Attempts to disqualify Anwar and Karpal as MPs and to hold by-elections in Permatang Pauh and  Bukit Gelugor fly in the face of Najib’s claim that he is serious about national reconciliation and national consensus

(Speech 2 in Dewan Rakyat when taking part in the debate on Motion of Thanks for the Royal Address on Thursday, 13th March 2014)

The traumatic and heart-rending MH370 tragedy is not the only event to darken the horizon of the country in the past week.

The other two somber developments of the country were the attempts to disqualify the Parliamentary Opposition Leader Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim and the DAP National Chairman Karpal Singh as Members of Parliament and to hold parliamentary by-elections in the Permatang Pauh and Bukit Gelugor constituencies, the former probably as early as before the next Parliamentary meeting in June.

The attempts to disqualify Anwar and Karpal as MPs fly in face of the claim by the Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Najib Razak that he is serious about national reconciliation and national consensus and is prepared to rise above partisan differences to end national drift and loss of leadership and direction in the country in the past 10 months since the 13th General Elections.

In his written reply to the PAS President Datuk Seri Abdul Hadi Awang on National Reconciliation Plan, Najib smuggled for the first time in the past 10 months a reference to the 1Malaysia Policy, which he seemed to have forgotten or abandoned although he promulgated as his signature policy when he first became Prime Minister in April 2009.

He said his concept of  National Reconciliation was “selari dengan Gagasan 1Malaysia, yang bertujuan memupuk semangat kebersamaan di kalangan rakyat, untuk turut sama-sama berperanan membina Negara Malaysia yang bersatu padu, dalam mendepani cabaran masa depan”.

Has Najib got the Deputy Prime Minister, Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin, to endorse both the 1Malaysia Plan and the National Reconciliation Plan by declaring that he, Muhyiddin, is now “Malaysian first, Malay second”?

If not, how meaningful can Najib’s National Reconciliation Plan be when the 1Malaysia policy is even repudiated by former Prime Minister Tun Mahathir who had gone on public record to declare two things: firstly, that he did not understand what 1Malaysia is all about; and secondly, he had never seen worse racial and religious polarization during during Najib’s 1Malaysia policy!

What is Najib’s answer to the worst racial and religious polarisation in post-13GE compared to any other time in the nation’s 56-year history and which led the National Unity Consultative Council (NUCC) to warn only last month that the Najib administration’s failure to act swiftly when dealing with racial and religiously sensitive incidents could lead to “serious consequences”?

The NUCC said in a statement that Putrajaya must move quickly as rising religious tensions could eventually hamper efforts to promote national unity.

It urged the Najib government “to uphold the rule of law and to actively promote national unity by taking prompt action against incendiary statements and actions which are provocative and can lead to conflict and tension with serious consequences affecting peace, harmony and national unity”.

What is Najib’s response to the NUCC call and the general expectation of the Malaysian citizenry that the government would be pro-active and even pre-emptive in taking measures to slap down and halt the increasing incidents of the incitement of racial and religious hatred and tensions through the spread of lies and falsehoods, to pit race against race and religion and religion, even if it would set the multi-racial, multi-lingual, multi-religious and multi-cultural nation in flames?

Instead of the promise of pro-active and pre-emptive action to save the country by giving no room or space for the evil and nefarious designs of the merchants and vendors of hate and violence, all that Najib suggested in his blog post “A national reconciliation update” at the end of last month was  that Malaysians should just ignore the demands of the instigators and extremists, i.e. “Don’t give them the air time or the publicity”.

I could not think of a more inane, useless or irresponsible plan to save the country from the sinister and nefarious forces out to pit race against race and religion against religion and to create racial chaos and religious conflagration, especially when it is the UMNO and BN-controlled printed, electronic and social media which gave precious oxygen to such instigators by sensationalising their extremist demands– in particular Utusan Malaysia and the UMNO/BN controlled electronic media of radio and television.

Will Najib immediately issue a directive to Utusan Malaysia and all Umno/BN-controlled printed, electronic and social media to stop giving oxygen to these instigators and extremists by denying them the “publicity they crave”?

If Najib is not prepared to issue such a directive, is he not condoning the instigators and extremists in their dastardly act of trying to pit race against race and religion against religion through the incessant incitement of racial and religious hatred and tensions with lies and falsehoods?

The least I had expected is an announcement by the Prime Minister serving a final warning to all and sundry that the government and all the forces at its command, including the police and the Attorney-General’s chambers, would be deployed to ensure that peace, harmony, progress and prosperity of all Malaysians would not be jeopardised or destroyed by the evil designs of a treacherous few who want to create racial chaos and religious conflagration through incessant incitement of racial and religious hatred and tensions with lies and falsehoods.

But Najib lacks such political will, commitment, leadership and vision to save Malaysia from the instigators and extremists set on creating racial chaos and religious conflagration through the ceaseless incitement of racial and religious hatred and tensions with lies and falsehoods.

All he is asking Malaysians is to “destroy” the instigators and extremists “by having faith in yourself and your fellow Malaysians”.

No talk that the full weight of the law would be brought to bear on anyone who preaches hate seeking to pit race against race and religion against religion to cause racial chaos and religious conflagration!

If this is all Najib could prescribe to ensure peace, harmony, progress and prosperity for all Malaysians, then he should not be Prime Minister as his proper vocation would be a Good Samaritan preaching from street to street and village to village to all mankind to do good and avoid harm to others!

Why the sudden compassion by Najib for the instigators and extremists who are out to set the plural Malaysian nation aflame?

And what is the use of the police, the Attorney-General’s Chambers and other national institutions if these instigators and extremists are suddenly to be given the powers of “immunity and impunity” to break the laws of the country and tear the country asunder?

Five things happened in the 28 days between Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak’s announcement of a National Reconciliation Plan (NRP) after the Cabinet meeting of January 29 and his blog-post on Feb. 25 on “A national reconciliation update” which raise serious questions whether the Najib premiership is really serious about national reconciliation, national unity and national consensus.

These five incidents are:

1. Although Najib’s post-Cabinet announcement of an NRP on Jan 29 was in response to Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim’s offer of an olive branch on Jan 26 to Barisan Nasional on behalf of Pakatan Rakyat for a “national consensus” to end the voices of hate and to move the nation forward, nothing was done in the past 30 days to convene a summit meeting of BN-PR leaders on “national reconciliation”.

2. Najib conspicuously turned his back on the world-wide celebration of “World Interfaith Harmony Week 2014” (Feb. 3 – 9) not participating in any function to mark the occasion, although on the first day of the World Interfaith Harmony Week last year, he set the pace on the observance of the global interfaith harmony week and visited the places of worship of the nation’s five main religions in Kuala Lumpur.

3. The Feb. 6 “chicken and slap” demonstration by self-styled “Council of Islamic NGOs” offering a reward of RM500 (later raised to RM1,200 and then RM2,000) to anyone who slapped DAP National Vice Chairperson and MP for Seputeh Teresa Kok followed by the “chicken-slaughtering and blood-smearing” of the images of DAP and Pakatan Rakyat leaders – in the process committing a slew of offences including criminal intimidation, sedition, incitement of violence against a woman, incitement of violence against an MP and incitement of another May 13 riots. Up to now, the police have not acted against the “Council of Islamic NGOs” protestors for a battery of criminal offences.

4. Resignation of P Waythamoorthy as Deputy Minister on Feb 10 for Najib’s “betrayal in historical terms to the entire Indian people” in not fulfilling the promises he made in the MOU the BN signed with Persatuan Hindraf Malaysia (PHB) before the 13GE, clearly a message that Najib will not honour his commitment to provide a fair deal to minority communities. This is a great blow to any serious talk of “national reconciliation”.

5. The vicious, malevolent and hate-filled reactions to the proposal by the Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department, Tan Sri Joseph Kurup on Feb. 22 for the omission of the “race” category in all official forms in the country as a major step towards creating a single national identity – like the vitriolic article by Utusan Malaysia (official UMNO newspaper) editor Datuk Zaini Hassan warning that Joseph Kurup’s suggestion was the first step to convince Malays to surrender their bumiputera status and other privileges afforded to the community.

Since the 13th General Elections on May 5 last year, the country has been confronted by a sextuplet of national crisis, viz:

Firstly, the crisis of nation building and national unity highlighted by the worst racial and religious polarisation in the nation’s history. It is sad that up to now, the Cabinet has failed to re-affirm the 10-Point Solution endorsed by the Cabinet in April 2011 to resolve the Bible controversy, with the Deputy Prime Minister and members of the Cabinet openly breaking ranks with the 10-Point Solution.

Secondly, the deepening economic crisis caused by the series of price hikes and looming avalanche of more price hikes in the coming weeks and months culminating in the introduction of the GST at six per cent in April 2015;

Thirdly, the crisis on the corruption front with no signs that there will be a serious campaign to fight “grand corruption” and end the colossal waste, extravagance and misuse of public funds.

Last week, when Najib said he was “prepared to put the nation’s long-term interest before his short-term popularity”, he  about “decades” before his anti-corruption efforts could bear fruit –in effect ruling out any effective anti-corruption results  during his tenure as Prime Minister.

In China, the anti-corruption drive under the leadership of the Chinese President Xi Jinping is probing and re-opening the corruption scandals  in the construction of the world’s biggest dam,  the US$60 billion Three Gorges dam, going back more than two decades to 1992 when work on the dam first started.

Is Najib prepared to re-open the corruption scandals in Malaysia in the past two decades, covering premiership not only of his predecessor, Tun Abdullah but  also of Tun Mahathir  as well?

Is Najib prepared to open the files covering the past two decades in the battle against corruption?

Fourthly, the crisis of deteriorating national educational standards to the extent that both the Prime Minister and Deputy Prime Minister have studiously avoided talking for even once about Malaysia’s poor performance in 2011 TIMSS and 2012 PISA.

Whether at the primary, secondary or tertiary levels, Malaysia’s educational system is performing dismally.

Dare the Education Minister Muhyiddin make a Ministerial statement in Parliament to explain why  Singapore can get two universities for four consecutive years into the  Times Higher Education (THE) Top 100 Universities World Reputation Rankings and THE World University Rankings for Top 400 but not a single one from Malaysia?

Fifthly, the crisis of security and safety of citizens, investors and tourists as the police has still to transform itself into an efficient, independent, professional world-class police service dedicated to “democratic policing” and not just “regime-protection” even if it means gross violation of international human rights norms and standards.

The killing of one police corporal Kpl Raja Aizam Raja Mohd and the wounding of another, Kpl Mohd Aidil Mustafa  by illegal foreigners in Klang early this month in facty  mark a new phase of the Malaysian security situation – not only ordinary Malaysians but even police do not feel safe in their own country!

Sixthly, Malaysia’s return to the nightmare of the depredations of the independence, impartiality and integrity of the judiciary – the dark days of a compromised judiciary in the late eighties and nineties.

When Tan Sri Dzaiddin was appointed the new Chief Justice of the Federal Court in December 2000, there were high expectations that Malaysia would start the difficult but important task to restore public confidence in the independence, impartiality and integrity of the judiciary, but during his term of office of less than three years, he could only stop the rot in the judiciary but was unable to launch wide-ranging judicial reforms to restore public confidence in the judiciary.

What happened to Anwar and Karpal, where the judiciary became the tools of the Executive to carry out its dirty work of disqualifying Pakatan Rakyat leaders from the elected legislatures of the country, whether Parliament or the Selangor State Assembly, have brought back the the nightmare of the judiciary of disrepute of the late eighties and nineties.

The Chief Justice Tun Arifin Zakaria has denied that the judiciary has regressed to its compromised past as in the late eighties and the nineties.

What else do we expect Tun Arifin to say? Did the Lord President and later Chief Justice of the Federal Court  of the “Dark Ages” of the Malaysian judiciary, Tun Hamid and the Tun Eusoff Chin admit their guilt of presiding over discredited, disreputable and compromised judiciary during  their time?

Is Najib prepared to work with the Pakatan Rakyat on a National Reconciliation Plan to address to resolve this sextuplet of national crisis?

From the recent persecutions of Anwar and Karpal, the answer seems to be in the negative.

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Boeing: MH370 not subject to FAA inspection order

The Malay Mail Online

March 13, 2014

WASHINGTON, March 13 — Boeing Co yesterday said the missing 777 Malaysia Airlines jetliner was not subject to a new US safety directive that ordered additional inspections for cracking and corrosion on certain 777 planes.

The Federal Aviation Administration last week ordered additional, repeated inspections of certain Boeing 777 aircraft, warning that corrosion and cracking could lead to rapid decompression and damage to the structure of the aircraft.

The Federal Aviation Administration told airlines to inspect US registered aircraft for cracking, corrosion and potential repairs after receiving a report about a 16-inch crack in the fuselage skin underneath an adapter for the airplane’s satellite communications antenna.

Boeing said it worked closely with the FAA to monitor the fleet for potential safety issues and take appropriate actions.

But it said the 777-200ER Malaysia Airlines aircraft did not have that antenna installed and was not subject to the FAA order.

An FAA spokesman on Wednesday also cautioned against linking the directive, one of hundreds issued annually by the agency, to the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines flight MH370.

“There is absolutely no indication whatsoever that this had anything to do with the accident,” said the spokesman, who also noted that airplanes were built with redundancies in the fuselage and inspection process to catch cracks or corrosion before they got bigger and caused problems.

The FAA first proposed the additional inspections for 120 US-registered aircraft in September before finalising the directive in February and then publishing them in the US Federal Register on March 5.

The new rule takes effect April 9.

“We are issuing this airworthiness directive to detect and correct cracking and corrosion in the fuselage skin, which could lead to rapid decompression and loss of structural integrity of the airplane,” the agency said in the directive.

Aviation authorities in other countries typically follow the FAA’s lead in issuing such directives, but it was not immediately clear if Malaysia had already followed suit.

A dozen countries, using 42 ships and 39 aircraft, are helping to search for the missing plane, which disappeared Saturday less than hour after taking off from Kuala Lumpur with 239 people on board. — Reuters

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Call for immediate formation of Parliamentary Select Committee on Disasters to give full support to MH 370 “search and rescue” operation and to conduct investigations after SAR ops to address all queries on the MH 370 tragedy

(Speech in Dewan Rakyat when taking part in the debate on Motion of Thanks for the Royal Address on Thursday, 13th March 2014)

I rise with a heavy heart to take part in the Motion of Thanks  on the Royal Address.

This is the sixth day of the disappearance of MH 370 with 239 passengers and crew, and what has made the past five days so excruciating and tormenting to the families, relatives and friends of the 239 people on board and well-wishers regardless of race, religion, political affiliation or nationality  in Malaysia and world-wide is that nothing has been found despite a massive multi-national SAR operation involving 35 aircraft and 42 vessels  to give any clue as to  what actually happened or to indicate the final location of the aircraft.

With each  passing day, our  hopes and prayers that the 239 passengers and crew of MH 370 can survive safely through their ordeal become more and more tenuous, but even so, we must not give up hope and must continue to pray for a miracle for MH 370.

All Malaysians, in fact all humanity, regardless of race, religion, politics or nationality,  have come together as one to pray for the safety of the 239 passengers and crew on board MH 370.

We cannot pretend that many questions are not being asked, whether by the aggrieved families, relatives and friends or by the humanity at large, whether  in Malaysia or internationally, and which increase with each passing day, about the MH 370 tragedy, but the answers to  these questions will have to wait as the  sole focus and priority  must be to  find the aircraft.

Malaysians and the world, however,  must be assured that at the right time and place, answers to all the questions that are being asked in the country and worldwide will be found.

The Malaysian Parliament  which represents all Malaysians must play its role in this MH 370 tragedy, not only giving full support to all the efforts in the “search and rescue” efforts by the government and the various agencies but also subsequently to conduct full investigations into the MH 370 tragedy and  its  various controversies and confusions, including:

Why the Prime Minister and the Acting Transport Minister had not been informed immediately when  MH 370 with 239 people on board went missing as they only knew about it several crucial hours later;

Whether  a Search and Rescue Operation (SAR) mission was initiated immediately at least within an hour of the “missing” aircraft as delays will result in SAR aircraft equipped with systems like forward-looking infrared being unable to detect the “heat signature” from the engine fuselage and bodies;

When contact with the aircraft was lost, whether 1.30 am Malaysian time, about an hour after take-off from Kuala Lumpur International Airport or 2.40 am;

The confusion over “stolen passports”, whether two or four, whether with “Asian features”, “blacks” or “Iranians”;

The confusion over “checked baggages”, with contradictory and confusing statements by the Director of Civil Aviation, the Inspector-General of Police and the Malaysian Airlines;

Whether the plane veered off course, resulting in the expansion of the search area from South China Sea to the Straits of Malacca and Andaman Sea?

For this reason, I call for the  immediate formation of a Parliamentary Select Committee on Disasters to give full support to MH 370 “search and rescue” operation and to  hold itself in readiness to conduct investigations after SAR ops to address all queries on the MH 370 tragedy.

I hope the Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Najib Razak  and the Acting Transport Minister Datuk Seri Hishammuddin Hussein can give their full support to this proposal.

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Chinese satellite images key on Day 6 of search for MH370

The Malay Mail Online

March 13, 2014

KUALA LUMPUR, March 13 — A Chinese satellite hunting for the missing Malaysian jet detected three floating objects at sea along Flight 370’s intended route, the latest lead for investigators on the sixth day of a multi-nation search.

Images showed the pieces were as large as 24 metres by 22 metres, China’s State Administration of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defense said on its website. The pictures were taken on March 9, the day after the Boeing Co. 777-200 vanished while flying to Beijing from Kuala Lumpur. Malaysian Airline System Bhd. is verifying the data with the search and rescue team, said Lincoln Lee, a spokesman.

“People will be watching closely today,” said Jeff Walker, an aviation security consultant at JKG Global Group in Sydney. “The Chinese have very good equipment, so let’s wait and see if it’s the wreckage.”

China’s report, which placed the location near the confluence of the South China Sea and Gulf of Thailand, follows other leads that haven’t panned out so far. A dozen nations have been scouring the ocean and land with at least 42 ships and 39 aircraft for the plane carrying 239 passengers and crew.

China will keep working to “optimize the image areas, analyze data and continue to search for the missing Malaysian Airline flight according to the developments,” the administration said on its website.

Floating Objects

The smaller “suspected floating objects” measured 13 by 18 metres and 14 by 19 metres, according to the website. The satellite found the items in a radius of 20 kilometres around a point of 105.63º east longitude，6.7º north latitude, according to the site.

The -200 version of the 777, Boeing’s biggest twin-engine model, is 64 metres long and has a 61-metre wingspan, according to the company’s website.

The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency is supporting the Department of Defense to find the missing aircraft, said spokesman Donald Kerr in an e-mailed statement. DoD is following up on all leads on the potential path of the aircraft, and is assisting US Pacific Command in their wide area search for debris fields.

Boeing said it already has investigators on site to assist the US National Transportation Safety Board. These teams would probably include 777 structures experts who can quickly identify crucial aircraft components, said John Purvis, a retired accident investigator who headed Boeing’s investigations unit for much of the 1980s and 1990s.

Soda Cans

Miles Kotay, a Boeing spokesman, wouldn’t say whether the world’s largest planemaker is reviewing the satellite imagery to determine whether the pieces came from the Malaysian Air jet.

“While we stand ready to assist investigators as needed, we do not comment on specifics,” Kotay said in an email.

Air patrols resumed at daybreak today after a multinational flotilla searched overnight, and China’s satellite photos put the waters north and east of Malaysia back as a central focus of the hunt for the missing 777.

The relatively shallow waters of the Gulf of Thailand should make it easier to locate the large pieces, which are probably no longer floating on the surface, said Purvis. Ships equipped with special sensors will be listening for pulses emitted by “pingers,” about the size of soda cans, attached to the so-called black boxes.

Pingers

“They’ve got 25 days left on their 30-day pingers,” said Purvis, who was involved in search and recovery efforts of TWA flight 800, the Pan Am crash in Lockerbie, Scotland and other disasters.

During probes of aircraft that ditched in the sea, Boeing personnel frequently head out on ships and barges searching for fragments of the missing aircraft, Purvis said. They can quickly tell if structures discovered by subsurface cameras would be critical to the investigation and worth the cost of hauling to the surface.

Flight 370’s route took it over the Gulf of Thailand, where the plane was approaching Vietnamese airspace when controllers lost contact. Signals from the jet’s transponder, a beacon that helps increase the plane’s visibility on radar screens, also ended then.

A Vietnamese search crew came up empty yesterday after searching the Vung Tau area in the southeast in response to a tip from an oil-rig worker who reported what looked to be a plane on fire. That was the area where a plane reported metal debris earlier this week, according to Vietnam’s Civil Aviation Authority.

Various Theories

The absence of wreckage has kept alive various theories about the plane’s disappearance, from an accident to hijacking to sabotage. The ships and aircraft are scouring waters on both sides of Peninsular Malaysia.

While the Gulf of Thailand initially took primacy in the hunt because of Flight 370’s last known position,Malaysia expanded the search this week to the Malacca Strait. Yesterday, Malaysia sought help from U.S. investigators in interpreting an unexplained radar blip detected over the strait, far from the jet’s route.

China, whose 153 citizens were the most of any nationality on the plane, had prodded Malaysia to conduct an immediate investigation into whether Flight 370 changed course, Qin Gang, a foreign ministry spokesman, said yesterday in a statement.

“This is unprecedented, what we are going through,” Acting Transport Minister Datuk Seri Hishammuddin Hussein told reporters yesterday in Kuala Lumpur.

“Coordinating so many countries together is not something that is easy.” — Bloomberg

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Experts slam Malaysia’s struggle to chart MH370 crisis

The Malay Mail Online

March 12, 2014

BANGKOK, March 12 — Criticised for contradictory statements, slow reactions and a lack of information, the “incompetence” of Malaysian authorities in communicating effectively during a crisis on the scale of its missing jet is painfully evident, analysts say.

With the search for flight MH370 now swinging away from the original zone, the airline and the government are accused of floundering as they face increasing demands for clarity.

“They have not experienced anything of this magnitude. It’s a bit difficult for them to grasp the scale,” Shukor Yusof, aviation analyst at Standard and Poor’s Capital IQ, told AFP.

Malaysia Airlines (MAS) has issued more than a dozen statements to the media since the disappearance, including the full flight manifest, details of the search and rescue operation, and offered support to families while authorities have given regular briefings.

The airline has also offered to fly relatives to Kuala Lumpur to be closer to the search and has made 31,000 yuan (RM16,600) available to the family of each missing passenger.

Some experts in public relations said the airline was doing its best in unprecedented circumstances.

But Yusof said the authorities had at times appeared “abrasive” and “flippant”, while airline representatives had seemed “lacking in contrition” which belied poor staff training for crisis situations.

“This is an extremely serious tragedy and it has to be treated as such… I think communication has been very poor,” he said.

‘Unforgivable’

Both the MAS updates and those from aviation chiefs have been under intense scrutiny from the press, public and international community since the flight disappeared en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing early Saturday with 239 people on board.

Social media erupted today after Malaysia confirmed it had taken the search northwest to the Andaman Sea — far from MH370’s intended flight path.

“Why so many unconfirmed accounts? Don’t know what is the real info,” posted one Twitter user.

China — which had 153 nationals aboard — has slammed Malaysia for a lack of information, while anguished relatives say the airline has been slow to communicate with them.

Adding to the confusion, MAS backtracked on a statement about the focus of the search yesterday.

And Malaysia’s air force chief meanwhile denied telling local media that the Boeing 777 had been detected in the Malacca Strait, far from its planned flight path.

For the plane to go missing is bad enough, “but then for the responsible country’s government and aviation agencies to handle the associated information with total incompetence is unforgivable”, David Learmount, operations and safety editor at industry magazine Flightglobal, wrote.

Senior Malaysian opposition figure Lim Kit Siang has also questioned why senior ministers were not more quickly informed about the missing plane.

“There are many questions about crisis management — for instance, why the prime minister and the acting transport minister were not informed immediately when the MH370… went missing, as they only knew about it several crucial hours later,” he said in a statement Sunday.

There was also some unwanted embarrassment when the transport ministry was forced to clarify comments by Malaysia’s civil aviation chief, in which he referred to black Italian footballer Mario Balotelli when discussing two suspect passengers on the jet.

‘Difficult conversations’

But without a breakthrough in the search, some experts say there is little more the airline can do.

“In the absence of literally any information about the fate of the Malaysia Airlines plane it would be astonishing if there were not major criticism of the airline from the families,” said Peter Hirsch, US-based director of reputation risk for Ogilvy Public Relations.

“On balance, the airline seems to be doing what it can.”

Authorities will “almost inevitably” make mistakes in their communication, said aviation crisis management expert John Bailey.

“When was the last time that any of these individuals were involved in something on this scale? They quite possibly have not undergone training in what to expect and what to focus on.”

“The real communication challenge for the airline and for all the other parties involved with this is dealing with the families. Managing their expectations over what’s going to happen next — those are very difficult conversations to have,” said Bailey, who runs a Singapore-based PR consultancy.

Under pressure to communicate any kind of development, crisis management specialists praised Malaysia Airlines for its use of both social media and traditional media.

“Operationally, many good things are being done,” said Ray Rudowski, regional director of crisis planning and training at Edelman Public Relations in Hong Kong.

“The problem is the lack of information at this point,” he said, with still no trace of the plane on the fifth day of searching. — AFP

                This entry was posted on Thursday, 13 March 2014, 7:44 am and is filed under
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Failing to show the way in search for flight MH370

The Malaysian Insider

March 13, 2014

Across the world, top newspapers and leading news agencies have started to rap Malaysia for the “mystery, confusion and disarray” in the search for the missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370.

So far, government leaders from Datuk Seri Najib Razak down have failed in one critical aspect: inspiring confidence and assuring Malaysians and the international community that they know what they are saying and doing.

There have been inconsistencies and discrepancies that have even led to Vietnam suspending its air search operations until Putrajaya lets it know the latest direction of the massive hunt for the lost Boeing 777-200ER.

Then there is the irony of China asking Putrajaya to be more “forthcoming” in its information about the passenger jet where two-thirds of the 239 people on board are Chinese.

The thing is, government is only as good at the people on top and the cream of Malaysians politicians have either been hiding, waffling or in a stupor.

Really, Malaysians should not be surprised at the performance of the Najib administration. After all, they were severely challenged by the floods in the east coast a couple of months ago. Nobody expects Najib to be chairing daily press conferences or to be leading the search and rescue operations but nobody expects him to stay on the sidelines while the air force, police, aviation authorities, Malaysia Airlines slug it out in a festival of wrong information.

Some of the baffling details heard since the passenger jet vanished on Saturday include Malaysia Airlines initially saying the Boeing 777 (registration number 9M-MRO) had lost contact with air traffic control at 2.40am after about two hours in the air.

It later said contact was lost at 1.30am, as data on flight tracking websites had been showing. The incorrect time report led to speculation the flight had crashed somewhere between Vietnam and China.

Two days ago, information leaked and was later confirmed that the aircraft could have doubled back across the peninsula and headed to the west near the Andaman Sea before vanishing at 2.40am.

This information has changed the entire course of the search from the South China Sea on the peninsula east coast to the west coast – where the Strait of Malacca is the world’s busiest shipping lane.

But it is not only the families of victims and world press who are exasperated, even Malaysia’s neighbouring countries which have sent out rescue aircraft and ships are dumbfounded.

Yet, more countries are now joining the international search and rescue mission, in the slender hope of finding survivors among the 239 people onboard the passenger jet.

India is now in and it is understood that Malaysia is seeking more information from Thailand and Myanmar on the off chance that flight MH370 had actually flown across the peninsula and onwards to the  Andaman Sea.

Why? No one knows.

But as the Guardian said: “Malaysian officials have given ambiguous, inaccurate and at times directly contradictory information since the aircraft’s disappearance, raising concerns among families of the passengers.”

The search for a missing Malaysia Airlines jetliner expanded today to cover a swathe of Southeast Asia, from the South China Sea to India’s territorial waters, with authorities no closer to explaining what happened to the plane or the 239 people on board.

Vietnam briefly scaled down search operations in waters off its southern coast, saying it was receiving scanty and confusing information from Malaysia over where the aircraft may have headed after it lost contact with air traffic control.

Hanoi later said the search – now in its sixth day – was back on in full force and was even extending on to land.

China also said its air force would sweep areas in the sea, clarifying, however, that no searches over land were planned.

And the seas off India’s Andaman and Nicobar Islands are also being combed for traces of the lost jet, a few days after the air force discovered it had data that showed the aircraft heading beyond the peninsula.

A question remains, is military secrecy hampering the search? And is that why ministers and deputy ministers are having a difficult time explaining themselves publicly.

A former air crash investigator told the Telegraph that an unknown factor in the hunt for flight MH370 was the extent to which the Malaysia Airlines flight was being tracked by regional powers on their military radar systems. Be that as it may, Malaysia enters the sixth day of search and rescue operations for the people of flight MH370. One can only hope that the confusion has ended for rescue workers and the media over the direction of the search.

Or as Defence Minister and acting Transport Minister Datuk Seri Hishammuddin Hussein said it, “I don’t think so. It’s far from it. It’s only confusion if you want it to be seen as confusion.” – March 13, 2014.

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In search for MH370, why did China take so long to release satellite photos?

The Malay Mail Online

MARCH 13, 2014 UPDATED: MARCH 13, 2014 03:04 PM

BEIJING, March 13 — Beijing was unusually open in revealing its satellite capabilities when it released photographs of possible debris from a missing airplane, despite taking four days to make the images public, analysts said today.

China’s State Administration for Science, Technology and Industry for National Defence (SASTIND) published three pictures late yesterday of what it said were suspected large floating objects in the South China Sea.

The images were taken on Sunday, it said, raising questions as to why it took several days for them to emerge, and whether—and if so, when—they had been passed to the Malaysian authorities co-ordinating the search.

China’s space programme is military-run and normally be shrouded in secrecy.

Malaysian and Vietnamese flights in the area of the photographs failed to spot anything, officials said.

But Morris Jones, an independent space analyst based in Australia, said Beijing’s disclosure of the pictures was surprisingly open.

“Satellite imagery is a strategic tool that has military applications, and nations are usually very cautious in revealing how much these satellites can do and how much they can see,” he told AFP.

“I am surprised that the Chinese have openly released this image because we don’t normally see images of this quality.”

According to SASTIND, the objects were approximately 13 by 18 metres, 14 by 19 metres and 24 by 22 metres in size.

The actual images “were probably of a much higher quality than the images they released to the media”, Jones said. Authorities released them “to provide enough information to show something, but the image is degraded to hide the true capabilities of the actual satellite.”

While China’s abilities in space remain decades behind the US, it has made rapid technological leaps and aims to launch an independent space station by 2020, eventually sending a man to the moon.

It has deployed 10 satellites in the search for MH370, Premier Li Keqiang said today.

The image data was obtained by the China Centre for Resources Satellite Data and Application (CRESDA), an agency jointly overseen by SASTIND and China’s National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC).

Among the agency’s goals is the creation of a national-level satellite data centre to provide high-resolution images for national defence as well as civilian purposes such as agriculture and disaster planning.

It started surveying the area after hearing of the disappearance on Saturday, it said in a statement, and by Tuesday morning, the satellites had gathered data covering a total of 120,000 square kilometres—an area almost the size of Greece.

“The quality of the data images is rather good,” it said.

An official with CRESDA told AFP today that the agency was still analysing the images but that no conclusions had been reached yet.

Jones said he did not find “anything suspicious at all” in the delay in releasing the pictures.

“There’s a lot of time you go through between the time you get the images and the time you release them,” he said.

“The satellite has to get into position, take the photo, then relay it to a ground station, then it has to be analysed. And keep in mind, the analysts on the ground are probably looking through a tremendous amount of data. So I would say there’s absolutely nothing abnormal.”

One of Beijing’s milestones in satellite technology came in late 2012, when it announced that it had launched a domestic satellite navigation network to rival the US GPS global positioning system.

The Beidou system—named after the Chinese term for the plough or Big Dipper constellation—currently has 16 satellites, a number expected to grow to 30 by 2020, when the system is slated to reach global coverage.

China is investing more than 400 billion yuan (RM213 billion) in the system, which is expected to “benefit both the military and civilians”, according to Chinese state media. — AFP

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Lost MH370 flew on for hours after vanishing from radar, reports Wall Street Journal

The Malaysian Insider

MARCH 13, 2014

American investigators suspect that Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 stayed in the air for about four hours past the time it reached its last confirmed location, the Wall Street Journal reported today.

The business paper said this raised the possibility that the Boeing 777-200ER jet could have flown on for hundreds of additional kilometres under conditions that remain murky.

Aviation investigators and national security officials believe the plane flew for a total of five hours based on data automatically downloaded and sent to the ground from the Boeing Co 777’s engines as part of a routine maintenance and monitoring programme, the paper said.

That raised a host of new questions and possibilities about what happened aboard the wide-body jet carrying 239 people, which vanished from civilian air-traffic control radar over the weekend, about one hour into a flight to Beijing from Kuala Lumpur.

Six days after the mysterious disappearance prompted a massive international air and water search that so far hasn’t produced any results, the investigation appears to be broadening in scope.

United States counter-terrorism officials are pursuing the possibility that a pilot or someone else onboard the plane may have diverted it towards an undisclosed location after intentionally turning off the jetliner’s transponders to avoid radar detection, according to one person tracking the probe.

The investigation remains fluid and it was not clear whether investigators have evidence indicating possible terrorism or espionage.

So far, American national security officials have said that nothing specifically points towards terrorism, though they have not ruled it out.

But the huge uncertainty about where the plane was headed, and why it apparently continued flying so long without working transponders, has raised theories among investigators that the aircraft may have been commandeered for a reason that appears unclear to US authorities, said the WSJ.

Some of those theories have been laid out to national security officials and senior personnel from various American agencies, according to one person familiar with the matter.

At one briefing, according to this person, officials were told investigators were actively pursuing the notion that the plane was diverted “with the intention of using it later for another purpose”.

As of yesterday, it remained unclear whether the plane reached an alternate destination or if it ultimately crashed, potentially hundreds of kilometres from where an international search effort has been focused.

In those scenarios, neither mechanical problems, pilot mistakes nor some other type of catastrophic incident caused the 250-tonne plane to vanish mysteriously from radar.

The latest revelations come as local media reported that Malaysian police visited the home of at least one of the two pilots.

Boeing officials and a Malaysia Airlines official declined to comment.

The engines’ onboard monitoring system is provided by their manufacturer, Rolls-Royce PLC, and it periodically sends bursts of data about engine health, operations and aircraft movements to facilities on the ground.

Rolls-Royce couldn’t be reached for comment.

As part of its maintenance agreements, Malaysia Airlines transmits its engine data live to Rolls-Royce for analysis. The system compiles data from inside the 777’s two Trent 800 engines and transmits snapshots of performance, as well as the altitude and speed of the jet.

Those snippets are compiled and transmitted in 30-minute increments, said one person familiar with the system.

According to Rolls-Royce’s website, the data was processed automatically “so that subtle changes in condition from one flight to another can be detected”.

The engine data is being analysed to help determine the flight path of the plane after the transponders stopped working.

The jet was originally headed for China, and its last verified position was halfway across the Gulf of Thailand.

A total flight time of five hours after departing Kuala Lumpur means the Boeing 777 could have continued for an additional distance of about 2,200 nautical miles, reaching points as far as the Indian Ocean, the border of Pakistan or even the Arabian Sea, based on the jet’s cruising speed.

Earlier yesterday, frustrations over the protracted search for the missing plane mounted as both China and Vietnam vented their anger over what they viewed as poor coordination of the effort.

Government conflicts and national arguments over crises are hardly unique to the flight 370 situation, but some air-safety experts said they couldn’t recall another recent instance of governments publicly feuding over search procedures during the early phase of an international investigation.

Authorities radically expanded the size of the search zone yesterday, which already was proving a challenge to cover effectively, but the mission hadn’t turned up much by the end of the fifth day.

WSJ has confirmed that the pilot had the ability to turn off manually the transponder on flight MH370.

A mid-air catastrophe could have destroyed it. – March 13, 2014.

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Malaysia sends search aircraft to possible crash site

The Malaysian Insider

MARCH 13, 2014

LATEST UPDATE: MARCH 13, 2014 10:10 AM

Malaysia is sending a search aircraft to check the possible crash site identified by Chinese satellite images, said a Malaysian air force official.

Chinese satellites searching for the missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 have “observed a suspected crash area at sea”, a government agency has revealed.

The Chinese have released days-old images of potential wreckage in the South China Sea in what is possibly the first indication of a crash site five days after the Boeing 777 disappeared with 239 people onboard.

China’s State Administration for Science, Technology and Industry for National Defence announced the discovery, including images of what it said were “three suspected floating objects and their sizes”.

The images were captured about 11am on Sunday, a day after the plane went missing, but were only released yesterday.

The Chinese agency gave coordinates of 105.63 east longitude, 6.7 north latitude, which would put it in waters northeast of where it took off from the Kuala Lumpur International Airport and south of Vietnam, near where the South China Sea meets the Gulf of Thailand.

“It’s where it’s supposed to be,” Peter Goelz, a former National Transportation Safety Board managing director, had told CNN’s Jake Tapper, noting the “great scepticism” about reports the plane had turned around to go back over Malaysia.

The Malaysian air force official, who spoke anonymously, said this morning that its aircraft were heading to that area.

This isn’t the first time authorities have announced sightings of objects or oil slicks that might be linked to the missing Malaysia Airlines aircraft.

However, none had proven to be from the plane.

Meanwhile, China’s civil aviation chief told Reuters today that there was no proof that floating objects in the South China Sea seen by satellite images were connected to a missing Malaysia Airlines aircraft.

“Chinese satellites have found smoke and floating objects… At present we cannot confirm this is related to the missing aircraft,” Li Jiaxiang was quoted as saying on the sidelines of China’s annual meeting of parliament.

He added that there was also no evidence the Malaysian military was concealing information about the missing flight.

Vietnam has already searched the area where Chinese satellites showed objects that could be debris from a missing Malaysia Airlines jet but a plane has been sent to check the area again, Vietnamese military officials said.

“We are aware and we sent planes to cover that area over the past three days,” Deputy Transport Minister Pham Quy Tieu told Reuters.

“Today a (military) plane will search the area again,” he said.

Another military official was quoted as saying that  Vietnam was waiting to see photographs taken by a Chinese satellite on Sunday in waters northeast of Kuala Lumpur and south of Vietnam in order to identify the exact location for further inspection. – March 13, 2014.

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Malaysia’s future in hands of ordinary heroes who dare to stand up for racial and religious harmony, clean elections and a better education system

(Speech 4 in Dewan Rakyat when taking part in the debate on Motion of Thanks for the Royal Address on Thursday, 13th March 2014)

Malaysia’s future lies in the hands of ordinary heroes who dare to stand up for racial and religious harmony, clean elections and a better education system – ordinary Malaysians  like Azrul Mohd Khalib, Ally Hazran Hashim, Siti Kassim, Major Zaidi Ahmad and Mohd Nor Izzah – who are the salt of the earth who will ensure that Malaysia will achieve her greatness and not become a failed state.

Azrul, Ally and Siti Kassim were involved in the “Walk for Peace” movement among ordinary Malaysians  regardless of race or religion who care about the country to push for national healing in the face of the worst racial and religious polarization in the nation’s 56-year history.

It all started on Sunday, January 5 this year outside Our Lady of Lourdes Church in Klang where the nearly 1,000 Catholics who turned up for Sunday mass had expected an angry mob of Muslims protesting against the possible use of the word ‘Allah’ but instead met a group of progressive Muslims bearing flowers to express solidarity and preparedness to defend the Church from the planned protest.

Among the progressive Muslims who turned up was social activist Datin Paduka Marina Mahathir.

This was followed by a “Walk for Peace” at the Kuala Lumpur City Centre (KLCC) park, Penang, Kajang and Ipoh.

Another unsung Malaysian hero is Royal Malaysian Air Force pilot Major Zaidi Ahmad who should be rewarded instead of being penalised for speaking up about the indelible ink fiasco in the recent 13th General Elections and is now awaiting court-martial for his great service as a patriot to the country.

Mohd Nor Izzat Mohd Johari, the head of Suara Guru Masyarakat Malaysia (SGMM), who is facing mean, petty and punitive persecution from the “Little Napoleons” in the Education Ministry with the Education Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin too “busy” to intervene, is one such unsung hero in Malaysia.

What is Nor Izzat’s crime? None, instead he had rendered great national service in spearheading the protest against the woes of the badly-planned and poorly-conceived student-based assessment (SBA) system. He should be rewarded for his positive contribution in forcing the Education Ministry to suspend the SBA instead of being subject to mean and petty punitive actions.

The nation must pay tribute to these unsung heroes who want the preservation of racial and religious harmony, a clean electoral system and a better education system for our children.

They are the true patriots who should be the role models for all Malaysians, even MPs and Ministers.  Only then is there a real future for Malaysia!

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MAS: Boeing, RR deny getting MH370 data bursts

The Malay Mail Online

By Zurairi AR

March 13, 2014

SEPANG, March 13 — Boeing and Rolls Royce did not receive engine data from missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370, the flag carrier said today when refuting reports that engine information showed the plane flew four hours longer than previously known.

Speaking during the daily press conference on the search efforts today, MAS group chief executive officer Ahmad Jauhari Yahya said both the plane maker and engine builder have denied they received two bursts of Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting System (ACARS) feedback allegedly from the Beijing-bound plane with 239 on board.

“The reports that the plane transmitted data long after the ACARS signal was lost are inaccurate. Our records show that the last ACARS transmission was at 1.07am,” Ahmad said.

“We have contacted both Rolls Royce and Boeing and both deny receiving the data.”

An earlier report by the Wall Street Journal that Rolls Royce such information had raised the possibility that the plane could be anywhere in a 4,400-mile radius.

Acting Transport Minister Datuk Seri Hishammuddin Hussein, who was also present at the press conference, pointed out that employees from both Boeing and Rolls Royce have been in Malaysia since Sunday and never raised such an issue.

The Boeing and Rolls Royce teams had accompanied the United States National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) officials here to aid investigations.

“As far as Boeing and Rolls Royce are concerned, the reports that the plane flew on after the signal was lost are inaccurate,” Hishammuddin said earlier.

A MAS official earlier today also told the media that the reported bursts of engine data did not take place, insisting that the ACARS signal dropped off when the Beijing-bound plane with 239 people on board went dark in the early hours of March 8.

Today, Ahmad Jauhari also said that the final ACARS transmission indicated that everything was normal with the engines on MH370.

Yesterday, the Bloomberg news service cited a source as saying that MAS opted out of a Boeing service to collect real-time performance data from jets like the 777-200ER used by MH370 for use in planning maintenance.

The source said MAS now collated such data itself.

The revelation of the purported engine data from Boeing and Rolls Royce raises the possibility that MH370 flew as far as 2,200 miles before it would have run out of fuel; this would put the search area into the millions of square kilometres or virtually impossible to humanly scour.

It also added to speculation that hijacking or terrorism was behind the disappearance of the plane that has now been missing for six days.

MH370 disappeared without sending any distress calls at 1.30am, less than an hour after taking off from Kuala Lumpur for Beijing.

Military radar recorded a plane that could have been the MAS flight turning back to the Straits of Malacca before losing the data plot at 2.15am when the plane was at 29,500 feet.

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No quick fix in search for MH370

The Malay Mail Online

March 13, 2014

Kuala Lumpur, March 13 — The search for Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 has entered its sixth day with multinational planes and ships scouring seas on both sides of Peninsular Malaysia.

Stumped for answers after a fruitless five days spent looking for the missing jetliner mainly in seas off Vietnam’s south coast, Malaysia has expanded the search area to include the Straits of Malacca and the Andaman Sea.

The search area is now so wide it spans seas from India to China, but Malaysia insists there is still hope for the missing passengers and crew, 239 in all.

Malaysian authorities reached the decision to widen the search under the unrelenting gaze of worldwide media and found themselves on the back foot for much of the time.

Perhaps it was inevitable there were some lapses and inconsistencies.

Malaysia’s air force chief rejected a local newspaper report quoting him as saying that MH370 had been spotted near Pulau Perak , an uninhabited island in the Straits of Malacca.

A day later he was back in the spotlight, this time saying that military radar had spotted a flying object, which may or may not be the missing airliner, in the narrow straits at 2.15 am Saturday.

If it was the missing airliner, it was radically off course.

The Boeing 777-200 aircraft’s last contact with air traffic control was at 1.30 am, locating the plane some 120 nautical miles off Kota Bharu.

Early reports had said the plane had been seen on radar at 2.30 am.

The varying times left some bewildered and others accusing Malaysia of incompetency.

Malaysia denies the charges vehemently.

On Thursday, acting Transport Minister Datuk Seri Hishamuddin Hussein brushed off criticism of Malaysia’s leadership in searching for the missing airliner, claiming that the perception of “confusion” was contrived.

There have been other inconsistencies too, mainly relating to passengers.

A mix up over passengers who checked-in but didn’t board the flight ran for more than a day. In the end, it was revealed that everyone who checked in had boarded the flight.

Supplying pictures of two Iranian passengers who were on the flight with stolen passports was  fraught with problems  for the police force. While it was easy enough to make out the faces of the two men, their legs didn’t quite match.  Police were forced to deny they hadn’t doctored the pictures.

But whatever the problems, the search for the missing jetliner must go on even if Malaysia stumbles in the telling of the story.

So many questions remain unanswered.

Why didn’t flight MH370 transmit its progress and location as it should have?

Was its silence due to deliberate action or an accident?

Where has it gone?

With each passing day it becomes that much harder to hold out hope that they people on board  are safe.

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‘Triggered transmission’ system instead of black box can help to locate aircraft faster

The Malaysian Insider

MARCH 12, 2014

The disappearance of Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 has brought a long-debated issue into focus – whether it is high time to install the “triggered transmission” sytem which records and transmits flight data the moment it senses something is wrong.

An editorial by the Bloomberg news wire service said the high cost of having a “triggered transmission” system, which one manufacturer put at less than US$100,000 (RM329,000) per aircraft, is the reason many airlines are reluctant to have them installed on their planes.

The cost of transmitting and storing huge amounts of data is also prohibitive.

The “triggered transmission” system was among the recommendations made by Investigators following the Air France tragedy on June 1, 2009.

France’s air-accident investigation bureau had recommended that the European Aviation Safety Agency and the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) “make mandatory, as quickly as possible, for aeroplanes making public transport flights with passengers over maritime or remote areas, triggering of data transmission to facilitate localisation as soon as an emergency situation is detected on board”, the editorial by Bloomberg said.

In the 2009 incident, an Air France Airbus A330 was flying from Rio de Janeiro to Paris when it disappeared off the coast of Brazil. It took five days to find the site of the crash – and two more years to retrieve the plane’s data recorders from waters some 3,900 metres deep.

However, Bloomberg said, the bureau was not recommending continuous transmission, but rather “triggered transmission” – when there are, for instance, unusual changes in a plane’s altitude, speed or proximity to the ground.

A working group of more than 150 people, from manufacturers to regulators, had said that such a system could detect anomalies as they happen, and that “nuisance transmissions”, or false alarms, could be all but eliminated.

“The stream of data would not only make travel safer, but also help companies save money on maintenance and fuel efficiency,” the Bloomberg editorial said.

It also said that a cheaper but still effective alternative would be off-the-shelf technology that continually transmits, in short bursts, just a plane’s position and velocity when it’s over water and out of radar range.

The ICAO has so far not made “triggered transmission” part of its standards and recommended practices, the Bloomberg editorial said.

Neither has it speedily adopted some of the recommendations made by investigators of the Air France tragedy, including coordinating and training for search and rescue efforts or requiring all underwater locating beacons to send transmissions for 90 days.

“Which leaves a question that will linger after flight MH370 is found: How many more planes will have to vanish before that happens?” asked Bloomberg. – March 12, 2014.

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Uncontrolled Development – “Pulau Ubah”

(Speech 3 in Dewan Rakyat when taking part in the debate on Motion of Thanks for the Royal Address on Thursday, 13th March 2014)

Allow me to bring the attention of the House to the problems of uncontrolled and poorly regulated development activities in Iskandar Malaysia which caused irreversible damages to our precious environment and severely hurt local livelihoods especially the poor who are largely dependent on natural resources for their sustenance.

This is the case that took place at Pendas and Tanjung Kupang, within the parliament constituency of Gelang Patah.  It is located in the district of Johor Bahru and also part of the Iskandar Development Region.

Since January this year, a coastal reclamation project has rapidly taken shape in the waters of the Johore Straits close to Tanjung Kupang.  This is close to the Second Link and the Malaysia – Singapore maritime border.  There are no signboards, no public information, no approval from the authorities be it federal agencies like the Department of Environment, the Iskandar Regional Development Authority (IRDA), or the State Government which is supposed to regulate and control all earthwork activities.

It is one humongous project as far as coastal reclamation is concerned.  The size is 2500 acres to be exact (according to official documents that we have sighted).  I visited the ongoing reclamation site by boat twice.  First on 15th February 2014 and then on 24th February 2014.  It was shocking.  The damages were beyond words.  In the middle of nowhere, an island was in the making so rapidly that just between my first and second visit, the size of the reclaimed island has doubled.

I searched through all the official maps and it was confirmed that the island in the making was not included in any.  The closest island that I could find is Pulau Merambong, a unique small land outcrop on Johore Straits right at the Malaysia – Singapore border.  But this newly reclaimed island was not to be found in any maps and I named it as Pulau Ubah.

This took place within the designated area of Iskandar Development Region.  The Iskandar Regional Development Authority (IRDA) is a government agency co-chaired by the Prime Minister and the Johor Menteri Besar.  IRDA was given the task to plan, facilitate and regulate development activities within Iskandar Malaysia.  Millions of ringgit have been spent to hire top-class consultants from all over the world to produce development plans, to conduct studies and to compile blueprints one after another, ostensibly for making Iskandar Malaysia an economically vibrant and environmentally sustainable development region unmatched by any other in the world.

In the most important document guiding the development activities of Iskandar Malaysia, which is the Comprehensive Development Plan (CDP) prepared by IRDA and approved by the Malaysian government, the ‘Pulau Ubah’ project simply does not exist in it.

In fact, in one of the Blueprints published by IRDA in 2011, entitled “Shoreline Management Plan”, the waters off Tanjung Kupang was identified as an area very rich with marine biodiversity and the presence of an extensive seagrass bed is probably among the largest in the world.  In this particular Shoreline Management Plan, the government agency IRDA (not some other environmental NGOs), recommended for the protection of this unique marine habitat as a “marine protected area’.  This is important for the sustainability of fisheries resources as well as keeping the potential for low impact eco-tourism activities in the future. In addition, it is definitely a unique and highly valued heritage for our future generation in Tanjung Kupang.

The coastal fishing communities which are predominantly Malays, have been residing in the area for generations and it is where they find their living.  In the straits there are dugong, seahorses, prawns, and an abundance of fish species – some of which are taken as the source of livelihood, some allowed to flourish in nature for environmental sustainability.  The locals cherish the land and waters given by God.  The livelihood for coastal fishing communities in the area should therefore be conserved. It can also serve as a tourist attraction by remaining as an authentic “Coastal Fishing Village”. The livelihood of the local communities should remain intact.  However, it is the contrary that has happened.

There it camethe reclamation contractors and the so-called ‘developers’ who started the reclamation project.  Approximately a marine area measuring 2,500 acres, about 3km times 3km, which is full of fisheries and marine resources are now being made into land.

Since last month, it was reported that fish in aquaculture farms as well as in the sea were found dead in great numbers in the Straits of Johore.  The losses amount to several millions ringgit.  The aquaculture entrepreneurs suffered.  The coastal fishermen complained but to no avail.  Government agencies, however, were indifferent to their problems and sweep the problem aside.  Without any investigation report being completed, the authorities has come to the unsubstantiated conclusion that the incident of dying of fish was totally not related to the reclamation project.

I was puzzled and worried – once the reclamation is completed later, can these fishermen still look for fish on the reclaimed brown land which was blue sea before?  How are they and their children to compete with foreign workers in order to land a job at the construction sites?  Where is the kampung after all?

Coastal Fishermen and Fisheries

They are small coastal fishermen.  The Department of Fisheries statistics tells us that there are 613 fishermen in western Johor Bahru, of which 415 are Malays, 147 Orang Aslis and 51 Chinese.  Gelang Patah is the main fisheries centre of the western part of Johore Bahru.  In the area of Pendas and Tanjung Kupang alone, there are some 250 coastal fishermen and 95% of them Malays.

Fishing might not be the dream job for everyone.  The coastal fishermen go to the sea in small boats with outboard engines to fish by using small nets or traditional fishing tools.  They are not the relatively well-off trawl boat fishermen with large boats, trawl nets and modern gears.  But without these coastal fishermen braving the waves and baking under the hot sun, there will be no fish and prawns as sources of affordable food and nutritious protein for us.

Fisheries contributes to about 1% of GDP for Malaysia. But the contribution of coastal fishermen to our society, and their important role in shaping Malaysian culture and identity, cannot be assessed and valued based solely on the GDP numbers.

I call for the Minister of Agriculture and Agro-based Industries to explain in detail to the House – what is the government’s policies towards protecting the rights and livelihoods of our coastal fishermen?  Are the Ministry’s policies as implemented through the Fisheries Development Board and the Department of Fisheries, in pushing for large aquaculture businesses and encouraging ocean fishing by large companies, give scant thoughts for the small and traditional coastal fishermen until they are marginalised in the waves of national development?

This only shows how large are the discrepancies between the everyday suffering of the people and those so-called development promises made and supposed to be delivered by the BN government.  What an irony it was for those people-oriented development projects, as claimed by BN, which in the end cause huge damages to the environment and disintegration to the local community when implemented on the ground.  It all happened without respecting the laws of this country, and in all likelihood, it also violates multiple international laws and conventions to which the Malaysian government have pledged to observe.

Not Rejecting Development Blindly

The question is: am I or the coastal fishermen I represent opposing coastal reclamation or even rejecting development per se?  Certainly not.  But there are socio-economic considerations and legal procedures that must be strictly adhered to by the developers, contractors and the government themselves, if they intend to reclaim or develop an area.  Among others: there must be open and comprehensive consultation with the local communities, lawful procedures to minimize the impact of sea reclamation on fisheries resources, and the right approaches in planning the priorities of development – whether it is done for a small selected group of investors and the already-rich, or to adopt an inclusive approach to get the local communities participating in a meaningful way so that they too will benefit deeply from national development.

Violating Malaysian Laws

This Parliament has enacted in 1974 the Environmental Quality Act (EQA 1974).  And under the EQA, there are regulations, orders and guidelines that were made for making Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) mandatory for a list of activities.  I have referred to the list of ‘prescribed activities’ requiring an EIA and clearly, all coastal reclamation activities must get prior EIA approval and so does any land development activities exceeding 500 hectares (equivalent to 1100 acres).

Why did the 2,5000 hectare Pulau Ubah project was allowed to proceed without any EIA?  Here I call the Environment Minister (Cameron Highlands MP) to give a full explanation – leave aside the well being of the Chinese Panda for a moment – focus instead on this burning local issues.  Our environment was under threat by those who pay no regards to Malaysian laws enacted in this House.  The haze is not getting better.  The fishermen complained about polluted seas. But the Minister is attracted to the Panda.

I also asked the Prime Minister (Pekan), as the Co-Chairman of IRDA, to explain the issue.

The Prime Minister must give his explanation to the public too, because there has been some sayings lately, especially in Johore that gaming/gambling license for the establishment of a casino is now being considered by the Federal Government.  A conglomerate was said to have lobbied for the starting of a new casino industry within the Iskandar Development Region.  Coastal reclamation projects such as the recently exposed Pulau Ubah – stated on paper as mixed development comprising commercial and residential high rise building – could that be site preparation for the upcoming second casino in Malaysia?

True Goals of Development for a Better Life with Dignity

Finally, let me go back to the core issue raised today.  What is really the true goals of development as pursued by Malaysia since our Independence?  For me, it is to benefit all people, to allow all Malaysians regardless of race and religion, to live a better and fuller life with dignity.  Yes, we could have dreamed to build the highest building and largest stadium in the word, or if necessary, reclaim sea for land development.  However, if we are lost in our way as the BN government did by pursuing mega projects blindly without considering socio-economic and environmental factors, the people will remain oppressed and unfree.

Tanjung Kupang in Gelang Patah in an example.  What meaning does development carries for the coastal fishermen communities – will they live a fuller and more meaningful life? We have only one Gelang Patah in Malaysia, but the patterns of development, or shall I say more precisely, destruction rather, is spreading like contagious disease to all corners of Malaysia under the BN administration.

                This entry was posted on Thursday, 13 March 2014, 7:06 pm and is filed under
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US says lost MH370 flew on for hours, flight data given by Malaysia

The Malaysian Insider

March 14, 2014

Evidence that flight MH370 flew on for another four hours after vanishing early Saturday morning came from data shared by Malaysian authorities, not from engine maker Rolls-Royce, Washington Post reported today.

As a result of unspecified “new information,” White House spokesman Jay Carney said authorities searching for the Boeing 777-200ER may expand the hunt into the Indian Ocean, which extends hundreds of kilometres further west.

Obama administration officials later said the new information was that the plane’s engines remained running for approximately four hours after it vanished from radar early Saturday en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. There were 239 people on board.

One senior administration official said the data showing the plane engines running hours after contact was lost came from the Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting System, or ACARS, a way that planes maintain contact with ground stations through radio or satellite signals.

The official said Malaysian authorities shared the flight data with the administration.

The Wall Street Journal first reported that US investigators suspect that the engines kept running for up to four more hours after the plane reached its last known location. The paper later corrected its report to say that this belief was based on satellite data, not signals from monitoring systems embedded in the plane’s Rolls-Royce engines. Putrajaya denied the initial report.

The developments came as the Malaysian government acknowledged that it has made little progress in solving the mystery of the vanished plane.

The US officials said they did not know what direction the jet flew whether it simply circled during the approximately four hours, or whether it was airborne at all. But that stretch of additional flight time could have put the plane somewhere over the Indian Ocean, prompting US officials to consider expanding the search into that area.

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity, the newspaper said.

In a news conference yesterday, Defence Minister Datuk Seri Hishammuddin Hussein and the Malaysia Airlines chief executive played down or dismissed a series of leads that had led to frenzied speculation about the fate of Flight MH370, which went missing a week ago.

In what Malaysian officials describe as anunprecedented aviation mystery, it remains unknown whether the plane, which carried 227 passengers and 12 crew members, is on land or in water, east of the country or to the west, or even somewhere far beyond.

In Washington, Carney told reporters that the United States is not in a position to draw any conclusions.

However, he added, “it’s my understanding that based on some new information that’s not necessarily conclusive — but new information — an additional search area may be opened in the Indian Ocean.”

Search operations in the Indian Ocean, the world’s third-largest ocean with an average depth of nearly 12,800 feet, would present significant challenges.

The United States was “consulting with international partners about the appropriate assets to deploy,” Carney said at a White House news briefing yesterday.

Pressed for details, Carney said that “one possible piece of information or… pieces of information has led to the possibility that a new … search area may be opened in the Indian Ocean, but I don’t have any more details on that.”

Adding to the confusion, Lt-Col Jeffrey Pool, a Pentagon spokesman, said the Defence Department has no reason to believe that the plane crashed in the Indian Ocean.

He said US Navy assets participating in the search are being guided by the Malaysian government’s investigation. He said he did not know what new information Carney was referring to.

Hishammuddin, who is also acting transport minister, said, “We have looked at every lead. In many cases, in fact all the cases, we have not found anything positive.”

He added, “Without debris, we can’t feel we are making any progress.”

Though the search for flight MH370 has at times appeared chaotic and baffling – a mix of rumours, confusion and red herrings – it felt yesterday for the first time like the trail had gone cold.

As the search area continued to widen, the US navy said that it was shifting one of its ships involved in the hunt, the destroyer USS Kidd, from the Gulf of Thailand to the Strait of Malacca on the western side of the peninsula.

The US military also announced that it would add a P-8A Poseidon aircraft to the search today. That plane is described by its manufacturer, Boeing, as the world’s most sophisticated “long-range anti-submarine warfare, anti-surface warfare, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance aircraft”.

It will join a Navy P-3C Orion surveillance aircraft already patrolling as part of the massive international operation.

India’s Defence Ministry said Thursday that the Indian navy has launched its own search mission, sending two ships – the INS Kumbhir, an amphibious warfare ship, and the INS Saryu, a patrol vessel – into the Andaman Sea near the Malacca Strait. India also appointed Air Marshal A.K. Roy as coordinator for rescue operations with Malaysian authorities, the paper said.

Indian coast guard and navy aircraft were also pressed into service from a base on the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. A senior Indian official said late Thursday that a total of three ships, two planes and a helicopter have now been dispatched in the growing search effort.

Burma said it would open its airspace to planes looking for the missing airliner and was prepared to join the search if asked, the BBC reported.

Malaysian authorities categorically denied the Wall Street Journal’s initial report and said engine data were unavailable after the plane disappeared from civilian radar at 1:30 a.m. on Saturday. The last transmission from the engines came at 1.07am, Malaysia Airlines chief executive Ahmad Jauhari Yahya said – 26 minutes after takeoff from Kuala Lumpur.

During all commercial flights, engines send bursts of data back to the ground at key intervals – during takeoff, for instance, and once reaching cruising altitude. Representatives from both Boeing and engine maker Rolls-Royce have been in Kuala Lumpur working with the airline, and neither received data after 1.07am, Ahmad Jauhari said.

Similarly, the New Scientist reported Tuesday that the engines transmitted just two packets of data, one while the plane was on the ground in Kuala Lumpur and one while it was climbing on its way to Beijing.

“The last transmission was received at 1.07,” Ahmad Jauhari told reporters. “It said everything was operating normally.”

Officials at the US Federal Aviation Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board said Thursday they had no information to back up the Journal report that the plane had remained airborne for hours.

They spoke on condition of anonymity since they were not authorised to comment.

A Rolls-Royce spokesman refused to comment on any aspect of data, saying only, “We continue to monitor the situation and offer Malaysia Airlines our support.”

Flight MH 370 was initially supposed to follow a northern path to Beijing.

Search teams from as many as 12 nations have been scouring the waters to the east and west of Malaysia. Earlier yesterday, attention focused on satellite images from a Chinese agency that showed three large objects in the water south of Vietnam.

But by midday, Malaysian authorities were dismissing the likelihood that those objects belonged to the plane.

Both Malaysian and Vietnamese teams returned Thursday to the coordinates of the large objects, but found nothing.

Even as viewed by satellite, the objects didn’t seem to match that of a plane wreck. The largest of the objects was roughly the size of a basketball court, with no smaller debris around.

The Chinese Embassy in Malaysia notified the Malaysian government yesterday, saying the images – released by a relatively unknown Chinese agency – were made public by mistake and did not relate to flight MH370.

“We are pretty much back at square one,” said Richard Aboulafia, a vice-president of analysis at the Teal Group Corporation.

Aboulafia said the combination of transponder and communications failure, together with the lack of debris and the possibility the plane turned around, suggested some kind of hostile takeover by passengers or crew.

Malaysia said it intended to again expand the search field for the missing plane.

But it remains unclear whether the search is best focused to the east or west of the Malay peninsula. The plane vanished over the eastern side, above the Gulf of Thailand, but Malaysia later found a military radar blip suggesting that an unidentified aircraft was tacking west.

The radar information has since been handed to the Federal Aviation Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board for analysis, a process that is not yet completed.

Hishammuddin said it remained possible that the plane turned around, diverting to the west after disappearing from radar.

But he added that the search was still focused around the location where the plane vanished. Of 46 ships involved in the search, 26 are in the Gulf of Thailand and the South China Sea, and 17 on the western side, in the Strait of Malacca and Andaman Sea.

“Our main effort has always been in the South China Sea,” Hishammuddin said. Malaysia has been criticised for at times releasing partial or contradictory information about the flight and search.

The criticism has been most pointed from China, which had 153 citizens on the flight. Chinese Prime Minister Li Keqiang said yesterday that Beijing had “asked the relevant party to enhance coordination” and find the plane as quickly as possible.

“First, this situation is unprecedented,” Hishammuddin said, in deflecting the criticism.

“MH370 went completely silent while over the open ocean. We are in the middle of a multi-national search involving many countries. This is a crisis situation. It is a very complex operation. And it has not always been easy.”

“We have not done anything that could jeopardise this search effort,” he added.

Malaysia Airlines announced separately that “as a mark of respect to the passengers and crew of MH370” who disappeared on March 8, it will retire the MH370 and MH371 flight codes it has used on its routes to and from Beijing.

MH is the designation for Malaysian Airline System, as the carrier is officially named. – March 14, 2014.

                This entry was posted on Friday, 14 March 2014, 9:02 am and is filed under
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Amid Search for Plane, Malaysian Leaders Face Rare Scrutiny

by Thomas Fuller

New York Times

MARCH 12, 2014

SEPANG, Malaysia — Malaysia’s governing elite has clung to power without interruption since independence from Britain almost six decades ago through a combination of tight control of information, intimidation of the opposition and, until recently, robust economic growth.

But worldwide bafflement at the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 has challenged the country’s paternalistic political culture and exposed its coddled leaders to the withering judgments of critics from around the world.

Civilian and military leaders on Wednesday revealed that they had known for the past four days, but did not publicly disclose, that military radar had picked up signals of what may have been the missing aircraft. It appeared to be flying on a westerly course sharply off its intended flight path to Beijing.

If the radar readings were from the missing plane, it could mean a radical reinterpretation of where it ended up. And it was only under a barrage of intense questioning on Wednesday from a room packed with reporters who had arrived from many countries that officials acknowledged that the last recorded radar plot point showed the jet flying in the direction of the Indian Ocean — and at a cruising altitude, suggesting it could have flown much farther.

That raised the question of why the information had not been released earlier.

“The world is finally feeling the frustration that we’ve been experiencing for years,” said Lee Ee May, a management consultant and a former aide to a Malaysian opposition politician.

Ms. Lee said she was embarrassed when the country’s defense minister, Hishammuddin Hussein, the scion of a powerful political family, rejected a reporter’s assertion on Wednesday that the search for the airplane had been disordered.

“It’s only confusion if you want it to be seen to be confusion,” Mr. Hishammuddin said at a news conference that unfolded before an international audience.

Relatively free from natural disasters and other calamities, Malaysia has had little experience with handling a crisis on this scale. It is also an ethnically polarized society where talent often does not rise to the top of government because of patronage politics within the ruling party and a system of ethnic preferences that discourages or blocks the country’s minorities, mainly ethnic Chinese and Indians, from government service.

Ethnic Malays, who make up about half of the population, hold nearly all top government positions and receive a host of government preferences because of their status as “sons of the soil.”

Authoritarian laws have helped keep the governing party, the United Malays National Organization, in power — and an ascendant opposition in check.

The day before Flight 370 disappeared, the leader of the opposition, Anwar Ibrahim, was sentenced to five years under a sodomy law that is almost never enforced. Critics called the case an effort to block the opposition’s rise at a time when the governing party’s popularity is waning.

Then on Tuesday, a court convicted Karpal Singh, another opposition politician, of sedition, a law enacted in colonial times.

“We call it persecution, not prosecution,” said Ambiga Sreenevasan, a lawyer and the former head of the Malaysian Bar Council.

The government is accustomed to getting its way, and the crisis surrounding the missing plane is holding officials accountable in ways unfamiliar to them, Ms. Ambiga said.

“Malaysians have come to accept that their leaders don’t answer questions,” she said. “When you are not seriously challenged in any meaningful way, of course you get complacent and comfortable.”

For a relatively prosperous country of 30 million people that is less well known internationally than neighboring countries like Thailand and Singapore, the government’s confused efforts at finding the missing jetliner are an awkward and undesired appearance on the world stage.

The crisis has led to introspection about why the government has appeared uncoordinated and unable to pin down seemingly basic facts about the missing flight.

Officials insisted for three days that baggage was removed from the flight before takeoff when five passengers did not board. But the country’s chief of police on Tuesday said that was false: Everyone who checked in boarded the plane, he said. No explanation was given for the conflicting accounts.

Ibrahim Suffian, the director of the Merdeka Center, an independent polling company, said the response to the crisis had underlined a lack of precision both in government and in the society over all.

“There’s a tolerance for a lack of attentiveness to detail,” he said. “You have a tendency of not asking so much and not expecting so much.”

The crisis also highlighted a lack of competence in government that Mr. Ibrahim said was related to a deference to authority and reluctance to take initiative. “There’s always been a kind of wait-for-instructions-from-the-top attitude,” he said.

Yet amid the criticism of the rescue efforts there was also an acknowledgment that the plane’s disappearance was so unusual that perhaps no government would be fully prepared for it.

“This is almost a unique situation,” said Ramon Navaratnam, a Harvard-trained economist and a former Malaysian senior civil servant. “Anyone would be caught off guard.”

For now, the Malaysian authorities are stuck in the unenviable position of hearing many questions but having few answers.

“They have never faced pressure to perform like this,” said Ms. Lee, the management consultant. “But now international eyes are on them, and they have nowhere to hide.”

                This entry was posted on Friday, 14 March 2014, 6:59 am and is filed under
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