Malaysia in the Era of Globalization #33

Chapter 5:  Understanding Globalization

Earlier Forms Of Globalization

 Globalization is not a new concept.  There have been other globalizing trends in the past.  Imperialism was one form, based essentially on the “White Man’s burden” to enlighten the dark world.  The ensuing economic bounty to the colonizers is not to be dismissed.  The world of the 19th and 20th Centuries was carved according to imperial dictates.

            The legacy of colonialism is such that today Malays in Malaysia, having been under British rule, know more about Britain than about their kindred across the strait in Sumatra.  Malays in Sumatra in turn, being under the Dutch, know more about Amsterdam than Kuala Lumpur even though imperial forces have long left the region.  Colonialism was able to break longstanding cultural and ethnic ties.  Another ready example is Hong Kong where its residents, though ethnically and culturally Chinese, feel more at home in Britain than Mainland China.  Quite apart from their choices of names, there is a gulf separating Hong Kong’s Christina Chin with her affected British accent from Beijing’s Jeng Zoumin.  They each view the world very differently; one ignores such differences at one’s own peril.

             The difference between today’s globalization and the colonialism of yore is that with the latter, there was no choice.  Colonialism was imposed; the colonized had no say on the matter.  It was premised on the supremacy of the colonialists over the natives, or more crudely, the White man over the colored.  Colonialism’s globalizing trends were restricted to within territories controlled by that particular power.  There was freedom of trade and movement of people only within the colonial empire but not beyond.  British colonies were integrated only with Britain.

             Like colonialism, today’s globalization is also broad and transcends race and geography.  But unlike colonization where there was no choice on the part of the colonized, in today’s globalized world no nation is forced to join in.  It is completely voluntary.

Further, unlike colonialism where the colonies had to beg or fight for their independence from their colonial masters, with globalization any nation can opt out and close its doors to the outside world, as Cuba, Myanmar and North Korea are now doing.

             Such manifest differences notwithstanding, strident critics would still like us to believe that globalization is just another form of Western neocolonialism.  It must be a very subtle form, so subtle that I cannot discern it.

             There is one other fundamental difference between colonialism and today’s globalization.  During colonial times, in addition to the free movement of goods, there was also free movement of people.  Passports and visas were alien concepts then.  The “natives” could move freely within the empire and many indeed chose to do that by migrating to the imperial homeland, much to the chagrin of their masters.  Today the face of Britain is made less white because of that early freedom.  As I will relate later, this difference is only a matter of degree.  With globalization there is also free movement of labor, especially for those with highly desirable qualifications.

             Islam, like colonialism, is also global in outlook and perspective.  Islam transcends tribal and national identities; it is truly universal.  The Muslim ummah is the most diverse culturally and ethnically, but united by a collective sense of oneness.  Islam accepts and celebrates this diversity.  Surah 30:27 of the Koran reveals (approximate translation), “And among His signs is the creation of the Heaven and the Earth; and the variations in your languages and your colors.”  The concept of race or nation-state is foreign in Islam.

             To Islam, humanity is divided essentially into believers and nonbelievers, not nationality, race or color.  Unlike Christianity that has a clear image of European origin and dominance, Islam is remarkable for the absence of racism or association with a particular ethnic group.  While many view as Islam and Arab interchangeably, the vast number of Muslims are non Arabs, and not all Arabs are Muslims.

             Although Allah in His wisdom had chosen an Arab to receive His divine revelations, it is a tribute to those early Muslims that Islam was and is not associated with Arab hegemony or colonialism.  When early Muslim traders brought Islam into the Malay world in the 14th Century, the natives readily accepted the faith because they and their leaders implicitly recognized the evident wisdom and truth of that message.  They did not view Islam suspiciously as a subtle attempt by the traders to lock in their market and increase their businesses.  Nor did the natives for a moment consider Islam a form of Arab colonization, subtle or otherwise.

             Islam is indeed a very pristine form of globalization.  The world of Islam is bound not by force (as with colonialism) or ideology (as with communism), rather by shared idealism: the concept of total submission to an Almighty Allah.  Muslims everywhere feel this wonderful sense of global oneness.  I can go to any mosque anywhere and feel welcomed.  This is quite contrary to Christendom where a southern Baptist would not be caught dead (or alive) in a Catholic Church.

             One cannot get carried away too far with this appearance of Muslim unity.  Although Muslims rightfully pride themselves in being race and color blind, nonetheless the schisms and the various sects of Islam do have cultural and racial undertones.  The difference between Shi’ite Iranians and Sunni Arabs is as much theological as racial and cultural.  Similarly despite the bond of Islam, the Bangladeshis (former East Pakistanis) could not get along with West Pakistanis.  The commonality of faith was not enough to overcome political, cultural, and ethnic differences.

             Advocates of globalization believe that modern technology and free markets will not only bring prosperity but also draw people of different cultures and backgrounds closer.  When people are brought together in an interdependent relationship as in free trade (in contrast to a dependent one, as with colonialism), the results could only enhance goodwill.

             Compared to early Islam, today’s globalization is still at a very rudimentary stage.  In early Islam there was freedom of movement of not only goods and services, but also people.  Early Islam even had its own head of state: the Caliph.

             Farish Noor, the Malaysian political scientist studying the Islamic movement, relates that there are fringe Islamic political groups that would like to bring the Islamic world back to that pristine past, encapsulated by their cute and catchy slogan, “The Caliphate: Coming Soon to a Country Near You!”

            To drive home my point about the leveling effect of globalization, it is through the Internet specifically and globalization generally that enables such fringe groups like the Hizbut Tahrir (that advocated the return of the Caliphate) to spread their messages far and wide.

             Apart from colonialism and Islam, the other significant globalizing force was communism.  Here the guiding element was ideological: “Workers of the World, Unite!”  Communism too transcended national and ethnic boundaries.  Even the Vietnamese and Chinese, neighbors but ancient enemies, were united through the bonds of communism, at least temporarily when they were facing a common enemy – America.

             With the collapse of communism and with it the ideological solidarity, the two (China and Vietnam) were at each other’s throat almost immediately.  Tito glued together the fractious old Yugoslavian republic through communism.  Without Tito and communism, Yugoslavia is no longer an entity.  Whatever may be said of that ideology, at least there was no orgy of ethnic cleansing when Yugoslavia was a communist state.  The vast Soviet empire was held together by communism.  White Russians, Mongols, Armenians, Eastern Europeans, and Middle Easterners were all lumped together and committed as workers and communists.  When communism collapsed, so did the empire.

             The egalitarian ideals of communism attracted many intellectuals of the First World.  Elite British institutions like Oxford, Cambridge, and the London School of Economics were breeding grounds for the ideological giants of the faith.  Even today many standard British economics textbooks still extol the wonders and promises of communism as an efficient economic system.  This ideal too proved seductive to many Third World leaders, especially those whose nations had just been liberated from colonialism.

Perhaps it was the exuberant embrace and unending declarations of socialist solidarity from the Russians and left-wing British that took in the natives.  After being regarded as second class citizens or worse by their former colonial masters, to be treated as equals by these White leftists must have been a welcomed change, and no doubt very flattering too.

             Today communism is a spent force.  It failed not because the objective of workers’ solidarity is not noble, rather as an economic and sociopolitical system it failed miserably to deliver the goods.  Communism now exists only in such quaint places as Cuba and North Korea.  China is only nominally communist.

             Cuba and North Korea serve as ready examples of the hubris of this godless ideology.  Even Castro’s spellbinding (to the committed anyway) oratories cannot stop the decline of the ideology.  Once Castro is gone, so too will be the last remaining remnant of communism.  North Korea serves as a living museum for a failed ideology; its citizens, reluctant exhibits.

             Contrary to the views of many Muslims, I do not consider globalization a challenge to Islam.  I consider the two complementary.  Islam increasingly is the answer to the modern man’s spiritual needs, while globalization caters to the material.  The two forces are not in competition.  I do not see anything in modern globalization that is contrary to Qur’anic teachings or Islamic practices.  Quite the contrary!  Many of the concepts of globalization, like free trade, are very much in tune with Islamic values, but more on that later (Chapter 11).

 Next:   Leveling Effects of Globalization

                This entry was posted on Thursday, 23 September 2010, 8:58 am and is filed under
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Teoh Beng Hock, Did You Commit Suicide?

by
Richard Loh

I am truly sorry, Sdr. Teoh Beng Hock, that I have to ask you this question, Did You Commit Suicide? Everyone knows that this is really a stupid question to ask but am I wrong? No, I am not wrong because this is the way how our government, macc, pdrm and the judiciary taught us, to be stupid.

When your family met up with the prime minister, he made a promise that your mysterious death will be fully investigated and ensured that no stone will be left unturned. With this promise, the prime minister should called for a royal commission of inquiry which your family and the public had wanted, instead, he called for an inquest. Why did he reject the RCI, simply because the chances of getting the truth of your mysterious death is very high. For an inquest, they have the upper hand to protect the guilty (if any), manipulate and fabricate, anyway, anyhow they wanted.

On the onset, the government, PDRM, MACC and the judiciary had already made up their mind to see that your mysterious death be concluded as committing suicide, that is, you took your own life. I came to this conclusion by judging the way they presented the case, the investigation by PdRM, the judiciary allowing the DPP to ridicule witness and articulation of imaginary theories.

Your body was discovered at around 1:30pm but was kept in the dark for over four hours before making the announcement. A lot of things can be done, cleaning up, confide in each other what to say and many other rearrangement if required during the four hours.

One minister came out with his wise statement just hours later, “we do not know why he wanted to jump and not going home”. One of the first few indication to start and point towards a commit suicide verdict.

The MACC suddenly became very professional, claiming that you were not a suspect but only a witness without explaining why a witness required such long hours of questioning right through the early morning. MACC claimed that you were released but do not know why you wanted to stay back while your personal belongings were still kept by them. Indeed, we, the public finds it very puzzling the way MACC tried to distance themselves from your death.

The so called professional PDRM can only came to the conclusion of sudden death. If the pdrm were to really look deeper into it, my guess is that they should be able to find out whether you committed suicide or was it homicide.

We now come to the interesting part, the clowning of your inquest. Here, we can really see that no stone was left unturned to pursue for a commit suicide verdict.

Your mental stage and your family were questioned very thoroughly but not the MACC officials that were questioning you. Every effort to block Dr. Porntip from testifying to the extend of questioning her qualification and expertise being not recognised by our country.

You were even speculated to have strangled yourself first before you jumped to your death. We can see how desperate they are to protect someone, the murderer, the government, the MACC, the PDRM or even the judiciary?

The most shocking and unbelievable evidence surfaced after more than a year of your inquest, your suicide note. As I had said above, for an inquest they have the upper hand to spring surprises, they can magically turned a common simple note into a suicide note. The laughter does not end here, there are more when they can justified to present your suicide note as evidence based on google’s translation from your written Chinese note into English. They did not get an expert to translate nor authenticate the so called suicide note.

So, here we are, can anyone be surprised should the DPP in the ongoing inquest  called for your lawyers to go and asked you whether you were murdered or that you committed suicide?

I am now ahead of the DPP stupidity to ask you this question first, Did You Commit Suicide?

http://ousel.blogspot.com/2010/09/teoh-beng-hock-did-you-commit-suicide.html

                This entry was posted on Thursday, 23 September 2010, 9:07 am and is filed under
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When is Najib going to provide leadership and take a stand against Malaysians “whose heads are not right” who have caused unprecedented inter-racial and inter-religious strain?

Speaking at the Interfaith Relations Working Committee luncheon yesterday, the Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak said the world contained individuals whose heads were “not right”.

He was referring specifically to the recent threat by an American pastor to burn the Quran and the Sept 11 attacks on the World Trade Centre by terrorists who “hijacked Islam” and said such conflicts were caused by ignorance.

He said: “Without understanding and knowledge, there can never be goodwill and understanding. We need to know the beauty found in every religion.”

What Najib said yesterday is very correct but Malaysians are entitled to ask why he  had not provided leadership to take a stand against those in Malaysia “whose heads are not right”  in the past 18 months of his premiership resulting in the escalation of the rhetoric of racial bigotry and religious extremism despite his proclamation of “1Malaysia. People First. Performance Now” policy?

It is precisely because of the Prime Minister’s failure to take a stand against individuals “whose heads are not right” that there had been such inter-racial and inter-religious strain in the past 18 months, destroying his political honeymoon as new Prime Minister, undermining his credibility and derailing his key policies like the New Economic Model  – a phenomenon never seen in the first 18 months of the previous five Prime Ministers, Tunku Abdul Rahman, Tun Razak, Tun Hussein, Tun Mahathir and Tun Abdullah.

Sadly, many of  those “whose heads are not right” are also to be found in his Cabinet, which is why despite his 1Malaysia policy “to create a nation where every Malaysian perceives himself or herself as Malaysian first, and by race, religion, geographical region or socio-economic background second and where the principles of 1Malaysia are woven into the economic, political and social fabric of society”, only one Cabinet Minister – Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department, Datuk Seri Nazri Aziz – has so far  the courage, conviction and gumption to declare that he is Malaysian first and Malay second.

Malaysians are very disappointed that in the past 72 hours, no other Cabinet Minister had emulated Nazri to publicly  declare that he or she is Malaysian first, race second.

Isn’t this the best proof the Najib’s Cabinet is populated by too many individuals “whose heads are not right” who dare not declare being Malaysian first race second, thus making a total mockery of Najib’s 1Malaysia slogan and policy?

Who is the second Cabinet Minister to declare that he/she is Malaysian first and race second?

When will Najib’s Cabinet have a majority of Ministers who can publicly declare that they are Malaysian first and race second to demonstrate that his 1Malaysia policy is being taken seriously by his own Cabinet?

                This entry was posted on Thursday, 23 September 2010, 11:33 am and is filed under
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Democracy only works when people claim it as their own

People first, democracy now!

By
P Ramakrishnan

In a democracy worth its name, it’s the people who come first. The government exists for them and not the other way around as is happening now. We are made to believe that the people are there to do the government’s bidding. The government actually tells you that.

You vote for my man on Sunday, you will get a cheque on Monday. That’s what they told the voters in Ulu Selangor. In Sibu they told the voters, “You elect my man, I will pay for the flood mitigation project” – otherwise you can drown in the flood for all I care!

In other words, you will be rewarded if you serve the ruler; otherwise you will be punished. They don’t govern the country any more – they rule over you; they lord over you.

Is this what democracy is all about?

53 years of disappointment

For 53 years, we have been ruled – not served; for 53 years we have been kept apart through policies that discriminate against the citizens; for 53 years they failed to forge a nation rooted in justice and truth. For more than half a century they failed us miserably; they disappointed us blatantly without a care or thought for the welfare of the nation and its people.

They did whatever they wanted to, without being accountable for their actions simply because the police, the judiciary, the anti-corruption commission, even our mainstream media and others are no longer able to function professionally and in an unbiased manner in the larger interest of the nation. Notions of justice and fair play are no longer the cornerstone of our society.

Tun Dr Mahathir made sure that truth and justice will not be part of the fabric of our society. He destroyed the judiciary in 1988 and we have not recovered from that shameful onslaught that removed the Lord President unjustly and made victims of two honest and brave judges of the Supreme Court who stood up for justice.

Our judiciary was once regarded as a bastion of justice. It was a well-respected institution of integrity in the Commonwealth. But alas, it is now totally discredited and ridiculed. We can even predict certain judgments even before they are pronounced.

Certain judges don’t even seem to know the law. They dispense judgments that are baffling and absurd. We witnessed these weird instances in numerous cases.

In the Perak crisis, the provisions of the Federal Constitution were completely ignored; in the Kampung Buah Pala case, we witnessed an absurd situation when a piece of land was sold for pittance by the former BN Penang state government when that land did not belong to the state government – this very important  fact was strangely never addressed by the court; in the cases involving conversions that deliberately disrupted families and separated mother and child, the verdicts of the judges were absolutely unfair.

In the case of Anwar Ibrahim, the courts have totally discredited themselves in the way they have denied Anwar access to vital information that is crucial for his defence.

Rampant corruption, wastage – and a false dawn

Corruption is rampant and the MACC does not come across as an impartial institution that can be depended upon to curb corruption. The speed with which it moves to investigate those opposed to the BN as compared to the dragging of feet when corruption involves BN leaders and ministers makes you wonder whether the MACC is there to protect the BN and harass the Pakatan Rakyat.

If we are privy to information about corruption and abuse of our money that has surfaced lately, it is not because of the ACA becoming MACC. It is because of the change of certain state governments.

For over 50 years, the books had been closed to the rakyat. Alarming information has been preserved and protected through the use of the OSA. Not any more.  Exco minutes no longer remain a state secret. They can be revealed; the abuse, the corruption, the lies – all can be exposed now.

The wastage and squandering of the national wealth is amazing and bewildering. While there are moves to remove subsidies and reduce scholarships due to lack of funds, we seem to have endless funds for opulent lifestyles and extravagant expenditure for putting up buildings that cost hundreds of million ringgit.

Shockingly, allocations to hospitals have been cut drastically resulting in shortages of vital medicines. But we have funds for building a new parliament.

Why do we need another Parliament when we already have one that is rich in history, serving as a national symbol of democracy for nearly half a century?

We should not even think of moving into the Putrajaya International Convention Centre, which has come to symbolise one of the many failed projects that has cost the taxpayers unnecessary colossal expenditure.

A new Parliament should not be used as an excuse to save or rescue Putrajaya ICC. The Malaysian voters should punish the BN at the next election if it dares to go for another Parliament completely dismissing public sentiments.

Why do we need another palace when we already have the Istana Negara and another palace in Putrajaya? We can safely assume that His Majesty the Yang Di Pertuan Agong had not demanded for yet one more palace.

People were fooled into thinking that a new dawn in race relations had arrived when the Prime Minister announced his 1Malaysia with much fanfare. For a moment, he made Malaysians believe that at long last we have come to our senses. He spoke of equal opportunities based on ethnic harmony, national unity, and efficient governance.

But it was rather unfortunate that almost immediately, it was sunset for 1Malaysia when his Deputy declared, “I’m Malay first.” He put a stop to our progress in race relations and came across as supporting Ibrahim Ali’s Perkasa, which is strident about Ketuanan Melayu.

1Malaysia notwithstanding, it is clear that under the BN we will never be united as a people and as a nation. The BN is not capable of genuinely reinventing itself. We will remain divided and compartmentalised in our own communities because this situation suits the BN.

We must never fall into this trap.

Hope for complete change

Democracy only works when people claim it as their own. But, as the Aliran Singers tell us, democracy means you have to get off your backsides!

In this regard, it is important to usher in a two-party system for Malaysia. In a two party system, we can expect them to behave responsibly or else they will get the boot, for sure.

It is refreshing to note that after half a century of monolithic rule by the BN, we are witnessing changes that are interesting and refreshing. We have got a Speakers’ Square, stadiums for massive gatherings, ‘tak nak ISA’, a more lively and vibrant parliament, accountability for past misdeeds, Balkis misuse of funds and junket trips exposed. These were never possible before the tsunami brought in the change.

Let’s give a serious thought to an alternative government. Let’s not be put off by the internal squabbles in the Pakatan Rakyat, which is being played up by the mainstream media to give an edge to the BN.

There is still hope for complete change. Please do not think that we are anti-BN. We are not. Any ruling party whatever its colour and shade must conduct itself responsibly, solely in the interest of the people.

In keeping with this policy, we give fair warning to any future PR government. We will be just as critical of the Pakatan Rakyat when it reaches Putrajaya. It makes no difference who governs this country. If they are wrong and at fault, if they do not walk the talk about people first, democracy now, the PR government too will be equally criticised and condemned. Rest assured, we will conduct ourselves even-handedly.

Let me make a personal appeal to all of you. The Aliran Monthly in its 30th year of publication needs your support urgently. The hassle of collecting payment from distributors, coupled with poor sales and spiralling printing costs, has forced our hand to do away with street sales of the Monthly.

As from 1 January 2011, the Aliran Monthly cannot be bought off the shelf in stalls and bookshops. But it will be available to those who subscribe to the magazine.

I encourage all of you to subscribe to the Aliran Monthly. Get your friends and relatives to subscribe as well. Meanwhile don’t forget to visit our website regularly, check out our Thinking Allowed-Online in particular.

This is an abridged version of the address by Aliran president P Ramakrishnan during an Aliran fund-raising dinner at the PJ Civic Centre on 26 June 2010

                This entry was posted on Friday, 24 September 2010, 8:53 am and is filed under
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Malaysia stumbling

Eric Ellis

TheAge

Australia

September 23, 2010

ONE of Australia’s key partners in Asia is struggling. Given the way its leaders have taunted Australia over the years, schadenfreude at its plight would be understandable. But this should be resisted, for if Malaysia stumbles, the effects may ripple across the region.

Erstwhile sponsor of the Carlton Football Club, a cash cow for the Australian education sector, Australia’s 10th largest trading partner and a champion of ”Asian values” – whatever they are – Malaysia seems to be brimming with sky-is-falling Chicken Littles. And their analyses are alarmist; ”failed state”, ”deep pit”, ”national decay”, ”ocean-going corruption”, ”useless mega-projects”.

While some of these could be used to describe the Delhi Commonwealth Games – a massive undertaking Malaysia successfully pulled off 12 years ago by the way – it is about a country oft-regarded as an Asian success, whose rampant economy inspired a cockiness among its leaders to take racially tinged potshots at the ”decadent and immoral” West, and at Australia in particular.

And then there was the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank to demonise, indeed anyone its mercurial then prime minister Mahathir Mohamad didn’t like on any given day. And there was 23 years of it, the Mahathir monopoly on Malaysian power.

So what’s prompted such painful hand-wringing from a tigerish economy that likes to boast how it ditched traditional models to virtually promise endless riches? The answer is some of the nastiest foreign direct investment (FDI) statistics an Asian economy has served up in a generation.

FDI into Malaysia slumped dramatically last year, falling a whopping 81 per cent. In 2009, Malaysia took in just $1.38 billion of new investment, barely enough to build a half-decent bridge in a land where pork-barrelling infrastructure projects are de rigueur. By contrast, India averaged almost double that in any given month. Malaysia’s FDI take was even less than that lured by the Philippines, long the region’s economic basket case.

This worries Malaysians greatly. For all of Mahathir’s bluster, he was careful to suck up to big business, and his less-poisonous successors since 2003 have done much the same. Foreign investment underpinned the Malaysian ”miracle”, transforming sleepy Penang into an Asian Silicon Valley and industrialising the Klang Valley that surrounds Kuala Lumpur to OECD levels, with $40,000 a year average incomes to match.

So has the sky fallen in? Some of the fall can be explained by the 2008 ”trans-Atlantic financial crisis”, as many like to call it in Asia. Malaysia’s reliance on foreign investment made it one of Asia’s most globally connected countries. So when Europe and North America tightened their belts after the subprime meltdown, Malaysia naturally was jolted. But the same external dramas affected just as connected Thailand – which endured a crippling political crisis to boot – and more so globalised Singapore, and both far outperformed Malaysia in ongoing FDI, as did Indonesia.

Malaysian fingers point at Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak and his on-again, off-again will to reform a lop-sided economy Mahathir tilted to favour his bumiputra franchise, the ethnic Malays who comprise about half Malaysia’s 28 million people.

Mahathir advantaged Malays with an aggressive ”new economic policy (NEP)”. Mahathir’s thinking went that Malays were less commercially inclined than their compatriot Chinese and Indian Malaysians and thus needed the state’s help. The NEP’s affirmative action aimed to lift Malays out of poverty, but many analysts have likened it to economic apartheid, a meal ticket that many Malays have got too used to.

The NEP anchored Mahathirism and helped keep him in power for two decades. Malays were lifted but NEP side effects are many and cancerous; corruption, cronyism and an oversized sense of entitlement. Much of Malaysia’s economy is controlled by ethnic Chinese, who pragmatically chummed up to Mahathir. To some, the NEP meant simply installing well-paid and influential Malay placemen on boards to fulfil quotas.

Anti-NEP rancour has been building for years and in 2008, five years after Mahathir retired, voters registered disgust by handing his Malay-centric United Malay National Organisation-led coalition its worst result in history, losing its two-thirds parliamentary majority in a gerrymandered assembly. The UMNO faithful toppled Mahathir’s successor, Abdullah Badawi, and now, as support wavers, his successor, Najib, says he wants to replace the NEP with a ”new economic model”, which he pledges to ”execute or be executed”. There’s a rising fin de regime tint about the UMNO empire, which has never been out of office and has absorbed Malaysia’s critical facilities of state; the civil service, military, media and the education system. Abolishing the NEP is a particular cross for the aristocratic Najib to bear; it was conceived in the early 1970s by his then prime minister father Tun Abdul Razak.

Najib has a big problem, and it is not just the allegations of corruption and even murder that swirl around his circle. Like Julia Gillard, Najib doesn’t have a popular mandate to govern. Also like Gillard, he got handed office when his party’s faceless men knifed an elected PM, Badawi, in office. Malaysians expect Najib to go to the polls soon to get that mandate, but he doesn’t seem sure it’s a good idea, as a confident opposition calls him to account.

In shades of Gillard’s Labor still, party hardliners are in revolt. While most moderate Malays accept the NEP needs tweaking, if only to keep UMNO breathing and in power, a virulent core of party heavies has organised under the banner of a movement called Perkasa, which means ”mighty” in Malay.

Perkasa claims to be defending the Malaysian constitution, which guarantees Malay ethnic primacy. It says it is fighting for Malay rights against the rising challenge of minorities. But Perkasa feels like a supremacist movement, something a Pauline Hanson might recognise. A former US ambassador to Kuala Lumpur has described Perkasa as ”militant”, while non-Malays condemn it for racial divisiveness. That’s emotive language in a country where people still define themselves by ethnicity over nationality and where the deadly race riots of the 1960s are never far away in thinking and policy – not just in Malaysia but among neighbours alert to ethnic tension.

As he dithers over rolling back the NEP and over an election timetable, Najib seems to think he can spend his way to popularity. Last week, he outlined a Mahathir-esque $500 billion investment plan to transform the economy with mega-projects. He appealed to foreign investors to help. But as China, India and Indonesia boom, they will need convincing it is money well spent.

                This entry was posted on Friday, 24 September 2010, 8:18 pm and is filed under
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PR will move urgent motion on 1st day of Parliament  Oct 11 if no satisfactory action taken against two school principals who made racist slurs against students in schools

Deputy Prime Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin has again rubbished Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak’s slogan of “1Malaysia. People First. Performance Now” when he made the startling statement yesterday that he is completely powerless to act against the two school principals, one in Johore and the other in Kedah, who had made racist slurs against students in their schools.

The previous occasion when Muhyuiddin rubbished Najib’s “1Malaysia. People First. Performance Now” concept was when the Deputy Prime Minister declared that he is “Malay first, Malaysian second” – diametrically contrary to the 1Malaysia objective to create a Malaysia where every Malaysian would regard himself or herself as Malaysian first and race second.

Muhyiddin’s latest gaffe was made at the opening of the Anti-Corruption Initiative for Asia and the Pacific regional seminar on the Criminalisation of Bribery in Kuala Lumpur yesterday, substituting for Najib who has left for New York to address the 65th United Nations General Assembly.

Malaysians wonder whether Muhyiddin would declare that he is “Malay first Malaysian second” or “Malaysian first Malay second” when his turn comes to address the UN General Assembly in his capacity as Deputy Prime Minister of Malaysia!

Be that as it may, Muhyiddin’s statement that it is completely outside the jurisdiction of a Deputy Prime Minister and Education Minister to deal with school principals who made racist slurs against their students in schools, making a total mockery of the Prime Minister’s 1Malaysia policy, has more than raised eyebrows  from Malaysians as it raised troubling questions about whether Najib’s 1Malaysia policy represents serious government policy and the degree of Muhyiddin’s support and loyalty to the 1Malaysia policy.

Is it outside Muhyiddin’s power to condemn school principals for racist slurs against students in schools which are  totally against the spirit and intent of 1Malaysia policy, making insulting, offensive and insensitive statements against the race and religion of students in a plural society?

If not, why the thunderous silence by Muhyiddin over the case of school principals making racist slurs against students in schools for more than six weeks?

No wonder one tweet response to Muhyiddin disclaimer is:

“wah, can act against a journalist and send her to ISA for reporting racist ceramah, cannot act against principal tsk tsk tsk”

The Prime Miinister had himself declared a policy of “Zero Tolerance for Racism” two weeks after the nation-wide uproar over the racist slurs by the two school principals but unfortunately the Najib administration is showing an enormous capacity for racism as 45 days have passed since the first incident of a school principal making racist slurs against students in schools without any sign of meaningful action being taken to effectively check the rise of racist bigotry and religious extremism in the 18 months of Najib premiership.

Let me serve notice that if no satisfactory action to honour Najib’s declaration of “Zero tolerance for racism”  is taken, particularly in the public  service with commensurate penalty meted out to the two school principals who made racist slurs, Pakatan Rakyat will move an urgent motion in the first day of Parliament when it reconvenes on Oct. 11 for the 2011 budget session to demand a full debate.

                This entry was posted on Friday, 24 September 2010, 12:28 pm and is filed under
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The MCA number game backfires

by
Thomas Lee

My Sinchew

23.9.2010

The revelation that the senior private secretary of ex-Transport Minister Datuk Seri Ong Tee Keat has asked for the vehicle registration numbers MCA 1 to MCA 9999 in Malacca be reserved for MCA members is clearly a reflection of the high-handed manner a small-time political administrator in the Barisan Nasional abused his little derived authority.

Current Transport Minister Datuk Seri Kong Cho Ha has confirmed that such a request was contained in a memorandum dated 17 Feruary 2010 and addressed to Road Transport Department (RTD) director-general Datuk Solah Mat Hassan.

Tee Keat has denied that he had endorsed the memorandum written to the RTD director-general by his private secretary, saying that “I still remember, among the things that came to my attention which I rejected included this memorandum, although I had returned to duty in March after some health problems.”

Kong, meanwhile, said that the instruction would be rescinded.

“Nobody can reserve any number for the MCA. It is part of the sequence of the way that the RTD issues the registration number and according to the state,” he said.

This ignominious and scandalous incident is certainly more serious and shameful than that of the so-called Support Letters Scandal in Selangor, in which swift and harsh action was taken against the errant municipal councillor by the state government and the DAP.

During the height of the Support Letters Scandal in August 2010, the MCA leaders had showed their self-righteous indignation and wrath against what they claimed was the abuse of power by Selangor state executive councillor Ronnie Liu in allowing his then aide Tee Boon Hock to issue letters of support to companies seeking contract jobs with the local authorities.

In a pace-setting benchmark for political acountability and transparency in the country, the DAP hauled up Ronnie and Tee, both senior leaders in the Selangor DAP, to face the party disciplinary committee over the allegations of corruption in the issuance of support letters to help crony firms gain contracts from the local authorities.

Ronnie was issued a severe reprimand and warning for failure to manage his administrative affairs properly, resulting in the abuse of the support letters. Tee was sacked from the party for abusing the support letters to endorse his son’s company. He was also removed as a municipal councillor.

In early September 2010, the DAP also issued an expulsion order on two members — Yap Hock Siew and Ong Chai Huat — for allegedly misusing a support letter for personal gain.

Yap and Ong were found to have committed direct conflict of interest in breach of party discipline when Yap issued a letter of support under the letterhead of the Pandamaran Village Development and Security Committee (JKKK) in favour of a business where both of them are partners.

Yap and Ong were respectively chairman and vice-chairman of the Pasar Pandamaran DAP branch at the time of their alleged wrongdoing.

The DAP has shown that it does not condone or tolerate any nonsense and irregularities committed by its leaders and members.

The party has set a very good example of how good governance, with the virtuous moral trinity of competence, accountability and transparency (CAT) principles as its fundamental basis, should be practised, and it is here that the MCA should learn from and emulate the DAP and adopt its exemplary party discipinary model.

Tee Keat should not have just washed his hands off the issue without taking any fast and firm action against his smart alec aide, whose unilateral instruction to the RTD director-general is certainly a gross abuse of the transport minister’s office.

It is sad, but true, that we have many such obnoxiously self-assertive and impudent persons, who flexed their muscles and used bullying tactics, in the civil service. It was former prime minister Tun Abdullah Ahmad Badawi who gave them the notorious name “Little Napoleons”.

If the MCA considers the Support Letters Scandal as a serious abuse or even a felonious action, deserving of harsh punishment, then the MCA Vehicle Number Plates Scandal certainly demands more severe castigation.

The MCA leadership should immediately hold a disciplinary hearing on the fiasco, and ask its former president Tee Keat and his aide, if he is a party member, to explain the shameful episode. Appropriate action should be taken if Tee Keat and his aide are found to have abuse their office.

The MCA must also apologise to the RTD director-general and the people for the outrageous unilateral proposal to reserve the series of vehicle registration numbers for its members. Even if the instruction has been withdrawn, the intended monopoly is a betrayal of the people’s confidence in the government.

By the way, I think it is unnecessary to reserve those vehicle registration numbers as I doubt many people would want to have their cars or motor-cycles bearing those number plates. Also, my sympathy with the car sellers in Malacca. Not many people would want to buy new cars until the “MCA” number series is exhausted!

                This entry was posted on Friday, 24 September 2010, 8:16 am and is filed under
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Ismail Omar has got his priorities as new IGP all wrong with police arresting cartoonist Zunar, questioning Nurul for sedition and wanting to question Serdang MP Teoh Nie Ching for her surau visit

Tan Sri Ismail Omar has got his priorities as new Inspector-General of Police all wrong with the police arrest of cartoonist Zunar, questioning Pakatan Rakyat Lembah Pantai MP Nurrul Izzah for sedition and wanting to question Pakatan Rakyat Serdang MP Teoh Nie Ching for her surau visit.

It would appear that the new IGP has no understanding whatsoever of the concept of democratic policing and continue to regard the paramount duty of police as that of protector of the powers-that-be instead of being the protector of the rights of the citizenry.

A new IGP for Malaysia would only be meaningful if the Malaysian police is to start for the first time in 53 years of the country as an independent, sovereign parliamentary democracy to initiate a transformation and break from the colonial past mentality and embrace democratic policing to protect the people and not the regime in power.

The Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative (CHRI) 2005 report on
“Police Accountability: Too Important to Neglect, Too Urgent to Delay”
has rightly stressed:

“Democratic nations need democratic policing. Democratic policing is based on the idea the police are protectors of the rights of citizens and the rule of law, while ensuring the safety and security of all equally. It rejects any resemblance to the regime policing of colonial times. Colonial style policing was based on the idea of police as protectors of a government foreign to the people.”

As the report said, “Increasingly, the fundamental of policing is seen as being the protection and vindication of the human rights of all.”

Such a concept is completely alien to the Malaysian police  in the past 53 years, which is also why there is a grave crisis of confidence in the efficiency, incorruptibility, professionalism of the Malaysian police force.

In the past 18 months of  Datuk Seri Najib Razak’s premiership, the country has been flooded with a plethoria of slogans – 1Malaysia, Government Transformtion Programme, New Economic Model, Tenth Malaysia Plan and a few days ago a RM1.3 trillion Economic Transformation Programme.

All this will come to nought unless it is accompanied by Institutional Transformation Programme with all the key national institutions like the police, the anti-corruption commission, the judiciary, the election commission and the civil service restoring public confidence in their institutional independence, efficiency, professionalism and integrity.

For the Malaysian police, which  has seen a complete collapse of public confidence in its institutional independence, professionalism and integrity as confirmed by the 2005 Dzaiddin Police Royal Commission of Inquiry, the first step to police institutional transformation must be its adoption of a new police ethos and police mission by embracing democratic policing as one of its transformational challenges.

A police committed to democratic policing will not blindly act as the instruments of the regime in power to harass and oppress the Opposition and legitimate dissent in the country, and Malaysia would be would have been spared police abuses of power represented by the arrest of Zunar, police questioning of PR Lembah Pantai MP Nurul Izzah for sedition and the latest police move to question PR Serdang MP Teo Nie Ching.

The new IGP must be mindful that the first priority of the police is to restore to Malaysians their two most fundamental human rights in any civilized society –the right to be free from the crime and to be free from the fear of crime and not to protect Umno/Barisan Nasional leaders from accountability, transparency and good governance.

The Police should not apply double standards – harassing leaders of the opposition and dissent whenever police reports are lodged, while ignoring police reports lodged against the powers-that-be.

This is why I have posed a specific question in next month’s Parliament: –

To ask the Home Minister  the number/nature of police reports lodged against Utusan Malaysia since April 2009 and what actions the police have taken on these police reports.

                This entry was posted on Saturday, 25 September 2010, 6:20 pm and is filed under
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Kit Siang calls Dr M ‘No 1 racist in Malaysia’

By
Clara Chooi

The Malaysian Insider

September 35, 2010

KUALA LUMPUR, Sept 25 — Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad’s latest play at racial politics has earned him the wrath of his parliamentary foe Lim Kit Siang, who has now christened the former premier with a new nickname — “the number one racist in Malaysia”.

The DAP advisor slammed Dr Mahathir for playing the race card yet again when he claimed the Malays would lose power if Pakatan Rakyat (PR) defeats the Barisan Nasional (BN) in the next general election.

“Our beloved former Prime Ministrer Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad said that in the next general election, the Malays would lose power if the PR forms the government.

“Imagine, a former Prime Minister, who ruled us for 22 long years, returning to politics as the number one racist in Malaysia,” he boomed to a crowd of over 1,000 people at a fundraising dinner in Bandar Menjalara here last night, organised by the Segambut DAP division. Lim’s rhetoric earned him thunderous applause from the crowd, who yelled in disagreement at Dr Mahathir’s latest assertion.

He also accused Dr Mahathir of appearing on the stump for Umno by trying to frighten off the Malay voters from voting PR.

“He is trying to instil fear in the Malays by playing the race card on them. This is the height of Dr Mahathir’s irresponsibility. He is becoming an ultra again,” Lim said.

Dr Mahathir, in his cautionary message to the Malay community on Thursday, also spoke of the possibility of a non-Malay snapping up the post of prime minister if PR took federal power as there was no constitutional restriction to stop this.

To further expound his prediction on the impact of a PR-helmed Federal government, the former Umno president had specifically singled out the case of former Perak mentri besar Datuk Seri Mohammad Nizar Jamaluddin.

Nizar, he said, was a sterling example of how Malay PR politicians had been sidelined in the coalition.

“We see Nizar in Perak…even though he was Mentri Besar, he followed the instructions of DAP until he fell. The Chinese claim this was BN’s move to bring down a Chinese government.

“So they called it a Chinese administration and is it not possible that we can have a prime minister like Nizar, Malay in name and a Muslim but not really independent and a tool of others,” he said.

During his 11-month rule in Perak, Nizar, from PAS, was often criticised as a DAP puppet who made all his administrative decisions at the whims and fancies of DAP cousins Datuk Ngeh Koo Ham and Nga Kor Ming.

Lim dusted off Dr Mahathir’s allegations however and claimed instead that the Perak PR government had been a “Malaysian government”.

“What Chinese government? The Perak government by PR was a Malaysian government. This is very sad. Dr Mahathir just wants to tell the Malays that if Umno loses the elections, the Malays will lose power.

“Is this true? That if Umno loses, will the Malays lose too? No,” he said, to a chorus of agreement from his audience.

Lim claimed that instead, the “Umnoputeras” would be the ones to lose, referring to the cronies in the ruling party.

“The Malays will not lose if they vote in PR. The Malays, the ordinary Malays, the Malaysians, they will not lose… they will have a bigger say in determining the destiny of their nation,” he said.

Lim also continued to slap insults on the BN government, with specific referrence to Deputy Prime Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin for his “Malay first” declaration and his recent claim that he did not have the power to punish two school principals for uttering racial slurs.

“What kind of deputy prime minister and the Education Minister at that, would have no power to take action against these school principals.

“If you have no power, then you have no right to be the deputy prime minister. Go away,” he said.

During the dinner function, a host of other DAP lawmakers also made political speeches and appeared to be on an early campaign trail, amid talk of an impending general election next year.

Segambut MP Lim Lip Eng told the crowd that Najib’s greatest fear was that Malaysians now had a taste for change and may possibly completely boot out BN in the next general election.

“He fears you. He fears that the people now have the courage to change. Only one group of people can do it — you.

“So what say you if we give Najib the fright of his life in the next general election?” he thundered.

Lip Eng also criticised the government’s recently unveiled Economic Transformation Programme (ETP), a major initiative worth RM1.3 trillion that is aimed at turning Malaysia into a high-income nation by 2020.

He pointed out that during his address to announce the ETP this week, Performance Management and Delivery Unit (Pemandu) CEO Senator Datuk Seri Idris Jala himself had said that 92 per cent of funding for the programme would come from the private sector.

“He said the private sector would be the ETP’s backbone. This means the private sector — local businessmen, you, me, we are going to foot the bill.

“On the one hand, you tell us that the ETP will save Malaysia in 10 years, but on the other, you say the government has no money and the ETP would have to rely on the private sector.

“So I ask myself, if we, the private sector, are the ones who can save this country, and you, in the government, have no money to do so, then why do we need the BN?” he said.

Lip Eng jokingly added that Najib should be replaced by a bright-minded and highly-established CEO of a successful firm to run the country.

Later, other DAP leaders including Seputeh MP Teresa Kok, Bukit Bintang MP Fong Kui Lun, Cheras MP Tan Kok Wai and Kepong MP Tan Seng Giaw also addressed the crowd.

                This entry was posted on Saturday, 25 September 2010, 9:41 am and is filed under
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Syariah: ‘The law of the land’

Clive Kessler

The Malaysian Insider

Sept 21, 2010

These days it’s not easy for a person of good sense to avoid being accused of sedition.

Especially if you have a basic grasp of modern political history and the nation’s constitutional foundations.

Voicing well-known facts and trite legal principles can get you into real trouble.

You question Ketuanan Malayu, for example, and you are told by those of a “Perkasa-ish” inclination, or lectured by Dr. Ridhuan Tee Abdullah in Utusan, that Malay political dominance is an agreed and foundational national principle. That it is inscribed in the Constitution.

What is in the Constitution? Here the champions of Ketuanan Melayu invoke Article 153.

That is the peg on which they hang the claim that enduring Malay ascendancy, even absolute political domination, is constitutionally enshrined. That it is an integral part of the “social contract” that made the nation and its Constitution possible.

But Article 153 is a small and dubious peg for such a big, even extravagant, claim. It merely provides for, or allows the government in its good judgement to institute, certain defined kinds of preferential treatment for Malays in certain identified and circumscribed areas.

It does not provide for, enshrine or constitutionally entrench Malay ethnic supremacy, enduring political domination.

But if you say this, you are likely to be challenged, and hit with a volley of police reports accusing you of sedition.

Of a triple sedition: against legitimate Malay political entitlement, as enshrined in Article 153; against the rulers who are the constitutionally-designated protectors of the Malay stake in the country; and hence also against the Constitution itself and the nation whose sovereignty it embodies.

Islam and the Constitution

The same rhetorical “fudge”, and similar vigilante recourse to zealous retribution, also apply in the case of claims that Islamic law, syariah law, is “the law of the land”.

Here again we now hear routinely, from Dr. Ridhuan and from those who write IKIM columns in The Star, that Islam is constitutionally the law of the land.

On what grounds?

First, they cite article 3 of the Constitution that proclaims Islam as the religion of the state.

Article 3 does not hold or in any way provide that Islamic law is the law of the land. In fact, the Constitution proclaims itself, in Article 4, as the sole and supreme law and basis of national sovereignty.

Moreover, any review of the debates on this subject that were part of the “Merdeka process and agreements” (the negotiations that some now retrospectively designate as “the social contract”) will reveal that, through Article 3, Islam was simply to be the emblematic “official” religion of the state as a sovereign international political entity, not the mandatory national religion or form of law.

Any such notion was resisted at the time, not only by most non-Malay and also Malay political leaders but also, crucially, by the Malay rulers themselves.

They resisted any assumption of religious powers under the Constitution by the new national government. They understandably wanted to protect their own traditional rights over, and their powers exercised through, Islam in their own states.

The Constitution could only be adopted, and national independence on its foundation proclaimed, on the basis of the consent of the Malay rulers. Their consent was granted on this specific assurance, that their Islamic religious standing would not be diminished.

Accordingly, the religious nature of the new state was, at their royal insistence, to be affirmed by only minimal measures, such as the formal reciting of a do’a at the opening of every session of the new national Parliament, nothing more.

So the notion that the Constitution, through Article 3, provides that Islam is to be, in any far-reaching and pervasive social and political way, the religion of the state’s citizenry, rather than the emblematic official religion of state ceremony and symbolism, is mistaken.

As for the claim that, under Article 3, Islamic law is to be entrenched and recognized and to be rightfully promoted as the national legal system or its unchallengeable foundation, that notion is even one step further from any accurate and faithful interpretation of the meaning of the Constitution and of the intentions of those whose agreement made its adoption and promulgation possible.

It is as much an inflation, or a fanciful embellishment, of the meaning of Article 3 as is the patently extravagant claim that Article 153 enshrines Ketuanan Melayu within the Constitution and as the foundation of national political life.

A precendental legal foundation?

Those who now, with retrospective revisionist objectives, seek to argue that syariah law — the legal system of Islam and its principles — is rightfully the supreme law of the land, or its authoritatively and incontrovertibly established foundation, have a second string to their bow.

They point to the judgment, long before the adoption in 1957 of the Merdeka Constitution, in the case of Ramah v. Laton in 1927.

The case involved the claim of a second wife, under syariah law, to a share in the estate of her deceased husband.

In arguing her case, lawyers for the second wife, whose claims were not at first recognized under the British common law system of the Malay states, sought to present the expert testimony of an expert in Islamic inheritance law.

The court, through its presiding judge Wilson, refused permission for such an expert presentation to be offered.

It cited clear grounds.

Had the case been one requiring the expert testimony of say, an expert in fingerprinting (or now, in our time, DNA sequencing), the court would have allowed such expertise to be placed before it.

Why? Because the court itself had no expertise of its own in the matter. This would have been specialized, arcane science.

But in the case of Islamic law, the court had held, the matter was different. Not that the court was itself expert in Islamic law, as knowledgeable as a master exponent of the technicalities of fara’id (Islamic inheritance law).

But, it held, Islamic law was a part of the common legal tradition of the country. As part of local “legal culture and tradition”, it was not unknown, nor were its principles foreign, to the common law courts. Though not expert in syariah legal technicalities, the court was entitled and empowered to pursue its own consideration of the principles involved.

It was competent and expert in the law of the land. So, it held, far from foreign and exotic or unrecognizable to the court, Islamic legal principles and processes were, for at least some part of the population, part of the legal culture with which the court worked, part of “the law of the land”.

The court did not need to avail itself of outside expertise. What Ramah sought and the grounds of her doing so were all part — a part though hardly the whole — of the common legal tradition and culture of the land and its people; a legal system that the common law courts were instituted to uphold, and in whose matters those courts were not simply competent and expert but the rightful ultimate authority.

The common law tradition operates by the crystallization of enduring and established custom as firm social conventions and their subsequent absorption and eventual recognition as legal principle, within and by the legal system itself.

The misappropriation of Ramah v. Laton

When Wilson J., in rejecting the presentation of outside expert testimony concerning fara’id and affirming the court’s own competence to consider the principles involved, declared that syariah law was, or was to be considered as part of, “the law of the land” he meant something  specific in that context, as every competent lawyer will understand.

He was affirming the court’s own independent ability, unaided, to deal with whatever was part of the local common law tradition.

He was not affirming that the syariah law, and certainly not the syariah law as understood and upheld by its technical experts (such as the man whose testimony Wilson declined to hear, or in our day the champions of syariah law implementation and supremacy), was any foundational part of the national legal system — and certainly not that it was the overriding law of the land, to whose claims and requirements all other legal concerns must be subservient, and to which all other legal traditions must acknowledge subordination.

Yet that — the dubious notion of an established “syariah pre-eminence” — is precisely the construction that the champions of syariah supremacy now make of Wilson’s judgment in Ramah v. Laton and the use to which, either uncomprehendingly or with knowing tactical purpose, they put it.

They deploy this misconceived or disingenuous interpretation of Ramah v. Laton as a way of getting around the problems that, when rightly and plainly understood, Article 3 of the Constitution clearly provides to the promotion of their cause.

Properly understood, Article 3 presents a huge obstacle to their cause. But the strategic misappropriation of the much earlier case from 1927 enables them to assert that matters were already decided, in a precedental legal decision, long before the Merdeka Constitution was promulgated.

That Constitution, for some, lacks legitimacy since it was, as they see it, “foisted” upon them by foreigners; but, provided it is construed as they wish it to be, the judgment of another outsider, Wilson J., may be used to trump constitutional principles. His words that Islamic law “is the law of the land” are now sedulously deployed to obviate any resistance that the Constitution and its clear-minded defenders might offer to the promotion of claims of Islamist legal supremacy.

Such views have been put by IKIM columnists in The Star, by newspaper columnists and polemicists, and even in law textbooks written by lecturers at the International Islamic University and used in that institution’s Law Faculty courses. (It is noteworthy here that the national committee, operating from the Attorney-General’s Chambers, on the Harmonization of Civil Laws and Syariah has, by formal decision, resolved to make the Law Faculty of the International Islamic University, where this questionable form of legal reasoning prevails and is developed, the sole source of competent specialist legal expertise and advice in its work.)

How did this strange appropriation and misdirection of Ramah v. Laton occur?

When the late Professor Ahmad Ibrahim published his monumental study of Islamic Law in Malaya (1965) he made no reference to Ramah v. Laton.  But by the time he began teaching at Universiti Malaya he had discovered it and explored its uses. Students from the early 1970s remember him dwelling on this case in his introductory lectures.

By the mid-1980s Ramah v. Laton had become a “stock in trade” of the group of young “syariah-minded” academic lawyers whom Professor Ahmad Ibrahim, now at the International Islamic University, had gathered around him and who were “making the running” in promoting the implementation of Islamic law.

By the time of the 1988 amendment to Article 121 (1A), these experts had persuaded the government — contrary to the clear meaning of the decision in Ramah v. Laton, but in its name and on its authority — that the civil courts could not hear any case involving syariah law principles; that cases that implicated such principles had to be heard by a separate and autonomous syariah court system of equal standing to the civil; and that the syariah courts and not the civil courts must be the ultimate and unchallengeable arbiter whether, in any instance, syariah principles were involved (and the case accordingly one for disposition at the sole discretion of the syariah courts).

By 2008, in the wake of the so-called Lina Joy case, the leading judges of the land were invoking Ramah v. Laton to justify the development of a new, syariah-based system of Malaysian common law. The common law evolves, true. This was Wilson J.’s point and underlying justification. But to see Wilson’s words in Ramah v. Laton used, over twenty years and more, to justify the supremacy of certain notions of syariah law, held by some very single-minded parties and partisans, within the local common law and over the Malaysian legal system as a whole is something that must surely have worried lawyers of good sense and conscience. It would, they must have known, have greatly displeased Wilson.

An odd exception

Much of the revisionist reinterpretation, or misinterpretation, of Ramah v. Laton has been the work of academic or scholastic lawyers, legal idealists and ideologues rather than “hands-on” daily practitioners of the law. Wilson’s oft-quoted words have beguiled the polemicists and provided them with a powerful instrument, a bludgeon against all doubters and opponents.

Yet there is one area where Islamic law in Malaysia has, in the real world, developed greatly and become of ever increasing practical significance. This is the area of Islamic finance.

In this area, specialist practitioners, eager that Malaysia might become an international pioneer and pace-maker in institutional innovation, have for some time argued, in  effect, for the recourse that Wilson J. rejected in Ramah v. Laton.  They have argued that in complex commercial cases involving Islamic finance and Islamic commercial law, courts should be set up that combine the standard common law procedures with conjoint legal and judicial expertise in Islamic commercial law. (Apparently some courts with this character are already operating, initially on a trial basis, in Shah Alam.)

But how might such tribunals — where judges in the civil law tradition would be assisted by, take advice from, sit jointly with, or even operate within specific legal parameters set by syariah-law experts —be constituted, given the words and real implications of Wilson’s judgment in Ramah v. Laton?

These worldly and purposeful practitioners working in the area of Islamic finance and business law understood the situation clearly. They knew what needed to be done if such “mixed” courts and tribunals were to be established. “It is time,” they declared in their professional legal bulletins (as an Internet search will show), “for the ghost of Ramah v. Laton to be laid”.

Nothing less than the exorcism of an unwelcome and troublesome legal ghost was required. But they, at least, unlike the doctrinaire syariah expansionists of the International Islamic University, clearly understood what Ramah v. Laton had been about and what the judgment in that case really meant. No sentiment here, no ideology, just a practical purpose and determination.

Yet it is strange that, at the same time though in different areas, Ramah v. Laton can both be invoked by some yet its setting aside be urged by others in the name, and for the common purpose, of syariah law institutionalization and implementation.

Sedition?

This is a straight-forward argument, one that should prove unexceptionable to informed scholars, observers and students of these matters.

But in these times these are not easy things to say.

For those who have formed excessive, even quite distorted, revisionist views of the meaning of Articles 3 and 153 of the Constitution and of the meaning of the judgment in Ramah v. Laton, the argument offered above will be unwelcome.

It will be rejected because those who hold the positions that are criticized confuse what is congenial to them —what they want, and wish to be the case —with what in fact is the case, what the Constitution and that legal decision really mean and imply. Where these meanings and implications displease them, they substitute, perhaps unwittingly but in some cases with canny purposefulness, their own, and then persuade themselves that their convenient fictions are the historic truth.

To make this argument exposes the author to charges of sedition: of questioning the standing of Islamic law under the Constitution (as some mistakenly see it); of impugning by implication the position of the Malay Rulers as the constitutionally appointed guarantors of the position of Islamic law (including, the “syariah supremacists” hold, their own inflated notions of its position); and hence of seditiously putting in question the supremacy of the Constitution itself.

Faced with such accusations, one can do nothing but to say, and go on saying, that those of that other opinion are simply wrong, mistaken —and generally, so far as the lawyers and legal scholars among them are concerned, that they should know better.

* Clive S. Kessler is Emeritus Professor of Sociology & Anthropology at The University of New South Wales, Sydney.

                This entry was posted on Saturday, 25 September 2010, 10:53 am and is filed under
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My reply to Muhyiddin could simply be: It’s the political will, stupid!

Deputy Prime Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin has challenged me to show him the part of the Constitution or law where a deputy prime minister or education minister has the powers to take action against a senior civil servant with a permanent position.

Akin to the American political catchphrase, “It’s the economy, stupid”, I could have simply responded: “It’s the political will, stupid”.

But as a Malaysian, I will not do so.  Muhyiddin accused me of ignorance as I have never been a government officer and worse, of being “100 per cent politician” but  I will not reply by hurling the latter accusation back at him and say he is “120 per cent politician” and that he is not acting like a Deputy Prime Minister at all, let alone a 1Malaysia Deputy Prime Minister for all Malaysians.

Nobody suggested that Muhyiddin should personally take action against the two principals, one from Johore and another in Kedah, who uttered incendiary, racist and sensitive remarks to their students in school, as asking “the Chinese students to go back to China” and likened  the Hindu prayer bracelets to a dog leash, but he must doubly bear responsibility as Deputy Prime Minister and Education Minister for a government which for 45 days has not been able to take action against such offensive, racist and sensitive remarks, especially occurring in the education sector with two principals as the culprits!

This is for two reasons:

•	Firstly, making a total mockery of the Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak’s signature policy of  “1Malaysia. People First. Performance Now” to effect a national transformation so that Malaysia can become an inclusive, sustainable high-income developed nation by 2020.

•	Secondly, raising the question of his commitment and loyalty as Deputy Prime Minister and Education Minister to Najib’s 1Malaysia policy, particularly after his infamous and most anti-1Malaysia declaration that he is “Malay first, Malaysian second”!

To the man-in-the-street, Muhyiddin’s claim that he is not  responsible for the 45-day inaction against the two principals is simply laughable, giving Malaysians a new subject to mock at as their conversational topic.

If Muhyiddin as Deputy Prime Minister and Education Minister is not responsible, who then is responsible?

Anybody else in the Cabinet to whom Muhyiddin can pass this buck to in terms of bearing political responsibility or does he want to push the whole responsibility to the Prime Minister himself?

Or is nobody is to be held politically responsible for this deplorable state of affairs because the Najib government has become a shambolic  and headless government?

Muhyiddin’s attempt to hide behind the Public Service Department, claiming that there are procedures and guidelines to be adhered to in such cases as governed by the PSD’s code of discipline for the 45-day inaction may be adequate to appease MCA and Barisan Nasional  leaders but simply unacceptable to the  Malaysian public.

At a time when the Prime Minister is propagating the “1Malaysia. People First. Performance Now” policy and a National Transformation Programme, the entire Najib administration is shown up as just not serious about these pronouncements when 45 days can pass without any action being taken against the two principals for incendiary, racist and insensitive statements to students in schools.

And what is worse – we have the Deputy Prime Minister luxuriating at his inability to do anything for 45 days over the two principals!

What type of a civil service transformation can Malaysians look forward to when there is nothing the No. 2 in the country who also helms one of the most senior Ministries over the 45-day hiatus of the PSD over the anti-1Malaysia indiscipline of the two principals?

If the civil service is so hidebound by so much  red-tape and bureaucracy, then it is beholden on the political leadership to shake up the civil service if it is to take the first step of a national transformation process so that Malaysia can achieve a high-income developed nation by 2020.

I have yet  to raise the question as to why for 45 days, Muhyiddin himself had failed to condemn the incendiary, racist and insensitive remarks of the two principals against students in schools.

Can Muhyiddin defend himself?

                This entry was posted on Sunday, 26 September 2010, 2:59 pm and is filed under
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Najib should first ensure religious tolerance is practised at home in Malaysia before offering  advice on religious tolerance  to President Obama

by
Dr Chen Man Hin

In the first place, the Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak  should not assume that Malaysia is a Muslim country. Malaysia is a multireligious society. while Malays who form 55% of the population are Muslims, the other 45 per cent are Buddhists, Hindus, Christians, Sikhs, animists, atheists, etc.

Religious tolerance –   there is limited religious tolerance in Malaysia.  Islam is favoured by the government and is regarded as the ‘big brother’ of religion.

There is a consultative council for religions  but Islam is not a member – , although invited to join. Islamic leaders prefer to stay away.

 Dialogue between Islam and other religions is limited. The attitude is that Islam is superior.

The word ‘ALLAH’ is regarded as sacred and is not allowed to be invoked or used by religions other than Islam. This is religious intolerance as the word Allah is freely used in the Middle East by all religions, which has been the practice even before the advent of Islam.

The government here discourages the building of churches and temples. The applications to build all new  churches are delayed  for years..

There is no religious freedom as a Muslim is not  allowed to change his faith, when he wishes to be converted to another religion.

In short, there is no religious tolerance in Malaysia. Under the circumstances, Najib does not have the credentials to offer his services to Presidnnt Obama to talk to  Americans about religious tolerance. Before giving advice to the bigot parson in Florida  who wanted to burn the Koran,  he should first advise Umno extremists not to burn cow heads or desecrate churches.

Prime Minister Najib  should instead encourage UMNO and other extremists to be more tolerant and to respect all religions in the country.

                This entry was posted on Sunday, 26 September 2010, 1:31 pm and is filed under
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Pakatan Rakyat must be prepared for snap 13th general elections to be held in six month

The Mentri Besar of the usurper Barisan Nasional Perak state government, Datuk Seri  Zambry Abdul Kadir has called on Barisan Nasional component parties to be prepared for snap polls and Barisan Nasional component parties are openly calling on their members to be ready for early general elections next year.

DAP and Pakatan Rakyat must be prepared for snap 13th general elections to be held in six months.

In his 18 months as Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Najib Razak has launched three major initiatives – 1Malaysia policy; the New Economic Model and on Tuesday, the RM1.4 trillion Economic Transformation Programme (ETP) to achieve a high-income economy by 2020.

However,  all these three Najib landmark measures have failed to take-off successfully as illustrated by the lukewarm response of the RM1.4 trillion ETP in  the Kuala Lumpur stock market.

The Kuala Lumpur Composite Index (KLCI), which closed at 1,469 points on Monday, lifted by 6.30 points  to 1,475.99 points on Tuesday when the RM1.4 trillion ETP was unveiled, but by the end of the trading week on Friday, KLCI had fallen by 24.80 points to 1,451.19 points.

There is just too little public confidence in the ETP after the two Najib initiatives were undermined and attacked.

Najib’s 1Malaysia policy, for instance, has still to be proven to be a national policy which attracts the full commitment and loyalty of the Prime Minister’s own Cabinet and Government – with Deputy Prime Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin publicly declaring that he is “Malay first, Malaysian second” while there is only one Cabinet Minister, Datuk Seri Nazri  Aziz the only Minister in the past 18 months who is prepared to declare that he is Malaysian first, Malay second, i.e. Malaysian first, race second.

Najib’s New Economic Model unveiled on March 30 was savagely attacked to the extent that Najib had to distance himself by claiming that the NEM is not the Government’s “final stand” but merely the “trial balloons” of a group of experts from the global market’s perspective!

And in both cases, the troop of nay-sayers was led by none other than the former Prime Minister Tun Dr. Mahathir Mohamad – who said he did not understand Najib’s 1Malaysia and warned of awful consequences if the NEM was implemented.

Most recently, Mahathir had racheted up his rhetoric of race and religion, even warning that the Malays will lose power if Pakatan Rakyat were to come to power.

This is the height of irresponsibility coming from one who had been Prime Minister for 22 years and propounded the concept of Bangsa Malaysia with Vision 2020.

If Pakatan Rakyat comes to power, it is not the Malays who will lose power but the Umnoputras while the ordinary Malaysians – Malays, Chinese, Indians,Kadazans and Ibans  – will be empowered.

Mahathir is conducting a most unethical and dishonest campaign to demonise Mohamad Nizar because he was a popular Perak Mentri Besar of the year-old Pakatan Rakyat Perak State Government before it was illegally, unconstitutionally and undemocratically toppled by Najib.

Mahathir accused Nizar as  tool of DAP and even claimed that Nizar’s PR government was regarded as a Chinese government by the Malaysian Chinese.

This is completely baseless and groundless as nobody regards the Pakatan Rakyat Perak State Government of Nizar as a Chinese government – it was a Malaysian government and regarded as such by all races in the state.

The way Mahathir is demonising Nizar was the same way he had demonised the first Prime Minister, Tunku Abdul Rahman more than 40 years ago, for which Mahathir had to subsequently apologise to Tunku.

As former Prime Minister, Mahathir should stop his irresponsible politicking of race and religion.

(Speech  at the DAP Canning Family Day and Foodfair at Red Crescent Hall, Ipoh on Sunday, 26th September 2010 at 9 am)

                This entry was posted on Sunday, 26 September 2010, 4:03 pm and is filed under
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Protecting the vulnerable

by
Tunku Abdul Aziz

My Sinchew

25th Sept 2010

The Government of Indonesia is absolutely right to ban their nationals from coming to work as domestic servants in Malaysia until our own government is prepared to guarantee the safety and well being of these women. This is the least the Government of Indonesia can do to protect their people from being routinely and savagely abused by Malaysian employers. The excesses that are reported in the pages of our newspapers are a shameful reminder of our ambivalent attitude to human cruelty and suffering.

Maid abuse is not a Malaysian invention; it has, however, become an ugly hallmark of our domestic employment culture. There have been far too many reported cases of inhuman physical treatment of foreign maids to ignore. The number of unreported cases of criminal abuse is staggeringly high. What sort of society have we allowed ourselves to be turned into? We shower our animals with love and affection, and yet we cannot bring ourselves to treat those who live, while in our service, under our protection, with a little kindness and dignity. We are dealing with human beings who work under conditions of slavery, out of dire necessity, not of choice. With its own abysmal human rights credentials, we cannot expect our government to be too concerned over such trivialities as foreign worker protection and their rights in a supposedly civilised country. If we do not give a damn about how our own citizens are abused by abusive laws, I should perhaps lower my expectations as far as our vulnerable foreign guest workers are concerned.

What can we do to stop man’s cruelty to man, or in this instance, it is more likely to be woman to woman? Both the foreign maid and the local employer must be screened for suitability for a start. The employing household must be inspected to ensure that the maid will be properly housed and will work under recognised labour regulations. It is not unusual to come across maids working from five in the morning to twelve midnight without a break, seven days a week, and three hundred sixty five days a year. Historically, the days of slavery are over but it appears that as far as our maids are concerned, they have become the 21st century inheritors of a system long dead. They are expected to endure the unendurable without a murmur.

A law for the protection and regulation of working conditions of domestic servants is long overdue. Any such law that is promulgated must include a provision requiring employers to subscribe to SOCSO, as well as depositing with the government the equivalent of one year’s employee salary as security against a breach of the employment conditions. This will ensure that maids in service will be treated in accordance with minimum, acceptable standards. Strict enforcement will be difficult given the level of corruption in all Malaysian enforcement agencies, but we cannot use their lack of integrity as an excuse to do nothing to provide legitimate protection for our foreign maids against abuse in all its manifestations.

Many will no doubt scream blue murder at what they consider an “unfair” imposition on their rights to employ and treat their domestic servants as they please. They will say that a year’s deposit to be held by the government deprives the less affluent from employing maids. If they are incapable of meeting this and other conditions of employment, then obviously they are not ready to have

servants at their beck and call. We must not think only of our “rights” and not stop to consider their rights as well. I understand fully the genuine necessity of many working parents for engaging maids to look after their children. The law that I have in mind is not intended to prevent any person from employing maids. It is intended to ensure fairness and equity for both. It is time the rights of our employees were legally prescribed, respected and recognised.   There is the other side of the “fairness” equation. What about protection for the employer? What if the maid runs away?  Employing people is always a gamble and luck plays a part, but if you have taken care to choose your employee carefully, you can minimise the risk.

We are dealing with fellow human beings when we employ people and how we treat them and deal with their work as well as personal concerns will determine our relations with them. We win some and lose some as in any relationship. For many Malaysians, this is probably the first time in their lives that they have the luxury of domestic servants, and there are many practical adjustments to be made before they are comfortable with the presence of strangers in their midst, sharing both the positive and the negative aspects of family life. A live in maid is not every one’s cup of tea. It is certainly not my idea of domestic bliss.

I hope I will get all-party support to propose a private member’s bill in the Senate covering the employment of domestic staff. In the meantime I hope the Indonesian Government will not lift its ban on maids for Malaysia until the Government of Malaysia wakes up to its moral obligations. Our courts have a role to play in ensuring that the punishment fits the crime especially in cases involving the use of hot irons on defenceless humans.

                This entry was posted on Sunday, 26 September 2010, 5:33 am and is filed under
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RM30m for UTAR not taken up

By
Teoh El Sen

Free Malaysia Today

SAT, 25 SEP 2010

PETALING JAYA: In August 2009, philanthropist Koon Yew Yin offered to donate RM30 million to Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahman (Utar) to build hostels with recreational facilities at its Kampar campus in Perak.

But there has been no response from Utar to the generous gesture. Koon, 77, then withdrew his offer on Sept 12, this year.

However, on Sept 13, Utar’s board of trustees and council said it did not accept the RM30 million donation because of the “many conditions (imposed) such as setting up a foundation where he (Koon) will be chairman and be in full control over the spending of his money”.

Then on Sept 14, Utar issued a statement saying it did not turn down Koon’s offer but was still discussing it.

But Koon, who called for a press conference here yesterday, rubbished the claim he wanted to exercise full control over his money.

“Ever since I made my written RM30 million donation offer on Aug 18 last year, the Utar authorities have been using various means to delay accepting my offer. Now they have informed the public that the delay is because I want full control over the spending of my money,” said Koon.

“This is factually incorrect and misleading. Even if I had wanted control, common sense would dictate that I should have some control. But I did not say that,” he said.

“So, what is the true reason (for not accepting my offer)?” asked Koon, the founder of three leading development companies — IJM Corporation Bhd, Gamuda Bhd and Mudajaya Group Bhd.

He suspects that the truth has to do with “those real estate developers Utar is protecting”.

“It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure that out ,” said Koon, a retired chartered engineer.

“The public must demand that MCA and the Utar authorities explain why the latter is protecting the real estate developers who are making unprecedented profits (building the campus). Who’s pocket did all the money go to?” asked Koon, who declined to name the developers.

A check by FMT showed that tin-mining tycoon-turned-developer Hew See Tong owned huge portion of properties in Kampar, which are near the campus. Hew is also a former MCA Kampar MP and adviser to UTAR (for planning and development).

Puzzling and disrespectful

What riles Koon is that the Kampar Utar does not have a single hostel within its campus, thus forcing students to find off-campus accommodation.

“It is unthinkable for any self-respecting university not to have adequate accommodations. All these years, why have they no plans to build hostels? Why are students forced to stay outside?” asked Koon’s architect, Lee Thean Hock, who had previously volunteered architectural work to build the hostels for free.

Koon’s trustee Lim Teck Ghee said: “It’s not every Sunday that someone makes such an offer (RM30 million). It’s quite remarkable. He (Koon) is not expecting any kind of reward. Under these circumstances, you would expect any organisation to grab it. But Utar is dragging its feet.”

“To observers, it is not only puzzling but disrespectful. Some may say it’s due to incompetence or even, stupidity,” said Lim, who is also Centre for Policy Initiative director.

Koon said that after waiting patiently for more than six months since his initial offer, he received an invitation to meet the Utar authorities on March 1, this year. The meeting was held at the Kampar campus.

Also in attendace were Koon’s trustees Teck Ghee and Tan Kit Pheng; architect Thean Hock; Lau Yin Pin, chairman of the Utar Trustee; Professor Chuah Hean Teik, Utar president; Fu Ah Kiow, Utar council member; and Dr Tan Kee Kong, Utar registrar.

“At that meeting, I agreed to allow Utar to have control over the donation and project as shown in my final written offer,” said Koon, who had amended the terms of his donation in response to suggestions by Chuah.

Chuah had proposed two clauses that gave Utar four members in a seven-member task force to monitor the spending of the RM30 million. Koon was also to be an adviser who could appoint three other members.

“I accepted these new conditions, which proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that I was prepared to allow Utar control over the spending of my money.

“My role was to be as adviser and not to be the chairman and be in full control as alleged. There is no power there, only an advisory role.

“The most crucial point was that they wanted four members in the committee, and I agreed,” said Koon.

He said that after the meeting ended on an optimistic note, he was given the impression that the acceptance of his donation was a formality and that it would be quickly acted upon.

“I waited more than a year for Utar’s reply but in vain. Any donor in any part of the world would have lost his patience. As a result, I withdrew my offer.”

“Utar’s refusal to accept my RM30 million donation for building hostels within the campus is so ridiculous. As a result, thousands of students and parents will suffer and they will not forget that the MCA controls Utar,” said Koon, who also said he planned to find another worthy charity cause to channel the RM30 million.

‘Are you joking’

Koon also questioned why MCA president Dr Chua Soi Lek had declared that he preferred not to get involved in this Utar cause.

Asked why he had imposed conditions at all when he could have let the university have a free hand to run the show, he said: “Do you know who’s the chairman of Utar and others who are from the MCA? Do you feel comfortable to give RM30 million to them… do whatever they want with my money…?”

Koon, who declared that he was no politician but simply someone who wanted to do charity, was appalled that Utar “continues to ignore the pressing issue of the housing needs of the students”.

On whether he would still consider extending his offer to Utar again, he said: “Are you joking?”

Currently, there are about 12,500 students in Kampar and the student population is increasing at about 2,000 every year. On average, each student is paying about RM2,000 on rental accomodation a year.

The Perak government gave 1,300 acres of land to develop the Kampar campus. Work started in 2003 and the first intake was in 2007. Up till now only about 200 acres have been used.

At the start of every semester, the students would individually have to secure their own accommodation. At present, the 9,500 Utar students enrolled in the main Perak campus are living in various rented houses in Kampar.

Koon had offered his donation after he received confirmation that Utar has no plans to build hostels. He attached one proviso: all the net profit from rents will go towards building more hostels. No part of the profits will accrue to him.

This year, Koon has allocated a RM1 million scholarship to poor Utar students.

The following is my (Koon’s) original donation offer made on Aug 18, 2009:

Proposed hostel development within Utar campus, Kampar

I wish to donate RM30 million to Utar for a hostel development within the Utar campus on the following conditions:

•	I solemnly declare that all the benefits derived from this hostel development are only for Utar in Kampar and not for my personal gain.

•	A foundation to be set up under the control of a board of directors with me as chairman and four directors to be appointed by Utar council with my approval.

•	The main object is to provide suitable accommodation with recreational facilities for Utar students within the campus.

The rental rate must be sustainable and competitive. The return from the investment must be able to generate a profit of at least RM1 million a year for scholarships to help poor students and additional funds for maintenance and new development.

Advantages of hostel and recreational facilities within the campus:

•	To help students, especially new ones, to solve their immediate accommodation problem.

•	Hostel environment is more conducive for learning and the development of human relationships.

•	Currently, the 9, 500 Utar students are scattered all over Kampar and the university has practically no control over them after lectures. They are free to drink and gamble as much as they like. Moreover, they have the constant worry of their landlords kicking them out or they have to find new accommodation before the start of the next semester. Can you imagine living with this constant fear while you are burdened with lectures, examinations and financial difficulties? This situation cannot continue if the Utar council has a good alternative.

•	University students are always burdened with a lot of difficulties and some students will develop irreversible psychological problem. Studies have shown that living in hostel have many advantages including the reduction of dropouts.

•	Living in university hostel is the most pleasurable period of a student’s life. The hostel facilities will generate happiness and comradeship among fellow students. As a result, students are better prepared to face the competitive world after their graduation.

After having waited more than six months for Utar’s acceptance of my donation, on March 1, 2010 , I met Lau Yin Pin, chairman of Utar board of trustees and Professor Chuah Hean Teik, president/CEO of Utar council in Kampar, and I gave them in writing my final donation offer as follows:

Final donation offer letter to Utar made on March 1, 2010

Koon’s mission is to help Utar students, especially the poor ones, get access to university residential accommodation and scholarships.

•	All the RM30 million donation and the profit from the rental and other income must be used for building hostels and other associated residential buildings for the use of students within the campus of Utar, Kampar.

•	All construction contracts exceeding RM10,000 must be open to competitive tenders.

•	The task force is to be composed of seven members, four to be nominated by Utar and three by myself or by my nominee.

•	I will be appointed by Utar as adviser to the task force. The role of adviser must be spelt out and be agreeable to me. This position will be a lifelong one. Any change to be made to the position has to be sanctioned by me or by the executors of my estate.

•	Utar will utilise a team of people to manage the hostel on a commercial basis. The rental rate must be competitive and profitable but at the same time it should not burden the students.

•	Koon and his estate reserve the right to authorise Utar to use a portion of the net income to create a Koon Yew Yin Charity Foundation to help poor students by offering scholarships or loans to Utar and other needy students.

•	In honour of his donation, Koon wishes to have a tablet prominently displayed with these words inscribed:

Recipients of Koon Yew Yin’s scholarships and residents of Koon Yew Yin’s hostels have only to promise him that when they graduate and are financially solvent, they will help other poor people.

The whole residential village is to be named Koon Yew Yin Residential Complex. Each hostel block should be named after the fundamental rights of citizens such as Liberty, Justice, Equality, Fraternity, Freedom, Integrity, etc.

                This entry was posted on Sunday, 26 September 2010, 3:27 am and is filed under
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