Malaysia’s Coming Elections: Between Change and Inertia

By
Farish A. Noor

And so, with the dissolution of the Malaysian Parliament on Wednesday, Malaysia is heading to the elections once again. The precise date of the 12th General Elections of Malaysia is yet to be known, but it is clear that this will be one of the more hotly contested elections that Malaysia has witnessed.

Over the past two years alone a string of controversies have stirred the Malaysian public’s interest in the goings-on in the corridors of power in the country: The highly publicised case of the murder of a Mongolian model has dragged many a famous name (including that of politicians) into the limelight; the revelation of irregularities in the appointment of senior judges has brought the judiciary into close focus; the destruction of a number of Hindu temples has aroused the anger of many Malaysian Hindus; while the plethora of on-going marriage and divorce cases between Muslims and non-Muslims has added to the widening of the gulf between the religious and ethnic communities in the country.

What is more, the spate of public demonstrations – many of which took place in the capital Kuala Lumpur – would suggest that sections of the Malaysian public are more politically aware and politically literate than before. The BERSIH campaign calling for free and fair elections, for instance, was a movement that is rooted in Malaysia’s civil society and which cut across the racial, ethnic and religious divides which have always been the salient markers of the Malaysian political landscape. Conversely the demonstrations organised by the Hindu Rights Action Force (Hindraf) would suggest that communitarian and sectarian political remains a defining factor of Malaysian politics until today.

All eyes will now be on the administration of Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, who faces the tough prospect of retaining the public’s support for a second term.

Badawi came to power following the resignation of former Prime Minister Tun Mahathir Mohamad, who led – and in many ways transformed – Malaysia for more than two decades. In the immediate aftermath of Mahathir’s unannounced resignation that stunned the nation, Badawi was chosen as his successor. Yet when Badawi came to power with an enormous mandate in the elections of 2004 (with one of the highest approval ratings ever given to any Malaysian leader) he promised a wide range of reforms that included the promise of greater accountability, transparency and a thorough overhaul of some of the key institutions of government including the civil service, judiciary and police force.

Four years on, there seems to be the widespread perception that the Badawi administration has failed to deliver. Despite earlier promises that the long-standing cases of alleged corruption and nepotism between government and the corporate sector were to be resolved, no major cases have been dealt with until now. Instead the Malaysian public has been witness to a number of embarrassing revelations about the murky dealings within the governmental system instead.

Another area where Badawi seems weak is his stand on Islam, which was encapsulated in his vision of a modern, progressive, ‘Islam Hadari’. While admittedly Badawi has expressed the keen desire to see Islam understood and practiced in a universal, inclusive and tolerant manner, the realities on the ground would suggest that the religious authorities in the country have not taken heed of any of the universal principles he has espoused all along: The seizure of Bibles by Malaysian customs officers, the activities of the morality police that spy on the private lives of Malaysians, the banning of books that are deemed ‘a threat’ to Islam and Muslims, etc. have all prompted Malaysians to ask: ‘What sort of modern, progressive Islam is this?’

But Badawi’s greatest challenge to date has been the pervading presence of his former mentor Tun Mahathir himself. More than the danger of increased communitarian and sectarian politics, more than the challenge of a resurgent Islamic party (PAS) waiting to regain control of the Muslim-majority states, more than the challenge posed by the new generation of politically-conscious urban civil society activists and dedicated professional classes; it is the dominating presence of Tun Mahathir that looms over the Badawi government at the moment.

When Badawi promised a new era of transparency and openness, many observers of Malaysian politics noted that this was a departure from the ways of the Mahathir administration. To some extent it has to be said that Malaysia’s civil society and media have indeed opened up, with issues being discussed in the public domain as never before. But this has also incurred a cost to the Badawi government, and it has irked those who were more comfortable with the ways of the Mahathir era when governance was strictly a top-down unilateral process with less public participation.

The down-sizing of several mammoth projects that were initiated during the Mahathir period, the revelation of corruption and abuse of power dating back to the 1980s, the attempt to introduce some degree of accountability to the workings of the police and security forces; etc have been seen as a means of overturning many of the developments made during Mahathir’s time. The former Prime Minister has further upped the stakes by publicly stating that Badawi was perhaps not the best man to replace him, and to suggest that Badawi may eventually be a ‘one-term’ Prime Minister.

This, then, is one of the core issues that is really being fought out in the coming elections of Malaysia. While the Badawi government is pressed to take on the opposition parties and to address a host of demands from a wide section of Malaysia’s now vocal civil society, the real – and perhaps only – threat to Badawi’s position in power comes from the old guard of the ruling elite and governmental system itself, who do not relish the prospect of real, long term institutional change, reform and modernisation. The 12th General Elections of Malaysia will therefore determine whether the reform process continues, or whether institutional inertia will win the day.

End.

Dr. Farish A. Noor is a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Nanyang Technological University of Singapore; and one of the founders of the www.othermalaysia.org research site.

                This entry was posted on Thursday, 14 February 2008, 11:53 am and is filed under
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Mantra of the ‘super corridor’

by
Dr. Azly Rahman

Now we are aiming to be a major player in the Information Age industry. For this we will welcome with open arms foreign investments. Those who have experience doing business in Malaysia know that we are ever willing to listen and to act to meet the multifarious needs of foreign investors. And so the Multimedia Super Corridor is created to become a giant test-bed for the soft and hard products of the cyber age
.- Dr Mahathir Mohamad, speech to MSC investors, 1998

Without doubt, machinery has greatly increased the number of well-to-do idlers.
 – Karl Marx, circa 1880s

In Sanskrit, the word “mantra” (mentera in Malay) means formula. Mantra is correlated to the idea of a grand strategy or a belief system in the form of political ideology that permeates the consciousness of the leader and the led or the author and the authored. Inscribed onto the consciousness of the people, via print, broadcast, and electronic media is the mantra of economic success rapidized by information technologies. The formula for success many developing nations, such as Malaysia, is undertaking is one characterized by the dependency on Informational Communications Technologies (ICT) particularly on the technology of the Internet/broadband to fuel the engine of capitalist development, relegating the state as a haven for cheap pool of labor in the microchips industry.

The mantra of success is one driven by the belief in the formula of “cybernetics.” I will discuss how the “cybernetic chant”, one orchestrated and broadcast by the government, permeates through the social environment. Let us first look at the geneology of “cybernetics”

I shall relate the idea and genealogy of cybernetics to the idea of what is currently known as “Information Age” or its varying and more fanciful terms such as “The Age of Cybernetics,” or “The Networked Economy,” or “The Digital Age.” I will then relate the idea of this “formula” of cybernetics to the notion of “inscription” of the ideology onto the landscape of human consciousness since the beginning of the second half of the twenty-first century.

On Cybernetics

The idea of “Information Society” or “The Network Society” stems out of the revolution in computing and has transformed our psychological, ideological, and material landscape of humanity. Social relations of production are altered and transformed as a result of new patterns of division of labor in what many a Chaos theorist would call patterns that arise out of randomness and chaos.

There are different levels of meaning of cultural change as it is impacted historically by “technologies of the body,” such as the Internet. In the case of cybernetics as technologies of the mind, this seems to be a “natural progression of late stage of capital formation” and in fact, as the Critical Theorist Herbert Marcuse and many a Frankfurt School analysts would call an age wherein technologies are at its final stage of development which will actually liberate humanity out of mundanity as a consequence of automation. Hence cybernetics, as a foundation of artificial intelligence and a philosophy close to the Cartesian philosophy of the mind and appealing to the “philosophy of human liberation via technological feats,” is at the present, the highest stage in the development of techno-capitalism. This proposition is reminiscent of Vladimir Lenin’s conclusion on the analysis of capitalism made almost a century ago.

Writings on social structures and political theory have primarily centered on the relationship between Capital, Humanity, and Nature. Many sociologists have written on how capitalism appropriates natural resources through the creation of labor and surplus value, which will then establish classes The debates that rage between the proponents of free market enterprise and command or controlled economies revolve around the issue of human nature, and who gets to control the production and dissemination and the monopoly of capital. At times, on a different plane there is also the reflection on the need for capital to be interpreted not only as physical or material, but also as cultural, and metaphysical. The central issue of these writings and debate and reflections is of equality and equity; an issue that continues to plague humanity in this age of rapidized technological developments, as echoed by many a contemporary social theorist.

In the age of cybernetics, French social philosopher Rousseau’s notion of the discourse on the inequality amongst men can be used to explain the evolution of contemporary social problematique such as digital divide, architecture of power, and the erosion of the Self into fragmented and miniscule selves. Other themes also include the furtherance of protectionist democracy via the use of tools of cybernetics, the control over the coding, encoding, and decoding of information by those who monopolize information, and a range of other tools of imperialism and domination and hegemony deployed and employed to the fullest advantage of those who owns the means of social reproduction. And those who own the means to control these processes can also own the means to engineer cultural reconfigurations

The nature of thought formation and consciousness production in the world of broadcast media can be exemplified in the media capitalism of Rupert Murdoch whose empire span Britain and the United States made possible by the modern oligopolic system of capital accumulation

The scientific paradigm of cybernetics, by virtue of its origin in the mathematical and exact sciences, out of the Copernican Revolution, of Newtonian physics and of Principia Mathematica, onwards to its march of Classical Physics, and next, Quantum Physics and Informational and Decisional Sciences and so on – is a science which has appropriated the “Natural-ness” of the art of being human. Being a paradigm subjected to the development of propositions, verification by the testing of hypotheses, falsification by the rejecting and accepting of the null, and replicating these processes and so on and so forth, cybernetics creates a “space” between what is Natural and what is Artificial. In-between these spaces, Technology as the motivator of civilizations to progress and to dominate, to extent the limits of what otherwise is impossible (for example the navigational technology of Christopher Columbus which made it possible to open up European colonization of the Native Indians of Amerigo Vespucci’s America) is also psychologically, a way to create the Technocratic and Authoritarian self. In between these spaces of Nature versus the Artificial lie Media as technology of the mediated self. Technology, as it is developed not by the hands of the “Author” has thence become a powerful tool of the surreal – of inequality amongst men. Popular culture presents technology as a colonizer of humanity, as exemplified by the theme of the movie,

The Matrix.

Cybernetics as a paradigm of thinking about the technology of action and feedback and the loops they produce is an interesting synthesis of three theoretical orientations: logical positivism, critical theory, and phenomenology The paradox is that on the one hand, it is derived from the Classical and Quantum Physics, on the one hand, it is a good foundational philosophy of technologism which combines many fields to form a unified theory of living things (like Critical Theory’s attempt to universalize and integrate the disciplines, albeit in a dialectical fashion), and on the other hand, Cybernetics too is phenomenological.

Precisely because we can derive three clusters of theories out of the paradigms above makes Cybernetics appealing and hegemonizing. The Internet as a manifestation of the ideology of cybernetics is a good example of how it is both a technology of advanced logical-positivism, and at the same time, one that is employed to make the concept of democracy more “accessible” when one goes into the study of free speech on the Internet.

Cybernetics and the idea of Cyberjaya

What is the link between the mantra of Cybernetics and the creation of Malaysia’s Cyberjaya? I propose the existence of a possible link between Cybernetics and Cyberjaya; on how the idea of cybernetics, as Systems Theory (employed to explain the nature of how living systems operate in a loop-feedback fashion) suggested undergoes transcultural evolution. The idea is now interpreted and transmutated by the government of Malaysia to mean the base and superstructure of hypermodern digital cities such as Cyberjaya, a city that embodies a new spirit of national development. Hence, the term evolved from the description of the physics of living things to the politics of domination and control in what I argue, is commonly known in the world of militarism, as the science of Command, Control, Communications, and Intelligence (C³I).

In each phenomena of social transformations, lies the history of dominant idea and of power, technology, and ideology. In the case of Malaysia’s corridor, the idea is alien and alienating to the masses. It is a transplantation of a mantra not understood by the local elites who benefit from the real estate projects associated to “cybernetics”.

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More bull by  DG Merican

Letters

By EJB

13.2.08

It appears that there is no end to the spin of Annie Freeda Cruez for the yarn she creates for DG Merican. Today the NST highlighted an article, “Malaysia’s rural health service second to none”. They forgot to add that it was for the year 1965 when you had to worry essentially about cholera, typhoid, malaria and hookworms.

DG Merican, just fresh from conning doctors that the PHFSA (Private Health Care and Facilities Act) is not meant to penalize registered doctors but is there actually to weed out bogus ones, has seen to it that, Basmullah Yusom, a registered practitioner, still languishes in Kajang Prison. He shows no remorse for blatantly lying to doctors and to parliament. He appears not to have a conscience either as he goes on another PR jaunt with Annie Freeda Cruez. Today it appears that he is trying to win brownie points by highlighting to the largely gullible Malaysian public that our rural health service is well run and effective. He is, of course, now in danger of believing his own bull.

Merican’s ebullient statistics include a health clinic every five kilometers and that more than 95 per cent of the rural population have access to a doctor. There are also 2,965 clinics and 151 mobile clinics in rural areas and there is one health clinic or centre for every 20,000 people while there is one community or rural clinic for every 4,000 people.

Impressive statistics until one actually walks into one of these clinics and realizes that there is only a nurse or HA who is going to attend to today’s epidemic of hypertension, diabetes mellitus, heart disease and cancer. Their duties –  check your BP, sugar, etc and dish out 30 year old medication for the next 6 months packed in two polystyrene bags with a  “Kalau mau jumpa doctor…tunggu tiga bulan ya…”. If the patient returns alive on follow-up, repeat above. Any complications, refer to “Hospital Besar” and join the queue where the rest of Malaysia will also be waiting to see not a specialist..but a medical officer in the specialist clinic, who could have been just transferred from the same district the patient was seen. This is the modus operandi of the Malaysian Healthcare System for the last 50 years.

Forget about obesity or even dengue, HIV, hepatitis or the reemergence of tuberculosis all of which have already claimed thousands of lives. Access to a doctor? Yes, try waiting three months if you are lucky. And incidentally how many of these clinics, especially the mobile ones comply with PHFSA rules. And how is it nurses are doing neonatal care, deliveries including curative, family health, dental, nutrition and dietetics, health education and promotion, home nursing, care of the elderly, rehabilitative services, environmental sanitation, adolescent health and community mental services.  Not to mention Medical assistants merrily providing general anesthesia still in Sarawak in the year 2008. Aren’t these against the PHFSA? Oh hang on? Yep, that’ right. One rule for Merican and one rule for Basmullah. Silly me. Nurse kill government patient OK. Basmullah no pay RM1500 for private clinic, go to jail.

Merican even appears to take credit for the healthcare provided for the Orang Asli. The Orang Asli Affairs Hospital in Gombak is run by the Orang Asli Affairs Department. And parliament was informed further in May last year that it is so well-run by the Orang Asli Affairs Department (JHEOA) that the Health Ministry has no intention of taking over the management. Much of the base work and credit for Orang Asli healthcare must surely go J. Malcolm Bolton and subsequent British Officers who improved Orang Asli Healthcare even throughout the Emergency.

There are enough publications in the literature to confirm that healthcare among the Orang Asli has been in terminal decline after independence with the Health Ministry itself having the distinct notoriety for scapegoating the Orang Asli’s themselves whenever disasters such as hepatitis break out among them. As recently as last year, Nicholas and Baer reported that the crude death rate and maternal mortality rate is still twice higher among the Orang Asli then the rest of all West Malaysians. (Healthcare for the Orang Asli: Consequences of Paternalism and Colonialism).

But Merican and Annie, go further. They utter that horrible phrase “telemedicine and teleconsultation”. We have to take it that Amrin Buang, the Auditor General must have clearly failed to delve into this rip-off.  Merican must be quite oblivious to the death of Medical Online linked to KUB in July 2003. Tasked to develop telemedicine, Medical Online died a horrible death when it couldn’t pay suppliers because of the insidious learning curve associated with this project by the project managers and the ministry. Its troubles in Ipoh said a lot about jumping the gun. How do you install a multi-million ringgit IT system comprising of expensive hardware and software when there is no electricity supply? Just like hospital having ISO status but roof is leaking?

Worse still no one in the Ministry of Health realized that technology waits for no one. While billions were spent on both hardware and software, all courtesy of the tax-payers money and probably Petronas, none in the ministry actually grasped that if they don’t learn it fast enough, the equipment and software is trash. Being practical appears not to be the Ministry’s stronger points. In its euphoria to achieve first world infrastructure, the MOH just failed to grasp how really appalling our third world mentality is.

Just a little research would have showed that even the National Health Service(NHS) in Britain was sliding into a £20 billion (RM120 billion)  IT disaster. British tax-payers till this day have been unforgiving and have threatened to punish Labour for their miscalculation in trying to implement electronic patient clinical records without studying in depth its feasibility. Basic problem – clinicians, whose support was essential in the introduction of IT to clinical care, were unconvinced and the costs / benefits for the NHS were unclear from Day One. Suppliers and ignorant ministry officials in Malaysia must have done such a sales pitch about paperless hospitals that our cabinet must have been left completely transfixed.

Today Malaysia will have to deal with the financial calamity arising from a civil servant at the Ministry which the government chose to believe. Woefully the main officer responsible for this mess is still apparently at the Ministry of Health and she is even expecting a promotion. And apparently the dumb lady even let the suppliers keep the source codes after paying millions for the software. Such are the brains that run the Ministry of Health and squander what must be, meager resources by now.

But this government never learns. Since it is must be mesmerized beyond belief at its ability to fool all of the people all of the time, it has now ended-up believing its own bull.  But since, parliament has been dissolved, I fear, Malaysians must brace themselves for greater thought provoking articles by both Merican and Annie Freeda Cruez.

                This entry was posted on Thursday, 14 February 2008, 7:17 am and is filed under
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Of Bull, Broken promises, Blockheads, Buffoons, Bigots, and Bravehearts

Martin Jalleh

14 Feb. 2008

It is the Year of the Rat. The Prime Minister (PM) has just let the cat out of the bag – the “General Elections (GE)” will be real soon, for there is a feeling amongst many that the country is going to the dogs.

The PM, who has never lost any sleep since he became the PM – has been  trying to awaken the nation to an imminent GE. He had declared in June last year, in what could have been the most important statement of his political career:  “I am no sleeping PM”!

Four years have passed swiftly by since Pak Lah became PM. He has made it very clear he is no “one-term” PM. Why, in between his many 40 photogenic winks he has even come up with Vision 2057! Who says the PM has failed to walk the talk — when he has even managed
Bolehland
sleepwalking!

But the boys on the fourth floor of Putrajaya who have been spinning the broken record which critics have entitled “I started a joke” have a tough job ahead. Experts of make-believe and myths, they have to create a mega-mirage of a PM and a government with a proven track record this coming GE.

Often, and as was evident in 2007, their script and
sandiwara
 have spun out of control by the silly statements of small-minded and self-serving sycophants surrounding the PM, causing Pak Lah and his government to stumble from one comic caper to another.

As the government’s delivery system fell apart, very symbolically and significantly so did structures give way in buildings such as parliament, the world’s second largest court complex in Jalan Duta and even Putrajaya.

Back to the PM’s “proven track record”, surely the year 2007 was a very “revealing” year and there was so much that the ordinary citizen of
Bolehland
 could fall back on to help them decide who they should vote for this coming GE.

Excellent Economy

50 years ago, we were second in Asia in terms of economic development. Last year we were almost second last. We also had much lower FDIs than many other countries in ASEAN such as Thailand and Indonesia. But we were told our economy is doing well compared to many countries.

As one BN MP had so proudly declared in parliament last year,
Bolehland
 had great cause to celebrate
Merdeka
, for we are “10 times more (economically) advanced than Ghana” which became independent in the same year as us!

Why bother with former European Commission Ambassador to Malaysia Thierry Rommel’s remark that the NEP amounted to protectionism against foreign companies? It is only “loglokal” that Umno still needs not only an unleveled-playing-field but also to move the goalposts from time to time.

2007 was another high point of Pak Lah’s premiership. We had to contend with high prices of food, fuel, gas, public transportation, tolls, etc. resulting in a high cost of living. We were told we were better off than four years ago. We were merely paying the high price of believing some people in high places.

Even government backbenchers doubted the positive economic indicators by the government and expressed disappointment that the grassroots were not benefiting from domestic economic development.  It is difficult to gauge what is going on in the grassroots when you are governing from the fourth floor!

Graft Galore

Pak Lah’s track record in his supposed “zero tolerance for corruption” drew a big zero in 2007. But there were several “firsts”. For the first time in the country serious allegations of corruption were made against
the
 chief of the Anti-Corruption Agency (ACA) and even
the
 Inspector General of Police (IGP)!

Corruption allegations were also made against the Deputy Internal Security Minister, the Sabah and the Sarawak Chief Ministers and the Commercial Crime Investigation Department chief! It was revealed that 40% of the senior police officers could be arrested without further investigations – strictly on the basis of their lifestyles!

Another first was when the parties suspected of corruption investigated each other! The police investigated the (then) chief of the ACA; the ACA investigated the Internal Security Deputy Minister and the IGP….and the Attorney-General decided that all three were clean!

What the Mahathir administration took to “achieve” in 22 years – pervasive corruption and criminal breach of trust, mismanagement and wastage of public funds – Pak Lah’s regime did even better in his first four years, made evident especially in the 2006 Auditor General’s Report.

Dr M’s administration ended with Malaysia being ranked No. 37 on the Transparency International (TI) Corruption Perception Index (CPI) in 2003. Three years after Pak Lah took over, Malaysia’s TI CPI ranking plunged to No. 44 in 2006. It is likely to plunge further.

Crippling Crime

Pak Lah also achieved a record of sorts with regard to his pledge of a drastic reduction of the crime rate in the country. For the first time in
Bolehland’s
 history, the crime index crossed the 200,000 mark. The rakyat in
Bolehland
did not feel good nor safe at all – whether inside or outside their homes!

The crime rate soared from 156,315 cases in 2003 to 224,298 cases in 2007 – a sharp rise of some 45% in the past four years of Pak Lah’s premiership. The number of serious crimes increased by 13.36% nationwide, with gang robbery without the use of firearms rising by more than 159% .

Shocked by the crime statistics of 2007, Pak Lah came up with a multi-pronged anti-crime strategy. What was really needed was the setting up of the Independent Police Complaints and Misconduct Commission (IPCMC), a key proposal by the Royal Police Commission.

The PM had in fact in principle agreed to the setting up of the IPCMC on 24 January 2006, but by the end of 2007 his track record showed that his biggest “crime” was to shelve the IPCMC and replace it with a toothless Special Complaints Commission proposal.

Blocking Bloggers

2007 saw the elite in Umno going berserk over blogs. For so long they had monopolised “the truth”.  Unable to “buy over” the countless blogs on the Internet as they do with newspapers, they did what they were best at – “criminalise” or demonise what was a major threat to them.

It was quite a record – they intimidated bloggers with police reports (and yet could not pinpoint what they were complaining about!), law suits, arbitrary arrests, police interrogations and threats of the government’s use of the ISA, the Sedition Act and a host of other laws.

On International Women’s Day, Tourism Minister Tunku Adnan bin Tengku Mansor put on record how the government (also read as Umno) felt about bloggers: “All bloggers are liars, they cheat people using all kinds of methods. From my understanding, out of 10,000 unemployed bloggers, 8,000 are women.”

“All bloggers are not in favour of national unity. Our country has been successful because we are very tolerant with each other, if not, there will be civil war, the Malays will kill the Chinese, the Chinese will take revenge and kill the Malays, and the Indians will kill everyone,” Adnan proved how asinine he was.

But bloggers were not bothered. (Raja Petra was the least petrified.) They refused to be cowed by the blather on blogs by the bunch of official blockheads. They took to heart former PM Dr M’s description of them as being the “only hope” left to speak out on problems in the country.

Puerile Parliament

Pak Lah had quite a track record of being absent from parliament. In fact he was more overseas than in the august house.  In a 44-month period as PM he made 83 overseas trips. Yet his deputy Najib Tun Razak would declare: “Parliament’s importance has not diminished even after 50 years of independence”.

Najib added that the role of the country’s legislature “should be given due respect not only from the elected representatives but also the people”. It was difficult to take Najib seriously especially when one takes into account:

§ the serious problem of high absenteeism in parliament amongst BN MPs

§the presence of six cows and 10 goats on parliament grounds waiting to be slaughtered for a dinner scheduled at the banquet hall to celebrate Pak Lah’s wedding

§   the severe and recurrent leaking problem of parliament’s roof and the “bocor” comments by two BN MP buffoons – with Minister in the PM’s Department Mohd. Nazri Abdul Aziz, and even Najib defending their remarks

§   the comments of spineless, silly, sexist and of course ‘stupid’ MPs

§   the hype, hypocrisy and of course, hysterics and histrionics in Parliament led by Ministers like Nazri

§   the arrest of over 20 people within the parliamentary precincts when they wanted to

hand over a memorandum.

Idiocy & the ISA

The government of Pak Lah created its own track record on the 20th anniversary of Operation Lallang which took place last year. Minister in the PM’s Department Bernard Dompok claimed there had been no detention under the ISA after Pak Lah took over as PM in 2003!

Foreign affairs ministry parliamentary secretary Ahmad Shabery Cheek had even the cheek to insist that “no one has demanded that the ISA be abolished”.

The PM himself declared that the ISA “is still relevant and useful” and that “matters pertaining to the rights of detainees will be given due consideration and assessment”. How can this be done when the basic tenet of the ISA is to detain a person without trial?

The Abolish ISA Movement (GMI) demolished Dompok’s claim by providing the statistics of arrests and renewal of detention orders under the ISA during Pak Lah’s premiership. They relieved Ahmad Shabery of his amnesia by forwarding him the long history calling for the abolishment of the ISA.

In a landmark decision the Kuala Lumpur High Court ruled that ex-ISA detainee Abdul Malek’s arrest was unlawful and that he was assaulted under police custody. He was awarded RM2.5 million in damages.

But it did not deter the government from ordering the arrest of five leaders of the Hindu Rights Action Force (Hindraf) under the ISA on the false notion linking them to terrorists without a shred of evidence. Samy Vellu would later confirm that was no such evidence.

Muzzled Media

“I think this government under Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi is a very, very liberal government,” Nazri tried very hard to convince himself as he spoke at a National Union of Journalists (NUJ) forum in September.

How and when was Pak Lah’s government “very, very liberal”? Was it when:

·  Information Minister Zainuddin Maidin (Zam) told the top editors of the media that there was “no need to tell the PM the truth”?

·  Chief secretary to the government Mohd Sidek Hassan instructed the media to avoid emphasising on news deemed negative against the government, such as the 2006 Auditor-General’s report?

·  Chairman of the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission Halim Shafie ordered broadcasters against giving airtime for speeches by opposition political parties?

·   the media were barred from covering the public hearing on crime held by the Parliamentary Caucus on Human Rights and Good Governance in Petaling Jaya by Caucus chairman Nazri Abdul Aziz?

·   all editors were rounded up to take specific instructions from the 4th Floor Boys in Putrajaya as to how to report the wedding of Pak Lah?

·   Zam told local newspapers not to quote from Internet blogs or use them as sources of information?

·   the Internal Security Ministry issued a directive to mainstream media not to publish any news on the issue of Malaysia being an Islamic State and only to publish statements from Pak Lah and his deputy?

·   Bernard Dompok’s disagreement with the PM and deputy PM that the country was an Islamic state was blacked out by the mainstream media?

·   editorial interference led to self-censorship which in turn had resulted in stories being slanted heavily  towards the government such as the public rallies by Bersih and Hindraf?

The “liberalism” which Nazri spoke so proudly of resulted in
Bolehland
 achieving the worst-ever ranking in the latest worldwide press freedom index released by Paris-based watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RSF) – the sharpest plunge of 32 spots from 92 to 124 placing, which is also Malaysia’s worst ranking in the RSF annual worldwide press freedom ranking since it was started in 2002

Judicial Jesters

The defects which began to show on nine occasions in a three-month period after the opening of the second largest court complex in the world in Jalan Duta were very symbolic of the state of the judiciary in 2007.

Here too Pak Lah and his government achieved a record of sorts. The two main players were then Chief Justice (CJ) Ahmad Fairuz and Nazri who is also the de facto Law Minister. Both were ready to do whatever it took and to utter the most naïve and nonsensical in order to maintain the status quo.

For the first time, the country did not have a Chief Judge for eight months, and the Nazri would insist that there “is no law that says the Chief Justice cannot act as the Chief Judge of Malaya”.

It was also the first time when a de facto Law Minister of
Bolehland
 openly declared that he is the Minister for the Chief Justice! It showed how nascent Nazri was.

For the first time too the country heard a CJ confess the existence of judges who (a) were often seen socializing with lawyers, prosecutors and corporate figures while hearing their cases in court; (b) were “constantly angry and foul-tempered”, portraying themselves as being the most brilliant or perfect judge in court; (c) accepted bribes. No action was taken against all these judges!

The super fast-track appointment of Umno lawyer Zaki Azmi as the president of the Court of Appeal was also unprecedented. The government was passing a vote of no confidence on the judiciary and saying there was no one else in the judiciary worthy of the position!

Fairuz would go on to advocate the abolition of Common Law and favouring its replacement by an Islamic law system.  He would challenge Karpal Singh to reveal the name of a Federal Court judge who had not written judgments in as many as 35 cases. When the latter did, the then CJ kept an elegant silence.

With his track record, Fairuz was put on a fast-track to retirement. It was perhaps the most “correct, correct, correct” thing that Pak Lah and his government did. It would also give Fairuz a lot of time to recall his supposed infamous telephone conversation with V. K. Lingam.

People Power

2007 was a year when the ordinary citizens decided courageously to record their feelings on the streets of
Bolehland
. They believed in their right to peaceful assembly and freedom of expression, in spite of the government’s poor track record of respecting these rights.

And so they told Pak Lah the truth – on 8 Sept. when 750 people gathered near Batu Buruk, in Trengganu for a Bersih ceremah; on 26 Sept. when 2,000 lawyers and others marched to the PM’s Department in Putrajaya to hand over a memorandum asking for a Royal Commission to investigate the lingering Lingam tape scandal.

On 10 Nov. 40,000 converged at Istana Negara to express their concern over the conduct of elections in Malaysia; on 25 Nov., about 40,000 ethnic Indians protested against the marginalisation of the Indian community; on 9 Dec., a 100-odd crowd attempted to conduct a march commemorating Human Rights Day.

The tell-me-the-truth government could not handle the truth. Predictably each assembly was labeled “illegal” – is the Federal Constitution illegal?  We were told it is not our culture to demonstrate – ask Umno, its in their history. It will damaged the country’s good name – peaceful assemblies are a common democratic feature overseas.  There will be violence – only when the police “riot”.

In sharp contrast was former deputy PM Musa Hitam, who, when asked in an interview whether Malaysia is ready for peaceful assemblies, spontaneously declared: “Yes! Come on, we have been independent for 50 years”!

Pak Lah’s ministers stammered, stuttered and struggled to make some sense in front of the international media and to justify the government’s desperate responses such as charging the peaceful Hindraf assembly for “attempted murder”!

The mainstream media sank to a new low. At the 50th year of our nationhood we still have a servile press sucking up to their political superiors and giving stories a spin and a slant that suits, soothes and serves the government.

The police pranced, pounced on and provoked. They pushed and pulverized. They pummeled and reduced to a pulp. They pounded with chemical-laced water and pierced the air with tear gas.

But the people, especially in the Bersih and Hindraf assemblies showed they were no longer afraid. There were even moments when they stood their ground. The police lost all authority and respect  Fully armed, they were helpless!

Rage on Race & Religion

For years Malaysia was very well known as Asia’s melting pot of races and religion. But Pak Lah’s track record showed a country gradually turning into a boiling pot – a land where opportunistic politicians used race and religion to stir the cauldron.

The PM, of whom well-known writer M. Bakri Musa calls “His Hollowness the Imam of Islam Hadhari” failed to put a leash on the increasing number of lower echelon zealots  or those whom columnist Helen Ang calls “Little Mullah Napoleons” running riot with their brand of religion.

Marina Mahathir’s Musings in May 2007 highlighted the existence of a “new association registered for the propagation of the shallow and superficial (SS)” and meant for those “who have nothing better to do with their lives than look for monsters under their beds, enemies in their blankets or crosses in their buns”.

“Just as we don’t see the supreme irony of trumpeting our religious superiority while at the same time claiming that it only takes biscuits to destroy us, we don’t see the irony of extolling ourselves as a superior race while at the same time insisting on crutches and handouts,” was Marina’s marvelous conclusion.

“2007 has proved to be one of the most divisive and troubled years in the half-a-century of Malaysia’s nationhood – with religious polarization assuming its most serious dimension, compounding an already difficult problem of racial polarization in the nation-building process,” observed Opposition Leader Lim Kit Siang.

In 2007, Pak Lah would create a record of sorts by contradicting himself time and again on matters concerning race and religion. For example, he would preach the virtues of inter-religious dialogue but would go on to ban the
Building Bridges Conference
, a seminar meant to bring together Christian and Muslim scholars of international repute.

The PM would insist on Malaysians being sensitive to each other but he would defend Hishammuddin’s   brandishing of the keris at the Umno annual general assembly.  He would also give his blessings to Umno holding its annual general assembly – on Deepavali!

He would emphasise that Malaysia is not a secular nor a theocratic state but would later decide to follow his deputy in declaring that Malaysia is an Islamic state – and made sure that the mainstream media carried his and Najib’s views only – what a dialogue!

In his Christmas message of 2007 he would call on Malaysians to move forward and put the country’s interest before any “narrowly-defined demands”. He would then be so “narrow-minded” as to ban the use of the word “Allah” by those of non-Muslim faiths, and its use in the Herald, a Catholic weekly!

Anwar Ibrahim provides a good comment on Pak Lah’s track record in this regard: “The ruling BN coalition is appealing to Muslim sentiment to reinforce its support in elections which could come in March…Malaysia’s problem is not radicalism…The real issue is what I would describe as state-sponsored Muslim puritanism more by racist sentiments than religious principles.”

Flip-flopping into the future?

The once looking good PM who had the people feeling good, increasingly failed to deliver the goods of transparency and accountability. Indeed in 2007, the supposed fairy tale of change by Pak Lah became what it really was – a full-bloom farce.

After four years, the PM has no concrete results to show – just cheap claptrap. The only significant change of Pak Lah was when he made an amendment to the Federal Constitution to allow the then 65-year-old Election Commission Chief to serve until the age of 66 – do you smell a rat?

Will the citizens of Bolehland re-elect the “flip-flop” PM and continue to stomach the farce, flaws and fraud flung at our faces by the 4th Floor Boys? Will Malaysians want to bring back the many soiled reputations, spent characters and self-seeking politicians of UMNO and the BN?

It is time to get real. Even the part-time model “space participant”, who came close to a moonwalk at the cost of RM90 million of our hard-earned money, had to come down to earth, and is probably busy back at the catwalk.

Indeed, ratting through the past four years it does not take very much for one to see that Pak Lah has ratted on his promises of 2004. Surely, enough is enough! A Happy Rat Year!

                This entry was posted on Thursday, 14 February 2008, 5:29 pm and is filed under
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Report those using govt resources in campaign: DAP

Malaysiakini

Yeow Boon Kiat | Feb 14, 08 5:36pm

DAP strongman Lim Kit Siang has urged voters to lodge a police report if they find any candidate utilising government resources in their election campaign.

“Whenever you see the prime minister, deputy prime minister, ministers or deputy ministers arrive in government vehicles or using government funds to campaign, lodge a police report immediately and call the Anti-Corruption Agency (ACA) to investigate”, he told a press conference in Petaling Jaya today.

dap islamic state roundtable 100807 lim kit siang”This is a blatant abuse of power and money politics,” he declared, adding that all Malaysians should help to ensure that ministers are behaving as caretaker ministers so that the elections will be clean, just and fair.

Lim described the recent ‘ang pows’ and ‘goodies’ dished out by the BN in recent weeks as electoral abuses and the people should consider them as such.

He also cited the incident in which MCA president Ong Ka Ting made use of a Fire and Rescue Services Department helicopter to campaign in Johor in 2004 as an example of the abuse of government resources.

A right step by EC

Lim called on the government to ground all its vehicles during the campaign period.

However, the veteran oppositionist surprisingly praised the Election Commission (EC) for allowing a longer 13-day campaign period (Feb 24 to March 7) in the coming polls.

“At least, this is a small step in the right direction towards a more fairer and cleaner election as candidates from all parties have more time to prepare”, he said.

Lim also called on EC chairperson Abdul Rashid Abdul Rahman to go an extra mile to prove Dr Mahathir Mohamad wrong by making sure that the 12th General Election will be cleaner than any elections during Mahathir’s rule.

The former premier had predicted that the coming polls will be the dirtiest ever, a prediction which Lim has also been reiterating of late.

Asked on his outlook on DAP’s performance in the coming elections, Lim said the party would perform better.

“We should do better than 2004 but the macro picture should be whether the opposition could win 75 seats collectively to deny the BN a two-thirds majority”.

                This entry was posted on Thursday, 14 February 2008, 7:24 pm and is filed under
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Tsu Koon following Pak Lah- Ending Penang CM-ship with a lie

(Media Conference Statement  at DAP PJ Hqrs on Thursday, 14th February 2008 at 12 noon)

The New Straits Times today reported that Koh dismissed as mischievous  the DAP’s claims that he, as Acting Gerakan President, was “kow-towing” to Umno over the choice of candidate for the Penang chief minister’s post.

Koh was following Abdullah’s precedent in telling a lie to end his four  terms as Penang Chief Minister when he claimed that in submitting three names to Abdullah to pick as the next Penang Gerakan Chief Minister, he was  just sticking to the principle, procedure and tradition of referring such matters to the prime minister, who is the BN chairman.

After the 1990 general election, the Gerakan leadership did not surrender the right to decide who should be the Penang Chief Minister to Umno or the Barisan Nasional President.

It was the Gerakan Central Working Committee which  decided which one of the two contenders, Koh Tsu Koon or Dr. Goh Cheng Teik, should be selected as the Penang Gerakan Chief Minister after the electoral defeat of Dr. Lim Chong Eu.

Both Koh Tsu Koon and Goh Cheng Teik were asked to leave the Gerakan Central Working Committee meeting to allow the CWC members to deliberate and decide on the matter, at the end of which, both were called back to the CWC to be informed that the choice of the Gerakan CWC (actually that of the then Gerakan President Datuk Seri Dr. Lim Keng Yaik) fell on Koh Tsu Koon.

Datuk Seri Dr. Mahathir Mohamad, who was then Prime Minister and Barisan Nasional President, was never asked to choose from the two candidates, Tsu Koon and Cheng Teik, as to who should be the Gerakan Penang Chief Minister.

Why  has Tsu Koon set a new precedent in surrendering the decision as to who would be the next Penang Gerakan Chief Minister to the Prime Minister and Barisan Nasional President, which in effect would mean vesting in Abdullah’s powerful son-in-law Khairy Jamaluddun the decision  who would be the next Gerakan Penang Chief Minister.

It would also mean a precedent would be set that it is  Umno and not Gerakan which  would henceforth  decide who will be the Penang Gerakan Chief Minister – and Khairy’s favourite is clearly the Deputy Information Minister Chia Kwang Chye – before Penang Umno finally achieves its ambition to have an Umno Penang Chief Minister!

Tsu Koon  may want to forget Khairy’s infamous excoriation of the Penang Gerakan State Government of having marginalized the Penang Malays, but Penangites and Malaysians are not going to be so forgetful as the Gerakan Acting President.

Did Tsu Koon act unilaterally in surrendering the prerogative of the Gerakan to decide who should be the next Penang Gerakan Chief Minister or did he get the full authorization of the Gerakan Central Committee to make such an unprecedented concession tantamount to renunciation of  party independence and integrity?

Did former Gerakan President Datuk Seri Dr. Lim Keng Yaik give his blessing and support to the new precedent of concession set by Tsu Koon – that it is now for Umno and in particular Khairy Jamaluddin to decide who should be the next Gerakan Penang Chief Minister?

                This entry was posted on Thursday, 14 February 2008, 7:24 pm and is filed under
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Pak Lah – “Who is Anwar”?

BELIEVE IT OR NOT series (1)

2008 General Election

Let us start a new series – “2008 General Election – Believe it or not?” starting with the following:

M’sian PM has ‘forgotten’ about Anwar

Thu, Feb 14, 2008 AFP

KUALA LUMPUR, Feb 14, 2008 (AFP) – Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi on Thursday insisted dissident politician Anwar Ibrahim was not a factor in upcoming elections, saying he had “forgotten” about him.

Anwar has objected to the timing of the polls on March 8, just a month before he is eligible to run for office after a ban expires, saying it was designed to keep him out of the race.

“Nothing to do with that,” Abdullah said after a meeting with top leaders of the ruling United Malays National Organisation (UMNO).

“We have forgotten about Anwar. I don’t remember about Anwar,” he told reporters.

Your contributions are welcome.

                This entry was posted on Friday, 15 February 2008, 7:42 am and is filed under
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Hindraf and the Pluralisation of the Malaysian-Indian Community

By Farish A. Noor

Since it came to the public stage of Malaysian politics the Hindu Rights Action Force (Hindraf) of Malaysia has been cast as a troubling phenomenon, but to whom? Predictably the reaction of the Malaysian Indian Congress (MIC) and its leadership has been to respond to Hindraf’s demands by stating that it is a troublesome organisation that is bent on dividing (and consequently weakening) the Indian community. Hindraf however has defended its actions on the basis that the MIC has singularly failed to defend the interests of the Hindus of Malaysia, and that the leadership of the MIC is entirely beholden to the ruling Barisan Nasional coalition instead. The vernacular Malay press in turn has attacked Hindraf on the grounds that it was seen and cast as being ‘anti-Malay’; though Hindraf in turn has proclaimed its loyalty to the concept of Malaysia as a universal idea while rejecting the notion of Malay cultural and ethnic supremacy.

Needless to say, these manifold configurations and postures has made it difficult to locate Hindraf on the Malaysian political landscape; but it has also expanded that very same political landscape to include a new range of disaffected and marginalised political actors. What many critics have failed to recognise is that despite the verbal pyrotechnics employed by Hindraf, it has actually contributed to the pluralisation and complexification of the Indian minority, and by doing so has rendered the simplistic mode of race-based politics in Malaysia more and more difficult.

While Hindraf’s appeal to the Indian minority in Malaysia is primarily communal and sectarian it has also introduce a cleavage – both political and ontological – in the Malaysian-Indian community itself. Hindraf’s sustained efforts to highlight the marginalisation, alienation and discrimination in all walks of life did not merely challenge the staid rhetoric of the Malaysian state whose brand of multiculturalism dates back to the mode of race-relations first developed during the colonial era, but more importantly rendered hollow the MIC’s claim to be the main representative, patron and protector of the Malaysian-Indian community.

Many of the accusations levelled by the leaders of Hindraf towards the leadership of the MIC and its President Samy Vellu in particular were based on long-held grouses that were nurtured over Samy Vellu’s long stewardship of the party: During the time of Samy Vellu the MIC expanded its patronage machinery and used its educational outreach unit, the Maju Institute of Educational Development (MIED) to sponsor the education of more than 10,000 Tamil schoolchildren. In 1982 Maika Holdings was created by the MIC to help pool together the economic resources of the Indian minority so that they could collectively invest in Malaysia’s economic development. Maika however was criticised by some as a patronage arm of the MIC, despite the fact that it was built from the collected sum of RM 106 million that was raised by many poor Tamil families. Following a succession of mismanagement scandals, Maika faced serious losses and many of the Tamil families could not recover their investments. In the face of growing criticism of his leadership Samy Vellu maintained a strong grip on the MIC: S. Subramaniam, who was brought into the MIC during the time of former MIC President Manickavasagam, was one of the strongest opponents of Samy Vellu, and accused the latter of mismanagement of the party. Nonetheless Subramaniam was defeated at the MIC Annual General Meeting of 2006, shoring up Samy Vellu’s position in the party even further.

When Hindraf began mobilising its supporters in 2006 in defence of the Hindu temples that were being demolished all over the country, much of its criticism was directed towards Samy Vellu and the senior leadership of the MIC who they accused of betraying the Indian minority and not being able to stand up to the demands of the UMNO party that leads the ruling BN coalition. Linked to the Hindu temples issue were other complaints related to the MIC’s finances, its alleged failure to uplift the economic condition of the Hindus; its failure to defend Hindu culture, language and identity, etc.

As a result of these complaints being aired in public, Hindraf had inadvertently exposed the class divisions that now exist within the membership of the MIC and the gulf of power, wealth and influence between the MIC leadership and the rest of the Indian minority community. This is ironic considering the fact that the MIC was originally set up by Indian activists like John Thivy, K. Ramanathan and Budh Singh in 1946 to defend the interests of the Indian working class and to struggle for economic and social equality in the first place. By emphasising the weakness and marginalisation of ordinary Malaysian-Indians and contrasting their lot to the opulence and luxury of those who claimed to be their leaders and spokesmen, Hindraf has actually introduced the fault-line of class difference within the Indian community itself, thereby rendering any simplistic attempts to homogenise the Malaysian-Indians as a singular political constituency more problematic.

Here lies the paradox that Hindraf itself has introduced into the equation of Malaysian politics: On the one hand it is a communitarian and sectarian organisation that seeks to mobilise and consolidate the Indian minority in Malaysia on the basis of an exclusive racial and religious identity; but on the other hand it has succeeded in doing so by adopting the rhetoric and discourse of betrayal and neglect of the community by some of its own; namely the leaders of the MIC. Hindraf has therefore contributed to the problematisation of the category of ‘Indian-ness’ itself, making it consequently more difficult for both the MIC and the ruling National Front to maintain its divisive form of communal sectarian politics that has always relied upon the instrumental fiction of neatly divided and compartmentalised racial groupings. What Hindraf has done via its street demonstrations and campaigns to discredit the MIC leadership is to demonstrate that the Indian community is not a singular bloc that can be reduced to one essentialised stereotype or compartmentalised within neatly-defined and hermetically sealed borders.

The responsibility, therefore, falls on the shoulders of the parties of the ruling National Front that have for so long maintained the culture and norms of divisive race and religion-based politics in the country. Malaysia is in need of a new politics that transcends racial and ethnic divisions, or at least one that recognises the complexity of the plural communities that reside in this country. One thing however is certain for now: Hindraf’s very presence on the political stage signals that some sections of the Malaysian-Indian community no longer see the MIC as the sole patron and protector of the Malaysian-Indians of Malaysia.

*Dr. Farish A. Noor is a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Nanyang Technological University of Singapore; and one of the founders of the www.othermalaysia.org research site.

                This entry was posted on Saturday, 16 February 2008, 8:43 am and is filed under
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Police crackdown on Hindraf rose campaign – another day of international shame for Malaysia

Another day of international shame for Malaysia – the firing of tear gas, chemically-laced water cannon and use of excessive force by the police against peaceful demonstrators and children during today’s Hindraf rose campaign in Kuala Lumpur .

Over 200 people have been arrested, reportedly including children, with allegations of manhandling by police.

Why was   it necessary for the crude display of police force against peaceful Malaysians and children who wanted to use the Valentine Day to present roses to the Prime Minister at the Parliament grounds and to appeal for the immediate and unconditional release of the five Hindraf leaders unjustifiably detained in Kamunting Detention Centre under the Internal Security Act?

Why couldn’t the Police show a humane and sensitive  face demonstrating its respect for human rights by allowing the peaceful Hindraf rose campaign  to be conducted without incident?

If the Police could be so high-handed, tough and insensitive for human rights when Parliament has just been dissolved for the conduct of the 12th general election, I dare not think  what the Police would do after polling day on March 8 if the Barisan Nasional wins another huge parliamentary majority.

The Royal Police Commission of Inquiry which was set up by the Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi four years ago when he first took office recommended that respect for human rights should be one of the three core functions of the Malaysian Police to achieve world-class status  – together with the objective to keep crime low as well as to eradicate corruption in the police force.

It is clear from the Police crackdown on Valentine Day and the Hindraf rose campaign that the Royal Police Commission Report and its 125 recommendations for police reform had completely  fallen on deaf years.

Abdullah, who is also the Internal Security Minister, and the Inspector-General of Police, Tan Sri Musa Hassan, should publicly apologise for the excessive use of police force against the Hindraf rose campaign and utter disregard of the Royal Police Commission recommendation that the police should respect human rights of Malaysians.

                This entry was posted on Saturday, 16 February 2008, 6:12 pm and is filed under
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Sack Zam as “caretaker Information Minister” if he continues to misuse RTM/Information for BN propaganda and spread falsehoods against Opposition

I had commended the Election Commission Chairman Tan Sri Abdul Rashid Abdul Rahman for fixing a 13-day campaign period for the 12th general election, which is longer than the previous five general elections between 1986 to 2004, i.e. 10 days each in 1986, 1990 and 1995, nine days in 1999 and eight days in 2004.

This is however only a small step towards conducting a free,fair and clean general election and there are many areas which the Election Commission Chairman must address to ensure that the Malaysian election system can be internationally acclaimed as of world-class standard in terms of its efficiency and being fair, free and clean.

For a start, I call on Rashid to address two issues:

Firstly, make nomination for the general election a disqualification-free process. At present, preparing for nomination is as traumatic as preparing for a major legal case for lawyers or sitting for higher degree examinations in universities.

Let us have a disqualification-free nomination process whereby no proposed candidate could be disqualified for any technical mistake in filling up the nomination form.  There should only be disqualification of candidates for fraudulent claims but not for technical mistakes which should be allowed to be corrected during or even after the nomination.

Let the voters decide who should be their elected representative, whether in Parliament or the State Assembly, and this power should not be usurped or denied by Returning Officers on the basis of nitpicking complaints by anyone.

Secondly, to ensure that a higher percentage of eligible voters are placed on the Electoral Roll and can exercise their constitutional right to vote in the 12th general election instead of the present low figure of 70% when it should be nearer 90% of all eligible voters!

Although the voters’ registration for the last quarter of last year was gazetted last week, a few states would not be able to use the voters’ registration for the last quarter as the Election Commission does not have the time to process and decide on the objections.

This is an unacceptable excuse.  More than a decade ago, I had told Parliament that in New Zealand, a voter can register on the eve of polling and cast his vote the next day. Why is the Malaysian voter registration system so backward and retrogressive that we cannot ensure that every one who had registered in the last quarter of last year could be placed on the Electoral Roll to vote in the 12th general election on March 8, with the whole process deciding on the objections completed before the polling day?

In fact, the Election Commission should go one step further – to be able to carry out the voter registration exercise for the next two weeks to ensure that all those who had registered between 1.1.2008 and 29.2.2008 could vote in the March 8 election. Is this beyond the efficiency and capability of the Election Commission?

With Parliament’s dissolution, the entire Cabinet is a caretaker Cabinet which should confine itself to the day-to-day administration duties and not abuse its powers in the misuse of government positions, machinery, resources and public funds for party electioneering purposes.

The Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, who had launched the National Integrity Plan to demonstrate his seriousness to promote and uphold a government of accountability and integrity, cannot to keep his silence on whether he accepts or rejects the entire concept of caretaker government between Parliament and the election of a new government.

If Abdullah is serious about the National Integrity Plan, he should publicly ground all government aircrafts, vehicles and facilities to ensure that they will not be misused by any Cabinet Minister – including himself – for partisan electioneering purposes.

Is Abdullah prepared to prove that despite all his broken promises about accountability, transparency and integrity in promoting good governance in the past four years, he will  at least “walk the talk” of his National Integrity Plan as a “caretaker Prime Minister” and stop  caretaker Ministers from  abusing government resources, facilities, manpower and funds for partisan electioneering purposes?

Is he prepared to sack  caretaker Ministers who refuse to honour  his National Integrity Plan and continue to abuse their positions and misuse government resources, facilities, manpower and public funds for partisan electioneering purposes in the 12th general election?

I call on Abdullah to give a 24-hour ultimatum to sack the “caretaker” Information Minister, Datuk Zainuddin Maidin  unless he stops  abusing and misusing his caretaker responsibilities and put an immediate stop to the abuse and misuse of  the RTM and Information Department as  the propaganda tool of the Barisan Nasional to spread lies and falsehoods against the opposition.

Let Abdullah prove that the Islam Hadhari he propounds stands for accountability, transparency, integrity and good governance!

All  NGOs, professional bodies, community organizations, societies and citizens should  play a pro-active role in 12th general election campaign to lodge police or ACA report for every instance of abuse of power by a caretaker government – as when they see a “caretaker” Minister misusing government aircraft, vehicle, public servants like drivers, public funds for partisan electioneering purpose.

Let the police and ACA be flooded by public citizen reports of abuses and misuses of power  up and down the country – which tantamount to electoral corruption – during the election campaign if caretaker Ministers flout their caretaker responsibilities.

Let Malaysian voters send a clear and loud message to the Caretaker Prime Minister that they take the National Integrity Plan (NIP) seriously – regardless of whether Abdullah and the Barisan Nasional leadership take the NIP seriously – and the first real step to implement the NIP is for an end to all abuses and misuses of power and public funds and resources by the “caretaker” government and “caretaker Ministers” in the 12th general election between dissolution of Parliament till Polling Day on 8th March 2008.

The Police,  and ACA should demonstrate their impartiality, efficiency and professionalism by setting up special units all over the country to receive and act on such reports – including the arrest of caretaker Ministers who abuse their “caretaker” responsibilities.

The Attorney-General, Tan Sri Gani Patail should also show his commitment to the National Integrity Plan by acting efficiently and promptly on Police and ACA reports and investigations on abuses by the “caretaker government” to bring every case to court for prosecution.

I have filed action to ask the Kuala Lumpur High Court for an urgent hearing of my case asking for a declaration that the government is bound by the ethics and principles of a caretaker government between Parliament’s dissolution and the election of a new government – and my counsel and DAP National Chairman Karpal Singh has asked the court for an urgent hearing of the case before nomination on 24th February as otherwise, the question would be academic and the court prove again to be a failure to be the last bulwark of Malaysian citizens in the defence of their constitutional rights and liberties.

(Speech by Lim Kit Siang at the launching of the DAP Menglembu election operations centre in Batu Gajah parliamentary constituency  on Saturday 16th February 2008 at 9 am)

                This entry was posted on Saturday, 16 February 2008, 9:58 am and is filed under
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Samy Vellu should apologise to ISA detainees and peaceful demonstrators for equating them as “criminals”

MIC President and the sole Malaysian Indian Cabinet Minister for over 28 years, Datuk Seri S. Samy Vellu has become the most unpopular Malaysian Indian leader  in the country, being booed and jeered almost daily by the Malaysian Indians in the country.

Last night, as reported by the press, Samy Vellu was again the target of boos and jeers by Indian crowds in Prai, Penang.  This is the New Sunday Times report:
“Mob jeers Samy Vellu, blocks his car”
:

BUTTERWORTH: MIC president Datuk Seri S. Samy Vellu went through a harrowing experience last night when some 100 people blocked his car and demanded the release of Hindu Rights Action Force (Hindraf) protesters detained at an illegal rally in Kuala Lumpur yesterday.

The crowd surrounded and banged his car as he was leaving SRJK (C) Chung Hwa 3 in Prai here after attending a function at 9pm.

The works minister was earlier escorted to the car after a mob started to jeer him.

But the group, including some women, blocked the car, and did not allow it to leave the school compound.

The crowd demanded that Samy Vellu alight from the car and talk to them but the minister refused, leading to a 10-minute stand-off.

Samy Vellu later wound down his car window and asked the people what they wanted.

The group demanded his help to secure the release of the demonstrators detained in Kuala Lumpur in the morning.

“But they are criminals,” Samy Vellu was heard saying.

This infuriated the group who refused to budge.

Samy Vellu finally relented and promised to call the inspector-general of police today.

By then, policemen managed to clear the way for Samy Vellu’s car to leave.

Samy Vellu should publicly apologise for equating peaceful demonstrators  and Internal Security Act (SA) detainees as “criminals”.

This is his attitude to the five Hindraf leaders and activists who are now currently detained in the Kamunting detention centre under the ISA, not for any crime that they have committed or threat to the security of the country  but because they have become a threat to the political security of Samy Vellu, the MIC and the Barisan Nasional because of their espousal of the cause for the end of the long-standing political, economic, educational, social, cultural and religious polarization of the Malaysian Indians into a new underclass in Malaysia.

I feel very offended when Samy Vellu equates peaceful demonstrators and ISA detainees to “criminals”.  I have twice been detained under the ISA, the first time in 1969 for 17 months and the second time, together with other DAP MPs and leaders like Karpal Singh, Lim Guan Eng, Dr. Tan Seng Giaw, Lau Dak Kee, the late P. Patto and V. David, in 1987 where Guan Eng and I were the last to be released among the Operation Lalang detainees after 18 months.

ISA detainees are no criminals or they would have been charged in court for an open trial to determine whether they are innocent or guilty of the offences preferred against them. It is precisely because the authorities have no proof that the ISA detainees have committed crimes that they are incarcerated under the detention-without-trial laws.

Samy Vellu should apologise to thousands of  ISA detainees since the ISA was enacted in 1960 for his slur on their idealism, patriotism and integrity by equating them, together with peaceful demonstrators for justice, freedom and fair play, as “criminals”.

                This entry was posted on Sunday, 17 February 2008, 1:43 pm and is filed under
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Traditional DAP stronghold Bukit Bintang has become a “danger” seat – the Battle for 5Cs

I have chosen  Bukit Bintang as the first DAP parliamentary constituency to visit  after the dissolution of Parliament on Wednesday because this traditional DAP stronghold for over three decades has become a “danger” seat through dirty  electoral tricks with  the influx of over 6,000 postal votes since the 2004 general election.

DAP can lose the Bukit Bintang parliamentary seat in the March 8 general election, not because the  people of Bukit Bintang have  ceased to support the DAP and decided to abandon their historic role as the national political vanguard for justice, equality and freedom in Malaysia but because of electoral hanky-panky and the  most lopsided playing field for Bukit Bintang parliamentary constituency  in 50 years.

If the two-term  DAP incumbent  Fong Kui Lun loses Bukit Bintang parliamentary constituency on March 8, it is not just a personal or a DAP party loss, but a major setback of historic proportion for the long, hard and grueling political struggle to create a fair, just and equal Malaysia where all Malaysians, regardless of race or  religion, can have an equal place under the Malaysian sun.

If Fong Kui Lun is defeated in the traditional DAP stronghold of Bukit Bintang, it will be the triumph of all that is wrong with our country not only in the past quarter-century, but also in the past four years of Abdullah premiership.

In Kelantan on Friday, Umno deputy chairman Datuk Seri Najib Razak launched  Barisan Nasional battle cry in its bid to capture the state from PAS – “Heal Kelantan”!

In fact, the battle cry for all Malaysians in the 12th general election should be “Heal Malaysia” as never before had the country been plagued by  so many divisive nation-building issues– with religious polarization the most serious and greatest new  threat to national unity.

The battle cry of “Heal Malaysia” should start from the battle of Bukit Bintang focused on 5Cs –

•	Crime –  with Kuala Lumpur as the capital of crime in Malaysia where no one can feel safe any more in the streets, public places or even the privacy of their homes, in Kuala Lumpur and the major urban centres.

•	Corruption – even worse than when Abdullah became Prime Minister four years ago when he promised to be the modern-dan Justice Bao to eradicate corruption.

•	Cost of Living – the economic crisis especially from inflation and economic downturn as made life a daily struggle for ordinary Malaysians.

•	International Competitiveness – the relentless decline of Malaysia’s international competitiveness illustrated by the plunge in international rankings of Malaysian universities, a unchecked brain drain and loss of national and international confidence in the rule of law and  an independent judiciary have  seen the country losing out to more and more countries when facing the challenges of globalization.

•	Defend and uphold the Merdeka Constitution and 1957 Social Contract – that Malaysia is a democratic, secular and multi-religious nation with Islam as the official religion but not an Islamic state; and to smack down the rise of Little Napoleons and Little Mullah Napoleons in the schools, universities and public service who are increasingly insensitive of the rights of citizens and Malaysia’s character as a nation of diverse races, languages, cultures and religions.

Let the  battle cry of “Heal Malaysia” emanate from the battle for  Bukit Bintang in the 12th general election.

                This entry was posted on Sunday, 17 February 2008, 2:21 pm and is filed under
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Financial Autonomy To Universities A Good Start

by
M. Bakri Musa

The decision by Minister of Higher Education Datuk Mustapa to grant financial autonomy to public universities is a good start.  He should not stop there however; he should also push to extend academic, management, and other freedoms.  Our universities will forever remain trapped in mediocrity as long as they remain within the clutches of the civil service.

            University of Malaya Law Professor Azmi Sharom says it best, “If we love our universities, we must set them free!”

            It shows how cumbersome the administrative machinery of the government is that such a simple decision would take months if not years to implement.  It would involve among others changing the various laws and regulations, right down to employment and procurement practices.

            Further, with the coming elections, there is no assurance that Mustapa will remain in his present post.  His successor may make yet another policy U-turn that regularly afflicts our education system.  Even if Mustapa were to keep his present position, there is no guarantee that he could overcome powerful forces that would resist ceding control of our universities.

            Yet those administrative changes, difficult though they may be to execute, would be the easy part.  Much more challenging and trickier would be to adjust existing mindsets.  Brought up under the present system, our academics and university administrators have long internalized the ethos and culture of the civil service.  I am not at all assured that they are capable of leading or even adapting to the change.

Making Public Universities Accountable

Public universities are tax supported; consequently they must ultimately be accountable to the body politic, meaning the government of the day.  However, there are other more effective ways to hold universities accountable without directly micromanaging them.

            The matrix of the civil service is the very antithesis of academia.  In the civil service, following established orders (“Kami menurut perentah” – We await directives!) is valued; in academia, you question established wisdom and assumptions. That is the only way to progress.

            The currency of the civil service is the size of your department as measured by the number of subordinates and budget allocation; among academics, the number of publications and frequency of citations.

            Meritocracy as practiced in the civil service is a completely different concept from that acknowledged in academia.  Thus to have the Director of Public Service Department decide who should be promoted Dean or Professor would be a recipe for disaster.  That is precisely the current problem with Malaysian public universities.

            As I wrote in my book, An Education System Worthy of Malaysia, the government could exert effective influence on public universities more through the twin macro levers of the governing boards and budgetary process.

            Appoint competent individuals with integrity who share the government’s broad policies and philosophy to the governing council of universities.  If it is a choice between someone competent but does not share your political views versus someone who shares your views but otherwise incompetent and corrupt, I would opt for the former.  It is far easier to convert someone to your viewpoint; more difficult to change or improve on someone who is incompetent and corrupt.

            The other equally powerful lever would be the budgetary process, both operating and capital.  With operating budgets, the government could tie them to the universities meeting certain prescribed goals.  If they exceed the target; they would get bonuses; if they fail, they would be penalized financially.

            These goals could be tied to the government’s polices.  For example, the government’s oft-stated goal is to increase the number of Bumiputras enrolled in the sciences.  Universities that meet or exceed that target would be rewarded financially.  Similarly with the policy of encouraging graduate studies and research; reward those universities who award doctoral degrees (especially in the sciences) and whose faculty members publish scientific papers.

            Similarly with capital budgets; the government could promise to underwrite 90 percent of the capital costs of any new programs or buildings; the universities would fund the remaining 10 percent.  This would encourage universities to seek their own independent  funding.

            However we should be careful that such incentives not be too generous that we reduce the vice-chancellors from being academic heads to champion fundraisers, as is happening on many American campuses.

            With greater management autonomy, each university could find its own unique and ingenious ways of meeting its own needs.  On many American campuses, private developers lease university land to build student residences and faculty housing.  Similarly, companies like Marriott provide food services for many students.  Such initiatives would free up scant academic resources.  We could then send the Deputy Vice-Chancellor for student housing back to the lecture halls instead of wasting his time in making sure that students are being well fed and housed.

            Such innovations are just the beginning; we would see many more if only we dare liberate our campuses.

Dispense with MOHE

By liberating the universities, the government may find that it does not need a huge bureaucracy to run them.  It could dispense entirely with the massive Ministry of Higher Education (MOHE) and divert the considerable savings to fund campus libraries and research laboratories.  We could hire a Nobel laureate to teach at one of our universities for the money we pay for MOHE’s Secretary-General, or the many Directors-General.  Imagine the good such appointments would do to our universities.

            Come to think of it, this is one reason why I am skeptical that Mustapa’s grand scheme of liberating our universities would be vigorously pursued.  It would mean one fewer Secretary-General, and many more Directors-Generals out of a job!  Then there are their deputies and assistants!

            California has an extensive system of quality universities and community colleges, yet it has no Ministry of Higher Education.  The state government exerts control through the budgetary process and through its nominees on the universities’ governing bodies.  Professors and other university employees are not part of the state civil service.  Malaysia would do well to learn from the Golden State.

            The central question policymakers should answer is this:  How can we make our universities serve the needs of our nation?  We do this best by liberating them so they could find their own path to excellence.  A mediocre institution serves nobody any good.

                This entry was posted on Monday, 18 February 2008, 8:10 pm and is filed under
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How to Stop Cars and Win Enemies

By
Farish A. Noor

When it comes to dealing with the grouses of the Malaysian public – many of which happen to be legitimate, mind you – it would seem that the benighted leaders of our blessed country have read every single page of the stupid book.

We recall the period when we, the Malaysian public were told by our – Malaysian – government that we had the right to speak up and that our voices would be heard. We were assured that we had the right to speak, to raise our concerns, to voice our opinions and to even state our differences and disagreements in this new Utopian, idyllic public space that had appeared out of nowhere. But no sooner than had we opened our mouths to utter the first sentence beginning with “But…”, the tear gas canisters were shot in our faces, the batons were raised, the water cannons were put to work. It is hard, as I wrote not too long ago, ‘to listen to the people while you gas them in the face’.

The latest (of many) instances of back-tracking came with the defensive posture taken by the senior leadership of this country in the face of the demands voiced by the Hindu Rights Action Force (Hindraf) of Malaysia. I write this as someone who is concerned about the poverty and growing income gap among all Malaysians, and not Hindus solely. And while I cannot lend my support to any grouping that is sectarian and exclusive by nature, neither can I deny the fact that many of the complaints raised by Hindraf happen to be real – or at least really felt – by the members and supporters of the movement itself.

As an analyst however my own take on what has happened with the Hindraf issue is one that is coloured by the concerns of a political scientist: Seen purely from an objective point of view, the academic in me is boggled and dumfounded by the response of the Malaysian government to date; the latest being the tear-gassing of Hindraf protesters before the very gates of the Parliament building. One wonders how and why the plethora of other alternatives were not – apparently – given serious consideration at all. Has it come to the point where calling out the riot police is the first response that the government can give to any demand emanating from civil society?

But the list of blunders does not end there: Coming back to Kuala Lumpur by bus the day before the recent Hindraf ‘roses’ protest, I – along with thousands of others – was stuck in an infernal traffic jam of Kafkaesque proportions. Many of us in the bus assumed that a major pile-up was up ahead, and expected to find a mass of mangled cars and bodies at the head of the jam.

But instead it was one – of many – road blocks set up to monitor the traffic heading towards the capital the day before the Hindraf demonstration. As we stopped for a pause and the smokers among us kissed our cancer sticks with relish, I could not help but notice that the cars and vans that were being stopped were those with Malaysians of Indian ancestry in them. Why?

That was precisely the question asked by an irate Malaysian driver whose van was stopped and who was asked to step out of the vehicle with his entire family. Before my very eyes every single one of these Malaysian-Indians – our fellow Malaysian citizens – was asked to produce his or her identity card and to explain why they were driving up to Kuala Lumpur. It struck me as odd that any Malaysian should have to explain why he or she should want to travel in her or her own country – unless of course, we are not even free to do that any longer.

A second car was stopped and three Malaysian-Indian men were asked to step out. They looked as if they were on a fishing trip as fishing rods and nets were in the boot of the car. But likewise they too were asked to walk to the desk, hand over their IDs to the policemen, give their personal details and asked what they were doing on the road that day and why.

Though none of the authority figures present at the road block made specific mention of Hindraf, I was not the only one who noticed that most of the vehicles stopped then were those with Malaysian-Indians in them. It was too glaring, too obvious to avoid and we were all embarrassed by what was happening before us, in broad daylight.

Bumming a kretek from an Indonesian worker who stepped out of his lorry and watching the scene together, my Indonesian fellow-nicotine addict quipped: “Waduh, jelas di Malaysia juga ada rasial profiling ya! Lucu sekali. Seakan Indonesia pada zaman Pak Harto…”

I replied, with more a touch of shame than humour: “Ia, mas- walaupun Suharto meninggal di Indonesia, roh-nya datang ke Malaysia!”

Now here comes the obvious question that begs to be answered: Had no-one, along the entire chain of command and responsibility, thought of the consequences of such actions? By stopping and questioning the passengers of Malaysian-Indian background on the suspicion that some of them might be attending the Hindraf rally the day after, was there not the blatant risk that the authorities would be offending many more ordinary Malaysians who felt that once again, as Malaysian-Indians, they were being singled out for unfair treatment? And if so, what have these road blocks and checks achieved, save to alienate even more Malaysian-Indians and lend weight to the claims of Hindraf? In the book of “A Hundred and One Easy Blunders for Governments to Make”, this case comes under the chapter “How to Stop Cars and Win Enemies”.

In the weeks ahead as election fever sweeps across the country, we will undoubtedly hear more of such stories of road blocks, profiling of suspected dissidents and opponents, traffic redirected, speeches disrupted, permits for assembly denied, etc. And with every single one of these calculated blunders, the critical mass of resentment, alienation, marginalisation piles up and grows higher and bigger. Political analysts are meant to make sense of politics even in the most troubled and complex of contexts, but here I am left with no compass or map to make sense of the situation: Ours has become the reactionary politics of irrationality instead.

                This entry was posted on Monday, 18 February 2008, 8:38 pm and is filed under
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Po Kuan – Malaysia needs you to create history to deny BN 2/3 parliamentary majority

It’s 2.45 am. Endless series of meetings, internal and external, in the past 72 hours, putting me on the road  from  Petaling Jaya to   Perak, Penang and down to Kuala Lumpur and Petaling Jaya, including two ceramahs with Po Kuan in Batu Gajah parliamentary constituency  on Friday night and the launching of two election operation centres (Tebing Tinggi and Menglembu in Perak) as  well as visit to traditional DAP stronghold in Kuala Lumpur, the Bukit Bintang parliamentary constituency, but which has now become a  “danger” seat because of electoral manipulation in the influx of over 6,000 postal voters.

Have been up for  22 hours – including a five-hour marathon meeting of DAP and Parti Keadilan Rakyat leaders which ended with primary agreement for one-to-one contest  between DAP or PKR with the Barisan Nasional in Peninsular Malaysia states –  with the last meeting just ended an hour ago.

Very tired but no thought of sleep until I blog about Fong Po Kuan. Not just because I have been made the villain causing Po Kuan’s announcement that she would not contest in the 12th general election but also because of her qualities.

At about 2.30 p.m., I received calls asking why I had forced Po Kuan to retire from politics, as AIFM (Chinese) received by motorists had carried news flash that Po Kuan had announced her resignation from the DAP because of her unhappiness with me in forcing her to contest in another constituency.

I never did such a thing and Po Kuan never resigned from the party – but the damage was done, as first impressions (however false) are most lasting, that I had forced Po Kuan to resign from the DAP because I was forcing  her to contest in another constituency apart from  Batu Gajah.  Talking about “eating dead cat”!

The party never asked Po Kuan to change constituencies, as all party leaders had expected and  fully supported  her to contest for the third time  in the Batu Gajah parliamentary seat.

I will not be speaking the truth if I say that Po Kuan’s  announcement yesterday had come as a complete surprise  to me, although it was a shock to the overwhelming majority of DAP leaders, members and supporters.

I had tried to head off Po Kuan from making such a decision because she is a great asset to the party, Malaysian Parliament  and  the cause for justice, freedom and democracy but I failed.  For this I take full responsibility.

I had skimmed through both the avalanche of comments on  her blog and my blog.  Po Kuan should know that she is looked up as a beacon of hope for Malaysians in the hard and grueling battle for justice,  democracy and a Bangsa Malaysia.

I fully associate with the  outpouring of public appeals to Po Kuan to reconsider and rejoin the DAP frontline in the great electoral battle looming before the nation by  again standing for the parliamentary seat of Batu Gajah – as DAP, the people and nation need her  to create history to deny the Barisan Nasional its unbroken  two-thirds  parliamentary majority on March 8, 2008 to usher in a  new democracy and a new Malaysian politics.

Before I conclude, let me confess that in the past 72 hours, I had departed from my practice since the start of my blog to read every comment published on my blog whether before or after publication – but with the dissolution of Parliament, time simply does not permit it.

As a result, I have not been able to respond to the many legitimate questions raised particularly over  donations  to the DAP Election Fund.  I thank you for your support and let me assure you that every sen of the on-line donation would be fully accounted, audited and made public after the general election.

We need far more financial support from you as what  the DAP Election Fund needs to prepare for the “Battle of the Century” in the  12th general election is many many times more than the amounts which  have come through online.

Thanks are in order for volunteers led by  GKT for taking over management of this blog since the past 72 hours till the end of the election campaign. Let us give GKT and team the time to go through the queries of the past 72 hours and to respond to them.

                This entry was posted on Monday, 18 February 2008, 3:44 am and is filed under
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Just Vote opposition to deny BN 2/3 Majority

Letters

by
Richard Teo

 I would like to refer to the Malaysiakini article ‘Finally a chance to wrest Penang.’

    In this article, Ronald Quay seems to contradict himself.His caption seems to suggest there is a good chance of the opposition wresting Penang from B.N and yet in the same breathe predicted that’B.N will still win the General Elections ,hands down’What is perhaps galling is his statement that’the Barisan national is still the best party to govern Malaysia today’.

    If Ronald is so confident that his theory of opposition contesting the State seats as oppose to contesting the
parliamentary seat is workable then there should not be any reason for B.N winning ‘hands down’.

   What the people of Penang should do is not try to play God. Trying to be smart by voting B.N for state seats while voting for opposition in Parliament may not always turn up as planned.

   For the country as a whole B.N will end up with a massive majority in parliament and in the other state seats.This is by virtue of the strong rural support which have traditionally supported UMNO irrespective of rain or shine.

 Therefore it should be the goal of every urban voter to vote for opposition in order to counter the strong rural vote for B.N.Only with this strategy of voting can there be a possibilty of denying B.N a 2/3 majority in state and Federal seats.

      I certainly dont agree with the writer’s statement that’the Barisan National is still the best party to govern Malaysia.’On what basis is he making the statement.?I can only conclude that he is not aware of what transpired during Mahathir’s 22 years

tenure and what happened during the current P.M’s 4 years of administration.

    Every aspect of B.N’s last 26 years tenure has been nothing short of failure.Corruption is rife, the Police dept is in shamble, the Judiciary is tainted, the civil service is a disgrace,foreign investors are avoiding us like a plague.If not for our oil and the

good export price of oil palm we would have followed ZimBabwee’s path to economic destruction.

    Even in matters of race and religion the govt has not handled it with care and sensitivity.This has resulted in further alienating the various races which if not properly addressed would have dire consequences in the future.So please do tell me what is the record of B.N’s governance that has so impressed the writer

that made him conclude that’ B.N is the best party to govern Malaysia.’?

     We inherited a good system of governance from the British during the colonial era and most of these institutions were already in place after Merdeka. So there is no reason why another party albeit an opposition party cannot continue to govern without any difficulty.With better accountabilty and transparency maybe the new party would do a better job.So please dont listen to the B.N leaders saying that the opposition has no experience in governing the country.We will never know if we dont give them a chance. Do we?

                This entry was posted on Tuesday, 19 February 2008, 8:51 am and is filed under
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