also assist the poorest communities, where sustainable agricultural development remains a reliable anti-poverty strategy.

Global initiatives, regional and sub-regional groupings should back up national strategies.  The G20, the world’s major economic policy forum, could act to discipline speculative activity in food and fuel commodities and conversion of cereals into biofuels.  For oil price volatility, the G20, being the group of all major consumers, including eight members from Asia and the Pacific, may engage OPEC – the group of major oil producers – to demarcate a benchmark “fair” price of oil and seek an agreement to restrict oil price movements within a band around it, besides creating a global strategic oil reserve to moderate the volatility of oil prices.

Another challenge for Asia-Pacific economies is to generate more aggregate demand in the region to mitigate some loss of demand from developed economies as they restrain their debt-fuelled consumption.

Inclusive development policies like poverty reduction and social protection can enhance domestic demand.

Furthermore, the emergence of Asia-Pacific region as the growth pole of the world economy means the importance of regional economic integration cannot be over-emphasized. The time has come to take a broader approach which focuses not just on deepening integration within subregions but also in fostering trade and business links to build a seamless Asia-Pacific economic space.

Working together, the Asia Pacific region can shape the forces of the present economic recovery by investing in its people, and by implementing social protections as a mainstay of national development.

Asia Pacific is a leader in the global economy, and it now has the opportunity to safeguard the development gains of its people.

*  Dr. Noeleen Heyzer is Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations and Executive Secretary of ESCAP and Dr Nagesh Kumar is Chief Economist of the Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific, Bangkok.

                This entry was posted on Tuesday, 7 June 2011, 3:53 pm and is filed under
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Cabinet should override Police and Attorney-General to establish RCI into Sarbani’s death to restore public confidence not only in national institutions but also Prime Minister and Cabinet

Cabinet tomorrow should override Police and Attorney-General to establish RCI into Sarbani’s death  as in case of Teoh Beng Hock to restore public confidence not only in national institutions but also Prime Minister and Cabinet

The Cabinet tomorrow should override Police and Attorney-General to establish a Royal Commission of Inquiry into senior Customs officer Ahmad Sarbani Mohamed’s death  as in the case of Teoh Beng Hock to restore public confidence not only in national institutions but also Prime Minister and Cabinet.

I have no qualms in admitting that I have reservations about the Teoh Beng Hock Royal Commission of Inquiry, particularly over the conduct and strategy adopted by the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) and its counsel Shafie who could make the outrageous suggestion of Teoh Beng Hock’s committing “honour suicide”, but Malaysians are currently deprived of a more satisfactory option to get to the bottom of Sarbani’s death.

I hope to be proved wrong over my reservations over the Teoh Beng Hock Royal Commission of Inquiry. However, the Cabinet’s immediate task is to act boldly and justly into the death of Sarbani.

Let the Najib and his Cabinet Ministers not disappoint Malaysians once again tomorrow.

In the past few days, Malaysians have  been regaled by Wikileaks highlighting the utter lack of confidence of top government planners and  officers in the “political will” of the Prime Minister to “transform” the nation  as in implementing the New Economic Model to ensure Malaysia’s quantum leap to escape the middle-income trap to become a high-income developed  country.  Nobody is really surprised by the Wikileaks.

Tomorrow Najib and his Cabinet will be facing another test – whether they dare to act boldy and justly to override the Attorney-General and the Police establishing a RCI into Sarbani’s death or they are just “sitting ducks” waiting for a change of government in Putrajaya in the next general elections.

                This entry was posted on Tuesday, 7 June 2011, 12:34 pm and is filed under
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DAP decries concession for PSD rejects

Jun 7, 11 2 |
 MalaysiaKini

DAP has urged the federal government to ensure all top Sijil Pelajaran Malaysia (SPM) scorers are given scholarships to study overseas and grants to study locally in the interest of fair play and rewards based on meritocracy.

In a statement today, DAP secretary-general Lim Guan Eng said his party was against the federal government’s decision to compensate top scholars who failed to obtain Public Services Department (PSD) grants to study overseas.

Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department Nazri Abdul Aziz said yesterday that 1Malaysia Development Bhd (1MDB) would be financing the grants for 500 qualified students who did not get PSD scholarships to study locally.

Lim argued that this was not appropriate because it did not demonstrate the country’s commitment to retain its human talent.

DAP mocks MCA’s financial knowledge

In a related development, Lim refuted claims by MCA president Dr Chua Soi Lek that Penang can afford to provide scholarships to the PSD rejects.

Chua had claimed that the Penang government could afford do so because the state drew the most industrial investment in 2010, at RM12.2 billion.

“If MCA can not differentiate between foreign and domestic investments with revenue, then MCA does not deserve to be part of government.

“Investments are held by the private sector to spend to generate jobs and economic growth, not revenue for the state government to spend.

“Perhaps all MCA leaders should undergo a basic course of finance,” said Lim, a trained chartered accountant, while Chua used to serve as a medical doctor and was once health minister.

Pakatan to help all top scholars

Lim, who is also Penang chief minister, said that despite revenue constraints, the state had still managed to provide study loans for local students studying in public universities fairly.

“Penang Pakatan Rakyat has also increased the primary and secondary school grants (not loans) to poor students. DAP pledges that unlike BN, all deserving top students in the country will be awarded the same scholarships if Pakatan wins control of the federal government.”

He said this pledge to provide overseas scholarships was crucial to help Malaysia out of the middle-income trap and become a high-income economy with US$15,000 per capita income.

“Malaysia would be sending the wrong message if we reward mediocrity instead of excellence, do not have a level-playing field that is fair to the best and brightest and allow the brain drain to continue.

“The time has come to invest our resources in the future by spending tens of billions of ringgit on human talent instead of squandering it on corruption and white elephant projects likes the RM5 billion 100-storey Menara Warisan,” Lim added.

                This entry was posted on Tuesday, 7 June 2011, 4:16 pm and is filed under
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DAP insists on overseas scholarships for all SPM aces

By
Shazwan Mustafa Kamal

June 07, 2011 | The Malaysian Insider

KUALA LUMPUR, June 7- All SPM top scorers should get overseas Public Service Department (PSD) scholarships instead of 1Malaysia Development Bhd (1MDB) grants if Malaysia wants to retain the country’s human talent, DAP has said.

Putrajaya announced yesterday that 500 special education grants would be disbursed by 1MDB to rejected applicants to study locally.  The categories (annual): Scholarships to public universities (RM7,500), scholarships for critical courses in private universities (RM15,000), and grants for non-critical courses (RM7,500).

“This pledge to award overseas scholarships equally to all top students is necessary to win Malaysia’s future by escaping the middle-income trap to become a high-income economy with USD15,000 per capita income…Malaysia would be sending a wrong message if we reward mediocrity instead of excellence, do not have a level-playing field that is fair to the best and brightest and allow the brain drain to continue,” said DAP secretary-general Lim Guan Eng in a statement today.

Lim repeated his call for the Najib administration to make public the results of those who were awarded overseas scholarships, and accused Barisan Nasional (BN) for failing to uphold transparency and accountability by not doing so.

The Penang Chief Minister said that MCA was trying to “distract” attention by attacking his administration for not having enough money to provide scholarships to top students in the state, in response to MCA’s claims yesterday that Penang had vast wealth to spend on overseas scholarships because Penang came out top in investments with RM 12.2 billion in 2010.

“If MCA cannot differentiate between foreign and domestic investments with revenue then MCA does not deserve to be part of government. Investments are held by the private sector to spend to generate jobs and economic growth, not revenue for the state government to spend.

“Further the Penang PR state government is still trying to clean up years of BN’s misrule and abuse of power in the state that caused RM230 million in losses to Majlis Perbandaran Seberang Perai(MPSP) until MPSP became practically bankrupt and the Tang Hak Ju land scam that costs the state RM40 million,” added Lim.

Lim said that despite revenue constraints, the Penang government has continued to award loans at local public universities to all deserving Penang students, and also increased primary and secondary scholl grants to poor students.

                This entry was posted on Tuesday, 7 June 2011, 10:48 am and is filed under
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Kit Siang: Have full-blown RCI into Sarbani’s death

Jun 7, 11 |
MalaysiaKini

DAP stalwart and Ipoh Timor MP Lim Kit Siang has called on the prime minister and cabinet to override the police and attorney-general’s (AG) call for an inquest into senior customs officer Ahmad Sarbani Mohamed’s death, and replace it with a full-blown royal commission of inquiry (RCI).

Lim (left) said such a move will restore public confidence in national institutions and also in the prime minister and cabinet.

“I have no qualms in admitting that I have reservations about the Teoh Beng Hock RCI, particularly over the conduct and strategy adopted by the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) and its counsel Muhammad Shafie Abdullah who could make the outrageous suggestion that Teoh had committed ‘honour suicide’, but Malaysians are currently being deprived of a more satisfactory option to get to the bottom of Ahmad Sarbani’s death,” he said in a statement.

“I hope my reservations over the Teoh RCI are proven wrong. However, the cabinet’s immediate task is to act boldly and justly into the death of Ahmad Sarbani. Let Najib Abdul Razak and his cabinet ministers not disappoint Malaysians once again tomorrow.”

Police had last Friday filed an application for an inquest to determine the circumstances leading to the death of the Selangor Customs assistant director. The application was submitted at the Kuala Lumpur court complex.

Ahmad Sarbani’s (left) sudden death caught the country by surprise as the MACC was swooping to carry out investigations over allegations of Custom officers being on the take and causing the country millions of ringgit in losses.

The death on April 7 also happened in the midst of the Teoh RCI looking into the cause of death and MACC’s investigation procedures. Ahmad Sarbani died after falling from the third floor of the MACC Kuala Lumpur headquarters.

Police have classified the case as sudden death. Friends of Ahmad Sarbani when interviewed on the day he was buried said they suspected foul play as he had allegedly gone to the MACC to retract his statement.

Lim said Najib and his cabinet are facing another test on whether they dare to act boldly to override the AG and the police by establishing an RCI on Ahmad Sarbani’s death.

“Or are they just ‘sitting ducks’ waiting for a change of government in Putrajaya in the next general election?” said the hard-hitting DAP leader.

                This entry was posted on Tuesday, 7 June 2011, 4:07 pm and is filed under
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Mimos – 25 years and going strong

By
KJ John

Jun 7, 11 | MalaysiaKini

This series of three columns I will call the 25th anniversary series. Three organisations I have been connected with have celebrated their 25th anniversary this year. First, let me congratulate Mimos Berhad for its 25th anniversary celebrations.

I hear it was a genuine occasion for celebration given the Mimos 2.0 version and their “outputs” in terms of the idea productisation vide patents and IPs registered were on public display. I was not there. I was with the National IT Council (NITC) and Mimos for only eight years between 1996 and 2004, whereas those who were publicly recognised were the original founders; all who go back from the very beginning of Mimos in 1985.

Regardless, I thoroughly enjoyed my limited time of eight years at Mimos Berhad, although ours was only a policy function, as the secretariat to the original National IT Council. In fact, the then-president and CEO, or my immediate boss, was among the best bosses I ever had, with some exceptions of PTD bosses who were more transformational and charismatic leaders, but who also taught me much.

Teachers have a lasting impact on one’s life. Mere “bosses” only deploy authority to insist on blind compliance, or, “to do it my way.” During our time (30 of us) with the NITC could have been more fruitful had the government not made the categorical error and mistake of transferring the NITC secretariat back to the ministry by 2004.

Today, I dare say that the resultant function and responsibility is almost a dead function. But, alas, governments can make grave mistakes with impunity but no one has to pay the price, except the citizens who are the victims through the resultant poor governance.

Let me therefore dedicate this column to the good and great people at Mimos Berhad; the researchers who worked hard with us because of their passion to dive into truth matters. Yes, science and technology is almost always about truth matters of the material world.

Unfortunately though, our everyday problems in life do not care too much about real truth; in fact, for most of us truth does not even really matter. I must say that I had the greatest pleasure of working and enjoying life within that R&D/public policy space of this nation.

Started as an R&D department

Mimos started as a mere R&D department under the PM’s Department with a RM5 million ‘angel grant’ to “get the E&E research projects started”. The process to undertake such “convincement” took the founder and CEO some years while he was already the dean of the Faculty of Engineering at UM at the young age of 28.

For those interested in a more complete version, please review one chapter in the Isis 25th anniversary publication written by the former CEO of Mimos Berhad. That is a great and first-time published story of how things really happened during the birth of the NITC and Mimos Berhad.

The then aspiring and young research scientist of 28 years of age and dean, who holds a doctorate from the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology, wrote his first paper about the future implications of microelectronics and what such connectivity potentially engendered for the future of our nation.

He finally got the paper to his nncle, then a minister in the Cabinet, who gave it to the then-International Trade and Industry Minister, who made the decision to give the RM5 million grant, as Prime Minister and emplaced the unit under the Prime Minister’s Department. Their office was an old bungalow in the PM’s Department area.

On Jan 1, 1985 Mimos was born. In 1987, Dr Mohamed Awang Lah and team developed the first and original Malaysian link to what is now called the world wide web. Then it was simply called the Internet.

In 1991 that same internet service was turned into an Internet Service Provider and was unveiled as Jaring. Jaring and subsequently TM’s Internet service brought Malaysia to be among the region’s most sophisticated information superhighways.

Therefore in 1995, Mimos was also given the role and appointed by the cabinet as the secretariat to the National IT Council. Its first director was a lady PTD officer on secondment from Mampu. Also in 1995, the NITC team at Mimos “hosted the famous Kenichi Ohmae” and his team of consultants from McKinsey who subsequently sold and ushered the birth of the MSC or the Multimedia Super Corridor.

In 1996 Mimos was also corporatised on the same day as Sirim as an R&D company under the Ministry of Finance with three core functions: R&D in the electrical and electronics Sector, national IT policy development, and IT business development.

The recent 25th anniversary celebrations honoured and made claims about successes, but allow me to also state some of the not-so-successful areas and arenas, also for mutual learning and growth. Development includes learning from our past mistakes.

The introduction of the Internet into Malaysia

In my hindsight the greatest success of Mimos was the introduction of the Internet into Malaysia as early as 1991. That allowed and enabled the MSC and all her subsequent multimedia project successes.

Nevertheless, without such a glamorous launch and fanfare, even Singapore has succeeded more than Malaysia in terms of Internet application and uses nationwide to improve productivity and its competitiveness. We in Malaysia did not use our visionary and head start in the Internet to move faster ahead in the world.

Another equally well-kept secret by Mimos but which cost the rakyat billions is the wafer fabrication plant at Mimos Berhad set up in 1997. Mimos fabricated and developed her first locally-designed integrated circuit and microprocessor but sadly today no one talks about this R&D wafer fab which has yet to contribute any significant impact within the E&E sector of Malaysia. One needs to ask and answer why.

Mimos has only spun-off two known entities as far as I know in its entire 25 year lifetime. Both these entities were nurtured and spun off with the support of the NITC. They are the Global Secretariat of the Global Knowledge Partnership and what was called NISER or the National ICT Security and Emergency Response and Computer Forensic Services which is today called Cybersecurity Malaysia.

The MSC and MDeC had two review processes undertaken for its performance and impact evaluation in the past 15 years. To my mind, it would also be useful to review and understand why Mimos Berhad after 25 years has not been able to commercialise and spin-off her internally nurtured business entities.

R&D without identifiable innovations which have made an obvious impact cannot be worth much given the very high learning costs. That would be a worthwhile self-inquiry after 25 years of existence. May God bless Malaysia.

* KJ JOHN was in public service for 29 years. He is now dean of the Faculty of Economics and Policy Science at UCSI University, Malaysia.

                This entry was posted on Tuesday, 7 June 2011, 12:51 pm and is filed under
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PwC says KL needs revamp to be competitive city

By
Lee Wei Lian

June 07, 2011 | The Malaysian Insider

KUALA LUMPUR, June 7 — The city needs to improve its hard and soft infrastructure to compete with global commerce and culture capitals, says Andrew Chan Yik Hong, PwC Malaysia’ executive director in charge of capital projects and infrastructure.

This comes after PwC released a report (www.pwc.com/cities) this week predicting the trajectory of 26 select cities based on a wide range of criteria such as intellectual capital, transportation, health, economic clout, liveability and lifestyle assets.

Kuala Lumpur did not make the list.

New York topped the list, followed by Toronto, San Francisco, Stockholm and Sydney. Singapore was the top-ranked Asian city, finishing ninth on the list, ahead of Hong Kong (10) and Tokyo (14).

“For Malaysia to be competitive, especially Kuala Lumpur, we need to improve the social, educational and technological indicators, as well as the hard economic indicators like economic clout, transportation and infrastructure, and cost,” said Chan in a media statement.

He said the government’s Economic Transformation Programme (ETP), which includes the ambitious twin goal of making Kuala Lumpur one of the top 20 most economically dynamic cities and top 20 most liveable cities by 2020, appeared to be on the right track as it focused on some of the same indicators as used by PwC’s study, such as health and public transport.

Chan said the most compelling takeaway from the study for Kuala Lumpur was that a broadly positive quality of life might serve as a foundation of both a resilient economy and lasting global success.

“Simply stated, the most globally competitive cities are almost always those in which its intellectual capital is offering professional and personal surroundings that can reasonably ensure their health and safety,” said Chan.

“This is important for individuals looking for not just a place to work, but also a place to live, build families and invest in the future.”

The report, titled “Cities of Opportunity”, said the most resilient societies were those in which citizens felt they had a stake — economically, politically, socially, and even emotionally — with seven out of 11 cities scoring least in life satisfaction also landing at the bottom of the overall rankings.

It noted also that the cities in the top 10 shared a bond of “depth” in economic infrastructure, law, commercial protection, educational and cultural foundations, civic organisations and social security.

The  Alpha cities such as New York and London were also being challenged by their smaller rivals such as Stockholm, which ranked first in intellectual capital and innovation, health, safety and security, as well as demographics and liveability.

Singapore was ranked first for alleviation of traffic congestion, and third for air quality.

The report was prepared by PwC and the Partnership for New York City, a non-profit membership organisation comprising a select group of 200 CEOs from New York City’s top corporate, investment and entrepreneurial companies.

In a ranking last year of the world’s most global cities by international management consulting firm AT Kearney, Kuala Lumpur dropped eight spots to 48, behind Bangkok (36) and Taipei (39) but slightly ahead of Manila (51), Jakarta (53) and Ho Chi Minh city (61).

Kuala Lumpur also ranked 79th out of 130 cities in the Economist Intelligence Unit’s 2010 ranking of easiest places to live, and was stagnant at 75th in the Mercer study of best places to live from 2006-09.

The city also failed to make the list of the top 100 most innovative cities with strong cultural and human infrastructure and global links as assessed by Australian innovation consultancy firm 2thinknow.

Initiatives planned for Kuala Lumpur under the Economic Transformation Programme to make the city among the top 20 most economically dynamic and liveable by 2020 include a new MRT system to enhance public transportation.

Other initiatives include rehabilitation of the city’s polluted rivers, more green space, a high-speed rail link to Singapore, improved pedestrian linkages, and a more vibrant and seamless shopping belt.

It is hoped that the better conditions will help attract top talent to live in the city, whose population is expected to soar to 10 million in 2020 from the present six million.

                This entry was posted on Tuesday, 7 June 2011, 2:52 pm and is filed under
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Sarbaini RCI will renew faith in institutions, says Kit Siang

By
Yow Hong Chieh

June 07, 2011 | The Malaysian Insider

KUALA LUMPUR, June  7 —  A royal commission of inquiry (RCI) looking into Customs officer Ahmad Sarbaini Mohamad’s death would restore public confidence in the country’s institutions, Lim Kit Siang has said.

The DAP parliamentary leader said Cabinet should be prepared to override the Attorney-General (A-G) and the police tomorrow as an RCI, like the one established for Teoh Beng Hock, was the only way to determine the cause of Sarbaini’s death.

“The Cabinet’s immediate task is to act boldly and justly into the death of Sarbani. Let the Najib and his Cabinet Ministers not disappoint Malaysians once again tomorrow,” he said in a statement today.

“I have no qualms in admitting that I have reservations about the Teoh Beng Hock Royal Commission of Inquiry… but Malaysians are currently deprived of a more satisfactory option to get to the bottom of Sarbani’s death.”

Lim added that Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak and his Cabinet would be “sitting ducks” waiting for a change of government in the next general election if they failed to “act boldly and justly” in calling for an RCI.

Sarbaini (picture, right), 56, was found dead on the badminton court of the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) building on Jalan Cochrane here on April 6 at about 10.20am, barely two hours after walking in.

His death, which occurred while the Teoh Beng Hock RCI was still ongoing, came as a huge blow to the anti-graft body’s already battered credibility.

Teoh, a DAP aide, fell to his death at the then-Selangor MACC office on July 16, 2009. An 18-month inquest returned an open verdict, ruling out both suicide and homicide in Teoh’s death.

                This entry was posted on Tuesday, 7 June 2011, 2:50 pm and is filed under
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Subsidy flip-flops sign of deeper problems, say economists

June 07, 2011 |
The Malaysian Insider

KUALA LUMPUR, June 7 — Economists perceive the Najib administration as prone to backtracking on policies, with political concerns trumping the need for economic reform.

In a scathing commentary published today by the Singapore Straits Times, the government’s dithering over subsidy cuts for energy and basic consumer goods was criticised by regional economists who are stirring a wider debate over the country’s long-term economic prospects.

The Straits Times said the big question being asked now was whether resource-rich Malaysia had fallen out of step with the global environment.

Putrajaya’s subsidy flip-flops, the newspaper said, were putting a spotlight on deeper woes, while the country’s competitiveness continued to be hurt by state intervention.

In recent months, Malaysia has gone back and forth on its intention to cut the large subsidy bill.

The government backed down recently from raising petrol prices before eventually deciding to raise electricity tariffs by seven per cent beginning this month.

Putrajaya announced a 7.1 per cent hike in electricity tariffs in an effort to trim a subsidy bill that would otherwise double to RM21 billion this year, promising that the hike would not affect three-quarters of domestic users.

Power prices will rise by as much as 2.3 sen per kWh in areas taking TNB’s supply, a potential source of public anger just ahead of snap polls expected within a year.

The Straits Times reported today the arguments by economists that decades of state intervention that sought to meld free market practices with an ambitious social agenda to restructure the country’s multi-ethnic society in favour of politically dominant Malays had sapped Malaysia of its competitive edge as a destination for foreign investment.

They also told the Straits Times that the government’s experiment with state command capitalism had created an economy burdened by subsidies, tariff protection and licences that benefit powerful vested interest groups.

“The government is reluctant to take tough measures because of the political impact on the public and the vested interest (groups) it could hurt,” Centennial Group regional strategist Manu Bhaskaran told the Singapore paper.

“But the reality is that there are no easy options.”

The Straits Times pointed out that the Malaysian economy was at a crucial crossroads.

“Malaysia needs bold action because the regional economic environment is changing rapidly, and the breathing space is shrinking,” World Bank economist Philip Schellekens says in a recent interview.

Malaysia’s exports continue to face low-cost competition from regional rivals Vietnam, Indonesia and Thailand, while Najib’s ambition to transform Malaysia into a high-income economy is heavily reliant on foreign investment.

“Foreigners are adopting a wait-and-see attitude because there is little clarity over government policy in dealing with the economy,” a chief executive of a foreign bank here told the Singapore newspaper while asking not to be identified.

Malaysian households are already feeling the stress of rising prices while the Straits Times also cited a recent World Bank report on the country that noted rising household debt as a concern.

Lending to households — for property, credit cards and personal loans — accounted for 55 per cent of the total banking system lending, the report said.

The Singapore daily pointed out that Malaysia’s economic woes are providing the opposition with fodder against Najib’s administration.

The central theme of the opposition campaign is that politically powerful groups which benefit from licences are being spared at the expense of the public, the Straits Times said in its commentary.

“Consider Malaysia’s reluctance to reform its controversial import licensing system for luxury cars, worth hundreds of millions of ringgit annually. All cars not assembled in Malaysia must have so-called Approved Permits, or APs, which are issued for free by the government to a small group of licensees connected closely to the government.

“Typically, the APs are then sold to car distributors for prices ranging from RM10,000 to as much as RM40,000 each. These costs, as well as taxes imposed by the government, are then passed on to Malaysian consumers, who generally pay some of the highest prices for cars in the region,” the newspaper reported.

                This entry was posted on Tuesday, 7 June 2011, 12:48 pm and is filed under
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The bigger subsidy addicts

By
Sakmongkol AK47

June 07, 2011 | The Malaysian Insider

JUNE 7 — The favourite excuse of CEOs and politicians is always to attribute external factors as the cause of our inconvenience. Consider for example, the increase in electricity tariffs. Its unavoidable says the government because cost elements are increasing. What cost elements — workers’ wages and cost of fuels? What about subsidies going to IPPs? These are the bigger subsidy addicts who deserve the mandatory death sentence.

Many years ago, our country suffered the worse outage in our nation’s history. We were without electricity for many days. Manufacturers lost a lot of money. Industrialists were screaming their heads off and their voices reached Sri Perdana, the abode of the 4th PM then.

He came up with the solution. We have this problem because TNB has a monopoly. Monopoly is not good. Dependency on one supplier isn’t strategic. It can be outright dangerous not to mention can cause untold economic damages if the system breaks down.

Let’s deregulate the electricity industry he proclaims. So Ananda, YTL, Genting and others came rushing in. we can supply electricity sir. But we need to have iron clad agreements so that our investments are well covered. We must have a guaranteed purchase from TNB at secure prices.

But sir in order to generate our current, we need cheap fuels. Otherwise we bungkus or consumers will have to pay more. Never mind says sir, I control PETRONAS. I will ask them to sell you natural gas at subsidised rates. And so government pays subsidies up to RM 19 billion a year.

As many people now know, the electricity we consumed passes through 4 stages. Generation, transmission, distribution and retailing.

But boss, we will only generate electricity. We won’t go into transmission, distribution and retailing. These are costly. Tarak untung. Kadang kadang untung.

In other words, TNB which has to invest in all 4 stages can offer us cheaper tariffs, but the IPPs awarded license which offer only generation of electricity cannot. How can this be? Apa nama? Macam mana?

Deregulation created an opposite effect in Malaysia. We ended up having to pay higher electricity tariffs because TENAGA was forced to buy electricity from IPPs who charged more for the electricity than if Tenaga produced it itself!

We come now to the stupid remark by the minister who says the government is powerless to reveal details of the PPA. Wasn’t it the government that ‘negotiated’ the deals with the IPPs? So why can’t we have access to the details?

Who were the first entrants to the IPP business? Genting Sanyen, YTL Power, Malakoff, SEV, Prai Power,Powertek, GB3, Tanjung Bin Power and Kapar Energy are among the two dozen or so IPPs in Malaysia. All of the above are owned by the Genting Lims, Francis Yeoh, Syed Mokhtar and Ananda Krishnan. These were the usual suspects consisting of the connected businessmen who get most of the big deals.

YTL Power’s profit for 2010 was more than RM1.6 billion on revenues of RM13 billion. Malakoff in 2009 had a profit of RM380 million on revenues of RM5.6 billion. Powertek had revenues of RM1.34 billion and a profit of RM450 million.

So Francis Yeoh makes RM1.6 billion and Ananda Krishnan makes RM450 million from his IPP while collecting subsidies from public money.

It is essentially a transfer of funds from the people’s pockets to the IPP’s vaults, through TNB, aided and abetted by the government. But the imbecilic minister says we can’t reveal. Of course we can’t reveal because that would expose the scandalous amount of profits these business luminaries make.

Why should we continue selling fuel at subsidized rates totaling RM 19 billion allowing these people to make huge profits? And the only solution offered and supported by the CEO who’s is paid handsomely is to raise tariffs further.

Let us illustrate the absurdity of this business arrangement. Look at the Thai power producers. They do not get subsidies and have to buy fuel at market prices. Fuels cost more in Thailand. Yet, despite the higher cost of fuels, Thai power producers sell electricity at a lower price than Malaysian IPPs sell to TNB. Apa nama punya economics ini?

So who really are the rapacious businessmen who are our own version of medieval German Robber Barons? Our robber barons get to keep their subsidies, and their unnatural, undeserved profits.

Peter Chin, the minister in charge of TNB must be mentally deranged. He claims that he cannot release the IPP contracts because it is between two private entities. Tiuniama punya minister. TNB is not a private entity; it is mostly government-owned. And the subsidies given to the IPPs are not private monies, they are public funds!

The reality is TNB is a very inefficient entity especially its operating cost. In 2005, the company’s 40.5% operating costs were spent in purchasing electricity from IPP.

For the financial year 2010, TNBs energy cost grew by 2.4% to RM17,379.0 million from RM16,974.4 million recorded in 2009 mainly due to higher payment to Independent Power Producers (IPP), totalling RM12,528.0 million, an increase of 5.9% compared to the previous (RM11,827.0 million) financial year.

* Sakmongkol AK47 is the nom de plume of
Datuk Mohd Ariff Sabri Abdul Aziz
. He was Pulau Manis assemblyman (2004-2008).

                This entry was posted on Tuesday, 7 June 2011, 3:12 pm and is filed under
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‘Someone had to say it’

By
Aneesa Alphonsus

June 8, 2011  | Free Malaysia Today

PETALING JAYA: Twenty years ago, a book like Someone Had to Say It by Tunku Abdul Aziz would have been ‘launched’ very quietly or not all since his strong opinions about the ruling party were written without any apologies.

It would have been deemed seditious and defamatory. A book like this would be heard only in the grapevine . Purchasing such an elusive book would only be possible via various non-governmental organisations or from some other related gathering.

Today, you can walk into any good bookstore, and find it standing upright on the shelves. The times they have changed indeed, Tunku Abdul Aziz writes about what many other Malaysians are thinking but lack the avenue and perhaps writing skill in order to express it.

He describes Some Had To Say It as a book which, “… cover a wide range of topics; social, economic, political and ethical issues that I felt to be in need of ventilating in a responsible, open and direct manner.

“The overwhelming majority of our people, of all age groups, having lived under an authoritarian, albeit benign, regime for close to three decades, unfortunately, do not even realise the extent to which their constitutional rights have been eroded. It was, I thought, about time they confronted these issues and reclaimed their rights as Malaysians, rights that have been systematically denied them.”

Tunku Abdul Aziz, who is a regular contributor to MySinchew and Sin Chew Daily, makes advocacy against  corruption both here and abroad his business. For some years, he served as vice chairman on the board of Transparency International as the press release states, “…at a time when Dr Mahathir, who was well known for his ambivalence towards corruption in public life, was the country’s prime minister.” He cheekily says, “Maybe my next book could be titled ‘A Spin Doctor in the House,” in reference to A Doctor In The House: The memoirs of Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad.

It was this outspoken nature which later saw him being appointed Special Advisor to the UN Secretary General in 2006, during which time he established the UN Ethics Office in New York.

Tunku who is also a DAP party member says that where the book is concerned and whatever our respective views might be, we should remain constant and agree to disagree because we live in a very complex society, more so now that Malaysia is growing in leaps and bounds.

“People have this view that if you are a politician, you can’t really be trusted. Sometimes I blush when telling people what I do,” he says in jest, and then adds, “Politics isn’t a profession, it’s more of a trade. And many of us have the passport as it were and the potential, just like any other Malaysian to step forward and say what needs to be said with integrity and honesty. We just need to decide to do something about it.”

This is where the book steps in. For a book that is heavy in subject matter, Someone Had To Say It is an easy read. There are 38 essays for you to choose from and each have the ability to enrage, enlighten and maybe illicit empathy. But whatever emotion it draws out of the reader, perhaps we can agree on one thing, that the language used in this book is fluid with lashings of the writer’s cheeky candor laced throughout while addressing what can still be done to right the wrongs of this country.

Someone Had To Say It
Retails
at RM40.

                This entry was posted on Wednesday, 8 June 2011, 1:33 pm and is filed under
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Because the nasi lemak rocks

By
C. Choong

June 08, 2011 | The Malaysian Insider

Negaraku, tanah tumpahnya darahku,

Rakyat hidup, bersatu dan maju,

Rahmat Bahagia, Tuhan kurniakan,

Raja kita, selamat bertakhta.

Rahmat Bahagia, Tuhan kurniakan,

Raja kita, selamat bertakhta.

It’s been almost 14 years since I’ve sung the national anthem. Fourteen. Guess that’s what happens when you’re shipped off to an international school system. All I remember about it though is the fact that half the school would get the lyrics wrong (kurnia……SANNNNNNN), and the other half would get it correct because we just spent the last music class being corrected about it. One half would try to outdo the other in emphasising the fact it was KAN… so the poor song was obviously butchered in the process of all this.

Anyway, why am I talking about this? Well with the whole brain-drain-national-loyalty-we-want-to-be-developed-GTP-ETP-MRT-WTV-government-scholarships-chaos-bag-snatching-shopping-crazy-elections-exchange-rate-increasing-subsidy-cutting-political-sex-tape mess that defines our country, I guess it’s normal for us to pick up the papers and be totally jaded by what is going on.

Sometimes I’m torn. I’m Malaysian but my Malay is pretty pathetic, my Chinese isn’t the best in the world and I probably know more about Hitler than any Malaysian from my history classes. But, obviously, I’m still Malaysian.

The older I’ve gotten, the more the elder generation complains about how unfair the policies that govern us are, about how they have had to work extra hard to make a difference in their own lives, about how privileges are enshrined in the system to favour someone because of their name, their skin colour and their beliefs.

Sometimes I can’t help but want to tell them that they shouldn’t have elected who they did at that time and kept them in power for years then. Blame no one but your own generation for creating and sustaining the mess that we’re attempting to sort out now. When the tide goes back, it really reveals the mess that is left behind.

Having been educated overseas, I’ve seen how well Malaysians (and South-east Asians in general) thrive in the foreign systems. Granted, by the process of selection, only the best get to be at the top-ranked institutions worldwide, but it has been a standing joke that in an economics class where the first 10 rows are filled with black-haired people, the grading curve will be exponentially skewed upward by 20 points.

At Economics commencement sandwiched between the two top-ranked economics students (a Singaporean and a Chinese national, both of whom I knew), at Honours commencement where the only individual to ever get eight semesters of full straight A’s (where the maximum you could ever get before was seven) was a girl from Penang… this illustrated to me how much talent our little corner of the world really holds.

So why come back? Well, family for one, a realisation that no matter how long I might stay in a foreign place, I could never understand or really take to heart their histories, their pride, when all my lineage comes from HERE.

Stories that shaped a nation define who I am, who my family is, and who we are going to be. True, the world is becoming more globalised, it is easy to move to get somewhere that exists almost as a different iteration of what we could be in no time flat, from the rural padi fields of Bali to 18 million people crammed on an island (NY, here’s looking at you), the sheer range of travel options we have show us exactly the mantles that we can choose to take on, and what’s life without comparing, without wanting to better ourselves.

We keep looking to the top and lamenting the fact that we aren’t there yet, but nothing in life is free. We have to work to get there, how have we forgotten that? At the same time, take a moment and pause, look at the countries and people below us, some would kill to have what we have: the natural resources, paved roads, conflict free for decades, a decently harmonious society, teh tarik.

We are unique, and we should embrace that with pride rather than let the media dictate the image we portray to the world.

                This entry was posted on Wednesday, 8 June 2011, 8:22 pm and is filed under
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BN on last legs of power, says Kit Siang

By
Shazwan Mustafa Kamal

June 08, 201 | The Malaysian Insider

KUALA LUMPUR, June 8 — Lim Kit Siang claims Barisan Nasional (BN) is on the verge of electoral defeat, and that proof of this was an Umno minister’s acceptance of the possibility that the country’s next prime minister could come from Pakatan Rakyat (PR).

The DAP parliamentary leader said this in reference to minister in the prime minister’s department Datuk Seri Nazri Aziz’s recent claim that Hadi was aiming to replace Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim as PR’s prime minister-designate.

In his analysis of the just-concluded PAS polls, the Umno supreme council member had said a glaring trend had emerged in the usually conservative Islamist party — a newfound lust for power.

“(This) strikes discerning Malaysians as the latest example of the debilitating loss of confidence enveloping Umno and BN leaderships that they are on the last legs of power until the 13th General Election.

“Now a senior Minister of the Najib Cabinet is seriously canvassing the scenario of UMNO and BN losing federal power in Putrajaya and, for the first time in the nation’s history since Merdeka in 1955, a Prime Minister not from Umno after the next 13th general election,” said Lim in a statement today.

Hadi has already stated that he does not want to be prime minister even if Pakatan Rakyat (PR) were to win in the upcoming general election, and explained that PAS’s current goal is to implement a welfare state concept.

Lim  said that as far as PR was concerned, all were in agreement that Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim will be the country’s next prime minister should the federal opposition take over Putrajaya.

                This entry was posted on Wednesday, 8 June 2011, 4:55 pm and is filed under
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Civil disobedience, race barriers and the Bersih rally

By
Keruah Usit

Jun 8, 11 | MalaysiaKini

COMMENT
A writer friend of mine in Kuala Lumpur is a firm supporter of the upcoming Walk for Democracy rally on July 9, despite having been arrested during a candlelight vigil against the Internal Security Act (ISA) last August.

Bersih, the Coalition for Clean and Fair Elections, announced on its website that “Bersih 2.0 has been actively advocating electoral reform but our demands have fallen on deaf ears.

The time has come for those mandated to administer the nation to ‘listen to the voices of the rakyat’. There is a clamour worldwide for greater democratisation of societies and we would invite those in power to heed those voices”.

This Bersih rally is a sequel to the first in 2007, involving some 40,000 Malaysians, with a cameo involving riot police, copious tear gas and water cannon. The first rally captured the voters’ imagination and contributed to the startling general election results the following year.

Prospects of a second mammoth rally have now sparked the usual threats of violence and ‘chaos’ from the Home Ministry and other Umno functionaries.

Bersih’s entirely reasonable demands

Even so, the rally organisers’ demands are entirely reasonable. Bersih is simply calling for the institution of certain essential components of any democratic election.

Bersih wants the Najib Abdul Razak administration to clean the electoral rolls, reform the postal vote, use indelible ink on voters’ hands to prevent fraud, provide free and fair access to the mass media, adopt a minimum of three weeks for the campaign period, strengthen public institutions, curb corruption and end ‘dirty politics’.

Bersih’s proposal of a peaceful demonstration is equally reasonable. In the past, such worldwide public expressions of political will, conducted peacefully, have conquered public opinion and overhauled bad policy.

This week, we commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Freedom Riders, black and white women and men who sat together in ‘whites only’ buses and waiting rooms in the Deep South, in order to force the Kennedy administration to enforce new anti-segregation laws. The Freedom Riders were beaten and firebombed by white supremacists, and jailed for up to half a year by the authorities, for their civil disobedience.

Other examples of peaceful demonstrations that eventually changed history include Gandhi’s Salt March in India in 1930, Martin Luther King’s Million Man March in the United States in 1963, and the Kwangju Uprising in Korea in 1980. Today, we too are bearing witness to the remarkable Arab Spring, a revolution that has opened up new ways of thinking for entire nations.

A brief history of doing time

“I wasn’t in the country during the 2007 Bersih rally,” my friend recalled. “But I was at a candlelight vigil aimed at abolishing the ISA, on its half century anniversary.

“We were milling around the entrance to the Amcorp Mall, sharing candles, singing Negaraku, and watching the ranks of police build up, well over a hundred of them. A phalanx of riot police used their shields to push us into the mall.

“Uniformed and plainclothes policemen started dragging young men away to the police vans, slapping several of them as they went. Two young Malay men told me later that policemen pushed their faces into the ground, using a knee in the back of their heads. Several young men were moved to the vans with their necks in police chokeholds.

“There were plenty of women wearing tudung or Muslim headscarves among the crowd of protestors, but the police avoided these studiously, perhaps because they would have created bad press. TV crews went around filming those arrested, but the floodlights and the cameras certainly didn’t do much to discourage the police from roughing up the protestors.

“One police officer trailed behind some arrested protestors, shouting ‘Tutup! Tutup!’ He was urging his men to gather around the detainees being dragged away, to try to prevent any misdeeds being captured on film.

“We sat in the police vans for an hour. A Bar Council lawyer talked to us through the chicken coop wire, asked for our names, and offered us advice. It was a hot evening, there were more than a dozen of us squeezed into one truck, and one of the other detainees kept swearing and belching beer fumes,” he sighed.

“Eventually the police drove us to the Petaling Jaya police station. We sat in the sweltering dark for another half an hour. Aru (S Arutchelvan, secretary general of Parti Sosialis Malaysia or PSM) and Syed (Ibrahim Syed Noh, chairperson of GMI, the Movement to Abolish the ISA) set the tone. Aru insisted that the police let us off, before we handed over our identity cards.

‘Police ran out of handcuffs’

“The police allowed us off the vans one by one, handcuffing each man as he stepped down. But they stopped this after four or five prisoners. They announced they’d run out of handcuffs! They eventually unlocked all the detainees and placed us together on a stage in the station car park.

“We could see people on the walkways a few floors up, on adjacent buildings overlooking the police compound. They were chanting in support, and waving candles. Later we were joined by around 15 arrested women. Finally, we watched the police bring in a few more protestors. They’d been arrested at the entrance to the station, because they’d been demanding our release.

“We were a small crowd, about 30 men and women, of mixed races. I sat next to a handful of college kids, Islamic scholars. They were polite, analytical, bright. They’d noticed the police had been rougher on them than on the non-Malays.

“They smiled when they described how the police had told them to bertaubat, or repent, all the while grabbing them around the throat.

“The Islamic students held a light-hearted group discussion with some Chinese detainees on the theology of candlelight vigils. They all agreed that since nobody was praying to anybody while they were holding the candles, there could be no religious objection,” he chuckled.

“One young man, Kechik, who said he was 19, was sitting beside me. He was rubbing his bruised neck where he had been choked. I tried to make some reassuring noises about the Bar Council lawyers trying to get past the police station entrance, and our eventual release on bail.

“He smiled and told me quietly that he knew all this, because this was his fourth or fifth arrest. One of the police guards recognised Kechik and greeted him with a wave.

“We were photographed. The photographer had to keep telling the detainees not to grin into the camera. They kept us there for seven hours, and then they made us go back to the station every few weeks to sign for police bail, as a kind of collective punishment, but in the end, we weren’t charged.

“None of the participants in the anti-ISA candlelight vigils in Petaling Jaya, Penang or Kelantan were eventually charged. It is fairly likely the police may have another crack at them on July 9,” said my friend.

* KERUAH USIT is a human rights activist – ‘anak Sarawak, bangsa Malaysia’.

                This entry was posted on Wednesday, 8 June 2011, 10:52 pm and is filed under
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Female journalists break silence on sexual violence

By
Kanya D’Almeida

Jun 8, 11 | MalaysiaKini

On Feb 11, while the world was celebrating former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak’s fall from power, CBS television correspondent Lara Logan was being “mercilessly assaulted” by a group of well over 200 men in a dark corner of Tahrir Square.

“For an extended period of time they raped me with their hands,” Logan, who was ripped away from her bodyguard by a mob and beaten before being attacked, said last month in an interview with the New York Times.

A public statement co-drafted by Logan and CBS chairperson Jeff Fager meant that she “didn’t have to carry the burden alone, like my dirty little secret, something I had to be ashamed of,” Logan said in one of her few interviews on the attack, two months ago.

Though Logan is not the first – and is unlikely to be the last – journalist to be subjected to such brutality, her story exposed the silence around such crimes, which happen far more frequently than the media world has acknowledged or that women themselves are willing to admit.

In the first extensive compilation of its kind, the New York City-based international press freedom group Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) released “The Silencing Crime: Sexual Violence and Journalists” Tuesday, a special report documenting a deluge of stories of rape, sexual abuse and severe harassment.

“I wrote a blog post about Logan’s attack the day after it happened and immediately women started contacting me to tell me their own personal stories of assault,” Lauren Wolfe, CPJ’s senior editor and co-author of the report, told IPS, adding that the reaction to Logan’s attack by women around the world constituted the momentum behind the report.

Based on over four dozen interviews with 27 local and 25 international journalists from Asia and Latin America to Africa and the Middle East, the report only scratches the surface of what is likely a much more widespread crisis, yet it is the only substantial document detailing crimes that activists believe occur across the world with frequency and impunity.

“From threats and groping to aggressive physical harassment and rape, these acts not only obstruct the work of journalists but are used as retribution,” Wolfe said in a press release Monday.

“Acknowledging and assessing sexual aggression against journalists is a first step toward formulating solutions and advocating for change.

This report is a step in that direction,” she added.

Many of the women who brought their stories to CPJ are doing so after years of silence, having hitherto feared being demoted, demonised or further humiliated by coming forward about attacks.

Indeed, the majority of the women interviewed for the report did so under condition of anonymity to “protect” their careers. The few who agreed to speak on the record also acknowledged their own, and their colleagues’, reluctance and hesitation to expose the crimes.

Jineth Bedoya, a then-journalist for the Bogota daily El Espectador, was abducted while investigating the actions of ring-wing paramilitaries in Colombia in May 2000. In a house in the city of Villavicencio, she was beaten by multiple attackers and gang-raped.

In the decade following the crime, Bedova has encountered three colleagues who have remained silent on reprisal attacks because of “cultural and professional stigmas”.

However, Wolfe wrote in an article on IPS Tuesday, two weeks ago Bedoya brought the case to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, hoping to inspire and encourage women to “denounce what’s happened to them and be able to ask for justice”.

“It’s embarrassing, and you feel like an idiot saying anything, especially when you are reporting on much, much greater horrors,” Jenny Nordberg, a New York-based Swedish correspondent who was violently groped while covering the late Benazir Bhutto’s return to Pakistan from exile in October 2007, wrote to CPJ in February.

“But it still stays with you,” she added. “I did not tell the editors for fear of losing assignments.”

“[Also], I just did not want them to think of me as a girl. Especially when I am trying to be equal to, and better than, the boys,” Nordberg said.

And, as Logan pointed out, sexual violence does not leave the same visible scars of torture or other forms of abuse. After rape or sexual assault, “You only have your word,” Logan said. “The physical wounds heal. You don’t carry around… evidence the way you would if you had lost your leg or your arm in Afghanistan.”

– IPS

                This entry was posted on Wednesday, 8 June 2011, 2:11 pm and is filed under
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