The case for vernacular schools

By Center for Policy Initiatives (CPI)

Umno vice-president Hishammuddin Hussein is anticipating that the motion on vernacular schools will be the hottest topic at his party’s general assembly to be held next fortnight (Nov 25-29).

The call to abolish vernacular schools, termed Sekolah Rendah Jenis Kebangsaan – SRJK (C) for those using Mandarin as medium of instruction and SRJK (T) for those using Tamil – is expected to dominate the debate by Umno delegates.

Among the SRJK vocal critics are Umno’s Cheras division chief Syed Ali Alhabshee and Petaling Jaya Utara deputy division chief Mohamad Azli Mohemed Saad.

Urging their abolishment, Syed Ali said vernacular schools are seen as the platform for fostering thick racial sentiments. He was reported by FMT on Oct 7 as saying that such a negative development could bring about division and discord between the people of various races in the country.

Syed Ali is an advocate of single-stream education where all primary schools must teach in the national language, Bahasa Melayu, in the Sekolah Kebangsaan (SK).

Meanwhile, Mohamad Azli was quoted by the NST in its Oct 5 article ‘Umno assembly should discuss position of Chinese schools’ as calling upon the annual convention at the Putra World Trade Centre (PWTC) to discuss whether multi-streaming should be maintained.

“Many are of the opinion that Chinese vernacular schools have been exploited by opposition parties to incite hatred towards other races, and spread racial and anti-government sentiments,” he said.’

It is against the backdrop of the above allegations and a predicted-to-be explosive Umno meeting that the Nov 11 forum titled ‘Should there be one stream of schooling in Malaysia?’ was organized by Gabungan Bertindak Malaysia with the Tamil Foundation (TF), Pertubuhan IKRAM Malaysia (IKRAM), Kuala Lumpur and Selangor Chinese Assembly Hall (KLSCAH), Lim Lian Geok Cultural Development Centre (LLG), Persatuan Aliran Kesedaran Negara (ALIRAN) and Majlis Perundingan Malaysia Agama Buddha, Krisitian, Hindu, Sikh dan Tao (MPMA-BKHST).

Presenting the vernacular school viewpoint

Held at the LLG Cultural Development Centre in Kuala Lumpur, the forum sought to bring the debate into open ground. (The eponymous LLG centre is named after Chinese educationist Lim Lian Geok).

Among the forum speakers was Centre for Policy Initiatives (CPI) director Dr Lim Teck Ghee.

In his presentation, Dr Lim said that while government policy on multi-stream education has remained unchanged, certain Malay nationalist groups as well as a few Umno leaders were still continuing with their campaign of agitation aimed at abolishing vernacular schools.

Dr Lim described some of these people as being professional agitators who were bent on creating racial strife and attempting to cast the SRJKs as a scapegoat for the country’s race relations crisis.

According to him, the academicians and professionals who were supporting these agitational groups were either ignorant or “apple polishers” seeking to curry favour with the political masters.

Racial discrimination is most divisive factor

There is no empirical evidence to show that vernacular schools undermine national unity, Dr Lim noted. Neither can it be proved that the currently almost mono-ethnic national schools advanced racial integration in any way superior to the role played by vernacular schools.

What evidence there is, Dr Lim explained, indicated that inter-ethnic interaction in the so-called “integrated schools” had resulted in disunity and mistrust rather than help bring about unity and integration.

Highlighting a study conducted in 1968-69, he said the poll taken of 7,000 students had found race-based affirmative action to be the factor most responsible for creating inter-ethnic mistrust among the respondents.

The survey had covered 34 secondary schools with mixed student population. Aside from their multiracial enrolment, the schools surveyed were also ones where competition for educational mobility was most pronounced.

Dr Lim expressed his belief that the finding is likely to be confirmed by a new study today. He suggested that it is overall government policies on race and religion in the socioeconomic and cultural areas that should be examined and blamed for the deterioration in national unity and integration.

SRJKs included in National Education Blueprint

Observing that SRJKs were increasingly the school of choice for many non-Chinese parents, Dr Lim pointed out that data from the National Education Blueprint revealed Chinese schools to have at present a more multiracial enrolment compared with SKs.

“Most Malaysians are aware that the diversity of school systems is an advantage in our increasingly globalised world and competitive economy,” he opined.

The blueprint, which is the country’s education roadmap for the next dozen years up to 2025, has reiterated that the diversity of cultures and peoples is fundamental to Malaysian identity. It additionally reaffirms the conventional philosophy that students learn best when taught in their mother tongue through their formative years.

The way forward

In his concluding remarks, Dr Lim called on Education Minister Muhyiddin Yassin to provide a White Paper in support of his own recent statement in Parliament that the government has been fair in its allocation to the different schooling streams.

Dr Lim said this reassurance is necessary due to widespread public perception that the SRJKs continue to be discriminated against and treated as “stepchildren” by the government and the Ministry of Education.

Full disclosure of funding allocation, school-building policy, school and class enrolment size and other pertinent issues, he added, would help put to rest the pervasive concern. Otherwise non-Malays might consider SRJKs to be the convenient political football that is kicked around whenever the Malay power centre is under duress.

                This entry was posted on Tuesday, 18 November 2014, 10:14 am and is filed under
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Joseph Pairin’s greatest act of patriotism is to put an immediate end to the 40-year “merry-go-rounds” on the Sabah illegal immigrants problem and not to be a party or to give his blessing to another “merry-go-round” by heading a committee to review the RCIIIS Report

Kudos to the PBS President, Tan Sri Joseph Pairin Kitingan for being hailed as a “true Malaysian patriot” by the Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Najib Razak on Sunday.

I do not know whether this implied that Joseph Pairin’s brother is not a “true Malaysian patriot”, but in keeping with his responsibility as a “true Malaysian patriot”, Joseph Pairin’s final and greatest responsibility is to end the 40-year “merry-go-rounds” to resolve the long-standing problem of illegal immigrants in Sabah which had mushroomed from the 140,000 figure which I cited in 1978 to some 1.5 million to 1.9 million today, completely changing the political demography and socio-economic circumstances in Sabah.

Pairin said his party had called for the formation of the RCI since it was established in 1985.

When I spoke in Parliament in March 1986 on the Fifth Malaysia Plan, where I devoted the bulk of my speech on Sabah and the problem of illegal refugees in the state, I estimated that there were about 300,000 Filipino illegal immigrants in Sabah.

I called on the Federal Government to take firm action to uphold the law, honour the Rukunegara, liberate Sabahans from the menace posed by the illegal immigrants by sending  increased reinforcements of police and security forces, in particular marine police, to protect Sabahans from internal unrest and external threat fomented by the illegal immigrants.

I proposed in Parliament (in 1986) that the illegal immigrants should repatriated to their own country, warning that there was a conspiracy to illegally enfranchise the illegal immigrants and give them voting rights to change the political map of Sabah as it was an “open secret” that the illegal immigrants had been given blue identity cards and been registered on the electoral register.

I calculated at the  time, i.e. 28 years ago in 1986, that out of 48 Sabah State Assembly seats, 21 were Kadazan majority seats, 8 Chinese majority seats and 19 Malay majority seats. If the illegal enfranchisement of illegal immigrants were allowed to take place unimpeded for another  just three years, it was feared that the electoral complexion could be changed to 16 Kadazan majority seats, 2 Chinese majority seats, and 30 Malay/Filipino/Indonesian seats.

All these concerns which I had expressed in Parliament in 1986 had come to pass, with fundamental changes in the political demography and socio-economic circumstances  in Sabah as a result of the illegal enfranchisement of illegal immigrants, which is the subject of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Illegal Immigrants in Sabah (RCIIIS).

Are we, at the end of 2014,  at the end-stage of this 40-year betrayal of the native Sabahans or at the beginning of another sickening “merry-go-round” which will see  no solution or conclusion to the problem, but instead see a greater influx of illegal immigrants following the announcement by the Prime Minister of a review committee into the report of the RCIIIS headed by Joseph Pairin?

Joseph Pairin’s greatest act of patriotism and even statesmanship is to put an immediate end to the 40-year “merry-go-rounds” on the Sabah illegal immigrants problem and not to be a party and give his blessing to another “merry-go-round” by heading a committee to review the RCIIIS Report.

What is needed is not to further review, but to immediately implement, the recommendations of the RCIIIS.

Friday’s Cabinet meeting cannot be more critical and crucial for the resolution once-and-for all of the 40-year illegal immigrants problem in Sabah.  It is in fact the D-Day whether there is going to be a solution or another “merry-go-round” procrastination for the problem.

Joseph Pairin, together with the three Sabah Ministers, as well as all Sabah MPs,  should convince the Prime Minister and the Cabinet  that Sabah does not need another “merry-go-round” to the 40-year problem of illegal immigrants in Sabah, as what was needed now is action to resolve the problem in the form of an Implementation Committee for the RCIIIS Report.

Is the Prime Minister and the Cabinet prepared to give Joseph Pairin the  full powers to implement the RCIIIS Report recommendations, and in areas where it is not possible to implement the recommendations, to give the Implementation Committee two months to report to Parliament and to seek guidance?

It is no use for Joseph Pairin to be praised as a “truly Malaysian patriot” if the Prime Minister is not prepared to vest in the PBS President the full powers to implement, wherever possible, the recommendations of the RCIIIS report to resolve once-and-for all the 40-year problem of illegal immigrants in Sabah.

                This entry was posted on Wednesday, 19 November 2014, 3:34 pm and is filed under
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Would Najib ask all the 34 UMNO/BN Ministers who send their children to private or international schools, whether local or foreign, to resign for their lack of  confidence in the Umno/BN national education policy and system?

Malaysians must thank the former Prime Minister, Tun Mahathir Mohamad for highlighting  the scandal of more and more Umno/BN Ministers and leaders sending their children to private or international schools, whether local or foreign, as it has been a standing example in the past decades of the hypocrisy of UMNO/BN leaders who preach one thing for ordinary Malaysians but do the exact opposite for themselves and their family.

Would the Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Najib Razak ask all the 34 Umno/BN Ministers who send their children to private or international schools, whether local or foreign, to resign for their lack of confidence in the Umno/BN national education policy and system?

I have been informed that one of the first things a Minister of the Najib Cabinet did on his appointment was to transfer one of his children to an international school.

Why?

Is this because Malaysia’s education system sucks, stuck in the bottom third of the countries surveyed in international assessments and not making any significant moves towards the upper tier of the top one-third of the countries with 15-year-olds in Shanghai, Singapore and South Korea performing as though they had four or even five more years of schooling than 15-years-olds in Malaysia in mathematics, science and reading?

Recent world university rankings show a power shift from the West, in particular the United States and United Kingdom, to the East, with for example 24 Asian Universities listed in the top 200 universities in the  2014 Times Higher Education (THE) World University Rankings compared with 20 a year earlier – led by Tokyo University and National University of Singapore in the top 25.

But this seismic shift in the continuing erosion of United States and United Kingdom domination of global higher education and the inexorable rise of Asian universities seemed to have completely by-passed Malaysia, despite our annual massive expenditures on education.

This trend was confirmed in the release of the US News and World Report’s 500 Best Global Universities Ranking 2015 last month, where the country’s premier university, the University of Malaya is the only university listed in the very lowly position of No. 423.

Even more serious, Malaysia is only placed in two of the 2,100 slots for 100 Best Global Universities for 21 subjects, i.e. Universiti Putra Malaysia (UPM) placed in the 54th rank in the 100 Best Global Universities for agricultural science, and University Sains Malaysia (USM) ranked No. 87 in the 100 Best Global Universities for engineering.

It is scandalous and shameful that out of the 2,100 slots for 100 Best Global Universities for 21 subjects, Malaysia’s 21 public universities which have a total of over 200 schools for different disciplines, could only manage to be placed in the 100 Best Global University slots for two subjects – agricultural science for UPM and engineering for USM.

Malaysians would have expected the University of Malaya, as the premier university of the country which have 12 faculties, two academies, five institutes and five centres, to be ranked among the 100 Best Global Universities in at least half a dozen subject areas since it got ranked as No. 423 in the 500 Best Global Universities Rankings 2015.

This is because universities which were on par with UM in terms of academic excellence and standards half a century ago, like University of Hong Kong, National University of Singapore, University of Melbourne and University of Sydney are ranked in the 100 Best Global Universities in more than a dozen subject areas.

National University of Singapore is 100 Best Global Universities for 15 subjects, University of Hong Kong in 13 subjects, University of Melbourne for 16 subjects and University of Sydney in 13 subjects.

Singapore, with three universities, wins 20 of the 2,100 slot for the 100 Best Global Universities for 21 subjects, i.e. National University of Singapore (15), Nanyang Technological University (4) and Singapore Management University (1).

Even Mahidol University of Thailand, which is below University of Malaya, being ranked No. 453 in the 500 Best Global Universities Rankings 2015, is rated as the 100 Best Global Universities for two subject areas – immunology and microbiology.

But Umno/BN Ministers and leaders are not really concerned about the deteriorating standards of education and higher education in Malaysia because they have themselves no confidence in the Umno/BN education system and policy and have long ago ensured that  their children opted out of the system altogether.

How many Umno/BN Ministers and leaders dare to declare that they do not send their children to private or international schools, local or foreign?

Will UMNO delegates next week  demand that all the 18 UMNO Ministers and 17 UMNO Deputy Ministers should each make a public declaration whether their children and grandchildren are educated under the national education system or whether they have been educated in private or international schools, local or foreign?

                This entry was posted on Wednesday, 19 November 2014, 9:49 am and is filed under
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Let the Global Terrorism Index 2014 be a wake-up call to all political parties,  NGOs and Malaysians  that we jeopardize the future of Malaysians if we do not  check the  rhetoric and politics of hatred, intolerance and extremism and hew closely  to the path of moderation

Malaysia has climbed 42 places in an international terrorism indicator that has cited religious extremism as the primary cause of terror attacks worldwide.

In the 2014 edition of the Global Terrorism Index produced by the Institute of Economic and Peace, Malaysia is now 48th in a ranking that has Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan at the top, having risen from 91st spot in the 2012 issue of the report.

Malaysia’s score on the index measuring the number of terrorist incidents, fatalities and casualties as well as damage to property has also risen steadily from 2012, going from 0.415 out of a possible 10 to the current 3.04. Ten signifies the highest impact of terrorism.

Regionally, the Philippines, (9th/7.29), Thailand (10th/7.19) and Indonesia (31st/4.67) scored worse than Malaysia. Singapore  was 124th, with a score of zero, indicating no negative effects from terrorism.

The Global Terrorism Index 2014 is bad news for Malaysia, for overnight, Malaysia has shot into the international radar of the top 50 countries under the world’s terrorism-watch, having overtaken 43 countries in a matter of two years as a country where terrorism is  a bigger problem –  overtaking countries like Uganda, Belarus, Saudi Arabia, France, Chile, Italy, Kazakhstan, Morocco, Tajikistan, Spain, Jordan, Switzerland, Zimbabwe, Sweden, Germany, Canada and Serbia.

What has gone wrong as Malaysia has always prided itself as a model for the world for inter-racial and inter-religious understanding, tolerance and harmony that we are now in the top 50 countries in the world in the Global Terrorism Index on the negative impact of terrorism, when Malaysia should be one of the countries with score of zero, indicating no negative effects from terrorism.

There are a total of 39  out of 162 countries in the Global Terrorism Index 2014   ranked 124 with a zero score indicating negative effects from terrorism, including Qatar, South Korea, Turkmenistan, Vietnam, Finland, Gambia, Ghana, Malawi and Mauritius.  In 2012, there were 43 countries with a score of zero with no impact of terrorism.

Let the Global Terrorism Index 2014 be a wake-up call to all political parties,  NGOs  and Malaysians that we jeopardize the future of Malaysians if we do not  check the  rhetoric and politics of hatred, intolerance and extremism and hew to the path of moderation.

Malaysia’s adverse ranking in the Global Terrorism Index should set off the alarm bells in the country as it come at a most critical juncture of the nation’s history,  with the recent lurch towards  the rhetoric and politics of hatred, intolerance and extremism with racial and religious polarization at its lowest point for over four decades to the extent that the Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak’s international call for a global movement of moderates to isolate extremism, including three speeches at the United Nations General Assembly in four years on the subject, has suffered in credibility and traction.

Najib is probably the only head of government in the world to have publicly praised the Islamic State (formerly ISIL/ISIS) terrorists, when he exhorted UMNO members on June 24 to emulate what he described as the “brave exploits” of ISIL/ISIS for UMNO to survive.

Although Najib has since denounced Islamic State unambiguously and unconditionally at the UN General Assembly on Sept. 26  and on Sunday condemned the beheadings of American aid worker Peter Kassig and 18 Syrian military personnel as “barbarism” and “abhorrent acts” which violate the teachings of Islam and the principles of Islamic law, they have not been able to completely  wipe out the horror of his ill-advised initial praise of Islamic State in June.

The Global Terrorism Index’s findings that Islamic extremism was the cause of two in three terror attacks last year should be of particular concern to Malaysia, which is experiencing increasing religious intolerance in the country.

Although no direct terrorist attacks were recorded in Malaysia, the country has seen a number of its citizens taking up arms in the ongoing revolution in Syria under the banner of the Islamic State.

The country was also once home to several suspected key figures in groups such as al Qaeda offshoot, Jemaah Islamiyah, the terror group blamed for the deadly 2002 Bali bombings and numerous other attacks.

According to Deputy Home Minister Datuk Wan Junaidi Tuanku Jaafar, 39 Malaysians have been detected as having joined violent jihadist movement seeking to form a global Islamic caliphate.

This is why all eyes are on the UMNO General Assemblies next week, whether they will send out a clear and unmistakable message to Malaysians and the world of the triumph of  moderation or whether the rhetoric and politics of hatred, intolerance and extremism are to continue their  march in Malaysia.

                This entry was posted on Thursday, 20 November 2014, 8:03 am and is filed under
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All Malaysians should be concerned that Malaysia has shot up to the Top 50 countries under Global Terrorism Index when we should strive to be one of the 40 countries with no terrorism problems

Kiwanis Club of Skudai, like Kiwanis Clubs all over Malaysia, is to be commended for the noble motto to serve the children of the world.

All Malaysians, regardless of race, religion or region, must be united in a common Malaysian Dream to make the country a better place for our children where there is justice, freedom, unity, harmony and prosperity for all.

I have many differences with the Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Najib Razak but I agree with his call for the Global Movement of Moderates, which he has articulated in international forums including thrice  in four years in his speeches to the United Nations General Assembly.

However, Najib seems to be waging a lose battle in his call for moderation to oust extremism in Malaysia.

I call on all Malaysians, regardless of race, religion or region, to fully endorse moderation and reject extremism in all aspects of their lives, for Malaysia must seek to be a model of multi-racial and multi-religious tolerance, harmony and understanding in an increasingly troubled world.

This has now become even more urgent with Malaysia shooting to the top 50 countries in the Global Terrorism Index 2014, rising from 91st  in the 2012 Global Terrorism Index to 48th spot, when Malaysia should be one of the 40 countries in the world with no terrorism problems so as to show-case our multi-racial and multi-religious harmony, tolerance and understanding.

Recent years have seen racial and religious intolerance, hatred and extremism raising their ugly heads in the country, and this should be the concern of all Malaysians because  such  intolerance, hatred and extremism will spell a future of conflict and disaster for our children.

Malaysians of good sense and goodwill, who want the best for our children and our country, should not give room or opportunity for the extremists and merchants of hatred and intolerance to spread their evil teachings but should instead unite in pursuit of a common Malaysian Dream to make Malaysia a better model of multi-racial and multi-religious harmony and diversity through the path of moderation!

(Speech at the Kiwanis Club of Skudai’s 13th Grand Installation and Annual Charity Dinner at Restoran Pekin Sutera, Skudai on Thursday, 20th November 2014 at 8 pm)

                This entry was posted on Friday, 21 November 2014, 11:26 am and is filed under
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Why Peter Kassig Was The Islamic State’s Greatest Threat

Hussein Rashid

Huffington Post

11/17/2014

With each bloody act, Islamic State militants demonstrate their need for self-importance overrides any moral, ethical, or religious boundary. Peter Kassig’s beheading is a microcosm of all the Islamic State wants, and religion is not high on that list.

Kassig converted to Islam and took the name Abdul-Rahman, servant of the Merciful. By many accounts, his conversion was genuine and the result of the love he felt for the people he met while providing aid in Syria. His former military service could have made him reluctant to return to a region in conflict. Instead, he chose to go back and help people, risking his life to do so.

In comparison, the Islamic State exacerbates a worsening humanitarian crisis in Syria. It works to prevent aid workers like Kassig from doing their job. A broken population that has no hope is the best recruiting environment it can hope for. If Syrians get aid from Americans, it would destroy the narrative that Islamic State militants are caring for Muslims.

The Islamic State specializes in media manipulation. It uses videos of its executions to gain a response from more powerful adversaries, thus giving it more legitimacy. The world “Islamic” ties the group to something grander than political machinations and 15th-century wars. Its video game-style recruitment material exhibits a mastery of the language of modernity.

Ultimately, the group is a product of modernity, not religion.

It’s interested in becoming a nation state, having a military, acquiring booty. Its members are modern-day marauders, more reminiscent of the 16th-century Mongols than the caliphates of the Abbasids or Fatimids. As a result, its interest in religion has no solid core from which to build. Like its kin, the Wahhabis in Saudi Arabia, its understanding of religion is nihilistic and exclusionary.

The Wahhabis worked with the British to kill Muslim Turks, because they weren’t Muslim enough. Their founding text, written in the 18th century, states that any deviation from the ideal is an aberration that must be destroyed. For these groups, calling oneself Muslim is tied intimately to ethnicity, gender, and money.

The Islamic State is simply the next iteration of the Wahhabi religion.

As the Wahhabi movement removed itself from the community of Muslims they did not want to recognize for fear of delegitimizing itself, the Islamic State is following a similar pattern.

Abdul-Rahman Kassig, as he called himself after a conversion to Islam, was the greatest threat the Islamic State faced. He provided relief and comfort to those in need. He practiced mercy and compassion, and in choosing his Arabic name, reminded people that these were divine qualities. The Islamic State could not let him, or others like him, live. Any deviance from its definition of what it means to be Muslim is a threat to its quest for power. Difference automatically shows that their claim to Islam is not the only one, nor is it representative. More importantly, Kassig shows that Muslims and non-Muslims, like beheading victim Alan Henning, are more invested in the care of Muslims than the Islamic State.

This group wants to represent Islam and Muslims. It crafts a telling of history to show that it is right, and its actions are normal. It needs to do this to make itself appear legitimate. But as long as people know the real history — and there are many more people like Kassig, Henning, or beheading victim Steven Sotloff — the Islamic State cannot maintain this fiction. Its actions have nothing to do with improving the lives of Muslims, but with killing Muslims and non-Muslims. Its goal is domination, not liberation.

                This entry was posted on Friday, 21 November 2014, 7:26 pm and is filed under
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China Reacts to Massive Corruption Tally of a Fallen General

by Alexa Olesen

Foreign Policy

November 22, 2014

It took at least 10 trucks to haul off Xu Caihou’s accumulated booty.

When China’s Ministry of Defense announced on Oct. 28 that the investigation into former General Xu Caihou for alleged corruption had concluded and his case had been transferred to prosecutors, the ministry declared the bribes received by Xu and his family members as
tebie juda
, or “extremely huge.”

The description served to pique public interest about the scale of graft perpetrated by the former vice chairman of China’s Central Military Commission, but was frustratingly vague, and no actual figures were mentioned.

This week, Hong Kong’s Phoenix Weekly and the Financial Times helped fill in the picture. Both had reports that cited people close to the investigation as saying investigators discovered Xu had one ton of cash (U.S. dollars, Euros, and Renminbi) in the basement of his 215,000 square foot Beijing mansion as well as jade, emeralds, calligraphy and paintings.

The FT said the cash was neatly stacked in boxes and that each was conveniently inscribed with the name of the solider who had offered the cash in exchange for a promotion.

Phoenix Weekly, published by Hong Kong broadcaster Phoenix Television, said in its Nov. 20 report that it took 10 military trucks to haul the loot away; the FT said it was a dozen trucks. Either way, it was indeed extremely huge.

Though the Chinese-language Phoenix Weekly story was widely circulated on Sina Weibo and other social media platforms and was even cited in a story by China.org.cn, a news portal run by the government’s State Council Information Office, the military has yet to confirm the report.

But the fact that China’s net nannies, who routinely censor online news, allowed the story to survive on Weibo suggests that the figures in the report don’t stray far from the official tally of Xu’s bribe-taking.

Xu’s case exemplifies the razor’s edge upon which President Xi Jinping must tread in his sweeping anti-corruption campaign, which was launched in 2012 and has netted tens of thousands of corrupt officials, big and small.

While a failure to clean up rampant corruption could be the death knell of the ruling Communist Party, the process of airing dirty party laundry also threatens to make people realize just how serious and systemic the problem has become.

Though some have painted Xi’s hunt for “tigers and flies,” as corrupt high- and low-level officials are now called, as a way for Xi to purge his rivals and strengthen his power base, others believe that it is a genuine campaign.

Cheng Li, director of the John L. Thornton China Center at The Brookings Institution in Washington D.C., told Foreign Policy that Xi’s campaign has “less to do with factional politics” and more to do with Xi’s desire to save the party “because the corruption is really penetrating in such a large scale.”

Late last month, while visiting Gutian, a former revolutionary base in southeast China’s Fujian province, Xi called on his military brass to profoundly reflect on Xu’s case and its unfavorable influence.

Xi also said during his Oct. 30-31 visit that problems in the military needed to be “faced squarely,” according to a report by the official Xinhua News Agency.

While Xu’s case can serve as a handy cautionary tale, it might also enflame anger among ordinary Chinese over the extent of official corruption.

Some of that was in evidence in the reactions to the Phoenix Weekly report after it was posted on Weibo. Though couched in cynical or darkly humorous language, many people were clearly upset.

One man from Shenyang in north China’s Liaoning province slyly invoked military lingo in his post, writing, “I am not so curious about the cash. But let me ask this, is a 2,000 square meter mansion standard issue?”

Another web user in Hubei province’s Wuhan city in central China wrote, “If the cash in my house was measured by the ton, I would also be forever obedient to the party, go with the party, and be in the party’s debt!”

Another reader from Jiaxing, a small city in Zhejiang province simply wrote: “Xu Caihou finally declared his assets.” The comment was a nod to simmering public anger over the party’s refusal to make officials openly declare their assets, a level of transparency that many argue would signal a real commitment to graft-busting.

While Xi has declared war on corruption, he has also puzzlingly jailed activists like the legal scholar Xu Zhiyong who have campaigned for such asset disclosure.

Others posed serious questions that could be uncomfortable for the leadership, like the man in Zhengzhou, the capital of Hebei province in central China, who wrote, “Gu Junshan laid offerings in front of Xu Caihou for his promotion. So, if I may, who was it that promoted Xu Caihou?”

Gu Junshan, a former general mentored by Xu, was charged with corruption in March. The financial news magazine Caixin reported in January that it took four military trucks to haul away Gu’s loot, including a gold boat and a gold statue of late Communist Party Chairman Mao Zedong. Now that authorities have started to pull at this particular thread, it’s unclear just how much is left to unravel.

                This entry was posted on Saturday, 22 November 2014, 5:48 pm and is filed under
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Global corruption a bigger scourge than terrorism

CBC news

by Brian Stewart

Nov 19, 2014

Anti-corruption protests growing all over the world, as are legislative crackdowns

While the G20 summit in Australia made headlines over global warming, economic growth and terrorism, much less attention was paid to the giant spectre of global corruption.

That is too bad as this is a problem that is arguably more dangerous to humanity than even terrorism because it siphons off an estimated $1 trillion from developing countries annually through bribery, money laundering, tax evasion, extortion and other financial crimes.

Recent World Bank estimates suggest that much of the world’s direct aid to the poorest countries ends up stolen, perhaps as much as $40 billion in recent years.

And it has been estimated that up to 3.6 million of the world’s poorest die annually from inadequate health care and living conditions directly because corruption has leached away development aid of all kinds.

At its most extreme, corruption causes people to lose faith in government, states to fail and violence to erupt in the form of organized crime and terrorist movements.

Only slightly less malign, it’s the dirty grease that keeps many repressive and violent dictators in lavish power.

No country is untouched by corruption, but it is “public enemy No. 1” in the developing world, according to World Bank President Jim Yong Kim, who has to fight to keep his bank’s $30 billion a year in development aid getting to its proper destination.

“Every dollar that a corrupt official or a corrupt business person puts in their pockets is a dollar stolen from a pregnant woman who needs health care, or from a girl or boy who deserves an education, or from communities that need water, roads and schools.” Kim says, in calling on the world’s economic powers to take steps to end this scourge.

Baby steps

Which brings us back to the G20 leaders and the pessimism that surrounds its anti-corruption talk, perhaps because it is made up of some of the world’s most bribe-infected and non-transparent economies, including those of China ,Russia, India and Brazil being among the most often mentioned.

At past conferences, G20 leaders have pledged to act robustly against this scourge, but most action has involved baby steps and future promises.

This time, the G20 nations at least agreed to slowly — over three years — strive to expose those shell companies and trusts that hide billions from tax collection while illicit money is laundered.

Critics have long pooh-poohed the idea of leading economic organizations like the G20 or International Monetary Fund trying to tackle questionable activities by its own people.

But some anti-corruption activists sense a change is in the air. The rise of terrorist mega-financing, as seen in the case of ISIS and al-Qaeda, has captured the international agenda.

“The incentive for G20 nations to make progress lies in their own back yards,” writes David McNair, the director of transparency at the ONE Campaign against corruption, noting that watchdogs “have highlighted numerous examples of anonymous firms facilitating corruption, enabling the free flow of terrorist financing and sanctions breaking.”

Canada stepping up

So far, it’s only a handful of the world’s 41 or so developed nations that have started prosecuting companies and executives that bribe foreign officials or facilitate corrupt practices.

But these are highly influential players like the U.K., France, Canada, Germany and Australia who have lined up alongside the very tough U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which is rattling boardrooms around the world.

Over the past two years, Canada has enacted amendments to former anti-bribery laws that will permit the prosecution of Canadian companies and citizens on bribery charges, regardless of where the corrupt acts take place.

Limits have also been taken off fines and the potential prison terms have been raised to an eye catching 14 years.

Under a controversial new “integrity framework” any company can be barred from selling products or services to Canada for a full decade if they or their foreign subsidiaries are deemed to have bribed or facilitated business anywhere abroad.

A powerful association of business groups here has recently lobbied the federal government to pull back on these new rules, saying the penalties are far too stringent.

But Ottawa has reason to get tough — of 250 global companies blacklisted by the World Bank under its new fraud and corruption policy, 117 are from Canada, albeit many are affiliates of troubled SNC-Lavalin.

The Quebec construction scandals have also harmed our image overseas.

‘Name and shame’

It’s believed that 35 Canadian companies are currently under RCMP investigation for bribery abroad, and in January 2013 the highest fine to date, $10 million, was levied against Grittiths Energy for paying a $2 million bribe to win land concessions in Chad.

In countries where tough laws are introduced, companies suddenly have every incentive to demand international standards of transparency to make the playing field equal. And so the reform pressure builds.

The other pressure point flows from social media and the unprecedented exposure of corruption it facilitates.

For the first time, people in developing countries are getting solid information about graft, which explains much of the populist anger these days in nations from Ukraine, Hungary, Mexico and Brazil to scores of countries in Africa where public demonstrations denouncing graft are becoming more common.

Adding to this, anti-corruption groups like Transparency International are launching new grassroots campaigns to “name and shame” the excessive spending of ruling families and the like.

It is a message clearly meant to mobilize youth fury against corruption the same way a similar energy was harnessed to fight global poverty a decade ago.

Many despair because this problem seems limitless. But the powerful idea is spreading that the world simply cannot go on like this, rotting at the core.

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                This entry was posted on Saturday, 22 November 2014, 5:25 pm and is filed under
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Najib should not set bad example to other Ministers by using threat of legal suit against Tony Pua to evade accountability and should make Ministerial statement to answer teeming questions on 11 aspects of the multi-billion ringgit  1MDB scandal in Parliament on Monday

The Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Najib Razak, should not set the bad example to other Ministers by using the threat of legal suit against the DAP MP for PJ Utara Tony Pua to evade accountability and he should make a Ministerial statement in Parliament on Monday to answer teeming questions on 11 aspects of the multi-billion ringgit 1MDB scandal, viz:

1. Why did the Government issue a “letter of support” for 1MDB’s US$3.0 billion (RM9.6bn) bonds issued in Mar 2013 which not only explicitly binds the Government to repay the debt in the event 1MDB fails to do so, but surrendered legal jurisdiction to the Courts of London?  Despite the denial that the letter represents an explicit “guarantee”, why isn’t this amount recorded as a Federal Government contingent liability since Malaysia is legally bound to repay the debt in the event of 1MDB default?

2. Why did 1MDB pay an average of more than 10% in “certain commissions, fees and expenses” to raise its loans – US$3.0 billion (Mar 2013) and US$1.75 bilion (May 2012), when other developing nations such as Uruguay pay as little as 0.1% to raise US$2.0 billion?  Even Penerbangan Malaysia Bhd which raised US$1 billion recently paid only 0.5% in such fees.

3. Why did 1MDB divert US$1.1 billion of its US$3.0 billion raised by its subsidiary, 1MDB Global Investment Limited to repay the former’s own debt and cover its operating expenses?  The “Use of Proceeds” of the US$3.0 billion bond as stated in the investors’ prospectus was to invest in a 50:50 joint venture with Aabar Investment. Additionally US$1.56 billion is parked at an unknown investment fund overseas while the proposed joint venture is still-born after 18 months.

4. Why did 1MDB agree to accept a corporate loan guarantee by International Petroleum Investment Corporation (IPIC) of Abu Dhabi on behalf of 1MDB’s US$3.5 billion of bonds with such onerous terms – 40% security deposit and a 10-year option to acquire 49% of 2 1MDB subsidiaries.  The 10-year option is worth at least US$250 million.  As a result of the loan’s 5.99% interest, the IPIC guarantee and the 10% of “certain commissions, fees and expenses”, the effective cost of fund to 1MDB for the US$3.5 billion loan is a staggering 13.98%.

5. Why did 1MDB invest US$1 billion in a joint-venture with PetroSaudi in 2009, a company with no track record and dubious origins and subsequently converted the investment into a US$1.2 billion loan, which was subsequently increased to US$1.7 billion?  Although 1MDB claimed the loan as been redeemed in full and the proceeds parked in Cayman Islands, it must answer for the risks taken as well as the complete lack of transparency and good governance as these sums were entirely funded by debt.

6. Why did 1MDB invest the US$2.32 billion proceeds from the redemption of Petrosaudi loans in 2013 in an opaque investment fund with Bridge Capital Partners in Cayman Islands, an unknown fund manager with questionable origins and no comparable track record?

7. Why did the Ministry of Finance hastily acquire a 1MDB subsidiary, SRC International Sdn Bhd in March 2012 which has then just received a RM4 billion loan from Kumpulan Wang Amanah Pesara (KWAP) guaranteed by the Federal Government?

8. Why did 1MDB overpay for its power assets – Genting Sanyen (RM2.38bn) and Tanjong Energy (RM8.5bn) which required an immediate impairment of RM1.2 billion out of its recorded goodwill of RM2.6 billion? As a result of the high price of acquisition, The Edge Weekly has estimated an annual return on investment of only approximately 5%, lower than the cost of funds to acquire these companies.

9. Why did the Ministry of Energy, Green Technology and Water reverse it policy of open tenders for new power plants to directly and hastily award a 50MW solar-power plant and a 2,000MW gas-turbine power plant to 1MDB before even the tariffs are agreed upon?

10. Why did the Federal Government sell super-prime land to 1MDB at heavily discounted prices – Bandar Malaysia (RM1.6 billion) and Tun Razak Exchange (RM194 million), allowing 1MDB to revalue their properties by a whopping RM5.22 billion in less than 5 years?

11. Why did international auditing firms – Ernst & Young and KPMG quit their lucrative work with 1MDB in 2009 and 2012 respectively?  Why hasn’t 1MDB subsidiaries submitted their financial statements to the Companies Commission despite some being overdue by more than 2 years?

Although the current budget parliamentary meeting is to end on Thursday, 27th November 2014, it will the height of irresponsibility for Najib as Prime Minister, Finance Minister and Chairman, 1MDB  Board of Advisers to evade and avoid accountability for the numerous questions that have been raised over the  1MDB scandal and which have not been  satisfactorily explained by the Deputy Finance Ministe, Datuk Ahmad Maslan.  Najib should in fact arrange for a full debate in Parliament to be held on his Ministerial Statement on 1MDB.

                This entry was posted on Saturday, 22 November 2014, 2:21 pm and is filed under
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Tunisians Are Shaken as Young Women Turn to Extremism

by Carlotta Gall

New York Times

Nov. 20, 2014

TUNIS — Leila Mustapha Saidi returned home on a recent day to find her daughter Henda missing, along with her computer. Mrs. Saidi, who had watched her daughter grow religious and “obsessed” with the conflict in Syria, said she feared she had run off to join Islamist fighters there.

Instead, the police called four days later. Her daughter Henda Saidi was holed up in a house outside Tunis with a group of suspected insurgents. A day later, security forces stormed the house. Of six people killed in the raid, five were young women.

“They classified her as a terrorist,” Mrs. Saidi said bitterly.

After more than two years of mounting attacks and assassinations, Tunisians are no longer surprised by shootouts between gunmen and anti-terrorist units, even in the capital. But the standoff in which Ms. Saidi was killed nonetheless shocked many here for the sheer number of women involved.

It has also driven home the fact that — nearly four years after events in Tunisia set off the Arab Spring, and with presidential elections Sunday — the lure of extremism has touched virtually every part of society, men and women, the poor and the comfortable alike.

It has reached even the relatively affluent district of La Marsa, where the Saidis live in a pretty house with arbors of flowers in an enclosed front garden. Henda was the third person from her high school to die for the Islamist cause in the last year, teachers and acquaintances said.

“We are all uncomprehending,” said Linda Ben Osman, an art teacher who worked at the high school several years ago and knew Ms. Saidi. “These were smart kids, kind kids, ready for life — very beautiful in the case of Henda.”

“The youth are desperate, I think,” Ms. Ben Osman added. “Before Syria and ISIS,” she said, referring to Islamic State militants in Syria and Iraq, “people self-immolated, or took boats to escape to Europe and died in the sea.”

She and others consider the outburst of extremism to be a reaction to the authoritarianism of Tunisia’s former ruler, President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, whose overthrow ushered in a free-for-all democracy.

Radical Islamists released from prison and returning home from exile were quick to exploit the new freedoms, taking over mosques, setting up associations, and recruiting thousands of young followers. Tunisia has been grappling with a surge of Islamist extremism since.

“We were in some sort of prison,” Ms. Ben Osman said. “The former president worked to keep our minds closed. When freedom came, people didn’t understand it. And maybe it did not bring what people wanted, and they look for it elsewhere.”

Young women have been as susceptible as anyone. In an interview, the interior minister, Lotfi Ben Jeddou, said all the women killed in the October raid were in their late teens or early 20s, and had joined the insurgent cell over the past several months. “They were educated,” he said.

Government officials said the women had refused to surrender, even using two children as shields. One small girl was shot in the head. Two men were also in the house; one was killed and one wounded.

Barely a week after burying their eldest child, Ms. Saidi’s parents sat at home stunned at the turn of events.

Mrs. Saidi said she could not bring herself to view her daughter’s body when it was brought home for the funeral. Her husband, Hedi Saidi, left the house and refused to attend the burial. “I could not accept the fact that it was my daughter,” he said. He criticized the government for hastiness in shooting at a house with women and children.

The Saidis described their daughter as highly principled but sometimes stubborn. “My daughter was a good girl, a hardworking student,” Mrs. Saidi said. “I do not think she was unjust. She did not do any wrong to anyone.”

Ms. Saidi, a 21-year-old law student, had become radicalized, and they knew she often hid her true intentions from the family, they said.

“For a year and a half she kept a system so we would not notice when she left,” Mr. Saidi said. “She was always reading, on the Internet, painting in her room.”

Ms. Saidi’s former high school French teacher, Dejla Abdelhamid, posted a heartfelt message on Facebook lamenting her death and wishing she had done more to prevent her being lured into extremism.

“Henda Saidi with her long fair hair, her radiant smile,” Ms. Abdelhamid wrote. “Her death is our failure, and the failure of a whole society, and in some part it is my failure as a teacher who fell short, missed something.”

Her post received a storm of comments, some accusing her of leading Ms. Saidi into radical Islam when they saw from her photo that she wore a veil. After Ms. Abdelhamid called on Ms. Saidi’s grieving parents, a colleague berated her for visiting the family of a terrorist.

“People do not know what is happening,” Ms. Abdelhamid said in an interview. “People are scared of each other.”

“The youth are lost, they do not have a reference,” she added.

She had met Ms. Saidi on the street a year after she had graduated from high school, she said. When she saw that she had abandoned her jeans and makeup and was dressed in the full black covering and gloves often worn by radical Muslims, Ms. Abdelhamid burst into tears. Ms. Saidi nevertheless seemed happy.

“She just smiled,” her teacher said. “I did not feel she was the girl who was lost.”

Ms. Abdelhamid attributes the turn to extremism by Ms. Saidi and others to the forced secularization under the dictatorship, which she says has left Tunisians ignorant of their religion, and now easily misled by radical preachers who have rushed in with new ideas.

“It’s like a tsunami we have not had time to understand,” she said. “We have to teach them to defend themselves in a solid way.”

                This entry was posted on Saturday, 22 November 2014, 11:49 pm and is filed under
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Will UMNO General Assembly next week  send out a clear and unmistakable message that UMNO will be the vanguard and not be the major obstacle to a movement of moderates against extremism in Malaysia?

I applaud the  Sarawak Chief Minister, Tan Sri Adenan Satem’s call to the majority of Malaysians to be united and speak up against extremism as the country cannot afford to have extremists given its diversity in terms of race, culture and religion.

Speaking at a Barisan Nasional youth retreat dinner in Kuching last night, Adenan said the country could become a worse place not because the minority did not do enough, but the majority did nothing.

The Sarawak Chief Minister warned that the danger of extremism is looming in the country and it is for the moderates  to speak up for moderation, pointing out that the majority cannot be silenced  for the fanatics and extremists do not speak for the country.

Adenan’s speech is like a breath of fresh air after the surfeit of suffocating statements, speeches and demands in recent weeks and months giving the world the impression that extremism has taken over the country and that  Malaysia’s multi-racial, multi-cultural and multi-religious diversity, tolerance, harmony and goodwill have suddenly become a liability instead of an asset – which seemed to be further reinforced by Malaysia’s shocking jump in the Global Terrorism Index 2014 to the Top 50 countries in the world to be watched for terrorism problems.

This is a most surprising  turn of events when Malaysia had always prided herself in the past few decades as a model and viable and successful  microcosm of a peaceful and united multi-religious, multi-cultural and multi-religious society and the Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Najib Razak had spearheaded the Global Movement of Moderates with his clarion call to moderates of the world to unite and stand up against extremists, declaring:

 “The fight against extremism is not about Christians versus Muslims, or Muslims versus Jews, but moderates versus extremists of all religions. We therefore need to rally a coalition of moderates; those willing to reclaim their religion, and pursue the path to peace.”

But strangely enough, in the past four years since Najib’s first speech at the United Nations General Assembly proposing a Global Movement of Moderates, Adenan is the first Barisan Nasional leader to make the call in Malaysia on moderates in the country  to unite and isolate the extremists.

It is food for thought that Najib has yet to make a stirring call in the country to moderates in Malaysia to unite against the extremists – although this is his favourite topic in international forums.

Will UMNO General Assembly next week  send out a clear and unmistakable message that UMNO will be the vanguard and not be the major obstacle to a movement of moderates against extremism in Malaysia?

Deputy Prime Minister and Deputy UMNO President, Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin said today that UMNO is at a critical stage and it must change or be changed.

Is Muhyiddin prepared to take the lead to urge UMNO to be the vanguard and not be a major obstacle to a movement of moderates against extremism in Malaysia?

When UMNO vice president and Defence Minister Datuk Seri Hishammuddin Hussein announced last week  that the relevance of maintaining the Chinese school system will be one of the “hotly-debated topics” during the Umno annual general assembly next week, many Malaysians are reminded of Hishammudin’s offensive, irresponsible and provocative “Malay keris” antics in previous UMNO Youth Assemblies.

Is another ferocious bout of Chinese-bashing in the works at the UMNO General Assemblies next week –  just like the orgy of Chinese-bashing immediately after the 13th General Elections in May last year with the UMNO organ, Utusan Malaysia leading the attack with the irresponsible and misleading  front-page headline and question “Apa lagi orang Cina mahu?” (What else do the Chinese want?).

This will be a manifestation of continuing “extremism” and not the triumph of moderation and isolation of extremism, which is the objective of the movement of moderates, whether globally or in Malaysia.

Four years after Najib first mooted the proposal of a Global Movement of Moderates, it is still difficult to identify UMNO/Barisan Nasional Ministers, Chief Ministers and Mentri-Mentri Besar, as well as national and state leaders, who are prepared to be in forefront to take up the cudgel of moderation against extremism.

Adenan has spoken up. What about the other UMNO/Barisan  Nasional Ministers, Chief Ministers/Mentri-Mentri Besar?

                This entry was posted on Saturday, 22 November 2014, 1:36 pm and is filed under
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Silent no more, please

— Thomas Fann

Malay Mail Online

NOVEMBER 22, 2014

NOVEMBER 22 — Since PM Najib attributed Umno-BN poor performance at GE13 to a Chinese tsunami and Utusan followed up with “Apa lagi Cina mau?,” all hell was let loose and the racists and extremists came out of their closets.

From ministers to ex-judges, ex-civil servants, politicians, etc. — they came out unashamedly declaring their true agenda.

But I still believe in Malaysia and that the vast majority of Malaysian of all races are decent, peace-loving and not racists at heart. We are the silent majority.  However, the silent majority is irrelevant when the only voices heard are those of the vocal extremists and racists. It seems that they are the ones who are setting the agenda for public discourse these days.

I want to quote from part of an article I read a while back.

I used to know a man whose family were German aristocracy prior to World War II. They owned a number of large industries and estates. I asked him how many German people were true Nazis, and the answer he gave has stuck with me and guided my attitude toward fanaticism ever since.

“Very few people were true Nazis,” he said, “but many enjoyed the return of German pride, and many more were too busy to care. I was one of those who just thought the Nazis were a bunch of fools. So, the majority just sat back and let it all happen. Then, before we knew it, they owned us, and we had lost control, and the end of the world had come. My family lost everything. I ended up in a concentration camp and the Allies destroyed my factories.”

Very few people were true Nazis but they enjoyed the return of German pride. Many people may not agree with the extreme views of the likes of Perkasa, Isma or even IS but perhaps in their hearts they enjoy the restoration of pride that these groups offered. Therefore, they maintain their neutral silence.  Or perhaps, too many are just too busy with daily survival and chores to bother.

Most Russians were peace-loving when the Communists came and took over the country. Yet 20 million died at the hands of Stalin.  Most Chinese were peace-loving when Mao brought about his revolutions and yet 70 million died under his rule. Most Cambodians just wanted peace but yet the minority Khmer Rouge murdered 2 millions of their own countrymen. History is littered with evidence of the irrelevancy of the silent majority.

In Malaysia, are we also doomed to be dominated by the extreme minority that seeks to divide us, sowing hatred and threatening our future? When will these hateful rhetoric become fleshed out to physical violence, riot and civil war even?

I refuse to be a passive observer of history and thereby become one of its flotsam, becoming a victim of circumstances contrived by evil men bent on destruction and domination of others. We cannot afford to remain as the silent majority, we have to speak up and act on behalf of the majority.

How do we overcome evil and hate? Do we overcome it with more evil and hate? With argument and reasoning? With legislation and intimidation?

I would suggest that to do all that or any of the above would be akin to pouring fuel to fire. What fuels such extremists are not just ideology, theology or even political motives but hate. Out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks. To be able to spew hate for another human being is an emotional matter, from the heart. To fight hate with hate is to further inflame the situation. Just as Mahatma Gandhi said, “An eye for an eye, makes the world go blind.”

I am aware that it is human nature to respond in like manner. When we are shown kindness, we reciprocate with kindness. When we are hated, we hate back.  In my view, the real danger of racist rants is not the content of such rants but how we respond to them.

Many Malaysians are hurt by labels hurled at them like pendatangs (migrants), penceroboh (intruders), perompak (robbers) and pemalas (lazy). They can’t get their hands on the issuer of these labels who spoke from the safety of press conferences, forums, parliament, social media, etc., so they take it out on their innocent neighbours who had the misfortune of sharing the same race as the issuer, thus the cycle of hate is perpetuated.

We become what I would call reflective racists, no less vile than the source of these racist rants.

No, we must overcome hate with love and kindness. It may sound soft and even weak but it is not. It is not easy to love someone who hates you or in the case of racism, self-appointed spokespersons of a particular race and the race itself.  It takes determination not to allow ourselves to respond in hate no matter what but instead respond either directly or indirectly with love and kindness.

To reclaim our nation (Negara-ku), if we are the silent majority of Malaysians who are decent and peace-loving, and refuse to be represented by these racist elements in our society and to be swept aside from any discourse on our future, we must not be silent and passive anymore.

These are a few suggestions I have.

Acknowledge the problem

To claim that the extremists and racists are a small minority and has little following would be a grave error. The fact that they are bold enough to speak up and allowed to do so with impunity is not just because the authority did nothing.

After years of race-based policies and indoctrination, the ground is fertile for these racists. Into this fertile ground they are sowing seeds of insecurities, hatred and fears. It would just be a matter of time before we all reap the fruits of it.

Seek to understand why

In normal circumstances, nobody wants to live in hatred. There must be reasons why people felt they needed to hate another race. What are they saying? Is there some truth to it? If there is, how can we make amends or if not, how we can allay those concerns?

Taking for example the phenomenon of the Islamic State (IS). Tens of thousands of foreigners have joined up with them for this jihad and committing atrocities beyond human decency. When it was revealed that Malaysians were among those who joined up, I was dumb-founded. Why? It’s easy to condemn them but I want to understand why? Perhaps in understanding we can begin to do something about the circumstances that led them to be willing to die in a foreign land. Likewise, we need to understand why people would want to hate other races.

Build bridges, not walls

Walls are divider of communities and an invisible walls have been built through years of policies based not on our citizenship but on the country of origin of our forefathers. Education policies and falling standards probably has a big part to play as well in polarizing the communities. In the face of worsening race-relation, we must look for every opportunities to build bridges of friendship, understanding, respect and acceptance.

Instead of waiting for some grand programme/campaign or change in government policies, can we just be good neighbours? Make conscious efforts to connect with someone of another race or religion. Seek to understand their values and faith and respect their practices or non-practices. Knowing the language of another is a great bridge-builder and it is incumbent on us to be able to speak another language other than our own in Malaysia.

Speak up

We have to let the rest of the silent majority know that they are the majority and not the minority. We have to strongly reject those who claim to speak on behalf of our race especially when in the name of our race or even God, they threaten and demean others. Who appointed them to be our spokesmen?

Ordinary citizens can speak up as we go about our lives. Reject racist jokes or terms like devil, pig, or snake attached to certain races. Even if it is common among people to talk that way, it is vulgar and is disrespectful.

If we are leaders in certain field, be it politics, business, academia, legal, civil society or civil service, we bear a greater burden to let our voices be heard through our speeches or writings.

The media has a huge part to play as well to give voice to such counter-racism views. Sensational hate remarks often make good headlines but in my view, it is a disservice to the nation on the part of media organisations to give racists disproportionately more space than voices of moderation.

Can we prove the statement that the silent majority is irrelevant wrong? Can we resolve this day to be relevant in our speech and action so as to reclaim back our nation for our children? Do we want our children to grow up hating another person just because of the colour of their skin? That is no way to live.

* The above were the text of a speech given at the Negara-Ku Roadshow on “Kembalikan Negara Ku: A Forum on Peace, Harmony and Unity” by one of the panel speakers, Thomas Fann.  Thomas is the Chairman of ENGAGE, a non-governmental organisation dedicated to encouraging and empowering citizens to get engage with nation-building.

                This entry was posted on Sunday, 23 November 2014, 10:00 am and is filed under
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Three unfinished business which Najib should present to Parliament before it adjourns next Thursday until next March

There are three unfinished business which the Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Najib Razak should present to Parliament before it adjourns next Thursday until March next year.

The first is the Report of the Royal Commission of Illegal Immigrants in Sabah (RCIIIS), which is meant to end once-and-for-all the 40-year problem of illegal immigrants in Sabah which had multiplied 15 to 19 times in four decades from 100,000 in the seventies to 1.5 million to 1.9 million at present.

If the Report of the RCIIIS, which was presented to the Federal Government on May 14, is not presented to Parliament next week for a full parliamentary debate, it could only mean one thing – that there is complete absence of political will to resolve the long-standing problem of  illegal immigrants in Sabah and the establishment of the Royal Commission of Inquiry was just a Barisan Nasional electoral ruse for the 13th General Election in May 2013 to secure votes for BN from the people of Sabah,  and for which it succeeded.

Furthermore, the establishment of the Joseph Pairin Kitingan Review Committee for the RCIIIS Report announced by Najib in Kota Kinabalu last week is just the latest “merry-go-round” sleight-of-hand  to kick the problem of illegal immigrants of Sabah into a distant and  indefinite future, while the problem snowballs to  pass the two million mark for illegal immigrants in Sabah – reducing native Sabahans to a minority and  foreigner status  in their own  land!

Secondly, Najib should table the White Paper on the Islamic State in the coming week, as the Home Minister, Datuk Seri Ahmad  Zahid Hamidi had told Parliament in a written reply to the DAP MP for Kampar, Dr. Ko Chung Sen last month that the White Paper on Malaysians involved in terrorist activities such as the Islamic State was being prepared.

Zahid had said that since December 2001, 167 Malaysians had been involved in militancy overseas, including 39 who are fighting for the Islamic State (IS) in Iraq and Syria.

The White Paper on Islamic State had acquired greater poignancy and urgency with two latest developments:

•	Malaysia shooting up to the Top 50 countries in the Global Terrorism Index 2014, when we should be one of the 40 countries in the world with no terrorism problems; and

•	The arrest of a man and two women by the police counter-terrorism division on Saturday for alleged involvement with the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (Isis).

It has been  reported that there were 45 Malaysians in Syria and 15 in Iraq fighting for ISIS; that at least five Malaysians have been killed in action in Syria and that at least five ISIS militants had returned to Malaysia.

Between January and June this year, police arrested 23 people in various parts of Malaysia over alleged links to the terror group.

The tabling of the White Paper on Islamic State becomes even more imperative following the statement by the Deputy Home Minister Wan Junaidi  Tuanku Jaafar in Parliament that Malaysian Isis fighters were returning to spread militant ideology in the country.

Thirdly, Najib should make a Ministerial statement on the roiling multi-billion ringgit 1MDB scandal and demonstrate that he is not trying to shut down public query and even parliamentary debate on the latest financial scandal by the threat of legal suit against the DAP MP for PJ Utara, Tony Pua.

In fact, Najib should give a public undertaking that his threat of a legal suit against Tony Pua will not be used to shut down any public questioning of any aspect of 1MDB deals.

Najib should not shoot the messenger just because Tony’s message demanding  full accountability and transparency about the 1MDB scandal is most embarrassing for him and his government – as the solution is not to ban all debate and discussion by threat of a legal suit but by full commitment to the principles of  accountability,  transparency  and good governance as  establishing a bipartisan Parliamentary Select Committee on 1MDB to ensure that there is no hanky-panky or impropriety in the government endorsement and involvement in 1MDB activities.

                This entry was posted on Sunday, 23 November 2014, 1:20 pm and is filed under
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Islamic State relaxes vetting of foreign jihadists in a bid to boost recruits

By Ruth Sherlock

Beirut

Telegraph

24 Nov 2014

Exclusive: safe house operatives working for Isil tell the Telegraph they have dropped security restrictions in order to swell the ranks joining the caliphate

The Islamic State in the Levant has relaxed “vetting” procedures for foreign jihadists joining the group, and expanded military training camps in a drive to build its “Caliphate”, safe house operatives and defectors have told The Telegraph.

The group has apparently largely dropped security measures designed to ensure that foreign recruits are not undercover spies, in favour of boosting numbers.

“Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi [Isil’s leader] has called for all Muslims to come to their land, so the process is much less stringent,” said Abu Ahmed, a Syrian living neighbouring in Turkey who runs a safe house and helps funnel jihadists into the country. “Almost any Muslim who wants to travel now can. They want everyone to come.”

Abu Ahmed who spoke to The Telegraph using a pseudonym, agreed to meet in a quiet café in Urfa, a small town on the Turkish border in Syria that is on the primary route for foreign fighters crossing into Syria.

For the past eighteen months he has worked to keep foreigners safe in Turkey, and then helped them to cross to Syria.

“It began like this: a friend in Aleppo rang me and told me there was someone they needed to bring to Syria. He said they would be guests in the country. So I took them to my home when they arrived in Turkey,” he said.

“The first ‘guest’ was a jihadist from Saudi Arabia. The second a Tunisian, and it went from there. Most of them are from the Gulf and the UAE.” Although he had not personally hosted Westerners, he said he had friends who had.

The safe house operative said in the past there were “stringent checks” before he could help someone cross.

His account matched that given to The Telegraph last year by a foreign jihadist who described needing at least three references from members of the jihadist group and a full background check before being given the clearance to join.

Since relaxing the regulations, the numbers of foreigners joining Isil has increased, Abu Ahmed said – despite the US led air strikes against the jihadists positions in Syria an Iraq.

Abu Abdullah, a former bodyguard for Saddam Jamal, the emir – leader – for Deir Ezzor in eastern Syria, agreed with the assessment: “Each day foreigners are joining more and more, from all over the world: Yemen, the Magreb and the West,” he told The Telegraph, also speaking with a pseudonym.

The claim is hard to verify independently, but Charlie Winter, a researcher with the Quilliam Foundation, which monitors jihadi activity, said there had been a “lot of chatter” on jihadi forums about the relaxation of the regulations.

The manoeuvre may be in part designed to boost Isil’s standing as the primary actor in global jihad.

The group’s split with al-Qaeda, and Ayman al-Zawahiri, al-Qaeda’s leader’s subsequent condemnation, has caused division in the jihadist ranks.

Mr Winter said: “They are trying to improve their image: to go from being a bunch of men too extreme even for al-Qaeda, to jihadists that are fighting the crusader enemy.”

He agreed the strategy appeared to be working: “It seems too that there are more people who are desperate to go to Syria,” he said.

To this end, Isil has also boosted its domestic recruitment drive, expanding its training camps in Syria and Iraq and reportedly “paying” locals to get trained.

A report by the Long War Journal has identified 46 training camps belonging to the Isil, Jabhat al-Nusra (al-Qaeda’s branch in Syria), and several other smaller hardline units.

Compiling video footage, messages posted by jihadists on social media and US military press releases, the group has determined the location of 34 camps in Syria and 12 in Iraq. Most of those belong to Isil.

Abu Abdullah, who fled from the group one month ago told The Telegraph: “I saw a huge number of soldiers in training camps and now they are paying locals to join. They know how to control people: in this time there are more Syrians in need of money.”

The defector spoke of the efforts the jihadists were making to indoctrinate the local population – focusing particularly on children.

“They feed the youngsters lies. They tell them ‘we will attack Rome’ and ‘today there was operation in the US’: none of this is true but they say it to seem all powerful. They brag about being labelled ‘terrorists’ by the West,” he said,

“They are working to destroy a whole generation. The ideas they implant will be hard to remove.”

Ultimately it is Syrian citizens, civilians like Abu Ahmed, that have helped the jihadist group become the power that it has.

Abu Ahmed said he had no previous fighting experience. He came from a religious family and had seen his brother and cousins arrested and tortured by the regimes.

He wanted revenge. He was a pragmatist, who said he helped send foreign fighters to Jabhat al-Nusra as well as Isil, despite the enmity of the two groups.

Many of his friends were doing the same; quietly sending men and weapons to the fighters from Turkey.

With short cropped hair and a leather jacket, a cigarette in his mouth, he kept an eye on his surroundings as he spoke, but seemed generally unconcerned by the illegality of his activities.

“Turkish intelligence know what is happening, but they turn a blind eye,” he said with a smile.

Both the defector and the safe house operative agreed that US-led air strikes had done little to degrade the group.

While some members were killed in the strikes, all the “Walis” – top leaders – left an area well before the attacks, they said.

Abu Abdullah said: “When they evacuate a base, they fly their flag from the top of the building. It is a scarecrow for American bombs.”

The group has continued to commit violent atrocities of mass killings and publish the crimes on You Tube.

But this was seen as a necessary evil by Isil supporters, Abu Ahmed said: “Today their target is to build an Islamic State, and they will work to achieve it – whatever the cost. America will lose the game.”

                This entry was posted on Tuesday, 25 November 2014, 12:40 pm and is filed under
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Its Malaysia under threat  – not Malays or Islam – if we aim to be one of the top countries in the world in terms of competitiveness, good governance, rule of law and crackdown on corruption

The Prime Minister and UMNO President, Datuk Seri Najib Razak asked yesterday: “Where have we gone wrong?”

He lamented that whether UMNO had built mosques, set up parent-teacher associations, or provided housing, none of these efforts had translated into political support because UMNO leaders hoarded handouts for their own supporters instead giving it to the community.

Najib asked: “Where have we gone wrong? Is Umno too busy with its internal affairs until it is more important to defend our branch chiefs or higher positions, than to find supporters for Umno?

“Or is it that when we do something – whether to give houses, condominiums, or kind of aid – we give it to our lieutenants rather than our community.”

Najib struck a responsive chord as he received a loud applause and shouts of “”Yes” when posed these questions in his speech at the opening of the Federal Territories Umno convention yesterday.

These are pertinent questions although Najib avoided the real problem plaguing UMNO rule in Malaysia – the rampant corruption and abuse of power highlighted by Najib’s questions.

But Malaysians, Umno and non-Umno, Malays and non-Malays, should be asking a larger question of “Where have we gone wrong” affecting not just UMNO, but the Malaysian nation and people, Malays and non-Malays.

All Malaysians, UMNO and non-Umno, Malays and non-Malays should ask “Where have we gone wrong” that after 57-year UMNO rule and six UMNO Prime Ministers, a former Chief Justice (Tun Abdul Hamid Mohamad) could deliver a keynote address (ucaptama) at the so-called National Unity Convention yesterday warning that  the Malays could suffer a fate similar to Red Indians in the United States unless PAS and UMNO unite to allegedly stop DAP from attaining federal power.

There are many troubling admissions and fallacies in the keynote speech by a former Chief Justice.

Firstly, it seems to be an admission that UMNO, although it claimed to be a party for the Malays,  had failed the Malays after ruling Malaya and then Malaysia for 57 years to the extent that Malays now risk suffering a fate similar to the Red Indians in the United States – and that this horrible outcome could only be averted and the Malays saved from such a fate if PAS unite with UMNO to save the Malays.

Would the UMNO leadership and the UMNO General Assemblies this week agree that UMNO had failed the Malays, politically, economically, educationally, socially, culturally and in every sphere of national life in the past 57 years as to risk the Malay suffering the fate of the Red Indians in the United States, and that UMNO needs the support of PAS to save Malays from this horrible fate?

I will like to see the UMNO President, Najib, Deputy President Tan Sri  Muhyiddin Yassin, UMNO Vice Presidents Datuk Seri Hishammuddin Hussein,  Datuk Seri Zahid Hamidi and Datuk Seri Shafie Apdal, all UMNO leaders and Ministers, as well as the UMNO General Assemblies this week to declare their stand as to whether they agree that they have failed the Malays so badly in 57-year UMNO rule of the country that Malays risk facing a fate similar to the Red Indians in the United States?

Will Najib and Hishammuddi declare that  their respective fathers, Tun Razak and Tun Hussein, had been such  failures as the second and third Prime Ministers so the place the Malays in Malaysia under such a risk?

The “Red Indian warning” has been a favourite ploy of Tun Dr. Mahathir. Is Mahathir admitting that he had been such a n abysmal failure as the fourth Prime Minister of Malaysia for 22 years from 1981 to 2003 that he has left the Malays after over two decades of premiership risking the fate of Red Indians in the United States?

From Mahathir’s tenure as Prime Minister, expenditures in the annual Federal government budgets for Islamic activities increased by leaps and bounds, as illustrated by the following items:

1.	Bahagian Hal Ehwal Islam (precursor to JAKIM)

Increase from RM4.3 million in 1980 to RM125.6 million in 1997 – a 29-fold increase.

2.Jabatan Kemajuan Islam Malaysia (JAKIM)

Increase from RM150.4 million in 1998 to RM783.3 million in 2015 – a five-fold increase.

3.Jabatan Kehakiman Syariah Malaysia (JKSM)

Increase from RM1.7 million 2000 to RM34.3 million in 2015, a 20-fold increase.

4.Jabatan Wakaf, Zakat dan Haji (JAWHAR)

RM1.2 million in 2005 to RM11.6 million in 2015, a nine-fold increase.

5.TV Al-Hijrah

RM40 million in 2014 (new TV station) under the Prime Minister’s Office.

6.Universiti Islam Antarabangsa Malaysia (UIAM)

RM10million in 1985 to RM424 million in 2015, a 42 fold increase

7.Universiti Sains Islam Malaysia (USIM)

RM59 million in 2007 to RM140.7 million in 2015, a 2.4 fold increase

8. Total allocation for above-mentioned  Islamic spending (operational and development)

RM4.3m in 1980 to RM1.6 billion in 2015, a 375 fold increase.

After a 375-fold increase in the annual government budgeting for above-mentioned programmes and activities to promote Islam, from RM4.3 million in 1980 to RM1.6 billion, do UMNO leaders really want Malaysians to believe that all such expenditures were a total waste as not only Malays, but Islam as well in Malaysia is under siege?

Malays and Islam is not under threat. Umno is under threat and is fighting for its political life.

UMNO  should reform and advocate a more inclusive approach and policy focussing of good governance, closing the gap between the rich and poor, restoring the rule of law and independence of national institutions, and combat corruption instead of resorting to high-handed rule and the irresponsible race and religious rhetoric and politics of hatred to save its political life.

If Malays and Islam is under threat, then it should be the concern and challenge of all Malaysians, including the Chinese, Indians, Kadazans and Ibans well as Buddhists, Christians, Hindus and Taoists to help to find a solution , just Malays and Muslims should regard it as a Malaysian problem which should concern them as well if the Chinese, Indians, Kadazans, Ibans or Buddhism, Christianity, Hindium, Sikkhism, Taoism are under threat!

This concept may sound strange and alien particularly at a period of heightened racial and religious polarisation in the country.

What Malaysia needs today is to have the resolve for more political and economic institutions which are inclusive for the country to compete with the best in the world, instead of closed-mind exclusive institutions and mechanisms  which will condemn the country to be inferior as the eternal slaves of the in the government outfits.

What Malaysia needs today are more political and economic institutions which are inclusive so that Malaysia can compete with the best in the world, instead of a closed-mind exclusive institutions and mechanisms  that will condemn Malaysia to inferior and “also ran”status in the competition with other countries.

It is Malaysia that is under threat  – not Malays or Islam – if we aim to be one of the top countries in the world in terms of competitiveness, good governance, rule of law and crackdown on corruption

We all have a common Malaysian Dream which  envisions a plural society where all her citizens are united as one people, rising above their ethnic, religious, cultural and linguistic differences as the common grounds binding them as one citizenship exceed the differences that divide them because of their ethnic, religious, linguistic and cultural divisions .

We all owe undivided loyalty to the country, we share in one motherland and we come together as one people to develop the greatness of the country deriving from the best from the diverse races, religions and cultures which have made a home in Malaysia so that Malaysia can become one of the leading nations of the world in all fields of human endeavour.

(Speech at the Rocketkini forum “Are Malays and Islam under threat?” at Mandarin Court Hotel, Kuala Lumpur on Monday, 24th November 2014 at 8 pm)

                This entry was posted on Tuesday, 25 November 2014, 6:52 am and is filed under
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Malaysia reaping inequality, corruption and racial envy from race-based policies

by Anisah Shukry

The Malaysian Insider

25 November 2014

Malaysia’s affirmative action policies in the past 40 years have created a culture of dependency, corruption and racial envy, a prominent Malaysian economist said today.

Tan Sri Dr Kamal Salih, an adjunct professor of Economics and Development Studies at Universiti Malaya (UM) said that the benefits of the development policies did not truly extend beyond the first 20 years of the New Economic Policy’s (NEP) implementation.

“The problem over the decades involved has not been with the intent nor the content of the NEP and its successors, but the manner of their implementation, which have produced new inequalities, poverty and vulnerabilities in the development process.

“While no further progress has been made in reducing inequality in income distribution over the last decade, the NEP had resulted instead in creating a culture of dependency, corruption and racial envy.”

Successive policies after the NEP, like the National Development Policy (NDP) and National Vision Policy (NVP), also had the same consequences as inequality in wealth distribution was not addressed, he said.

Kamal said this in his keynote speech at the launch of the Malaysia Human Development Report (MHDR) 2013 at the Pacific Regency Hotel in Kuala Lumpur today.

Kamal was the lead author of the report, which revealed that the formation of the middle class was fastest during the implementation of the NEP in the 20-year period involved.

“However, throughout the entire period until now, the size of the middle class… has remained relatively small for Malaysia, trending around the 20% when in comparison in a typical developed country situation, the percentage is closer to 50-55%.”

He said the middle class was defined by the World Bank as those households positioned between 20% of the median income.

Kamal added that NEP-based ethnic classification was becoming less relevant when tackling equity in development, noting that inequality in Malaysia went beyond race.

The policies were aimed at bringing Malays and Bumiputeras to be on a par economically with other ethnic groups.

But the study showed that inequality had also grown within ethnic groups. Wealth gaps between ethnic groups as a whole did close, but resulted in the creation of a class divide.

“While the bottom 50% has wages/salaries making up 97% of their purchasing power, the upper part of the middle class would exhibit a similar pattern to the upper 50% with contribution from wealth effects approaching 11% and increasing as they climb the income ladder.

“In other words, on the basis of household fiscal capability Malaysia essentially exhibits a two-class social stratification, with inequality diminishing between ethnicities but within-group income gaps rising more and more to obliterate the NEP-based ethnic classification as a relevant issue of equity in development.

“Income inequalities then become essentially a question of class. This would be good news for some, while not so for others!”

He added that the New Economic Model’s (NEM) emphasis on the bottom 40% overlooked “vertical and horizontal equity” in development, such as institutional issues, corruption and rent-seeking behaviour.

“In my view, a piecemeal and project-oriented approach will not do the job, only a comprehensive reform of policies and institutions will set the course of the country’s development in its proper path onwards to economic growth and social justice.” – November 25, 2014.

                This entry was posted on Tuesday, 25 November 2014, 5:18 pm and is filed under
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UMNO must draw the line in the sand and the UMNO General Assembly this week is the last opportunity for UMNO to  demonstrate whether it stands for moderation or extremism

The Prime Minister and UMNO President, Datuk Seri Najib Razak  asked the very pertinent question on Sunday at the Federal Territories UMNO Convention on Sunday, “Where have we gone wrong?”, lamenting that whether UMNO had built mosques, set up parent-teacher associations or provided housing, none of these efforts had translated into political support because UMNO leaders hoarded handouts for their own supporters instead of giving it to the community.

Two former Prime Ministers and UMNO Presidents have given different responses to Najib’s question.

In his blog,  Malaysia’s fourth Prime Minister Tun Dr. Mahathir Mohamad blamed the “warlord” mentality in UMNO, and urged the UMNO delegates at this week’s UMNO General Assembly to criticize the party leadership on several issues which are “hot” now.

He said previous UMNO Presidents had also been criticized and emerged victorious afterwards, citing as examples Tunku Abdul Rahman, Tun Razak and Tun Hussein.

He said he himself was “attacked and almost lost my position”.

Would UMNO delegates speak up on the various “hot” issues in the country, the most  prominent being the multi-billion ringgit 1MDB scandal, the new unfolding and another multi-billion ringgit Pembinaan PFI Sdn Bhd scandal, the old but still very potent multi-billion ringgit PKFZ scandal following the decision of the Port Klang Authority to withdraw its RM720 million suit against turnkey contractor Kuala Dimensi Sdn. Bhd, the rampant corruption in the country with not a single shark or tiger netted in the anti-corruption campaign in the past four decades; deteriorating educational  standards under  Malaysia’s national education system with  even  UMNO leaders having no confidence by sending their children to private or international schools, the worsening Gini Co-Efficient in Malaysia reflecting worsening income inequality or the latest Global Terrorism Index 2014 with Malaysia shooting to the Top 50 countries with terrorism problems?

Mahathir is right – there is very little confidence that these real issues would be debated as dominating the UMNO General Assembly will be the racial and religious rhetoric, hysterics and histrionics.

Malaysia’s fifth Prime Minsiter, Tun Abdullah Ahmad Badawi has a different take in his blog today.

He said UMNO should be a party that leads all Malaysians, although it is a party for Malays and Bumiputeras.

He   cautioned Umno leaders to not point fingers or offend others in chasing the Malay agenda in this week’s party general assembly.

He finds it  “sad and worrying” that “many feel that UMNO supports extremist elements”.

When  was  the last time that the UMNO General Assembly has any positive  news for the other communities? It is “good news” for nation-building if any UMNO General Assembly does not imply negative news for the other communities.

Is this the way for UMNO, to use Abdullah’s words,   to be a party for all Malaysians?

UMNO must draw the line in the sand, and the UMNO General Assembly this week is  in fact the last opportunity for UMNO to demonstrate whether it stands for moderation or extremism.

After governing the nation for 57 years, UMNO should be more and more inclusive and less and less exclusive – but the reverse is taking place, becoming even more exclusive and less inclusive than in the past.

The so-called National Unity Convention, which should be more correctly termed National Disunity Convention, where the keynote message by a former Chief Justice  is that the Malays are in dire straits and could suffer a fate similar to Red Indians in the United States unless PAS and UMNO unite to allegedly stop DAP from attaining federal power (when DAP had never said or believed that it could attain federal power without being part of a Malay-dominated political coalition)  highlights UMNO’s lurch towards greater exclusiveness instead of towards greater inclusiveness.

The “Red Indians” warning is a favourite cry of Dr. Mahathir, even after he stepped down as the Prime Minister of Malaysia for 22 years.

Mahathir asked the same question as Najib on Sunday,  as “What went wrong?” was the first chapter of his book “The Malay Dilemma”.which he wrote in 1970.

Will the delegates of the UMNO General Assembly dissect “What went wrong” with the 22-year Mahathir premiership that after his retirement as the longest Prime Minister in Malaysian history, Malays are purportedly facing the risk of becoming Red Indians in the United States?

What would be the response of the first three Prime Ministers to Najib’s question: “Where have we gone wrong”.

We can only speculate.

Tunku would probably lament the rise of politics of hate,  intolerance and bigotry which has seen the country plunged to its worst racial and religious polarization in the nation’s history.

Razak would probably regret the rampant abuse of power by those in authority and power, who have lost the ability to see the important distinctions among government, party and self, causing a greater disability to grasp what is right and wrong.

Hussein would definitely lament the rampant corruption in high political places. When he was Prime Minister, he insisted on tabling a White Paper in 1979 on the Price Waterhouse Report on the Bank Rakyat scandal, which involved malpractices, mismanagement and misuse of public trust and funds to the tune of RM65 million.

This sum is now chickenfeed, for financial scandals are in the tens of billions of ringgit which do not cause the Prime Minister or Finance Minister (or one who is both) to bat an eyelid!

Hussein would be thorough shocked that there is neither White Paper or ministerial statement on the multi-billion ringgit scandals, whether 1MDB, Pembinaan PFI Sdn. Bhd or the latest in the PKFZ scandals when he had insisted on issuing a White Paper over a RM65 million financial scandal!

“What went wrong?”

What will be Mahathir’s answer in 2014 compared to what he wrote in 1970?

                This entry was posted on Tuesday, 25 November 2014, 3:58 pm and is filed under
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What to expect from Umno’s ‘sound and fury’ show

— Koon Yew Yin

Malay Mail Online

NOVEMBER 24, 2014

KUALA LUMPUR, Nov 24 — Students of English literature, a subject which has unfortunately been abandoned by our Malay-centric schools, will remember these lines from Shakespeare’s famous play ”Macbeth”:

To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,

Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,

To the last syllable of recorded time;

And all our yesterdays have lighted fools

The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!

Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player,

That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,

And then is heard no more. It is a tale

Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,

Signifying nothing.

These lines remind me of the coming UMNO General Assembly meeting.

Will this much hyped event be the last act of a very bad play, an idiot’s tale full of bombast and melodrama but without meaning?

Already, Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin has gone on record to say “UMNO must change or be changed”. He is the latest of a long line of UMNO leaders who have been reading from the same old tired script, promising a reformed UMNO. However, to date, nothing has changed.

Within UMNO as the deputy prime minister has admitted “there are still fights for positions, money politics, carelessness, negligence and forgetfulness, and this includes the party’s wings”.

He has conveniently omitted mentioning the other fights which UMNO leaders are engaged in outside the party – fanning crude racism, encouraging Islamic bigotry and dominance, and fostering a culture of extremism, hate and intolerance.

Umno: Looking backwards

Tan Sri Muhyiddin has not forgotten about race, religion and “ketuanan Melayu” in his admission of infighting within the party.  In fact, according to his interviews with the UMNO aligned media, he wants UMNO delegates to focus on these same hot topics.

It is in Muhyiddin’s and UMNO’s dominant leadership’s genes to be “Malays first and Malaysians second.” That is why the party’s carefully chosen speakers at the assembly – UMNO president Najib, deputy president Muhyiddin and others will engage in the usual “sound and fury, signifying nothing” show.  All that will likely emerge from the meeting then is:

1.  a renewed round of threats, bullying and attempted blackmailing of the country’s minority communities, especially the Chinese, East Malaysia non-Malay Bumiputra and non-Islamic communities

2.  a further appeal to the Malays to recognise that the community, Islam, Malay royalty, Malay business class, etc; need to support UMNO or the non-Malays will take over the country

Umno: Looking forward

But I, and many other Malaysians, have not lost hope entirely. There must be individuals and groups in the party that know of the cancer and culture of corruption, authoritarianism, greed, self enrichment and opportunism within the party which many of the top leaders are bent on spreading to the rest of the country.

Surely, in a party with millions of members, there must be many of integrity, decency and sensibility who know that the party – in its present condition – is the Malay community’s worst enemy. Surely realistic platforms for real reform and change can be put up for discussion instead of the bashing of vernacular schools and self concocted enemies of Islam, royalty and the Malays. .

The main aim of this UMNO meeting should be to formulate policies to make Malaysia a developed nation; and to make the Malays a respected community that can stand on its own feet and without the need for crutches, keris-wielding or name-calling.

This group of moderate and honorable members must change the policies that have not worked. They must push out the leaders who have not performed and replace them with new blood that does not seek to make the non-Bumiputra the scapegoat for everything wrong or bad that happens in the Malay community.

Only in this way then can UMNO deserve its leadership position in Malaysian politics.

                This entry was posted on Tuesday, 25 November 2014, 12:34 pm and is filed under
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