Malaysia needs not only a new Finance Minister, but also  new world-class Education Minister

Calls on the Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Najib Razak to stand down as Finance Minister led by DAP MP for Kluang and DAP National Political Education Director, Liew Chin Tong have reached a new crescendo with last Friday’s statement by the Deputy Prime Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin withdrawing blind and total support to Najib’s handling of the RM42 billion 1MDB scandal, with the triple position:

1. That the Auditor-General should audit freely and independently, and tracing back to the accounts in 2009 when 1MDB first started, not just the accounts of 2013, as well as a forensic audit to ensure “there is no corruption in 1MDB transactions.

2. That the Public Accounts Committee  begin investigating 1MDB without having to wait for the outcome of the Auditor-General’s findings.

3. No bail-out of  1MDB whether in the  proposed disposals of lands in  Tun Razak Exchange and Bandar Malaysia which were “obtained from the government on the cheap”.

However, the nation needs not only a new Finance Minister, but also a new Education, a need driven home after Muhyiddin’s speech today admitting his shock with the poor performance of Malaysian students in international assessments, despite the millions of ringgit being spent to improve the education system.

What is most shocking about Muhyiddin’s “shock” is that it has to take him  15 months for the Deputy Prime Minister-cum-Education Minister to be shocked by the dismal performance of Malaysia’s 15-year-olds in the three subjects of mathematics, science and reading in the 2012 PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment), when the results were released 15 months ago in early December 2013.

This is the first time after 15 months that the Malaysian Education Minister had expressed shock or made any public comment on the 2012 PISA results.

What had Muhyiddin been doing in the laslt 15 months?

Even up to now, Muhyiddin does not seem to have fully grasped the enormity of the  dismal results of Malaysian students when compared to their peers in other countries, whether in PISA or Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS).

Speaking at a function in Sekolah Kebangsaan Seksyen 7 in Shah Alam, Muhyiddin said:

“They (students) are smart, but when placed in international tests like TIMMS and Pisa, it is not a secret where we stand. The bottom one-third, not the top.

“I, as the education minister, am shocked at the report but I have to accept that the education standards, although said to be good, is not enough.”

There can be no more categorical admission of his failure as  Education Minister for the past six years.

Why is Muhyiddin hanging on as Education Minister?

Muhyiddin does not seem to realise that he had been presiding over a relentless deterioration of educational standards of Malaysian students in the past six years, and that the problem is not just Malaysian students falling to the bottom one-third instead of among the top third tier of countries in the world in terms of performance in international student assessments, but the triple woes suffered by Malaysian students.

The triple educational woes of Malaysian students highlighted by PISA and TIMMS reports  are:

1.	Malaysia is  stuck in the bottom third of the countries surveyed in international assessments, and not making any upward move towards the upper tier of the top third of the countries.

2.	Although at the bottom third of the pile, Malaysia is being overtaken by other countries in the group, like Kazakhstan and Thailand.

3.	 But the most disconcerting result from the 2012 PISA is the widening gap between Malaysia and the “top performers”. The disparity in the scores between 15-year-olds in Malaysia and the 15-year-olds in Singapore, South Korea, Hong Kong and Shanghai have widened since the previous PISA. Based on the difference of 38 points on the PISA scale being equivalent to one year of schooling, the disparity has widened to reach a stage where the 15-year-old in Shanghai, Singapore and South Korea are performing as though they had four or even five more years of schooling than 15-year-olds in Malaysia.

Just on this  dismal record of Muhyiddin as Education Minister in the past ten years, he should stand down as Education Minister.

Furthermore, Malaysians would not forget that it was Muhyiddin who had claimed that Malaysian youngsters are receiving better education than children in the United States, Britain and Germany.

But the second Education Minister Datuk Seri Idris Jusoh, is not the answer to resolve the nation’s educational woes.

Idris recently claimed that Malaysia’s education is “world class”, which was debunked by the latest Times Higher Education (THE) World Reputation Rankings 2015 where once again, Malaysian universities failed to make the cut among the best universities in the world – although  the list of the world’s 100 most prestigious universities included two universities from Singapore, 43 from United States,  12 from UK, six from Germany and five from Australia.

Malaysia does not have world-class education, whether primary, secondary or tertiary.

But let us begin with world-class Education Ministers – and both Muhyiddin and Idris have proved that they do not have the mettle to be  world-class Education Ministers.

There is no shortage of Malaysians who can become world-class Education Ministers to start the long hard road to create a world-class education system for all Malaysians. The question is whether such material to be world-class Education Ministers will be given the opportunity to prove their worth!

                This entry was posted on Friday, 13 March 2015, 5:12 pm and is filed under
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Let all previous Home Ministers from Tun Mahathir to Tun Abdullah declare whether they had signed  a “stack of letters and agreements” to the US  like Zahid’s  infamous letter to FBI vouching for the character of an alleged  international gambling kingpin?

The Home Minister, Datuk Seri Ahmad Zahid Hamidi’s revelation that that he has a “stack of letters and agreements” his predecessors as Home Minister had signed with the United States which are like his infamous letter to the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) vouching for the character of an alleged international gambling kingpin is a real shocker, especially as his two immediate predecessors Datuk Seri Hishammuddin Hussein and Tan Sri Syed Hamid Albar (March 2008 – May 2013) had publicly denied that they had ever sent any such support letter unilaterally to the FBI.

Is Zahid seriously suggesting that his two immediate predecessors as Home Minister have publicly lied when in fact they had signed a “stack of lean  international gambling kingpin, Paul Phua?

This matter has gone beyond the realm of internal power rivalry in a political party as it now concerns not only national security and Malaysia’s international reputation as well.

If Zahid is referring to either Hishammuddin or Syed Hamid Albar, then there is only one final solution – let the truth be out and it is either Zahid on one side or Hishammuddin and Syed Hamid Albar on the other who have to bow out of public life.

Or is Zahid referring to  Home Ministers before Hishammuddin and Syed Hamid Albar?

Who are they?

The Home Ministers before Hishammuddin and Syed Hamid were: Datuk Seri Mohd Radzi Sheikh Ahmad (2006-2008),  Datuk Azmi Khalid (2004 – 2006) and Tun Abdullah Ahmad Badawi (1999 – 2004).

Or should we go further back to the longest  13 years the Home Ministry was ever helmed by one person – the country’s fourth Prime Minister, Tun Dr. Mahathir who doubled up as Home Minister from 1986-1999.

The quartet  should speak up as elder statesmen to clear the air whether there is a “stack of letters and agreements” which they had  signed with the United States like Zahid’s infamous letter to the FBI vouching for the character of an alleged international gambling kingpin,  done without the knowledge, authority or sanction of the police, the Foreign Ministry, the Cabinet or even the Prime Minister at the time.

Zahid has made a most astonishing claim, especially after the Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department, Datuk Seri Shahidan Kassim has heightened the mystery in his parliamentary answer to the DAP MP for Segambut, Lim Lip Eng, refusing to disclose the information relating to the gambling kingpin Paul Phua, saying that it was a “huge secret” classified under the Official Secrets Act.

Since being elected as a Member of Parliament in 1969, this is the first time any Minister has refused to disclose any information in Parliament on the ground that it is a “huge secret” under the Official Secrets Act.

What is this “huge secret” with regard to “national security project” involving Paul Phua when information on  mega defence procurements had never been denied on the basis that they were “huge secrets” but merely “secrets” under the Official Secrets Act?

However, with the most incriminating statement by Zahid that the “stack of letters and agreements” his predecessors had signed with the United State would, if revealed, caused them “great shame”,  national interests and justice to all the previous Home Ministers from Mahathir to Abdullah demand only  one course of action to be taken.

This is for the Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Najib Razak to declassify the “stack of letters and agreements’” all the previous Home Ministers have signed with the United States like Zahid’s infamous letter to FBI to vouch for the character of the alleged international gambling kingpin and for the Prime Minister to present a White Paper or a  Ministerial statement on the matter in Parliament in the coming week.

Meanwhile, all the previous Home Ministers from Mahathir to Abdullah owe the Malaysian public a personal explanation as to whether they had signed a “stack of letters and agreements” with the US during their tenure of office which would cause them to “suffer shame” if revealed – as  explicitly stated by Zahid.

                This entry was posted on Saturday, 14 March 2015, 10:15 am and is filed under
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Malaysia’s IS problem

Malaysia’s focus on stopping would-be fighters masks growing domestic support for Islamic extremists

By
Bridget Welsh and Zachary Abuza

The Edge Review |  6 March 2015

When local papers reported last month that a 14-year old Malaysian girl had been stopped from heading to the Middle East to fight for the Islamic State (IS) movement, the headlines quickly faded into the background.

Her thwarted departure was marked as another “success”, but there was little discussion of the factors shaping the IS movement within Malaysia. Are there domestic factors that contribute? Let’s take stock of what we know so far.

While Malaysia – in common with other Southeast Asian countries – does not rank among the top 20 countries involved in the fighting, its presence is large enough not to be dismissed.

So far 71 people have been detained in Malaysia for their alleged participation in IS, with 59 recorded as fighting. Six Malaysians have died, including its first suicide bomber. There have been enough volunteers from Malaysia and Indonesia that a Malay-speaking unit was formed. Two Malaysians were also identified in a grisly beheading video.

Most participants have been urban, concentrated in the west coast, and young. The group is a mix of professionals and unemployed, mostly recruited through social media, especially Facebook. Many are women, and media reports have vividly described Malaysian women who have joined as brides and taken out loans to fund their travel.

Numerically, Malaysia’s participation may yet appear small. But these numbers indicate only action, not the quiet support within the movement’s networks, including in the areas of fundraising and recruitment.

Malaysia, in fact Southeast Asia, is not part of the Islamic caliphate plotted by IS. This does not mean that there is no affinity with this millenarian movement: technology and social media have facilitated powerful, savvy messaging.

IS is seen to be successful in opposing immoral governments and the West. The images of the “modern” activists using violent medieval methods have served to inspire with its “success” rather than alienate through its “evil”.

The movement attracts the heavily devoted, those inspired by martyrdom. The idea of apocalypse propagated by IS resonates with followers’ deep-seated religious interpretation, as the vision of a perceived better world connects to those unhappy with today’s conditions.

IS globally stands out for its appeal to women, who have been given a place in the movement (even if a subservient and exploitative one). Gender inclusion – particularly targeted toward young girls – has made IS more attractive. Indeed the most recent arrest in Malaysia was a 29-year old housewife and recruiter for IS.

Malaysia has provided an enabling context for IS beyond these global trends. The government’s restrictive approach towards religion has pushed discussion among Muslims about the faith underground.

The latest Pew Research Center survey on religious freedom for Muslims ranks Malaysia seventh last, out of 198 countries, for its restrictions.

This narrow space is compounded by a narrow view of faith, an environment that encourages takfiri, or accusing other Muslims of apostasy. The Shia in Malaysia have been especially targeted for their beliefs, often openly by the government’s religious authorities.

This is central to the IS paradigm of war against Shia in Syria and Iraq.

It extends to demonisation by religious zealots of Malaysia’s Christians, who are also in IS’s firing line. The government has broadly encouraged religious extremist views by funding organisations that promote intolerance and exclusion and it has sent mixed signals in its interventions over religious hatred.

Further, the government has not implemented standards of good governance in areas such as corruption and job creation.

In a climate where trust of government institutions has declined, this has had a spillover by contributing to perceptions within society of immorality within government, further inspiring support for IS.

Many are uninformed. There is little in the way of civic education about IS beyond pictures of horror. Instead there is a tendency to glorify struggle in the core of the faith in the Middle East and give inadequate attention to the periphery with local dynamics and implications half a world away.

Among the public at large there is low appreciation of how different IS is from Jemaah Islamiyah or al Qaeda, as struggles for Islam are often equated rather than differentiated.

The government has focused on counter-terrorist initiatives, using the security forces for control. The attention has been on stopping wouldbe fighters and to repudiate the violence. The government has taken this seriously and been proactive in these efforts.

This focus has been narrow, however, and has lacked follow-up, with those released often allowed to continue their networking and fundraising efforts and returnees not allowed to share their horror stories.

The approach is not a holistic one that recognises the underlying factors contributing to IS within Malaysia itself. The movement is portrayed as coming from outside, without an acknowledgment of the impact from inside.

The concern is for when the experience from outside comes back inside. Without a more holistic approach to reducing the appeal of IS in Malaysia, it may just be a matter of time before the fighting itself moves closer to home.

                This entry was posted on Saturday, 14 March 2015, 1:44 pm and is filed under
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Moving forward – a simple formula for Pakatan

By Stephen Ng

Malaysiakini

Mar 13, 2015

COMMENT
With the current stalemate within the Pakatan Rakyat coalition as a result of having to deal with PAS president Hadi Awang and the ulama faction of PAS, there is only one way forward for Pakatan.

The solution may be found in a simple formula, which can work only when it is agreed upon by all Pakatan supporters.

After all, faced with the possibility of a split in the near future, Pakatan Rakyat may not have too many options to choose from if it seeks to offer a united front to go for the final push in the next general election.

History teaches us that the moment the three component parties parted ways in Barisan Alternatif, there is no way for the opposition to offer a strong challenge against Umno/Barisan Nasional in the elections.

BN strategists have been working doubly hard at splitting the Pakatan votes. By now, Pakatan leaders should have realised that whenever there is a three-cornered fight, Umno’s odds to win the seat become 2:1.

Given that scenario, opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim would have gone to jail in vain, and for a nation in birthpangs, all hopes for a better Malaysia that Pakatan sought to offer would be dashed against the rocks.

Every Malaysian’s dream to have a two-party system would be dissipated by the next general election. Before that happens, Pakatan leaders would do well to discuss their strategies and forge ahead amidst the current challenges.

Lessons learnt

A good lesson that should have been learnt by now comes out of the 13th general election (GE13). Kota Damansara, which saw a three-cornered fight between PKR, PAS and Umno, was a major mistake by Pakatan leaders. The results were in fact predictable, given that in 2008, PSM’s Nasir Hashim polled 11,846 against Umno’s Zein Isma Ismail (10,771 votes).

For a constituency with 56 percent Malays, 30 percent Chinese and 14 percent Indians, the narrow majority of 1,075 votes was the result of stiff competition from Umno. If not for all the opposition parties working together under one banner, Kota Damansara would never have been won by Nasir.

However, in 2013, Pakatan saw a split of votes between PKR and PAS when both parties fielded their candidates for Kota Damansara. The result: Umno’s Halimaton Saadiah Bohan won with 16,387 votes.

It did not matter if Nasir (right) was campaigning using a different banner, but Pakatan would have easily won Kota Damansara with a bigger majorit, if the votes had not been split between Nasir (14,860 votes) and PAS candidate Ridzuan Ismail (7,312 votes).

Whatever transpired, it did not matter, but when there is a split of votes between Pakatan component parties, there is no way a divided force can take on the Goliath of Malaysian politics.

PAS’ directions uncertain

Since the demise of one of the country’s most well-respected statesman, Tok Guru Nik Aziz Nik Mat, it is hard to determine in what direction the Islamist party will be heading.

Whether it will remain with Pakatan is still a big question for most people, especially when there is talk about forming a unity government with Umno.

A wiser man like the late Nik Aziz would have objected against it, knowing that the big brother would have no reason to allocate more seats for PAS. After all, if PAS were to break away from BN, it would leave behind a bigger hole in the ruling coalition. Umno would want to protect its seats before conceding them to PAS.

In the past 12 months, we have seen how the ailing Hadi has become a stumbling block to the close cooperation between PAS and the other Pakatan component parties.

PAS Youth chief Suhaizan Kaiat (left) is right with his assessment that this has indeed caused a shift in the non-Malay votes, without which state constituencies like Paya Jeras, a traditional Umno seat, could be won by PAS.

A new spiritual leader replacing the late Nik Aziz is also said to be showing little interest in cooperating with other Pakatan component parties.

We also know that the people who are aligned to the Pakatan cause within PAS are unlikely to form a breakaway party. Unless they are strong enough to take the helm of the party from the ulama camp, or willing to form a breakaway party, Pakatan will be faced with an unwilling component party.

The decision on whether to keep or drop PAS from Pakatan before the next GE has to be made; otherwise, the collaboration between the three major component parties will remain unhealthy, and more issues will crop up.

At best, Pakatan still has PAS supporters who are aligned with PasMa, which has also been distanced by the ulama camp within the party.

The internal conflict between the Hadi camp and Mat Sabu camp will intensify as PAS gets ready for the coming general assembly in June, but the question remains to be seen whether there is anyone willing to challenge the PAS president.

The bigger picture

In the bigger picture, we know that the country is groaning to see a two-party system in Malaysia. This is where Pakatan can ill-afford to break up the way Barisan Alternatif did, immediately after Anwar went into prison in 1998.

Bitter lessons have to be learnt from the GE in 2004, and Pakatan has to now strategise its next frontier, if it seeks to become an alternative front to the ruling coalition.

Malaysians generally agree that the BN coalition which has been in power for more than half a century, and its president, have become ‘out-of-touch’ with the people. At best, the coalition and its component parties have overstayed the hospitality of Malaysians.

If PAS, under its current leadership, continues to pose a challenge to a united front, the way forward is for the Pakatan leadership to drop PAS.

The key in winning the next GE is in ensuring that only pro-Pakatan PAS leaders are given the support, and in return, pro-Pakatan supporters from within the Islamist party are to support the Pakatan candidate from whichever party.

This is the formula that party leaders will have to agree upon and start cascading down to their supporters before the next general election due in 2018.

Else, there is no way that Pakatan would be able to give Umno/BN a run for their money!

STEPHEN NG is an ordinary citizen with an avid interest in following political developments in the country since 2008.

                This entry was posted on Saturday, 14 March 2015, 4:12 am and is filed under
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UMNO’s “Unity Government” plotters now  celebrating for  they believe they will be able to achieve a major breakthrough for their seven-year-old conspiracy in four days’ time

UMNO’s “UG” (Unity Government between UMNO and PAS)  plotters are now  celebrating for they believe they will be able to achieve a major breakthrough for their seven-year conspiracy in four days’ time.

Although UMNO’s “UG” conspirators  hatched their plot immediately after the 12th General Elections in 2008, they could not make any headway, although over the years, the UMNO “UG” plotters have refined their game and overcome one obstacle after another.

The UMNO “UG” plot had right from the beginning involved the highest UMNO levels –  like the present and former  UMNO Presidents and Prime Ministers –  and a very high-level meeting was held in the first few months after the 12th General Elections but plotters came away empty-handed.

The “UG” plotters  found the obstacles quite impregnable, especially in the steely, principled and consistent opposition of the late Mursyidul Am PAS, Datuk Nik Abdul Aziz Nik Mat.

In fact, when the “UG” concept was revived again over the Selangor Mentri Besar crisis in the third quarter of last year, there was an article in The Malaysian Insider entitled:
“Jangan cakap soal gabung PAS – UMNO selagi Nik Aziz ada, kata penganalisis
”, quoting a political analyst who said it was better not to discuss it as it was impossible so long Nik Aziz was still alive.

The article said:

“Sebelum ini, media pernah memetik kenyataan Nik Aziz beliau akan meludah muka mana-mana pihak khasnya pemimpin PAS yang mahu bergabung dengan Umno.

“Ia dibuat berdasarkan pengalaman beliau dalam PAS ketika Umno menendang parti Islam itu keluar daripada gabungan Barisan Nasional (BN).”

Although UMNO “UG” plotters encountered a very uphill battle to translate their idea into reality, they have not given up efforts to create conditions conducive to their proposal, in particular in intensifying the rhetoric and politics of hate, extremism, bigotry and intolerance on race and religious issues to conjure up  the completely false perception and fear that Malays and Islam are under unprecedented threat and only an “UG” government of UMNO and PAS can save the Malays and Islam.

The death of Nik Aziz on Feb. 12, 2015 was a great and new opportunity for the “UG” plotters.

When the “UG” proposal was first conceived in 2008, MCA, Gerakan and other BN component parties were kept completely in the dark.

But now, they have not only been let into the “UG” secrets, but have been fully recruited to support the “UG” conspiracy on the Machiavellian justification that “the end justifies the means” – the end being to use whatever strategems and trickeries to destroy the greatest threat faced by UMNO/BN coalition in history, the Pakatan Rakyat formed by DAP, PKR and PAS.

This is why the leadership of  MCA, Gerakan and the other Barisan Nasional component parties have given UMNO the mandate for the UMNO Kelantan State Assembly representatives to support PAS amendment of the 1993 Syariah Criminal Code Enactment 1993 in the Kelantan State Assembly next week – on the ground that this is the best strategy to break up Pakatan Rakyat because of  the DAP’s firm and consistent stand that hudud laws are not in accordance with the Malaysian Constitution and outside the Pakatan Rakyat Common Policy Framework.

As a result, MCA, Gerakan and the other Barisan Nasional component parties have agreed to Kelantan UMNO State Assembly representatives voting  in support of PAS’ hudud implemention proposals in the Kelantan State Assembly although this is a fundamental breach of the Barisan Nasional (and previously Alliance) founding principles, and for MCA and Gerakan, not only of their respective parties but their founding fathers including Tun Tan Cheng Lock, Tun Tan Siew Sin and Tun Dr. Lim Chong Eu.

In total betrayal of their party’s founding principles, MCA and Gerakan leaders are also hoping that the UMNO’s UG plotters will succeed in four days’ time to make a major breach in destroying Pakatan Rakyat and therefore save UMNO/BN in the 14th General Elections.

This is a political scenario Malaysians may have to face in the next few days.

                This entry was posted on Saturday, 14 March 2015, 1:49 pm and is filed under
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Why is IGP Khalid declaring war on Pakatan Rakyat when he should be declaring war on Islamic State? Is IGP for UMNO/BN or for all Malaysians?

DAP MP for Rasah and DAPSY Chief Teo Kok Seong is the sixth victim of the police crackdown on organisers of the Kita Lawan peaceful rally last week.

He was arrested under Section 143 of the Penal Code when he reported to the Dang Wangi district police headquarters at 11 am this morning, for his statement to be recorded as arranged beforehand.

The Kita Lawan rally was held peacefully to protest against the five-year jailing of Parliamentary Opposition Leader Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim.

The other five who had been arrested for the peaceful rally are PKR Youth chief and Selangor Exco Member Nik Nazmi Nik Ahmad, PKR Vice Chairman/Secretary-General/ MP for Pandan Rafizi Ramli, PKR Youth leader Saifullah Zulkifli, PKR Supreme Council member Fairiz Musa and PAS Youth treasurer Fakhurazi Mokhtar.

PKR Vice President and MP for Lembah Pantai Nurul Izzah Anwar is expected to be the next target.

Kok Seong has been sent to  the Jinjang Police Station where he would be remanded overnight.  Is the police planning for a longer remand for Kok Seong, like the further three-day remand in the case of Nik Nazmi?

This is  a gross abuse of power.

I want to ask the Inspector-General of Police Tan Sri Khalid Abu Bakar whether he is IGP for UMNO/BN or IGP for all Malaysians.

If Khalid is IGP only for UMNO/BN and does not think he has to conduct himself with a modicum of fairness and justice, he should ask UMNO/BN to pay his salary and not collect his remuneration from Parliament.

Can Khalid explain why the UMNO Minister for Agriculture and Agro-based Industries, Datuk Seri Ismail Sabri who made the racist and seditious call on Malay consumers to boycott Chinese businesses;  the former Deputy Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department, Datuk Mashitah Ibrahim who lied with the seditious statement that the Chinese in Kedah had burnt the Quran “page by page in a prayer ritual”; and the Penang UMNO leader Datuk Mohd Zaidi Mohd Said who incited inter-racial hate, tension and conflict with the allegation that the success of Penang was because of the illegal businesses and crimes in “broad daylight” of the Chinese in the state had not been remanded for a single night in the police lockup for their transgressions?

The recent police re-investigation of the Penang Deputy Chief Minister II P. Ramasamy for sedition is another example of such abuse of power.

This was an old case which the police had already investigated last year and found that there was no basis in the allegation that Ramasamy had made a seditious and racist remark.

Why should the police re-open investigations on an old case which the police had investigated and closed just because the twitter-happy Inspector-General Police had seen a “doctored” account of Ramasamy’s earlier statement by some irresponsible cyber-trooper?

What the IGP should really do is to get the police to investigate the person responsible of twisting and doctoring Ramasamy’s remark last year!

Are we having a law for UMNO/BN people and a different law for PR leaders and NGO activists?

In fact, the IGP should answer why he is declaring war on PR leaders and NGO activists who are committed to the peaceful and democratic process of political change when he should be declaring war on Islamic State brainwashing Malaysians to join their atrocities of public stonings, beheadings and  mass killings?

The IGP has clearly got his priorities all wrong – in treating law-abiding citizens but who want to exercise their constitutional rights of freedom of assembly, association and expression in a peaceful and democratic manner as greater threats to society than the Islamic State terrorists and recruits who have no qualms about bombing society into smithereens!

The IGP is very Internet-savvy and he should have read this posting within minutes of its going up on the Internet – blog, tweet and facebook.

I commend the IGP for being so Internet-savvy but I advise him to use it to convince all Malaysians that he is IGP for all Malaysians and not just IGP for UMNO/BN.

There is no reason for any overnight remand of  Kok Seong in Jinjang police station as the police have ample time to record a statement from him, especially as he had reported to the Wang Dangi Police Station by prior arrangement the previous day.

I would urge the IGP to ensure that police investigations on Kok Seng are efficiently carried out and completed today and he could be released without spending overnight at the Jinjang Police station lock-up.

Similarly, I would urge IGP to ensure that  the police show the utmost respect when Nurul Izzah Anwar reports to the police on Monday whereby all investigations on her could be completed without having to remand her overnight.

                This entry was posted on Saturday, 14 March 2015, 5:37 pm and is filed under
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Anwar jailing could hurt both opposition and Najib

Yang Razali Kassim

East Asia Forum

14 March 2015

The jailing of Anwar Ibrahim following a second sodomy conviction could trigger a chain of events that could shake up Malaysian politics. Unlike after his first jailing in 1998, the opposition, which he leads, is already split and could crumble. But this may well play out as Prime Minister Najib Razak, who is currently under siege within his ruling United Malays National Organisation (UMNO), fights for his own survival. Anwar currently is serving a jail term of five years for what he maintains was a political conspiracy by his enemies, including Prime Minister Najib.

Unless pardoned by the Malaysian King, the verdict could well end the 67-year-old Anwar’s political career. Besides losing his parliamentary seat, by the time he is released, he would be 72 making any political comeback difficult. But the former deputy prime minister has in the past proven to be like a cat with nine lives — and might just have one more. His family’s move to petition for a royal pardon was unexpected, but that prevented Anwar from losing his parliamentary seat pending the King’s decision. Anwar did not make the appeal, insisting on his innocence.

In 2000, two years after he was sacked as deputy premier following a clash with then prime minister Mahathir Mohamad over the handling of the Asian financial crisis, Anwar was jailed for his first sodomy conviction. He was released four years later when that conviction was overturned by the court. Anwar countered his latest court verdict with a vow to continue his fight from behind bars, thus promising to turn himself into a political martyr.

So, what now?

Anwar’s fractured opposition alliance, Pakatan Rakyat (PR), could close ranks and turn his incarceration to its advantage. This could mean an explosive phase for Malaysian politics at Najib’s expense and the ruling Barisan Nasional (BN) coalition. But closing ranks appears to be tough without Anwar to act as a bridge between internal factions. And if the PR fails to overcome its internal divisions, the opposition will find itself heading for demise.

The challenges are daunting: 1998 is not 2015. Anwar is older and his health is also an issue. There is also no clear alternative leader of Anwar’s stature, with his charisma and political acumen to pull the divided alliance together.

This leaves the opposition coalition with little choice but to fall back on Anwar’s appeal and leadership again despite the odds. This would buy more time for the opposition to sort out its leadership crisis and throw up a new generation of opposition leaders.

To this end, the surprising move by Anwar’s family to seek a royal pardon allows the PR to retain Anwar as leader of the opposition in parliament A core of younger leaders, who have emerged on the wings of Anwar’s reform movement, are stepping up to the plate. These younger leaders, which include his daughter, Nurul Izzah, Azmin Ali, Rafizi Ramli, Saifuddin Nasution, Nik Nadzmi and Tian Chua, are now set to play a more prominent role to redefine Malaysian politics post-Anwar. An unexpected development is the emergence of more of Anwar’s offspring to continue his struggle, such as Nurul Nuha and Nurul Hikmah. There are also more promising young leaders in the broader opposition coalition beyond Anwar’s own party.

Will Anwar’s jailing help Prime Minister Najib?

Anwar’s second jailing has obvious implications for Najib. If Anwar’s family fails to secure him a royal pardon, the charismatic opposition icon will, by law, lose his parliamentary seat and will no longer be a major factor in the political equation. He will miss the next general election. But the family petition for the pardon has automatically suspended Anwar’s disqualification, pending a decision by the King. This means PR will not be as leaderless to fight the next polls as initially thought.

If Anwar becomes a political martyr and the opposition alliance overcomes its division, he might potentially become a more potent threat to Najib. But at this point, the split within the PR — between the Islamist Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party (PAS) and the Chinese-based Democratic Action Party (DAP) — seems difficult though not impossible to reconcile.

Anwar’s political lifeline ironically may come from Najib’s own problems. As it is, Najib is already looking at a tough year ahead on both the political and economic fronts. He has entered 2015 under the clouds of three dramatic airplane disasters. He is probably the only Malaysian leader since independence to have come under such unprecedented misfortune.

Ominously, one of the worst floods to hit the country’s peninsular in a ‘mini tsunami’ ushered in 2015. A subsequent photograph of Najib playing golf with President Obama during a private visit in Hawaii during the floods didn’t help either.

Najib also took the rap for losing the popular vote in the last general election to the Anwar-led opposition. A new investment fund which he advises, 1Malaysia Development Berhad known as 1MDB, has been heavily criticised for amassing huge debts so soon after formation. The alarming debt size has drawn heavy fire from two UMNO stalwarts, Mahathir and former finance minister Daim Zainuddin. The 1MDB issue continues to burden Najib.

Economically, this could not have come at a worse time: plummeting global oil prices have hit Malaysia, an oil exporter, hard. This forced the government to downgrade GDP growth forecasts from 5–6 per cent to 4.5–5.5 per cent. But Najib shied away from declaring an emergency, stating ‘we are neither in a recession nor a crisis as experienced in 1997, 1998 and 2009’.

The drop in oil prices was not accompanied by a corresponding decline in the prices of consumer goods. This led to one UMNO minister accusing ‘Chinese traders’ of profiteering and calling on the majority Malay community to boycott Chinese businesses. There were even alarmist statements that certain parties had sabotaged the economy to profit from the falling national currency. This is probably the first time since the 1998 financial crisis that such talk has resurfaced, although it has been defused for now.

As he faces these challenges, Najib has to ensure that his ethnic-based ruling coalition remains stable. But a key partner, the Malaysian Indian Congress (MIC), has broken into a public power feud, forcing Najib to step in. Another component party, the Malaysian Chinese Association (MCA) has just recovered from its own power struggle. In the anchor party, UMNO, the Mahathir-led undercurrents against Najib’s leadership remain despite the re-jailing of Anwar.

Najib cannot afford any more upsets in 2015, especially as Malaysia will be under the spotlight as chair of ASEAN. Will Najib display sufficient political skill to ensure his survival as leader — even as his nemesis, Anwar, and the divided opposition struggle for their own political survival?

Yang Razali Kassim is a Senior Fellow with the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University in Singapore.

                This entry was posted on Sunday, 15 March 2015, 7:09 am and is filed under
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PAS, MCA, Gerakan all falling into UMNO  trap to use “UG” to divide, destabilize and destroy Pakatan Rakyat as well as to save UMNO from being voted out office in Putrajaya in the 14GE

The reiteration of the PAS Kelantan Deputy Mentri Besar Datuk Mohd Amar Nik Abdullah that PAS would table the Kelantan Syariah Criminal Code Bill “without any amendment, regardless of DAP’s view” in the Kelantan State Assembly on Wednesday, 18th March 2015, would be pushing the seven-year-old Pakatan Rakyat to breaking point.

It is not just the DAP views, but if the decisions made at the Pakatan Rakyat Leadership Council, represented by the top leaders of DAP, PKR and PAS, including the latest PR Leadership Council meeting of March 12, 2015,  are repeatedly disregarded or violated, then the present format of Pakatan Rakyat cannot function or continue.

This will be a great pity, for it will mark the triumph of UMNO conspirators who have been trying their utmost in the past seven years to use the bait of “UG” (unity government between UMNO and PAS) and in the past year the additional bait of “hudud implementation in Kelantan” to achieve their objective to divide, destabilize and destroy the most formidable coalition challenge to be faced by UMNO/BN – the Pakatan Rakyat of DAP, PKR and PAS – as well as to save UMNO from being voted out of office in Putrajaya in the 14GE.

The writing on the wall is unmistakable.

For the first time in electoral  history in Malaysia, the UMNO/BN government in Putrajaya is a minority government with support of only 47% of the electorate – and for the second successive general elections, denied of its unbroken two-thirds parliamentary majority for 51 years from 1957 – 2008.

A recent opinion survey showed that the Prime Minister’s  approval rating dropped to 44% in January from 48% in October 2014 as more people felt his government was headed in the wrong direction in economic matters.

The UMNO/BN is set for both an implosion and an explosion, despite the brave talk by the Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Najib Razak at the 2015 Kedah UMNO Convention in Alor Setar yesterday that it was capable remaining in power and winning the 14GE if “unwanted people” and “jemuan jemuan” like Mahathir, Daim and Zam are not in the party.

There can be reason for such bravado from Najib (who even faced a revolt from his No. 2, the Deputy Prime Minister, Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin over his handling of the RM42 billion 1MDB scandal), unless he believes that Pakatan Rakyat, the most formidable threat to UMNO/BN, is on the verge of rupture and even disintegration because of the success of UMNO “UG” conspirators using the lure of hudud implementation in Kelantan to divide, destabilize and destroy PR.

If Pakatan Rakyat is no more, Najib and UMNO leaders believe that the multiple crisis of confidence arising from 1MDB scandal and the  stack of problems relating to political, economic, educational, good governance, rule of law and human rights issues would be more manageable.

MCA and Gerakan leaders are playing with fire by buying into the UMNO “UG” plot to divide, destabilize and destroy PR, and giving the mandate to UMNO Kelantan State Assemblymen to vote in support of PAS Kelantan’s hudud proposal in the Kelantan State Assembly – working on the Machiavellian principle that “the end justifies the means”.

The end is  the destruction of Pakatan Rakat and the means their acquiescence to  Kelantan UMNO State Assemblymen supporting PAS Kelantan on hudud implementation in the Kelantan State Assembly.

If MCA and Gerakan can open the breach to agree to UMNO Kelantan State Assemblymen supporting PAS on hudud implementation in Kelantan, aren’t they setting a precedent to future agreement to UMNO State Assemblymen in other states agreeing to hudud implementation, and even finally, agreeing to UMNO MPs supporting hudud implementation in Parliament?

DAP will remain constant and consistent that hudud laws are not within the Pakatan Rakyat Common Policy Framework and this was also the stand not only of the late Mursyidul Am, Datuk Seri Nik Aziz Nik Mat but also of PAS President, Datuk Seri Hadi Awang that hudud is not in the list of PR priorities.

In May 2012 in Hulu Terengganu, PAS President Datuk Seri Hadi Awang said hudud could only be implemented if there are adequate conditions, giving as examples that if there is no minimum wage provision or resolution of the unemployment problem, the conditions for implementation for hudud do not exist.

If Pakatan Rakyat, the second Opposition Coalition in the nation’s history after Barisan Alternative,  comes to the end of the road, it will have far-reaching political implications and repercussions with the likely loss of all the historic electoral gains in the 2013 General Elections.

Firstly, DAP, PAS and PKR achieved their best parliamentary and state assembly results during their tripartite co-operation in the 1999, 2008 and 2013 General Elections.

In the case of PAS, from a regional party confined largely to its “northern” heartland of Perlis, Kedah, Kelantan and Terengganu, PAS had gone “national” in the 13th General Election with parliamentary and/or State Assembly representation in every state in Peninsular Malaysia, except for Negri Sembilan.

DAP and PKR have  also benefitted from the Pakatan Rakyat partnership, with the DAP winning 38 Parliamentary and 107 State Assembly seats and PKR winning 28 Parliamentary and 42 State Assembly seats.

All these electoral gains of the three Pakatan Rakyat parties  are in the balance if there is no Pakatan Rakyat in the 14th General Elections.

Secondly, Pakatan Rakyat offers Malaysians the first opportunity of a new Federal Government which does not come from UMNO/BN.

Both these historic electoral gains are likely to be lost if Pakatan Rakyat is no more.

However, if the electorate loses confidence in the Pakatan Rakyat because of  a fundamental breach of the PR Common Policy Framework, then the three component parties of DAP, PKR and PAS can fare even worse in the 14th GE compared to  the results achieved in the 1999, 2008 and 2013 General Elections.

These are among the sober realities and conundrums PR leaders will have to  confront in the next few days.

                This entry was posted on Sunday, 15 March 2015, 3:03 pm and is filed under
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President Barack Obama’s Malaysia Problem

By John R. Malott

Asia Sentinel

March 13, 2015

A former US ambassador tells why he initiated a petition to free Anwar Ibrahim

It was still the evening of Feb. 9 on the US east coast when I learned that the Federal Court, Malaysia’s highest, had upheld the conviction of the  opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim.

The next day I saw a press release issued by a spokesperson for President Barack Obama’s National Security Council (NSC), saying that “the United States is deeply disappointed with Mr. Anwar’s conviction.” It said that “the decision to prosecute Mr. Anwar and the conduct of his trial have raised a number of serious concerns about rule of law and the fairness of the judicial system in Malaysia.”

While the content of the press release was good enough, many observers pointed out that it was issued in a name of a mid-ranking official in the NSC and not by a higher-ranking person in either the NSC or the White House itself. As such, to many people it seemed that the White House might just be “doing the necessary” and issuing a pro forma statement because it had to. Their suspicions were raised because Obama himself had been seen playing golf in Hawaii with Malaysia’s Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak just a few weeks earlier.

The golf match with Najib was a rare occasion for Obama, for as The New York Times pointed out in a March 10 article, Obama’s relationships with foreign leaders are almost all cool and businesslike. It is rare for him to invest his time in a personal relationship or to “click” with a foreign leader. According to present and former US Administration officials, however, Obama likes Najib. They “click.” They say that Obama likes meeting and talking to Najib.

Malaysia’s Obama Problem

After learning of the verdict against Anwar, I decided that one step I could take was to write a petition on the White House “We, the People” website and see if we could hit the magic number of 100,000 signatures. That would get attention.

The problem when it comes to Malaysia and Obama is two-fold. First, Obama believes what Najib tells him. He has drunk Najib’s Kool-Aid.  He truly believes that Najib wants to reform his country but is being held back by conservative elements within his ruling party. According to people in the know, Obama thinks that pushing Najib in private or public will only make Najib’s task harder. So Obama took a light approach when he met Najib in Malaysia in April 2014, and it was only because of pressure from US human rights groups and others that the trip plans changed. Obama met with Malaysian civil society representatives for almost an hour (instead of the scheduled 15 minutes), and Obama NSC advisor Susan Rice met privately with Anwar and other opposition party leaders on the last day of the visit.

The second and broader problem is the failure of the Obama Administration for six years to make human rights and the promotion of democracy and political freedom a central element in its overall foreign policy. This is surprising for a president from the Democratic Party, which traditionally has placed great value on civil rights and political and personal freedom. It is even more surprising for Obama, our first African-American president and a man who regularly summons the rhetoric of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and the images of America’s civil rights struggle.

Will the Real Najib Please Stand Up?

Obama is not the first person whom Najib has fooled. The “international Najib” is impeccably dressed in expensive suits and speaks great English. He is courtly, polite, and soft-spoken. He talks of his dreams to reform Malaysia and move it forward.  When he addresses the United Nations and international think tanks, he speaks of leading a global movement of moderates and describes Malaysia as a tolerant, multi-racial, multi-religious paradise where everyone lives in harmony. He talks about his plans to reform Malaysia’s political system. But none of those promised reforms – from abolishing the sedition act to allowing for a free press – has ever taken place. In fact, Malaysia under Najib has become more repressive, not less. And thanks to Najib’s silence and passivity, racial and religious strains are higher than at any point since the murderous race riots of 1969.

Most of the world, however, fails to understand the gap between Najib’s international rhetoric and his actions at home. That is because few people around the world, other than the Malaysian diaspora, follow developments in Malaysia. They only know the “Good Najib” and not the Najib surrounded by scandal, from 1MDB to Scorpene submarines to the Mongolian translator who was murdered by Najib’s  personal bodyguards.

God Bless the Queen

One who did pay attention, however, was Queen Elizabeth II.

In January 2012, Najib hosted the first international meeting of his “Movement of Moderates” in Kuala Lumpur and once again proclaimed his belief in democracy and tolerance. Yet three months later, he sent his police force onto the streets of KL to beat and tear gas his own citizens, over 100,000 of them, whose only crime was to gather peacefully and express their hopes for free and fair elections in Malaysia. People whose only “crime” was to walk down the street wearing the color yellow – the symbol of Bersih, the organizers of the protest – were arrested.

One week after his police force fired chemical-laced water on the protestors and detained over 1,600 people, the “good Najib” took a trip to London. But when he walked in the room to meet Queen Elizabeth, he got a big surprise. The Queen was wearing yellow. No one thinks it was an accident. Even the flowers in the vases behind her were yellow. The Queen had sent a clear message.

That was in 2012.  So it is surprising that three years later the Obama Administration still seems not to understand the reality of what is happening in Malaysia. I am very sure that the US Embassy in Kuala Lumpur is reporting the situation accurately. The problem is that few people at the senior levels in Washington pay attention to Malaysia, and lower-level officers no doubt find it hard to counter the ideas about Najib and Malaysia that seem to be well-entrenched in Barack Obama’s mind.

If Not Us, Then Who?

I have always believed that the promotion of democracy and political freedom must be an essential part of American foreign policy. It does not mean that we should sacrifice our other national interests in any country. But to paraphrase Barack Obama’s rhetorical style: “If not us, then who? If not now, then when?”

If America does not stand up for the principles upon which it was founded, then who will? How can we as Americans claim those rights for ourselves, while standing by indifferently as they are denied to others? Are we not prepared to work and sacrifice so that the blessings of liberty are brought to all of God’s children?

America has to stand on the right side of history. It must always stand for the principles that define America’s very existence and which have distinguished it from other nations. It must support those people around the world who believe in the same values that we do, and who only want – today — the same freedoms that we have enjoyed for over two centuries.

So that is why I wrote the petition – as a wakeup call to Obama and his White House. America has to be true to its principles. Convincing Najib to release Anwar and carry out his long-promised reforms is just as important to America’s interests as the TPP, combating ISIS, or anything else that is on the Administration’s “wish list” with Malaysia.

America needs to make Anwar’s freedom, and indeed the freedom of all Malaysians, of all races and religions and political orientation, a priority in its policy towards Malaysia.

If we don’t, then how can we call ourselves Americans?

Malaysia’s Youth Are the Future

In Malaysia’s last two general elections, the voting pattern was clear. The youth of Malaysia have cast their lot with the democratic opposition. And Malaysia’s young people are the future.

A recent survey by the Merdeka Center, an independent polling organization in Malaysia, found that one out of two Malaysians want the political “old guard” to retire and pass the torch to a new and younger generation.

So the two key questions are this. Are America’s policies aligned with the aspirations of the next generation in Malaysia? And when the next generation comes to power, what will they think of us?

Looking at comments on Malaysia’s various news websites, it is clear that the new generation is skeptical of America. While their parents were conditioned by former Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamed and others to look at the US in Third World terms – as an imperialist nation – the younger generation’s view is different. They think that America is simply and selfishly pursuing its own interests at their expense – and that given a choice between the TPP and democracy in Malaysia, for example, America will choose the TPP every time, so its companies can profit.

This is not knee-jerk anti-Americanism among Malaysia’s next generation. Rather, their views are reinforced by hearing visiting senior Obama Administration officials talk about the importance of concluding the Trans Pacific Partnership or cooperating to combat ISIS – but not hearing anything about democracy and political freedom. Unless we change our policy, they will remember the pictures of Obama golfing with Najib, at a time when the Leader of the Opposition – the man that 53 percent of Malaysians and almost 70 percent of Malaysia’s young people voted for — was about to face his final legal reckoning and head to prison.

Crossing the 100,000 Mark

So I wrote the petition on February 10 and placed it on the “We, the People” website.

It is very rare for any petition on the White House website to reach the magical number of 100,000 signatures. Of the over 141,000 petitions that have been filed since Obama became President in 2009, only 162 of them — about 1/10th of 1 percent — have ever obtained the required number of signatures.

As of this writing, the petition now has about 114,000 signatures, so we have won, so to speak. The White House is now required to send us a response.

There also was a counter-petition, reportedly launched by UMNO “cyber troopers.” It was pulled from the White House website when it was discovered that the great majority of its signatures – over 60,000 — were fraudulent, generated by a disposable email website that appropriately is called “slipry.net.”

When the counter-petition was put back up, those 60,000-plus signatures had been removed. A number of Malaysians commented, ‘phantom voters, phantom signatures. That’s how UMNO tries to stay in power.’ The attempt to defraud the White House became a major embarrassment for Najib’s party and supporters.

As for the Future….

I am not holding my breath that there will be a sudden “eureka” moment for Obama and his policy towards Malaysia. The White House petition, now so very successful, is just the first of many steps that need to be taken in the United States and around the world to make sure that Najib and the UMNO regime know that the world is watching, and that the con game of the International Good Najib and the Domestic Bad Najib is over.

The day will come when the world understands that there is only one Najib, and that he leads one of most repressive, racist, and corrupt regimes in Asia. And when that day comes, then hopefully we all will be wearing yellow.

John Malott is a former US career diplomat and was ambassador to Malaysia from 1996 to 1998

                This entry was posted on Sunday, 15 March 2015, 6:12 am and is filed under
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Twin ghosts haunt Malaysia’s sovereign fund

By Una Galani

Reuters

March 12, 2015

The author is a Reuters Breakingviews columnist. The opinions expressed are her own.

Malaysia’s 1MDB faces a daunting task. The six year-old sovereign fund was set up to finance big national projects but expanded too fast, took on heavy debts and is now at the centre of a growing controversy. An ambitious restructuring brings both political and financial risks.

The fund which counts Prime Minister Najib Razak as chairman of its board of advisors has pledged to dismantle itself following a strategic review led by new chief executive Arul Kanda. It plans to stop making new investments and raise cash through an initial public offering of Malaysia’s second largest independent power producer. Selling unused land and finding equity partners for real estate projects that include a new financial centre in Kuala Lumpur and a development built around the terminus for a planned high-speed rail link with Singapore should bring in additional funds.

1MDB’s most pressing objective is to pay down net debt, which stood at around 38 billion ringgit ($10.3 billion) in March 2014. In the same year it made a net loss of 665.4 million ringgit, despite booking a gain from the revaluation of its property portfolio. Absent similar revaluations, it also made a loss in the previous two years.

In the past year, 1MDB has already redeemed $2.3 billion of investments it held in the Cayman Islands and settled a 2 billion ringgit loan. A public offering of an 80 percent stake in its energy unit – which carries debt of around 18 billion ringgit – was initially expected to raise 11 billion ringgit. However, previous efforts to list the business have been delayed. Meanwhile, potential co-investors may shy away from an entity that appears unable to escape controversy.

Past missteps hardly inspire confidence. 1MDB overpaid for the energy assets it has acquired since 2012 from local tycoon Ananda Krishnan and other conglomerates. It has also attracted scrutiny by paying unusually high fees on bond issues worth $4.8 billion arranged by Goldman Sachs in 2012 and 2013. Around $3 billion was earmarked for a joint venture with state-backed Abu Dhabi investor Aabar. Although the two countries retain a strong relationship, the terms of the venture have still not been finalised and an agreement appears unlikely to materialise.

The fund’s lack of transparency has been a particular concern in recent months. Its failure to repay a 2 billion ringgit loan due at the end of November sparked a broader market sell-off as investors worried that 1MDB’s debts might pose an additional burden for a country already grappling with the plunge in global oil prices.

Kanda said on Feb. 15 that the loan had been settled but provided no explanation of how. Even though Krishnan is widely believed to have played a part in clearing the loan in return for a share of the energy business, 1MDB has remained silent on the issue.

Meanwhile, 1MDB has become a target for Najib’s political opponents. Following reports that a local tycoon had siphoned money out of the fund, former Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad called for an investigation into its finances. In an attempt to contain the political storm, Najib on March 4 ordered Malaysia’s auditor-general to verify 1MDB’s accounts.

The risk is that the political controversy makes it harder for 1MDB to clean up its finances. If the fund is unable to reduce its debt, the government may be forced to help out, for example by asking state-backed pension funds and companies to support a listing of the energy business or become equity partners in its real estate projects.

Alternatively, the government may have to support 1MDB’s debt directly. The state has explicitly guaranteed 5.8 billion of the fund’s borrowings. Extending this to all of 1MDB’s net debt at the end of March 2014 would increase the state’s contingent liabilities to 18.1 percent of GDP from 15.1 percent at the end of the third quarter. That’s on top of federal government debt that was already at 52.8 percent of GDP at the end of the same period.

What 1MDB’s many critics really want is a frank and simple explanation of how a fund supported by the Prime Minister ended up in such a financial mess. That would probably draw attention to past mismanagement and costly mistakes. Unless it is able to complete its ambitious clean-up, however, 1MDB’s woes will continue to be a political and financial burden.

                This entry was posted on Sunday, 15 March 2015, 6:31 am and is filed under
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Will Mahathir again make history – to be sacked from UMNO twice apart from quitting once on his own?

The Prime Minister and UMNO President, Datuk Seri Najib Razak went into a political offensive yesterday when opening the two-day 2015 Kedah UMNO Convention, calling on UMNO members to ignore ‘jemuan-jemuan’ (bad characters) and apple-polishers as these people cause disunity in the ranks.

He said UMNO was capable of remaining in power and win elections if these “unwanted people” were not in the party.

Who are these “bad characters” that Najib was referring to?

The persons who immediately come to mind are UMNO’s longest-serving Prime Minister and President, Tun Dr. Mahathir Mohamad, his two-time Finance Minister, Tun Daim Zainuddin and his “hullubalangs” like former Information Minister and Utusan Malaysia editor-in-chief Zainuddin Maidin.

It is most noteworthy that Najib has chosen Kedah to go on the offensive, making the speech before the Kedah Mentri Besar, Mukhriz Mahathir, when everybody at the convention and outside knew that heading the   “jemuan-jemuan” slammed by Najib is none other than Mukriz’s father, Tun Mahathir.

Is the longest-serving UMNO Prime Minister and President leading the list of  “bad characters not wanted in UMNO” by Najib?

After his blog on Feb. 10  quoting Shakespeare’s Hamlet about “something rotten in the State of Denmark”, Mahathir said he would quit “if he was the Prime Minister today” and suggested that Najib should “make things easy” and resign if he cannot perform.

Mahathir had not been quiet in the past month, but had waded into the RM42 billion 1MDB scandal which has put all the mega financial scandals in Mahathir’s 22-year premiership to shame in scale and scope, warning that UMNO/BN may just lose in the next general election unless the whole truth about the 1MDB is revealed.

Mahathir supported the Deputy Prime Minister, Tan Sri Muhyiddin’s proposal for a forensic investigation into the 1MDB since its formation in 2009, but went beyond the DPM’s suggestion that the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) should immediately conduct its investigations into 1MDB without having to wait for the outcome from the Auditor-General’s audit, as Mahathir wanted not just  “an ordinary audit of the accounts” but immediate forensic investigation by the police on allegations made against several people who were involved in 1MDB’s financial management independently of the Auditor-General’s audit.

Mahathir also called on Najib to explain the source of his huge wealth, that his office declared as a family inheritance, but which his own brothers vehemently denied.

Najib was clearly responding to Mahathir when he said in Kedah yesterday that UMNO was capable of remaining in power and win elections if the “bad characters” were not in the party, as the “the ‘jemuan’ are worse than apple-polishers and ‘batu ronson’ (instigators) because they try to pit us against each other, so much so our shortcomings are amplified, party harmony is affected”.

Najib said getting rid of these negative elements was important to secure Umno’s future.

Is Najib setting the stage for the expulsion of Mahathir from UMNO, which will be another history for Mahathir – out of UMNO three times, twice expelled from UMNO and quitting UMNO once on his own.

In his speech in Kedah, Najib said that he would not condone any wrongdoings and that wrongdoers will face action under the law.

Three  outstanding cases out of a host of injustices, where wrongdoings are being condoned and wrongdoers do not have the face the full rigours of the law,  immediately come to mind, viz:

•	Who murdered Mongolian Altantuya Shaariibuu in October 2006, as the two former police commandos Azila Hadri and Sirul Azhar did not have the motive to kill Altantuya and blow up her body with military explosives as the duo did not know the Mongolian at all. Why is there a conspiracy of silence and total inaction by the police to investigate the “mastermind” of Altantunya’s murder?

•	Who killed DAP aide Teoh Beng Hock at the MACC headquarters on July 16, 2009 and why were MACC officers whose actions the Court of Appeal had ruled last September contributed to Teoh’s death  been promoted – eg Hishammuddin Hashim, promoted as Sabah MACC director?

•	The failures to charge  the UMNO Minister for Agriculture and Agro-based Industries, Datuk Seri Ismail Sabri who made the racist and seditious call on Malay consumers to boycott Chinese businesses;  the former Deputy Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department, Datuk Mashitah Ibrahim who lied with the seditious statement that the Chinese in Kedah had burnt the Quran “page by page in a prayer ritual”; and the Penang UMNO leader Datuk Mohd Zaidi Mohd Said who incited inter-racial hate, tension and conflict with the allegation that the success of Penang was because of the illegal businesses and crimes in “broad daylight” of the Chinese in the state.

How can Najib explain such egregious condonation of wrongdoing and failure to  ensure that wrongdoers  face action under the law in these three instances?

                This entry was posted on Sunday, 15 March 2015, 10:43 am and is filed under
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Is hudud all that matters to the Kelantan government?

COMMENTARY BY THE MALAYSIAN INSIDER

16 March 2015

Perhaps it is a case of come hell or high water, the Kelantan government is just set on ensuring that Islamic criminal law or hudud can be implemented in the Malay heartland state.

After all, high water did come to pass last December when floods swept through the state and left tens of thousands homeless. And hell is just another way to describe the slumping economy that Kelantan folk have complained over the years.

Despite years of economic drift, the state is still under PAS since 1990, much to the chagrin of Umno and Barisan Nasional (BN) which have been struggling to wrest it from the Islamist party over the years.

But perhaps the clerics who run PAS should pause and take heed of the latest Merdeka Center survey issued today.

The independent pollster found that a majority of voters in the peninsula said the PAS-led Kelantan government should focus on post-flood reconstruction, rather than its hudud law amendments.

According to a survey of 1,008 voters interviewed over the telephone, 84% thought the state government should concentrate on repairing and rebuilding homes of flood victims.

This is also the prevalent view of 81% Malay/Muslim respondents interviewed across the peninsula, it added.

“It should be noted that the survey found this view prevalent across key Malay/Muslim demographics of gender, age groups and media consumers.

“This finding is also in line with Merdeka Center’s previous finding in a survey carried out in April 2014, which revealed that a majority (58%) of Malay respondents thought that the country is not ready for hudud implementation,” Merdeka Center said in a statement.

PAS has not listened to the findings of any surveys, nor has it listened to its allies in Pakatan Rakyat (PR) thus far. Perhaps it feels that the Kelantan victory in all elections since 1990 is proof that the Kelantanese want hudud laws.

It could also be a case that they might not want Umno or BN because most of the voters in Kelantan actually live and work in states ruled by the federal coalition government.

And their vote for PAS is more a vote against Umno, rather than for hudud. But all this could be lost to PAS, which appear to have become parochial and puritanical in their outlook after losing Kedah and several semi-rural seats in the west coast of the peninsula.

If they actually believe in good governance as demanded by Islam, then PAS should look at improving the lives and livelihood of those in Kelantan before thinking of ways to punish them according to Islamic precepts.

As it is, they are already punished by a government that has done little for their lives on earth. If the hudud comes to pass, it will be the PAS government’s crowning achievement but just another punishment for their voters.

And that is definitely not what Islam is all about. – March 16, 2015.

                This entry was posted on Monday, 16 March 2015, 3:26 pm and is filed under
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MCA and Gerakan are only half a step from allowing their State Assembly representatives to vote in support of  hudud after they have agreed  to Kelantan UMNO Assemblymen voting in support of hudud in Kelantan State Assembly

MCA and Gerakan are only half a step from allowing their State Assembly representatives to vote in support of hudud in the various State legislatures after they have agreed to Kelantan UMNO Assemblymen voting in support of hudud in Kelantan State Assembly in the next few days.

When UMNO Kelantan State Assembly representatives vote in support of Kelantan PAS hudud law in Kelantan in the Kelantan State Assembly on March 18 or 19, it will the D-Day for MCA, for it will be something the MCA and Gerakan founding fathers like Tun Tan Cheng Lock,  Tun Tan Siew Sin and Tun Dr. Lim Chong Eu would never imagine would have happened in MCA and Gerakan – to agree directly or indirectly, explicitly or in a tacit manner, that Malaysia is not a secular state.

When MCA and Gerakan open the breach to agree to UMNO Kelantan State Assemblymen supporting PAS on hudud implementation in Kelantan, MCA and Gerakan would have set the  precedent to  allow UMNO State Assemblymen in other states to agree to  hudud law and implementation.

If MCA and Gerakan can agree to UMNO Kelantan State Assemblymen voting to support PAS on hudud implementation in Kelantan State Assembly, it will be a precedent for MCA and Gerakan agreeing to UMNO State Assembly representatives in other states agreeing to hudud law and implementation.

We are then only half a step to MCA and Gerakan State Assembly representatives themselves voting in support of hudud law and implementation in the various State Assemblies.

If MCA and Gerakan have no objection to UMNO State Assembly representatives voting in support of hudud law and implantation in the various State Assemblies, how can MCA and Gerakan leadership object to MCA and Gerakan State Assembly representatives taking the half step of themselves voting in support of hudud law and implementation in the various State Assemblies?

Clearly, the MCA President Datuk Seri Liow Tiong Lai, the Gerakan President, Datuk Mah Siew Keong and the entire MCA and Gerakan national leaderships have not thought through the far-reaching consequences of their Machiavellian tactics of tacitly giving support to UMNO Kelantan State Assembly representatives violating the founding principles of  Barisan Nasional (and previously Alliance) that hudud is not in conformity with the bedrock principles of the Malaysian Constitution agreed to  by the founding fathers from all races and religions in the country before the achievement of Merdeka in 1957 and formation of Malaysia in 1963.

If the MCA and Gerakan national leaders are men and women of principle, commitment and vision, I would ask them to convene emergency meetings not only of MCA and Gerakan Central Committees but also of the Barisan Nasional Supreme Council to reaffirm their founding nation-building principles – which would be violated if Kelantan UMNO State Assemblymen vote in support of hudud implementation in the Kelantan State Assembly.

But I would not do so, knowing the limitations, weaknesses and failings of the present MCA and Gerakan leaderships.

They are in fact giving “moderation” a bad name, proclaiming their support for moderation when they are in fact prepared to betray the “moderate” founding principles of their party founders, like Tun Tan Cheng Lock, Tun Tan Siew Sin and Tun Dr. Lim Chong Eu.

Moderate Malaysians, regardless of race or religion, will ask all  political parties to be constant, consistent and principled in their politics.

MCA and Gerakan agreeing to Kelantan UMNO State Assembly representatives  to vote in support of Kelantan PAS on  hudud law and implementation in Kelantan is a violation of MCA, Gerakan and Barisan Nasional founding principles.

DAP agreeing to Kelantan PAS State Assembly representatives to vote in support of hudud law and implementation in Kelantan after the formation of Pakatan Rakyat in 2008 will be a violation of DAP principles and PR Common Policy Framework.

DAP is constant, consistent and principled in the stand that hudud law and implementation is not in accordance with the PR Common Policy Framework and the Malaysian Constitution.

But MCA, Gerakan together with UMNO, have deviated from the UMNO, MCA, Gerakan and BN founding principles that hudud law and implementation are against the fundamental principles of the  Malaysian Constitution.

Can MCA and Gerakan Presidents and leaders justify the betrayal of the founding principles and stand of their respective parties and  founding fathers?

It is very short-sighted, selfish and utter betrayal of the MCA and Gerakan founding principles  for the present generation of MCA and Gerakan leaderships to play the game of the UMNO “UG” (Unity Government of UMNO and PAS) plotters to use hudud to divide, destabilise and destroy Pakatan Rakyat so as to save UMNO/BN in the 14the General Elections.

Can they pull back at the precipice?

                This entry was posted on Monday, 16 March 2015, 12:20 pm and is filed under
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The die seems to be cast – the Pakatan Rakyat (PR) Common Policy Framework (CPF) will be broken by PAS Kelantan and no one in the national PAS leadership is prepared, capable or has the power to remind PAS Kelantan State Government to honour the PR  CPF

The die seems to be cast, with the Pakatan Rakyat (PR) Common Policy Framework (CPF) set to be broken by PAS Kelantan in the Kelantan State Assembly on Wednesday.

The Kelantan Deputy Mentri Besar Datuk Mohd Amar Nik Abdullah has reiterated almost everyday that against the decision of the Pakatan Rakyat Leadership Council on March 12, the PAS Kelantan State Government is going ahead with the Kelantan Syariah Criminal Code Enactment.

It is would appear that no one in the national PAS leadership is prepared, capable or have the power to remind the PAS Kelantan State Government that it should honour the PR  Common Policy Framework.

If hudud had been a hot controversial issue in the 13th General Election on May 5, 2013, the UMNO/Barisan Nasional coalition would not only have regained its two-thirds parliamentary majority, Pakatan Rakyat would have lost Selangor apart from Kedah, and Johore would have reverted as an invincible UMNO/Barisan Nasional “fixed-deposit” state.

Past general elections have proven that hudud issue was never a vote winner for PAS, and Terengganu provides the best illustration.

In the 10th  General Election in 1999, PAS and PKR won all eight parliamentary and 28 out of 32 state assembly seats in Terenganu because of the backlash against UMNO arising from Anwar Ibrahim’s “black eye” and the Reformasi movement.

But despite the passing of  the Terengganu state hudud enactment in 2001, PAS and PKR only managed to retain 1 out of 8 parliament seats and 4 out of 28 state assembly seats in the 11th General Election in 2004 – losing the Terengganu State Government in the process.

If hudud was a leading campaign issue in the 13th General Elections in 2013, PR would not have achieved the good electoral results of 89 Parliamentary seats and 229 State Assembly seats, as any increase in Malay support for the Pakatan Rakyat parties would be negligible while the loss of non-Malay support for PR candidates would be very significant.

A loss of 10% non-Malay voter support for PR in the 13GE in 2013 would translate into PR losing 19 Parliamentary seats and 40 State Assembly seats; while a loss of 20% non-Malay voter support would translate into PR losing 43 Parliamentary seats and 95 State Assembly seats.

In both scenarios of loss of 10% or 20% of non-Malay voter support, UMNO/Barisan Nasional would have regained two-thirds parliamentary control of Parliament.

If there is a 20% loss of non-Malay voter support, PAS would be reduced from 15 to five state assembly seats in Selangor; from 9 to  5 in Kedah; from 5 to 1 in Perak; from 3 to 2 in Pahang; from 1 to 0 in Malacca, and from 4 to 0 in Johor.

DAP, PAS and PKR achieved their best parliamentary and state assembly results during their tripartite co-operation in the 1999, 2008 and 2013 General Elections as compared to all previous general elections.

In the case of PAS, from a regional party confined largely to its “northern” heartland of Perlis, Kedah, Kelantan and Terengganu, PAS had gone “national” in the 13th General Election with parliamentary and/or State Assembly representation in every state in Peninsular Malaysia, except for Negri Sembilan.

All these gains will go to nought if hudud had been a hot controversial issue in the 2013 general election, or if Pakatan Rakyat is forced to disintegrate because of the failure to uphold the PR Common Policy Framework.

In such a case, the victors will be UMNO/Barisan Nasional, while the losers will be the healthy democratic development in Malaysia leading to the ousting of UMNO/BN from Putrajaya in the 14th General Elections.

                This entry was posted on Monday, 16 March 2015, 5:13 pm and is filed under
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Can we drop the term ‘moderate Muslim’? It’s meaningless

Sarfraz Manzoor

Guardian

16 March 2015

The word moderate means devout to some, liberal to others. We don’t need it to describe ordinary followers of a tolerant religion

I first started calling myself a “moderate Muslim” in 1989 in the aftermath of the Salman Rushdie affair. Watching bearded men in Bradford burning copies of The Satanic Verses I wanted to signal that I was not like them, that I believed in free speech and tolerance and being reasonable and civil, and that I did not see a contradiction in living within the value structures and laws of this country and being Muslim.

The claim that most Muslims are moderate is rarely challenged, which is why I have spent the last month travelling around the country talking to ordinary Muslims about the word. I anticipated disagreement on what defined moderate; what I did not expect was universal hostility to the very phrase and yet everywhere I went the message was the same: don’t call us moderate.

“I see it as a criticism,” one woman in Luton told me. “You are giving me this label based on how I look and how I dress.” Her male friend said he found the word “offensive”, adding: “Are you saying I’m only 50% Muslim? When someone says to me ‘you’re moderate’ it suggests to me they’re saying ‘you’re not fully Muslim’.”

It was surprising to find a term that I had always assumed was favourable and benign being so roundly condemned

The men and women I met told me they found it infuriating that they could be devout in their practice of their religion but they would only be considered “moderate” Muslims – since moderate was often taken to mean not hugely observant. Meanwhile those who had committed appalling acts of terror – and who were often far from religious in their earlier lives – would immediately be considered “real” or “full” Muslims. It was surprising to find a term that I had always assumed was favourable and benign being so roundly condemned. It may once have been useful but the phrase is no longer fit for purpose.

This is about more than politeness and semantics. The language matters because if ordinary Muslims feel they are being divided into camps, into “good” (moderates) and “bad” (non-moderates) then any statements made by politicians will be heard with great scepticism, especially if for many Muslims “moderate” has come somehow to mean more secular.

The other danger is that if politicians merely assume that most Muslims have views that are moderate they may be blinding themselves to the scale of the challenge they face. A recent BBC survey of 1,000 British Muslims revealed that while 95% said they felt a loyalty to Britain and the vast majority had no sympathy for the perpetrators of the Paris attacks, 27% did have some sympathy for the motivations behind the Paris attacks and 45% said clerics preaching violence against the west could be justified as being in touch with mainstream Muslim opinion.

The men and women I met were uniformly horrified by the atrocities perpetrated by Islamic State and rather insulted when asked if they could shed any light on why anyone from this country would wish to travel to Syria. They disputed the suggestion that their Islam had anything in common with the ideology of the jihadis.

But if by being moderate we mean believing in freedom of expression and an acceptance of equality in gender and sexuality, it is by no means certain that the majority of Muslims are moderate, as the word is commonly used. One young student in Leicester told me that unlike many of his fellow Muslims he would shake a woman’s hand. He still believed in gender segregation at public events but his stance on handshaking meant he defined himself as a moderate.

While everyone I talked to would begin by firmly stating how all Muslims they knew were tolerant and how Islam was about moderation, when I asked how others in their communities in Luton, Bradford and Leicester would react if a loved one told them, for example, that they were gay, or where they stood on the idea of free mixing between the sexes, it quickly became apparent that they held views that many would not consider moderate at all.

In trying to encourage more Muslims towards modernity the mistake is to assume that moderation equates to liberalism. The implication in the term “moderate Muslim” is someone who is not especially devout. But being devout is not antithetical to being moderate. That is why it is so important to make a distinction between being moderate, conservative and religious. Many of the people I talked to considered themselves devout Muslims but told me they believed Islam was intrinsically moderate.

To assume most Muslims are moderate is to imagine that progress is inevitable but if we want the next generation of Muslims to have values we associate with being moderate, we need to be prepared to make an argument for a progressive Islam. That is not possible if politicians employ terms many Muslims find alienating.

The distinction is not between those who are moderate and those who are dangerous extremists. It is between those who continue to insist that Islam can somehow be disentangled from culture, geography and history – on issues such as female dress, gender mixing and homosexuality for example – and those who recognise that Islam has always adapted and incorporated the specific culture of the country where it is practised. These are not lesser Muslims so rather than using “moderate”, let us call those who follow an Islam that is open-minded, liberal and tolerant what they actually are: British Muslims.

• In Search of Moderate Muslims, presented by Sarfraz Manzoor, is broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on Tuesday 17 March at 4pm

                This entry was posted on Tuesday, 17 March 2015, 12:28 pm and is filed under
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Hudud sebagai tukul

oleh Liew Chin Tong

Roketkini

17 Mac 2015

Kisah sebenar di sebalik langkah hudud Kelantan

Tukul dihayun untuk menimbulkan retak antara dua parti. Di Malaysia, pelaksanaan undang-undang jenayah Islam atau hudud adalah tukul yang dicipta untuk memecah-belahkan Pakatan Rakyat dan sekaligus mengukuhkan kedudukan anasir pro-UMNO dalam PAS serta melemahkan para pemimpin parti itu yang pro-Pakatan Rakyat.

Saya sememangnya seorang pemimpin DAP, namun makalah ini saya tulis sebagai seorang mantan ahli akademik yang telah mengabdikan masa empat tahun daripada usia muda untuk memahami dinamika dalaman PAS sedekad setengah yang lalu. Sejak itu saya telah menerbitkan beberapa karya akademik berkenaan subjek ini.

Teks dan konteks

Saya melihat diri sendiri sebagai kawan lama PAS yang berusaha menumpaskan UMNO di kotak undi bersama-sama sekalian warga Malaysia yang lain. Bagi saya, faksi PAS yang bekerjasama secara sulit dengan UMNO atas dasar asabiah patut dianggap sebagai musuh bersama oleh semua kalangan yang mahu melihat Malaysia yang mempunyai kerajaan baru yang bersih, amanah, demokratik dan saksama.

Debat tentang hudud tidak dianggap begitu penting dalam wacana negara, sekali pun di kalangan pemimpin tertinggi PAS sejak tahun 1950an. Ungkapan-ungkapan seperti “Negara Islam” dan “hudud” hanya menjadi popular sejak tahun 1980an, khususnya setelah Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim menyertai UMNO sejurus sebelum pilihanraya umum April 1982 (langkah yang memberikan wibawa “Islamik” kepada kerajaan Mahathir yang baru dibentuk) dan sewaktu pemberontakan kumpulan ulama muda menentang kepimpinan Datuk Asri Muda dalam muktamar PAS, pada Oktober 1982 (kerana Asri dilihat lebih cenderung kepada semangat kebangsaan Melayu).

Era Islamisasi itu – pertempuran antara PAS dan UMNO untuk menonjolkan siapa ‘lebih Islam’ – boleh dikatakan berakhir dengan pemenjaraan Anwar pada September 1998 apabila persaingan antara UMNO dan pembangkang lebih terarah kepada permasalahan yang realistik seperti kemerosotan ekonomi, keadilan, tadbir urus yang baik dan kesejahteraan rakyat.

Di seluruh dunia orang, termasuk Islamis, berbincang tentang permasalahan hakiki tentang kehidupan secara holistik tanpa memberikan tumpuan terhadap agenda perundangan khusus. Kebanyakan Islamis arus perdana, dari Maududi sampailah al-Qaradawi dan ramai lagi, memberi penekanan terhadap maqasid, iaitu tujuan-tujuan Syariah, dan bukannya terhadap hudud sebagai satu bentuk.

Muslihat dan penipuan

Hudud kembali disebut-sebut apabila pada Mac 2014 Perdana Menteri di Jabatan Perdana Menteri Jamil Khir mengumpan kerajaan Kelantan dengan menjadikan usul persendirian di Parlimen satu pilihan.

Perbincangan antara Timbalan Menteri Besar Nik Amar Nik Abdullah dan Kerajaan Persekutuan mengambil bentuk “urusan antara dua kerajaan”, terhindar daripada pengawasan pemimpin PAS Pusat dan majlis pimpinan Pakatan Rakyat.

Tanpa sebarang niat untuk memberi sebarang taklimat kepada Jawatankuasa PAS Pusat dan juga pemimpin tertinggi Pakatan Rakyat, para pemimpin PAS Kelantan berkeras hendak membentangkan enakmen hudud pada 29 Disember 2014. Bagaimanapun, rancangan itu tergendala berikutan bah besar di Kelantan yang turut menenggelamkan beberapa pejabat kerajaan negeri di Kota Bharu.

Nik Amar kemudiannya diarahkan oleh pimpinan PAS Pusat untuk menghadiri mesyuarat Majlis Pimpinan Pakatan Rakyat pada 8 Februari 2015 yang dipengerusikan oleh Anwar Ibrahim, dua hari sebelum Ketua Umum PKR itu dipenjarakan.

Nik Amar menjelaskan bahawa Kelantan hanya mahu membuat sedikit pindaan ke atas enakmen 1993 dan jaminan diberi kepada para pemimpin Pakatan bahawa mereka akan berpeluang melihat deraf pindaan sebelum ia dibentangkan.

Pada 12 Mac 2015, dua Exco Kerajaan Negeri Kelantan yang masih junior telah dihantar untuk menghadiri mesyuarat Majlis Pimpinan Tertinggi Pakatan Rakyat “tanpa mandat” untuk membuat sebarang perubahan ke atas deraf dan mereka mendakwa “sudah terlambat” untuk membuat sebarang perubahan.

Langkah ini jelas satu muslihat dan tipu-daya.

Sesuatu yang menyedihkan apabila ada pihak sanggup melakukan sedemikian walaupun Quran telah memberi amaran bahawa kita sama sekali tidak harus mengambil cara yang tidak saksama dan tidak jujur.

Udang di sebalik batu

Langkah tergesa-gesa hendak membentangkan rang undang-undang hudud dalam DUN Kelantan tanpa melalui proses perundingan yang sempurna dengan PAS dan sekutunya dalam Pakatan Rakyat menunjukkan bahawa ada tujuan terselindung di sebaliknya.

Saya percaya semua pemimpin dan anggota PAS menyokong hudud secara prinsip, namun saya tidak percaya bahawa semua mereka bersetuju dengan cara isu hudud ditangani sekarang. Saya percaya Nik Amar mempunyai motif tersendiri.

Pertama, beliau sedang cuba mengukuhkan kedudukannya untuk mengatasi Husam Musa dalam politik Kelantan.

Kedua, berdasarkan taklimat Nik Amar dalam mesyuarat Pakatan, beliau percaya enakmen hudud akan menyelamatkan PAS Kelantan dalam pilihanraya akan datang; bererti beliau tidak yakin PAS mampu menang dalam pilihanraya nanti.

Ketiga, beliau sedang menyiapkan diri untuk sekali lagi bertarung dengan Timbalan Presiden PAS Mohamad Sabu bagi merebut jawatan kedua tertinggi dalam parti pada pemilihan parti nanti. Dua tahun lalu beliau tewas di tangan Mat Sabu.

Keempat, beliau berpandangan hudud mampu meningkatkan sokongan terhadap PAS di seluruh negara, walaupun banyak kerusi PAS di kawasan selain pendalaman dimenangi menerusi undi non-Muslim.

Mengapa gopoh?

Muslihat, tipu-daya dan kegopohan hanya akan menguntungkan UMNO. Masa yang dipilih pula bertepatan dengan waktu UMNO sedang bergelut dengan pelbagai skandal dan krisis serta hampir hilang kuasa dalam pilihanraya akan datang.

Keruntuhan Pakatan Rakyat adalah kunci kemenangan UMNO kerana tiada lagi pakatan pilihan untuk bersaing menentangnya.

Barangkali kegopohan untuk membentangkan enakmen hudud Kelantan sebenarnya tiada kena-mengena dengan pengembangan keadilan. Jika ia berkaitan dengan keadilan, mengapa gopoh? Mengapa tidak dijalankan lebih banyak perundingan?

Segalanya adalah muslihat politik.

Malangnya, rakyat Malaysia, termasuk Muslim, akan terus-menerus menderita lantaran perpecahan Pakatan Rakyat. Puncanya, kegagalan menangani persoalan dengan baik. Akibatnya, UMNO akan jadi semakin kuat dan ganas.

                This entry was posted on Tuesday, 17 March 2015, 2:57 pm and is filed under
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Tiada siapa menentang kepimpinan ulama

A Shukur Harun

The Malaysian Insider

17 March 2015

Muktamar PAS ke-61 pada Jun ini akan menentukan segalanya, sama ada parti itu mampu melakukan perubahan atau terus menjadi parti yang terbuka.

Ini perlu difikirkan semua pihak, terutamanya perwakilan yang menentukan pemimpin yang akan menerajui PAS pada masa depan. Adakah pemimpin dipilih itu mahu melakukan perubahan dan terus menjadi parti yang terbuka atau mungkin berundur ke belakang dan menjadi tertutup?

Dalam pada itu, orang di luar PAS – terutama dalam kalangan Pakatan Rakyat (PR) iaitu PKR dan DAP – akan memerhatikan keputusan muktamar Jun ini, sama ada PAS akan terus mengeratkan hubungan dengan Pakatan Rakyat atau semakin menjauhkan diri.

Sesungguhnya tidak dapat dinafikan, di dalam PAS sudah terbahagi kepada 2 golongan, iaitu golongan konservatif yang tidak bersedia melakukan perubahan dan golongan progresif dan mahukan perubahan.

Ini sangat sahih, berdasarkan kenyataan demi kenyataan dan perlakuan dari 2 pihak yang berseberangan.

Saya tidak bersedia untuk mengatakan, ini pertentangan antara golongan yang dipanggil ulama dengan golongan profesional.

Ini kerana di kalangan ulama ada yang berfikiran terbuka dan mahu menjadikan PAS parti yang terbuka sementara di kalangan profesional, juga ada segelintir darinya yang berfikiran konservatif, tidak terbuka.

Pertarungan 2 pihak di dalam PAS, yang tidak boleh dinafikan kewujudannya dilihat dengan berhati-hati rakyat di negara ini.

Dalam masa yang sama terdapat kebimbangan serius di kalangan ahli terhadap pertarungan kedua-dua pihak di dalam PAS yang boleh mengundang keuntungan bagi Umno dan BN, walaupun mereka juga berada dalam situasi krisis. Mereka berpendapat jika golongan progresif mendominasi keputusan pemilihan PAS di muktamar nanti, maka PAS akan terus berperanan memperkukuh Pakatan Rakyat.

Justeru, golongan progresif ini tidak mencabar atau mengeluarkan kata dua kepada PR.

Namun, jika golongan konservatif mendominasi keputusan pemilihan di muktamar nanti, maka kebanyakan rakyat berpendapat hubungan PAS dengan PR akan semakin renggang.

Golongan ini akan terus memberikan kata dua, mendesak malah mengancam untuk keluar daripada PR. Inilah yang membimbangkan semua pihak.

Mereka mengancam untuk keluar daripada PR dengan hujah kononnya ‘kerana akan merugikan Islam’. Ini menjadi wirid mereka, siang dan malam.

Malangnya, andaian ini tidak pernah dibuktikan kebenarannya, tidak pula dijelaskan apa dia ‘akan merugikan Islam’ jika berada di dalam PR.

Malah, ada sesetengah ustaz muda ini yang berterus terang mendesak supaya PAS keluar PR walaupun mereka tidak sedar sebanyak 4 kali muktamar PAS menegaskan komitmen PAS dalam PR, namun wirid mengancam untuk keluar Pakatan itu berterusan kedengaran.

Inilah dilema dan kebimbangan di kalangan rakyat, terutama penyokong Pakatan Rakyat dari pelbagai kaum dan agama, yang mengundi PAS dalam Pilihan Raya Umum ke-12 dan ke-13.

Mereka bertanya, apa akan terjadi jika golongan konservatif mendominasi keputusan pemilihan di muktamar PAS nanti. Ia dilihat akan menimbulkan masalah besar akan kedudukan PAS dalam PR.

Ini masalah besar yang dihadapi PAS. Pada zaman Allahyarham Fadzil Mohd Noor memimpin PAS, hubungan ulama dan bukan ulama, khususnya profesional sangat erat.

Mereka bekerjasama sejak puluhan tahun, justeru Allahyarham berjaya ‘mengulamakkan’ profesional dan memprofesionalkan ulama.

Kini, hal seumpama ini tidak lagi terjadi dan ini akan memberikan kesan besar dalam pemilihan pimpinan di muktamar PAS Jun nanti. Ia akan menjurus kepada pemilihan 2 kelompok yang disebutkan nanti.

Namun saya masih yakin, akan ada perwakilan yang masih rasional, berfikiran terbuka dan memandang jauh ke depan akan masa depan PAS.

Mereka ini akan memilih tokoh terbaik yang mampu meneruskan keterbukaan PAS dan tidak menimbulkan masalah dalam Pakatan Rakyat.

Oleh itu, jangan ada sebarang pihak dalam apa status pun dalam PAS yang cuba mempengaruhi dan mendesak supaya perwakilan mengundi golongan itu dan ini.

Setakat ini, daripada bukti yang ada, golongan progresif tidak berkempen mendesak perwakilan mengundi golongan mereka.

Biarkanlah perwakilan dengan penuh tenang memilih tokoh terbaik – dari presiden hingga ke AJK PAS Pusat. Biarkan perwakilan menikmati hak mereka memilih tokoh yang mereka fikir layak untuk memimpin.

Berdasarkan pengamatan, pembacaan dan kehadiran saya dalam PAS sejak 32 tahun lalu hingga kini tidak ada sesiapa di dalam PAS yang menentang kepimpinan ulama justeru konsep itu diputuskan dalam muktamar PAS pada awal 80-an.

Oleh itu, adalah salah dan mengelirukan sebarang tanggapan ada di kalangan ahli  kononnya menentang kepimpinan ulama. Tuduhan ini adalah palsu dan tidak benar.

Banyak kajian dan tulisan mengenai kepimpinan ulama, termasuk yang terkini dari Dr Mujahid Yusuf Rawa yang disiarkan dalam The Malaysian Insider.

Semua ahli PAS mendukung kepimpinan ulama. Apa yang sebenarnya berlaku ialah ada segelintir ustaz yang berasa dirinya ulama, yang melemparkan pelbagai tuduhan dan label yang tidak elok terhadap golongan bukan ulama, khususnya golongan profesional.

Golongan profesional ini terpaksa mempertahankan diri mereka apabila dicabar dan difitnah, kerana mereka juga mempunyai maruah dan harga diri.

Inilah yang terjadi, tetapi malangnya ada yang menganggap menentang sesetengah ustaz ini seolah-olah menentang kepimpinan ulama. Tanggapan ini tidak benar sama sekali dan amat mengelirukan.

Oleh itu, semua pihak di dalam PAS jangan cuba mengelirukan dan memanipulasi persoalan ini. Tidak ada yang menentang kepimpinan ulama. – 17 Mac, 2015.

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