Malaysia on trial along with Anwar

By
Barry Wain | The Age, Australia

The last time Malaysia’s former deputy prime minister Anwar Ibrahim was charged with sodomy, the country’s judicial system was on trial. This time around, the stakes are even higher.

If Anwar is convicted, in a case that opened in Kuala Lumpur’s High Court on Tuesday, Malaysians can wave goodbye to the best chance of developing a two-party political system in more than half a century.

It will also end any real prospect of Malaysia extricating itself from corrosive race-based politics, and signal the former British territory’s continued descent into self-destructive extremism.

Over the past two years, the charismatic Anwar, 62, has achieved what many analysts thought was impossible. He has tacked together three disparate political parties and formed a credible – if still fragile – opposition, representing hope for a multiracial future.

Nobody else has the organisational ability, political skills and personal trust to hold them together and provide the People’s Front, as it calls itself, with dynamic leadership.

Anwar’s legal problems should be seen in this light.

In 1998, then-prime minister Mahathir Mohamad sacked Anwar as deputy premier and finance minister because he suspected Anwar was using the turmoil of the Asian economic crisis to challenge him.

Beaten viciously in custody, Anwar spent years in jail after being found guilty of corruption and sodomy in trials regarded as fatally flawed by international legal authorities. He was cleared of sodomy on appeal, but banned from seeking public office for five years.

On his return, he galvanised the fragmented opposition into a stunning psychological victory in 2008, capturing five of Malaysia’s 13 states and denying the ruling National Front coalition its customary two-thirds majority in parliament.

The opposition was able to make such gains by tapping into the “politics of disgust”, winning the support of Malaysians alienated by rampant corruption and cronyism. Significant numbers of them crossed ethnic lines to vote for candidates promising reform.

Anwar targeted the affirmative action program called the New Economic Policy, which is supposed to channel economic benefits to native peoples, predominantly Malays. The policy has been widely abused to enrich better-off Malays, notably members of the ruling United Malays National Organisation (UMNO), the dominant party in the 13-member National Front.

In a bold move, Anwar formulated an alternative new economic agenda to assist all poor Malaysians, based on need rather than ethnicity. Not only did droves of disaffected Chinese and Indians desert the government, but a significant percentage of Malays also switched allegiance.

UMNO, in power since Malaysia gained independence in 1957, has reacted badly to its setback. Faced with the possibility of defeat at the next elections, due in 2013, the party has concentrated on sabotaging the resurgent opposition rather than reforming itself.

Like the rerun of a bad movie, Anwar was promptly arrested and charged again with sodomy, this time on the complaint of a university drop-out who had worked briefly for Anwar. Consensual sex between males is illegal in Malaysia, punishable by 20 years’ imprisonment and caning, though the law is rarely enforced.

The public perception in Malaysia is that “sodomy 2”, as the local media dub it, is entirely political, a view shared by the international community. An Amnesty International spokesman has characterised the trial as “the same old dirty tricks” to remove Anwar from politics.

UMNO has also resorted to scaremongering, using race and religion to reinforce the fear among Malays, the majority community, that they are besieged and under threat.

UMNO was blamed for fanning racial tension when arsonists last month attacked 10 churches across the country, after a court ruled that Christians could use the Arabic word “Allah” as a translation for ”God” in the Malay language. The government insists “Allah” should be reserved solely for Muslims, despite widespread use of the word by Christians and other minorities in Arabic-speaking countries and places such as Indonesia.

Prime Minister Najib Razak, elected president of UMNO last year to replace the discredited Abdullah Badawi and stem UMNO’s decline, has talked reform and even made minor adjustments to affirmative action. But while he promotes an inclusive vision for the country under the slogan of “One Malaysia”, an UMNO-owned newspaper often carries racist commentaries.

Anwar and his allies in the People’s Front have found the going rough in the past two years. Through a mixture of inexperience and incompetence, they have underperformed in the states they control.

Still, if Anwar is jailed for sodomy, it will not only end his political career but also terminate an attempt to open up the economic and political systems of one of the Muslim world’s most important countries.

Barry Wain, writer-in-residence at the Institute of South-East Asian Studies in Singapore and author of the recently released
Malaysian Maverick: Mahathir Mohamad in Turbulent Times
, speaks to an Asialink public event on February 16, 6pm, Level 1, Sidney Myer Asia Centre at the University of Melbourne.

                This entry was posted on Friday, 5 February 2010, 5:15 pm and is filed under
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No McCarthyism but disband BTN which had produced a generation of Nasir Safars with racist brain-washing making it the biggest enemy of Najib’s 1Malaysia campaign

Deputy Prime Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin yesterday tried to mitigate the Nasir Safar outrage claiming that it could have been “a slip of the tongue” (New Straits Times).

If so, it is a very big slip or Nasir has got a big tongue when he could in one gulp make so many offensive, insensitive and anti-1Malaysia utterances as:

Labelling Indians and Chinese in Malaysia as “pendatang”;

“Indians came to Malaysia as beggars and Chinese especially the women came to sell their bodies (jual tubuh)”;

Claimed that Umno was solely responsible in drafting the constitution sidelining the contribution of MCA and MIC;

Threat to revoke the citizenship of those vocal about the subject cap for SPM examination.

Clearly, it cannot be a madness of a moment, but madness for many moments!

Although the Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Najib Razak had been very quick and prompt in damage-control, getting Nasir to resign within 12 hours of the outrage on Tuesday and declaring that the Nasir episode should be “a lesson to all” to be racially sensitive, Najib must admit that the greatest casualty is his 1Malaysia campaign.

As a result of the Nasir Safar outrage, and despite Nasir’s belated and qualified apology, there is  a quantum jump in public skepticism whether Najib’s 1Malaysia campaign  is no more than  just a rebranding and public relations (P.R.) exercise without any meaningful change in nation-building policies – as in for instance, replacing the “ketuanan Melayu”  concept with “ketuanan rakyat”.

It is clear that Nasir Safar is not an extinct species in Umno but represent a very powerful mainstream thinking in Umno, both in party and government,  nurtured by a generation of racist brain-washing by the National Civics Centre (Biro Tata Negara) in the Prime Minister’s Department, which had a budget of RM600 million in the past decade to carry out such  divisive indoctrination.

When  the racist brain-washing BTN programme was exposed at the end of last year, Najib ended the public row when he met 30 high-ranking  BTN officers in Parliament on Dec. 15 and asked them to ensure that the BTN Course is in line with the 1Malaysia concept.

That the BTN’s racist brain-washing courses have not changed is reflected by a letter to the editor in the News Straits Times of Dec. 29, 2009 complaining about a BTN session, viz:

MY nephew, who is a doctor, has just returned after attending an induction course held from Dec 19 to 24 at the Bayu Beach Resort in Port Dickson. He is very upset and extremely disappointed.

  The first four days of the programme was conducted by officials from the Ministry of Health and they were very professional in their approach and methodology. However, the sessions during the next two days conducted by the National Civics Bureau (BTN) were so downright racist, sickening and was nothing more than an exercise to divide Malaysians, instil hatred and discord.

  Although my son is a Muslim and a Malay, and was not the target of the BTN instructors, he and his other Muslim friends were upset that their non-Muslim brothers and sisters were constantly labelled as “pendatang” and the Malaysian Indians were hounded in regard to the actions of the now outlawed Hindraf movement.

  One BTN instructor even had the temerity to say: “No need to attend BTN course if you think we are racists” and “We warn you not to report what happens here to the press or to anyone else.”

I am not proposing any McCarthyism – defined by Wikipedia as “the politically motivated practice of making accusations of disloyalty, subversion, or treason without proper regard for evidence” – but firm action must be taken to disband the  racist and divisive brain-washing by the BTN which had  produced a generation of Nasir Safars and is the biggest enemy to Najib’s 1Malaysia campaign.

Will the Cabinet next Wednesday have the political will to disband the BTN for becoming the  racist indoctrination machine  and replace it with a 1Malaysia Civics Centre which operates in an open, transparent, non-partisan and truly 1Malaysia manner to promote Malaysian national consciousness and not racist attitudes and stereotypes?

                This entry was posted on Friday, 5 February 2010, 11:46 am and is filed under
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There they go again

The opposition leader treads a familiar path into the dock

Feb 4th 2010 | BANGKOK | From The Economist print edition

SLINGING mud at opponents is a staple of most democracies, even if voters might prefer a more sensible debate. In Malaysia, a prudish, majority-Muslim country, it seems that nothing succeeds quite like below-the-belt personal attacks. For Anwar Ibrahim, the opposition leader and former deputy prime minister, who went on trial this week accused of sodomising a young male aide, the tactic is wearily familiar. In 1998 he was charged with the same crime, found guilty and jailed. Exonerated and freed, he has staged a comeback that another conviction might jeopardise.

Much has changed in Malaysia since Mr Anwar last took the stand. His nemesis, the country’s longest-serving prime minister, Mahathir Mohamad, who presided over his downfall, has retired, if not exactly gracefully or quietly. The once-mighty United Malays National Organisation (UMNO), which leads a 13-party multiracial governing coalition, looks increasingly vulnerable at a future election. A judiciary that was seen as beholden to its political masters has begun to assert its independence, and has sided with free-speech plaintiffs in prickly faith-related cases.

That independence will be put to the test in “Sodomy 2.0”, as Malaysia’s press has taken to calling Mr Anwar’s trial. His lawyers have pressed for the disclosure of prosecution evidence, including medical reports of the accuser, Saiful Bukhari.
He told the court on February 3rd that Mr Anwar coerced him into having sex, which would be illegal in Malaysia and punishable by up to 20 years in jail. Mr Saiful worked briefly for Mr Anwar in 2008, when he was 23. During the same period, he was seen with aides of Najib Razak, then deputy prime minister and prime minister since last April. Mr Anwar accuses Mr Najib and his wife of a conspiracy to frame him and says they should testify. Mr Najib insists he has nothing to do with the case.

UMNO has been scheming to weaken the opposition, which won five out of 13 states in March 2008 elections that stunned the ruling coalition. Last year it seized back one of those states, Perak, by luring defectors. Then it tried, in vain, to peel off an Islamic party in Mr Anwar’s alliance. An anti-corruption agency has been mobilised to dig opposition dirt, with disastrous results in the case of Teoh Beng Hock, a political aide who died last July after falling out of a window while in the agency’s custody.

Mr Anwar’s trial is a much more potent weapon for UMNO, both as a blot on the opposition leader’s image and a distraction from his politicking. UMNO-owned media will harp on the sordid details, just as they did in the first trial when a semen-stained mattress was hauled into court. The blogosphere, however, where young Malaysians get their news, may not be easily impressed. Nor, it seems, will foreign investors, whom Mr Najib is desperate to attract with promises of a more open and less UMNO-dominated economy. His government’s image is already dented by corruption scandals, including a multibillion dollar project at Port Klang that has been dogged by accusations of mismanagement and cronyism. Some Malaysians may be wondering why such matters seem to generate less heat than Mr Anwar’s alleged transgressions.

                This entry was posted on Friday, 5 February 2010, 11:04 am and is filed under
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Stop Anwar Sodomy2 trial if  Najib is serious about Malaysia 2.0 new economic model …

In his 2010 New Year Message issued on 31st December 2009, the Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak forecast that Malaysia will emerge stronger in 2010 with the long-term as well as short and medium-term initiatives taken by the Government.

However, Malaysia has becoming weaker instead of stronger whether in terms of national unity or in international competitiveness since the first day of the new year.

The first month of the new year was marred by irresponsible mischief to create inter-religious discord over the Dec. 31 judgment of the Kuala Lumpur High Court judge Datuk Lau Bee Lan lifting the 2007 Home Ministry ban on the Catholic Church weekly Herald and allowing the use of the word “Allah” in its Bahasa Malaysia version – with a spate of desecration of churches, mosques, surau and Sikh Gurdwara.

As a result, Malaysia’s international image and standing suffered unprecedented battering in the first month of the year, aggravating Malaysia’s crisis of confidence, undermining Malaysia’s international competitiveness and tarnishing Malaysia as a safe and secure haven for FDIs and as an ideal location for tourists and students.

Malaysians hoping for a surcease to  such damning adverse international publicity for Malaysia in February are in for grave disappointment – for Malaysians already cannot hold their heads high in the past week because of the shame and indignity the Malaysian government has brought to the nation and people with the Anwar Ibrahim Sodomy2 trial, with worse to come for the rest of the month.

Malaysia’s senior statesman Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah cannot be more right when he gave three  reasons why Anwar’s ongoing sodomy trial is  “posing a serious challenge to public confidence in the government”, viz:

“The trial is being conducted in an overwhelmingly politicized environment. Part of its context is the earlier trial of Anwar on the same charge, a trial which was perceived worldwide as politically motivated. We do not longer live in an insulated world.”

“Pre-trial publicity by the local mainstream media has been so blatantly unbalanced as to convey the impression that the media are pursuing a political agenda. Since the local mainstream media is either government owned or tightly controlled, this translates into the impression that the government itself has an interest in its outcome.”

“Many Malaysians believe that sections of the executive and political establishment have an interest in this trial. There does not seem to have been any attempt to remove this suspicion.”

Malaysia suffered a three-place drop in the World Economic Forum (WEF) Global Competitiveness Report (GCR) 2009-2010 falling to 24th from 21st spot the previous year because of much poorer assessment of its institutional framework and governance – with every indicator in the area exhibiting a downward trend from judicial independence to security since 2007.

With Anwar’s Sodomy2 trial, Malaysia is again in the dock of international opinion with far-reaching repercussions in terms of Malaysia’s attractiveness as a haven for FDIs, tourists and international students.

Najib has promised an important initiative in 2010 to lay a strong foundation for the nation’s prosperity in the future – a new economic model, whose announcement had been repeatedly delayed since last year.

If Najib is serious about Malaysia 2.0 new  economic model to restore Malaysia’s worsening competitiveness, the Umno/Barisan Nasional government should stop Anwar Sodomy2 trial which has not only put Malaysia on international trial but reminded Malaysians that they cannot expect much from Najib’s Malaysia.2 new economic model when the Najib governance is so modelled on the old Mahathir script which had produced the Anwar Sodomy1 travesty of justice.

                This entry was posted on Saturday, 6 February 2010, 2:13 pm and is filed under
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Twitter exchange – Anwar’s Sodomy 2 and NEM

02/06/2010 06:54 PM

limkitsiang
: @saiwanstar Journos owned by politicians shld not talk high and mighty about “NEM is 2 impt to leave 2 politics n politicians”.

02/06/2010 06:49 PM

limkitsiang
: @saiwanstar “NEM is 2impt to leave 2 politics n politicians” – Najib n MCA Ministers not “politicians”? Star owned by MCA – so? Warped logic

02/06/2010 06:46 PM

limkitsiang
: @saiwanstar “I agree with u tht sodomy 2 ws a fixed up but …” who said this? Backing off so quickly? Deny when cornered?

02/06/2010 06:38 PM

saiwanstar
: @limkitsiang Don’t recall ever saying who fixed sodomy 2 did I? :) no bullseye uncle lim. NEM is 2 impt to leave 2 politics n politicians.

02/06/2010 06:21 PM

limkitsiang
: @saiwanstar Y classic mca kneejerk allegation dap will sabo d country’s economy? U have sole claim 2patriotism? U owe public apology

02/06/2010 06:15 PM

limkitsiang
: @saiwanstar Bull’s-eye Star dep exe editor agrees Anwar Sodomy2 fixed Y no indication (conscience) in star? What NEM with lousy Govenance?

02/06/2010 05:59 PM

saiwanstar
: @limkitsiang p/s am not even in the top five of the star editorial dept. Am just a curious and tired old hack with a loud voice :)

02/06/2010 05:57 PM

saiwanstar
: @limkitsiang I agree with u tht sodomy 2 ws a fixed up but 2 equate d trial to d NEM is unfair regardless of governance and openness :).

02/06/2010 05:42 PM

limkitsiang
: @saiwanstar ‘Its governance, stupid’ Journos who is top 4th ranking in star shd know paper is mca-owned no need 4journos 2sell their soul

02/06/2010 04:58 PM

saiwanstar
: Me dhallow? I am bt so it tying anwat 2 d NEM RT @limkitsiang: wht shallow n superficial thinking frm a senior star reporter (cont)

02/06/2010 03:49 PM

limkitsiang
: @saiwanstar what shallow n superficial thinking from a senior star reporter do grow up

02/06/2010 03:46 PM

saiwanstar
: rt! Kit losing d plot RT @Aisehman: LMAO how is Sodomy2 linked 2 new econ model? Tell LKS its economic model, nt male fashion model LOL

02/06/2010 03:36 PM

saiwanstar
: Does dis mean DAP will sabo d country’s economy if trial not stp? RT @limkitsiang: stp Sodomy2 if Najib is serious abt new economic model

02/06/2010 02:18 PM

limkitsiang
: Stop Anwar Sodomy2 trial if Najib is serious about Malaysia 2.0 new economic model …http://bit.ly/aL6Zfg

                This entry was posted on Saturday, 6 February 2010, 7:01 pm and is filed under
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How can Najib inspire confidence in Malaysia 2.0 new economic model when he has done nothing in past ten months to stop brain drain or achieve brain gain

When he became Prime Minister in early April last year, one of the first things Datuk Seri Najib Razak announced was a new economic model for the country to ensure Malaysia make a quantum leap to escape the middle-income trap to become a high-income country.

At first, this new economic model of Malaysia 2.0 was to be announced by the second half of last year, then delayed to January of the new year and now to the first quarter of the year.

In actual fact, the World Bank had recommended that Malaysia adopt a new economic model three years ago, stressing that industrial countries are already aiming for economic model 3.0, and with competition at economic model 1.0 intensifying, striving to achieve economic model 2.0 is not an option for Malaysia but a necessity.

The question is why the World Bank’s advice that Malaysia migrate to a new economic model 2.0 was ignored for three years, losing more precious time for Malaysia to catch up in the international competitiveness race when the country had become a straggler as compared to other countries.

When the country achieved nationhood in 1957, Malaysia was the second most economically-advanced country in Asia after Japan.

Today, South Korea’s GDP per capita is US$16,450, Singapore US$34,346, Hong Kong US$29,559 while Malaysia is still at US$7,469 – with the disparity between Malaysia and these countries  set to become wider in the coming years and even risking of being overtaken by countries like Thailand, Vietnam and even Indonesia!

It is pertinent to ask how Najib could inspire confidence in the Malaysia 2.0 new economic model when he has done nothing in the past ten years to stop the brain drain of Malaysia’s talents abroad or to achieve brain gain.

One of the specific proposals made by the World Bank three years ago for Malaysia to migrate to a new economic model Malaysia 2.0 was: “Engaging and attracting back talented, experienced, wealthy and well-connected members of Malaysian diaspora”.

If Najib is incapable of checking Malaysia’s braindrain which had led to the emigration of two generations of the best and brightest overseas as to create a two-million-strong Malaysian diaspora in the world, how can the Prime Minister succeed in achieving “brain gain” or to reverse “brain drain” from the Malaysian diaspora?

I still remember the ambitious “brain gain” programme of the Eighth Malaysia Plan ten years ago to “reverse brain drain” to transform Malaysia into a K-economy and Information Society through a two-pronged strategy, viz:

An annual “brain gain” of 5,000 “extraordinary world citizens of extraordinary talent” to “lure the best brains regardless of race or nationality, from Bangalore to California”; and

Encourage 500 skilled Malaysians overseas every year to return home with their expertise from 2001.

This ambitious “brain gain” programme was an unmitigated failure – with Malaysia losing even more talents in the past decade.

Malaysia is not short of proposals for a new economic model Malaysia 2.0 but what is sorely lacking is  the political will to implement them.

How can Najib ensure that  the new economic model of Malaysia 2.0 to be announced by him will not fail because of the lack of political will to carry out far-reaching government transformation programmes including restoring national and international confidence in the system of governance in Malaysia?

This is why Anwar Ibrahim’s Sodomy 2  trial is not a good harbinger for Najib’s Malaysia 2.0 new economic model.

                This entry was posted on Sunday, 7 February 2010, 12:14 pm and is filed under
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Open Letter to ALL Pakatan MPs

Open letter by
Emmanuel Joseph

Dear Few Pakatan Rakyat Elected Representative (You Know Who You Are)

Yang Berhormats,

I am writing this to vent my frustration, irritation, disgust, disbelief and anger on how many of you are acting recently. Its with sincerest and most honest intention that I am writing this, as a Pakatan grassroots ‘small fry’ member, who like the millions of Malaysians came out in full force to support you all when you were practically nobodies and put you where you are today, sitting in the highest decision making bodies in your own states and country respectively. Some of you were luckier than others, and been appointed to important government posts, some even head entire state governments. Congratulations, your long wait and tireless effort paid off. But please do kindly remember, it was not only your effort alone, but the effort and will of more than half the Malaysian electorate that put you where you are. You did not win entirely on your own charm, your education level, your profile in your respective fields of expertise or struggle. Frankly, most Malaysians who supported you did not even care who you were or what you did, as long as you were not donning a dark blue cap with a BN logo on it. That is the reason we had aircraft mechanics voted into power in the last General Election.

The next time any of you decide to foam in the mouth about lack of funding, lack of resources and other similar grumbles, please bear in mind these few facts. Firstly, you stood for the election on your own free will. Nobody put a gun on your foreheads asking you to run for elections, nobody begged you to contest. Out of your own reasons, rightly or wrongly you stood, representing the people, and because of that, the people rallied behind you and riding on this, you were catapulted into where you now are. Secondly, others have had far less than you, suffered much more than you and been doing it for far longer. Take a look at the likes of YB Dr Tan Seng Giaw, YB Fong Kui Loon, YB Dr Wan Azizah, YB Mustafa Ali, YB Nasharuddin Mat Isa and many more.
What more YBs Karpal, Kit Siang and Nik Aziz? Who was there to fund them? Who supported their families when some of them were thrown into ISA? Most of you are only first term Yang Berhormats, so why can’t you not sacrifice less than 5 years of your life if you are sincere in your cause? Thirdly, regardless of your previous political alignment, you are with Pakatan now. Its a people’s alliance, not a cronies’ alliance. If money, resources and a luxurious allowances is what you craved, you have the wrong party, maybe even the wrong country. And if you were in it for those express reasons, please do the honorable thing and resign.

Dear Yang Berhormats,

The next time you decide to shoot from the hip about party policy, please bear in mind these few facts.Firstly, you are not Pakatan Rakyat, you are a part of Pakatan Rakyat. The policy of Pakatan Rakyat is not your sole prerogative, nor is it yours, your father’s or your grandfather’s to decide. There’s a hierarchy in place, and its there for a reason. You are a single member of Pakatan Rakyat, and as an elected rep, have the trust of the nameless, faceless, positionless Pakatan grassroots to speak on its behalf in explaining the policy to the people, not deciding on the policy for the people. Secondly, your opinions, however valid you perceive them to be, and your points, however salient you believe them to be, remains just that, yours. Not the party’s, not the alliances’ and hell, no, not the peoples’! If its your own opinion by all means say so, lease don’t confuse everyone by muddling and befuddling everything and everyone and turning what is clearly black and white into a giant grey mess. Thirdly, please remember that the media loves to give you attention even more than you love the attention it gives you. Especially when you shoot yourself in the foot. While you’re busy shooting your own feet, the media is amputating the very feet Pakatan stands on, no thanks to the likes of you. If you don’t like what Pakatan stands for, then by all means, do resign.

The next time you decide to bring out your personal vendetta against any Pakatan colleague, due to a long standing feud, a dissatisfaction over your appointments or that of your political followers,or just because you just don’t like the guy’s face, please try doing this steps instead. First, try talking to the person. Nothing clears the air like a good honest conversation. Second muhasabahlah diri. You are nothing near perfect, yet we still voted you in. Isn’t that nice? Shouldn’t you then be nice to your comrades? Third, remember that every action has a reaction. Call it a law of physics, or political karma, it will come back to haunt you one day! If you feel you are still right and Pakatan is wrong, then don’t demand that Pakatan withdraw! Your own withdrawal from office will more than suffice.

Dear Yang Berhormats,

Please remember, the people who voted you in can as easily vote you out. The people who worked hard to ensure your victory can work as hard with a vengeance to ensure your loss. You carry the aspirations of an entire generation on your shoulders, please do not snuff out our dreams for a better Malaysia. There are enough elements out there that want Pakatan destroyed, so internal self-destruction is the last thing needed right now. And if you believe you don’t need the Malaysian electorate, then, rest assured, the Malaysian electorate needs you even less. Thank you, and have a pleasant (remaining ) time in political office.

Sincerely,

Emmanuel Joseph,

(A Nearly Nameless, Faceless, Positionless Pakatan Member)

DAP Socialist Youth,

Klang.

                This entry was posted on Sunday, 7 February 2010, 5:02 am and is filed under
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Malaysia has forgotten Tunku, and Tunku would not recognise Malaysia

By
Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah

Tunku Abdul Rahman was the founder of Malaysia. That has been obscured by an intervening period in which his memory has been brushed out of our national consciousness.

He brought together a Malaysia that had come together “through our own free will and desire in the true spirit of brotherhood and love of freedom”, in a union arrived at “by mutual consent by debate and discussion…through friendly argument and compromise,” and “in the spirit of co-operation and concord.”

This was the basis for Malaysia he worked for and established, and that his life embodied. That basis has been replaced by something alien to it, his memory has been suppressed, and our history revised.

Part of the reason our collective memory of Tunku has faded, and that Tunku would not recognise today’s Malaysia, is that Tunku and his generation built institutions that empowered the people rather than cults of personality to concentrate power and wealth in themselves. They reached instinctively for democratic decision-making. The concepts and precepts of constitutional democracy were part of their natural vocabulary and instinctive reactions. They knew who the country belonged to, and that they lived to serve.

The day of Tunku’s funeral was not even declared a public holiday. It is no accident that the erasure of his memory has gone hand in hand with the erosion of our institutions. Tunku built up a system of good civil service in which ordinary citizens did not need to see so-and-so to get things done. This has been replaced by a domineering style of leadership in which what you get done depends on who you know. Of course the rich and powerful have better connections.

In place of the protection for ordinary citizens guaranteed by popular representation, rule of law and the checks and balances of independent institutions, we have the cult of the great leader.

In place of a system which designed to assure the rights of the ordinary citizen we have a system re-designed around the interests of corporate and political bosses.

Ordinary Malaysians are disenfranchised of their rights to health, education and security. They are then patronised by leaders whose idea of public service is to go around like Father Christmas doling out gifts of resources which are really the property of the people. This turns citizens into supplicants. Our properties are converted into gifts from the great leader. Our rights are converted into permissions. Our country has become his country.

There has been, over the years since his passing, a quite deliberate erasure of our memory of Tunku. This should come as no surprise. He saw the wrong turn we were taking and he opposed it. He and several other leaders were excluded from UMNO Baru. He led a movement called Semangat 46.  His conception of our politics and system of government had no place for corrupt practices, arbitrary executive power and the manipulation of racial and religious identity for political gain.

Tunku Abdul Rahman did not help us achieve independence and then the merger, alone. He led and worked with  an entire class of individuals schooled in the culture and practice of parliamentary democracy. In politics and the civil service they thrived in a time before the machine politics of patronage and lowbrow identity politics had sucked the life and talent out of the ruling party and left it filled with people who quite simply don’t have the ability to hold this country together anymore.

The average age of our first cabinet was under thirty. Tun Razak was 28.  Tun Dr Ismail was barely 30 years old.  Men of their calibre would not have made it up the ladder of the party that has succeeded theirs. They would have been too untainted, too young to do so.

The IDEAS project looks back, then, not just to an individual but to an era in Malaysia’s brief history. It will promote the values and principles on which we were formed.

Over the course of that history we have not trodden a continuous path to the present day. There have been two regimes, or political dispensations, in the life of this country, young as she is.

The first began in the fifties and ended in 1970.  The dispensation that followed came to a mortal crisis in 1997  and limped on to 2008. Against the background of those changes, what has followed the elections of March 2008 is hard to describe as anything but the detritus of a once-functioning political system.

If any one of us was tempted to imagine that Malaysia had outgrown the sordid events of 1997, the government’s newspapers bring to our breakfast tables each day Sodomy 2, to remind us that after another decade of sloganeering,  as Tunku Zain Al-‘Abidin pointed out, we have come full circle to find ourselves back at the doorstep of our debased institutions and a Constitution that is increasingly inoperative.

The progress of the trial of the leader of the Opposition, the government’s apparent ignorance of the sovereign rights of the states and the way in which we have allowed religious issues to be manipulated, point to that conclusion. The constitutional crisis in Perak, in which a government has been installed by illegal means, the failure to implement two royal commissions of inquiry findings, point to that conclusion.

The barbarous political culture promoted by the establishment media brings us full circle, and drives home the point: our system of government is still in 1997. We are still in the after-wash of a wave of bad taste, authoritarianism and arbitrary power that destroyed our practice of parliamentary democracy, compromised our judiciary and police, and disenfranchised our people.

To modify Tunku’s words, we now have a democracy “existing in name, but grievously compromised in substance, reality and fact.”

Our penchant for slogans is a reflection of our dislocation from the living reality of constitutional and parliamentary democracy. We don’t need slogans. We need our Constitution back.

This, then, is the context in which IDEAS has adopted its noble purpose. The efforts of idealistic young people, attuned to the principles of parliamentary democracy and to our real history, and equipped with a plan to effect that purpose, are exactly what we need at this time. We need this and other such efforts from the young. They should not let their repugnance at the ugliness of our political system turn them away from it. It is precisely because we have a broken political system that it is so ugly. It is precisely because our main political parties are bound to infantile ethnic politics that we are now stagnant and declining as a country. Instead, I hope they see the mindlessness and ugliness of our present politics as a call to service.

I urge young people to rise to the task of changing our political system. We have left it to “the deranged” for too long as Tunku Zain Al-‘Abidin calls them. To expect change from the incumbents is to expect, in the Malay saying, the mice to repair the gourd…“Bagai tikus baiki labu-labu.”

It is time for us to understand, discuss, organise and act together.

Tunku was a true Malaysian. As we have forgotten him, we have also forgotten how to be Malaysians. We must learn again how to be free and equal citizens of a constitutional democracy.  In our national life we must learn again how to be a Federation of sovereign states governed by the rule of law.

We have been robbed of our memory, and have had it replaced with slogans, but we have also been robbed of our country. Let us come together to recover both.

                This entry was posted on Monday, 8 February 2010, 6:23 pm and is filed under
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Towards A Developed Malaysia – Part 1

By
M. Bakri Musa

[Presented at the Third Annual Alif Ba Ta Forum, “1Malaysia Towards Vision 2020,” Rochester Institute of Technology, NY, December 5, 2009, organized by Kelab UMNO NY-NJ.  The presentation can be viewed at www.youtube.com (search under “Bakri Musa RIT”) or through
this link
]

Part One of Six: Definition of A Developed State

Thank you, President Shahrir Tamrin of Kelab UMNO-NY/NJ for inviting me again. I still savor the many pleasant memories of last year’s event. To President Arif Aiman of the Malaysian Students Association, RIT, your warm welcome and generous introduction more than made up for the chill of a New York autumn! To Nur Fauzana and her committee, I congratulate you for your grit in holding this forum in December when American campuses are typically gripped with term paper deadlines and final examinations.

To fellow panelist Dr. Azly Rahman, it is good to see you again! I was in Greece recently and imagined you conducting a Socratic-like seminar on the meaning of truth, wisdom, and knowledge, under those imposing columns! To Ambassador Jarjis, it is a pleasure meeting you and your wife again. That was an impressive picture of you with President Obama, a portrait of a Malay hulubalang (knight), fearsome yet elegant, with his tanjak (keris) discreetly tucked underneath the samping. You effectively demonstrated that a genuine hulubalang need not brandish his keris to convey his message!

To Ali Iqbal, you significantly lower the average age of the panelists.  I enjoyed your panoramic take on the current economic crisis.  It was thankfully free of economic jargons and thus very informative.

To many, “1Malysia” is one of those slogans Malaysian leaders are so fond of coining.  Before that there was Malaysia Boleh (Malaysian Can!), and more recently, Cemerlang, Gemilang, dan Terbilang (excellence, glory, and distinction), and, as it turned out, all temberang (hot air).  To others, 1Malaysia is Prime Minister Najib Razak’s website.  Or is it that of a web-hosting company?

That last remark is unkind, of course, a lousy attempt at humor on my part!  That done with, I now turn to the topic at hand.

 “IMalaysia” is Najib’s vision of a united Malaysia.  The eight values of his 1Malaysia are perseverance, culture of excellence, acceptance, loyalty, education, humility, integrity, and meritocracy.  I am sure you were grilled on that at your scholarship interviews back home.

I do not know what the difference is, if any, between a culture of excellence and meritocracy, or between acceptance and loyalty.  My hunch is that Najib is superstitious, and eight is an auspicious number in his scheme of things.

Vision 2020 is former Prime Minister Mahathir’s inspiration, first articulated in1991, to propel Malaysia towards a developed state by 2020.  His original title was, “The Way Forward,” but that did not have quite the same zing.

One dictionary defines a developed state as one with a high degree of industrialization and standard of living brought on by wealth and technology.  Being the iconoclast that he is, Mahathir has his own ideas.  To him, a developed state is one that is, among others, “psychologically liberated,” “fully moral,” and “fully caring.”  Then perhaps unsure of what those fuzzy terms mean, he added the traditional economic criterion of “doubling of real gross domestic product every ten years between 1990 and 2020.”

Mahathir’s reference to GDP is both inadequate and misleading.  What is relevant is the size of the economy relative to the population:  the per capita GDP.  A developed nation typically has a per capita income in excess of $18K, adjusted for purchasing power parity.  That too has its limitations.  Brunei’s per capita GDP is nearly $50K, way ahead of Canada, but no one would suggest that Brunei is developed.  The figure for Malaysia is about $12K.

The United Nations has a more inclusive measure with its Human Development Index (HDI).  It factors in the health of the population (as reflected in life expectancy), level of education (as measured by adult literacy and school enrollment rates), and standard of living (per capita GDP).  Developed nations generally have an index greater than 0.900; Malaysia’s at 0.826.  If you believe in HDI, Malaysia is more developed than Russia!

I have a simpler definition.  A developed state is like pornography; I know it when I see it, to borrow Justice Potter Stewart’s famous phrase.  When I drive south from San Diego, California, to Tijuana, Mexico, I know that I am leaving a developed country and entering a developing one.  When I drive into Montreal, Canada, from Plattsburgh, New York, I know that I am entering another developed country.

In Tijuana, if the police were to stop me, I would grab my wallet to see how much cash I have to bribe him.  If a similar incident were to happen in Canada, I would check my driver’s license and car registration papers.

If I were unfortunate enough to have an accident in Tijuana, my first thought would be how to get back across the border as quickly as possible.  In Canada, I would not hesitate being sent to the nearest hospital.  When dining out in Montreal, my only consideration would be the choice of cuisine, ambience, and of course, cost.  In Tijuana I would have to choose very carefully, and even then I would stay away from the ice and salads.

I leave it to you to judge where Malaysia is, closer to Tijuana or Montreal.

My late father had an astute observation on what is meant by a developed society.  I was visiting him after a long absence.  It was in 1969, right after the deadly race riots, and the streets of Kuala Lumpur were deserted.  I was driving him and we came to a stop sign.  I duly stopped.  He asked me why I did that, and thinking that he did not see the sign, replied, “There was a stop sign.”

“But there were no cars,” he protested.

 I did not reply.  After a long pensive pause he added, “That is why the West is advanced.  People there obey the law even when no one is watching!”

He may not have realized it, but my late father was on to something profound.  That is, respect for the rule of law is the feature of a developed society.  This is precisely what is lacking in a developing country, and more importantly, what keeps it trapped in its backward state.

The prevailing ethics in a developing country is that the law applies only to ordinary people, not the leaders.  Those in power have nothing but contempt for the law.  It is there to serve their purpose, and they never hesitate using it against their enemies.  On a mundane level, I have a picture of a limousine, with the title “Ketua Hakim Negara” (Chief Justice) emblazoned across its license plate, parked illegally and blocking the traffic at Sepang International Airport.

Of course even in America cars of cabinet secretaries and congressmen are exempt from the usual parking restrictions, but you would never see their cars blocking traffic at Reagan National Airport.

In New York, the biggest traffic violators are diplomats from developing countries.  There is a definite correlation between those diplomats and the World Bank’s index of public corruption in their home country.  Merely living in a developed country does not make you a developed person.  This supports my contention that you should focus on developing your people, not your country.

The Quran reminds us to “command good and forbid evil!” as if Allah is watching over us at all times (“closer than our jugular vein”).  In a developed country, they obey the law as if someone is watching over them all the time.  Of course today there are surveillance cameras at traffic intersections.  Better not run the red light!

The challenge is to ensure that Malaysia is headed towards Montreal and not sliding back to Tijuana.  If we do not get to Montreal, we will automatically slide quickly towards Tijuana.  Make not mistake about that; standing still is not an option.

Next:   Part Two of Six:  Diamond of Development

                This entry was posted on Monday, 8 February 2010, 5:01 am and is filed under
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UMNO leaders in Federal Government should not play with fire and mortgage credibility and success of 1Malaysia GTP Roadmap and Malaysia 2.0 new economic model

UMNO leaders in the Federal Government, from the Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak, Deputy Prime Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin to Cabinet and sub-Cabinet levels should not play with fire and mortgage the credibility and success of the 1Malaysia Government Transformation Programme (GTP) Roadmap and Malaysia 2.0 new economic model yet to be announced by Najib.

They should be mindful that Malaysians and the world are watching whether they could separate their responsibilities as Federal Government officials from those of Umno leaders, which would have a great bearing on the credibility, trustworthiness and success of of Najib’s 1Malaysia GTP Roadmap and Malaysia 2.0 new economic model which is to be the basis for the Tenth Malaysia Plan to be presented to Parliament in June.

For instance, national and international credibility in the system of governance which plays a very important role in a country’s international competitiveness, would suffer grievously if Malaysians and the international community believe that the Najib premiership is unable to rise above narrow political party considerations to give top priority to national interests as to continue to compromise the independence, professionalism and integrity of national law enforcement agencies.

There is for instance growing national and international concern about double standards in government where irresponsible elements provoking sensitive racial and religious outbursts are given immunity and leeway if they are aimed at destabilizing Pakatan Rakyat state governments, even when these demonstrations are  founded on baseless allegations or half-truths, like the outrage of the cowhead demonstration against the Selangor Mentri Besar Tan Sri Khalid Ibrahim in Selangor in August last year and the demonstration against the Penang Chief Minister, Lim Guan Eng last Friday.

Malaysians are witnessing a reversal of role of mainstream media (msm). Since more than a decade ago from the outset of the Anwar Ibrahim reformasi movement in 1998, mainstream media will play down the crowds at demonstrations by dividing them with a factor of 10. Now, we have mainstream media magnifying the crowd at anti-Pakatan Rakyat demonstrations by multiplying it by a factor of ten – which explains Bernama reporting a demonstration of 3,000 against the Penang Chief Minister last Friday.

The 1Malaysias GTP Roadmap makes many proposals about promoting “a truly 1Malaysia government” and an “all-inclusive 1Malaysia media” but they will have neither credibility nor public confidence if “a truly 1Malaysia government” and “an all-inclusive 1Malaysia media” fail the daily test of actual day-to-day governance in the eyes of Malaysians and the world.

                This entry was posted on Monday, 8 February 2010, 2:39 pm and is filed under
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Why the prosecution of Anwar Ibrahim matters to the West

The Washington Post

FEB 7 – In the past two years, Malaysia, which has been a one-party state since it gained independence in 1957, has made remarkable strides toward becoming a democracy. That it has done so is mostly due to the efforts and political talent of one man – Anwar Ibrahim.

So the fact that Anwar went on criminal trial last week should deeply concern the democratic world. The outcome could determine whether one of Asia’s most economically successful countries preserves its stability and embraces long-overdue reforms.

A former deputy prime minister in the ruling party, Anwar was deposed and jailed in 1998 by former Malaysian strongman Mahathir Mohamad.

A manifestly unfair trial followed in which Anwar was convicted of homosexual sodomy, which shamefully remains a crime in Malaysia.

Six years later, the conviction was overturned by a court, and Anwar resumed his political career – this time as an open champion of democracy in Malaysia and other Muslim countries.

Anwar succeeded in forging a coalition of opposition parties, including his own multiracial People’s Justice Party (Parti Keadilan Rakyat or PKR), an Islamic party (PAS), and a secular party (DAP).

He has campaigned against the government’s toxic policy of racial discrimination, which funnels economic favours to well-connected members of the ethnic Malay majority.

In the past two years, his coalition has pulled off a string of stunning victories in state and parliamentary by-elections; it now controls four of 13 state governments. If led by Anwar, it would have a fair chance of winning the next national election in 2013.

That’s one reason it’s suspicious that, three months after the state election victories in 2008, Anwar was once again accused of sodomy.

Another is that his young male accuser was seen with aides of Najib Razak, who is now prime minister; Anwar says he has evidence that the accuser met with the prime minister and his wife shortly before making his charge.

A third is that the case has been transferred from criminal court to a higher court whose judges are closely linked to the ruling party.

If Anwar is convicted, he could be sentenced to up to 20 years in prison and would be banned from politics for five years. He is 62.

The ruling party no doubt hopes a conviction will cause the opposition coalition to crumble. But it could just as easily provoke a backlash against Najib or street demonstrations that could destabilise the country.

That’s why the Obama administration and other Western governments interested in stability in Asia should make clear that the imprisonment of Anwar would be a blatant human rights violation – and not in Malaysia’s interest.

                This entry was posted on Monday, 8 February 2010, 1:06 pm and is filed under
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Mandela-isation of Anwar?

by
Azly Rahman

“Man proposes, god disposes”

Thomas a Kempis, ‘Of The Imitation of Christ’

While America awaits The Super Bowl, Malaysia awaits The Super Trial II this week to listen to the arguments concerning the predicament of Anwar Ibrahim.

Philosophically, what ought to be the shape of things to come? Where do we go from here, as a nation? Where do we wish to bring this nation that is in need of deep reflection on the meaning of nationhood and democracy?

Maturity after Mahathirism

If we take 1998 as a framework in looking at the changes this country is seeing politically, Anwar can be seen as an embodiment of Nelson Mandela.

His spirit did not die for the six years he was jailed and upon his release a momentum was created that grew in strength to first, become institutionalised in the form of a strong Parti Keadilan Rakyat and next, of Pakatan Rakyat.

Divine intervention and human design propelled such changes – the evolution of a one-party Mahathiristic construct to an emerging two-party counter-hegemonic system that is making the current regime fearful and tremble.

Indeed from 1998 to 2010, Malaysians not also saw an evolution of critical sensibility but waves upon waves of loud protests on the streets, in parliament, in cyberspace, and in the minds of Malaysians against the excesses of the Mahathirist-inspired totalitarianism and autocraticism.

Malaysians have matured, in a way. Only the civil servants and those employed and caressed to obedience by the ruling regime have not fully matured in terms of civil libertarianism. Understandably one cannot bite the hands that feed, as the iron hands will pound violently once bitten.

If twelve to fifteen years ago, Malaysians dared not speak of Malay rights, corruption, controlling interests in Barisan Nasional, definition of bumiputera, and the means and methods of thought-control and sword of Damocles of the ruling regime – the situation has dramatically changed.

It is as if the release of Anwar from his six years of incarceration signify, as postmodernists such as Fredrick Jameson would say, a ‘rupture’ and the ‘waning of effect of the ruling totalitarian regime.

The Internet, a Frankenstein of postmodern times and an avatar of chaos and complexity and a protean technology of both democratic and demagogic thinking, aided the Malaysian revolution in thinking.

What is revealed on the Internet becomes a launching pad for real-time street protests and many times too, prosecution of this or that person for corruption and other forms of ‘transgressions’ done in the name of politics; transgression ala a political version, Tiger Woods-stylised, in which revelations can become ugly, cancerous and financially disastrous.

Anwar Ibrahim has become a rallying point for this new wave of revolution – not merely a reformation in fact – of a new form of consciousness albeit plagued with consistent cluster-bombing and carpet-bombings done by those who wish to stop it on its tracks, Machiavellian-styled.

Challenging obedience

How has the new consciousness eroded the sense of obedience to authority, particularly of the Malays – often considered the most obedient human beings on Earth?

Like those rallying behind Nelson Mandela (far right) circa apartheid in South Africa, Malaysians are seeing the Mandela-isation of Anwar Ibrahim particularly his second trial.

It is not Anwar who is on trial – it is the will of Malaysians of all walks of life, ethnic groups, religious conviction, class, and caste, that are on trial. It is the growing urge to come together and dismantle the excesses of race-based politics and the ugly manifestations of greed via political creed that is on trial.

Beginning from the political ‘honey-mooning’ years of Abdullah Ahmad Badawi and his failure to make reforms to all forms of repressive and intolerable acts right up to this day wherein all’s-not-well-ends-not well’ is the feature of the present government that is quite certain seeing its demise.

Beginning from the show of arrogance of UMNO particularly to an even worse show of that same arrogance in issues of combating corruption, fixing the judiciary, improving the universities, egalitarian-ising and equilibrium-ising the education system, teaching religious and racial tolerance – Malaysian have seen enough of a breakdown of what once looked like a showcase of ‘civil society’.

The rallies, the water cannons, the chemical-laced sprays, the deaths of Altantuya, Kugan, Teoh Beng Hock, and the Perak parliamentary plague – all these are amongst the demonic verses of the narrative of this nation that are inspiring the rise of ‘civil disobedience’. “Dissent, is the highest form of patriotism,” said the American philosopher-president-statesman Thomas Jefferson – and this is what Malaysians are embodying as a cultural-political philosophy.

Maybe we are seeing the Mandela-isation of Anwar Ibrahim. And we ought to see that as a philosophical global-positioning-system circa the next general election. The coming election will see total rupture after a fierce struggle over the mandate to rule.

Change can be painful, but change must a nation go through. It is through the regimented swallowing of bitter pill can maladies be cured. For too long, especially during the Mahathirist years, Malaysians have been given Prozac and serenaded with feel-good stories of being grateful and not biting the hands that feed to a point of numbness and total obedience, that it takes this country to the verge of destruction for us to wake up and to smell the Napalm in all its morning glory – as our own ‘Apocalypse Now’.

It will be an interesting week ahead. May we continue to live in interesting times, as what Chairman Mao Zedong would say. How this weeks’ episode will end will depend on how: “Man proposes, God disposes”.

                This entry was posted on Tuesday, 9 February 2010, 8:38 am and is filed under
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Najib’s 1Malaysia concept means “a thousand and one” different things even to Umno and BN Ministers and leaders

Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak is unhappy about the various misconceptions over the 1Malaysia concept which he introduced upon taking office in April last year, causing him to lament yesterday in his keynote speech at the 1Malaysia Economic Conference: “I am greatly saddened that such an idea, which is not terribly complicated, is so often not understood.”

Najib has only himself to blame as the 1Malaysia concept has come to mean “a thousand and one” different things even to Umno and Barisan Ministers and leaders – let alone to the people at large.

This is why even his senior aide of some two decades, Datuk Nasir Safar, could interpret Najib’s 1Malaysia as inclusive of offensive and insensitive sentiments such as:

Labelling Indians and Chinese in Malaysia as “pendatang”;

“Indians came to Malaysia as beggars and Chinese especially the women came to sell their bodies (jual tubuh)”;

Claimed that Umno was solely responsible in drafting the constitution sidelining the contribution of MCA and MIC;

Threat to revoke the citizenship of those vocal about the subject cap for SPM examination.

Although Nasir was subsequently forced to resign and apologise for his insensitive and derogatory remarks, this is not because Najib has succeeded in establishing that such racist and insensitive thoughts are against the very core of his 1Malaysia concept, but because Nasir was foolish enough to be caught red-handed in publicly espousing such racist and extremist views.

In fact, there is an entire government department, the Biro Tata Negara, with a budget of some RM600 million in the past decade, whose very purpose is to disseminate such racist and divisive ideology among the new generation of Malaysians, particularly civil servants.

The first 10 months of Najib premiership have been marred by a series of incidents which make a total mockery of his 1Malaysia concept – for instance the insensitive cowhead demonstration against the Selangor Mentri Besar Tan Sri Khalid Ibrahim in Selangor in August last year or the demonstration against the Penang Chief Minister Lim Guan Eng last month slanted to provoke racial sentiments.

Officially, the goal of 1Malaysia is defined as creating a nation where every Malaysian perceives himself or herself as Malaysian first  and race (whether Malay, Chinese, Indian, Kadazan or Iban), religion (Muslim, Buddhist, Christian, Hindu, Sikh) or region as second.

But no leader, whether BN or UMNO, dare to publicly espouse this as it  flies in the face of the Umno ideology of “Ketuanan Melayu”!

It is no wonder that Umno and BN leaders are lost at my suggestion for a Parliamentary Select Committee on 1Malaysia Government Transformation Programme (GTP) Roadmap, as the Barisan Nasional Cabinet and Government are unable to reconcile the stark contradictions between  the exclusive Umno ideology of “Ketuanan Melayu” with an inclusive 1Malaysia concept.

I will move a motion in Parliament next month for the establishment of a Parliamentary Select Committee on the 1Malaysia GTP Roadmap.

Najib should ensure that his 1Malaysia does not continue to mean “a thousand and one” different things even in the BN Cabinet and Government so as to be able to support the proposal for a Parliamentary Select Committee on 1Malaysia GTP Roadmap which is headed by a senior Pakatan Rakyat MP.

Najib should know that his 1Malaysia concept is a total mockery  and does not deserve to be taken seriously when he dare not even support the idea of a Parliamentary Select Committee for 1Malaysia GTP Roadmap.

                This entry was posted on Tuesday, 9 February 2010, 3:22 pm and is filed under
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Justice is done in by the Federal Court

By
Martin Jalleh

Once again justice is shamelessly sacrificed on the altar of political expediency by judicial shenanigans of the highest court in Bolehland. It is a sad day indeed to see how five “blind” men of supposed legal stature strove so hard not to see and sense what was staring at them in the Federal and Perak constitutions.

The judiciary – the very portal of justice continues to be reduced to a convenient playground for the ruling elite to legitimize their power grab, persecute their opponents and promote their political agenda, through the perversion of the rule of law by certain court jesters.

The Federal and Perak Constitutions are dead, done in by those who decided to disregard, desecrate and discard constitutional provisions to treat the doctrine of separation of powers with deference. They are rigorously and rightly interpreted only when it best suits Umno.

In stark comparison to the courageous, cogent and convincing judgment of High Court judge Abdul Aziz Abdul Rahim, the cowed five-member bench caved in and conveniently decided to take the cue from the powers that be.

It comes as no surprise that their “collective written judgement is apparently riddled with contradictions”.The five judges surely qualify for retired Justice N H Chan’s classic category of “recalcitrant” and “Humpty Dumpty” judges in the Perak conundrum.

Today the reputation of the judiciary or whatever was left of it, has been sullied irreparably. In the eyes of the public the judiciary has sunk so low as to allow itself to be intimidated, its independence and impartiality interfered with, and its integrity reduced to ignominy.

The judiciary has made a decision ignoring the overwhelming implications. As toppled Perak MB Nizar Jamaluddin said: “If this decision goes on and becomes the law of the day, it will lead to an absolute monarchy (which) means the ruler can now dismiss the prime minister or the mentri besar at any time.”

The winds of change promised by the PM have turned into a stench of contemptuous compromise emanating from the corridors of the Palace of Justice. The rhetoric of the Chief Justice on a judicial renaissance and the Attorney-General on a “war against injustice” stink to high heaven.

In the halls of the Palace of Justice hangs a heavy suffocating air of hypocrisy whilst supposed men of honour with hollow character hang on to their high and lofty positions and holler, hype and harp on upholding and interpreting the constitution to the hilt as they hand out whimsical and warped judgments!

The Federal Court decision was merely the next logical step after the historic haste with which the judiciary helped Zambry back to the helm. Less than a day after the KL High Court had ruled in Nizar’s favour, and three hours after Zambry had filed for a stay of execution, a one-man Court of Appeal readily heard the latter and granted him a stay two hours later! Zambry won his appeal 11 days later!

The Federal Court ruling is the climax of the shocking and scandalous manner the judiciary has handled the Perak crisis. It has left behind a dead constitution, “bad” and “perverse” decisions, dubious declaratory orders, judgments devoid of reasoned grounds, and disgraceful double standards.

The judiciary was bursting with bias which even the blind could see!

The added fact that the “Perak cases” were made the exclusive domain of a few judges in the High Courts and especially the Appellate Courts strongly suggests a hidden hand of one who obediently followed the instructions of the same Umno elite who hijacked the Perak state government by high-handed, hideous and heinous means.

What is next fellow Perakians? Yes it was a very unfair judgment but then again life is unfair! Shall we move on and win the war in spite of having lost the battle today? Let us leave the judiciary and the those who make a mockery of our justice system to swim and drown in their own judicial vomit.

Surely the past one year had drawn the rakyat of Perak closer together and made us more daring and determined to dream and drive ourselves towards a Government we really want in Perak. Personally, I have never been to so many PAS ceremahs before in my whole life!

Indeed the Perak Constitutional crisis had forged and fostered formidable comradeship amongst the leaders and members of the parties of Pakatan Rakyat (PR) in Perak. Who can forget the kind of support the PR Aduns gave to one another as they tried to enter the State Assembly or the historic raintree State Assembly? The crisis also revealed the real friends and foes of PR.

The struggle made us Perakians realize that there were heroes amongst us – an MB with an indomitable spirit, a Speaker whose courage became an inspiration to many, a retired judge intensely committed to the law, intrepid principled politicians in the coalition and unknown individuals willing to risk involvement – surely in continued synergy we will be able to serve up a surging and unstoppable wave of change…in the next General Elections!

                This entry was posted on Wednesday, 10 February 2010, 12:17 pm and is filed under
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What is Najib’s response to the PERC’s “blistering” report and the prospect of Malaysia becoming even more uncompetitive internationally because of his failing strategy to be “all things to all people”

Yesterday, I criticised the Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak for coming up with a wishy-washy “1Malaysia” concept, which has come to mean “a thousand and one” different things even to Umno and Barisan Ministers and leaders – resulting in his lament that “
I am greatly saddened that such an idea, which is not terribly complicated, is so often not understood.
”

This criticism has found support in the latest report of the Hong Kong-based
Political and Economic Risk Consultancy (PERC) on Malaysia
 which is quite pessimistic about the Najib strategy of “trying to be all things to all people, but in the end he might satisfy no one”.

In what Malaysian Insider has described as a “blistering report” on Malaysia at the end of January, PERC raised Malaysia’s risk index from 5.24 in December to 5.4 in January – out of a possible maximum score 10 for highest level of risk.

PERC maintained in its report that foreign investments into Malaysia have not been forthcoming, either in direct form or in the equity markets.

It said: “Foreign companies and investors are remaining cautious until they see how Malaysia gets its own house in order.”

PERC is confirming the alarm raised by all astute observers of the Malaysian national scene – that Malaysia is sliding down the slope of becoming even more uncompetitive internationally despite Najib’s 1Malaysia slogan and plan for a Malaysia 2.0 new economic model.

The PERC report said it is “probable” that no other Asian country is suffering from as much bad international press as Malaysia.

Among the developments that caught the attention of world media  were the theft of military jet engines, detention of terror suspects from a number of African and Middle East countries following warnings that Islamic militants were planning attacks on foreigners at resorts in Sabah, renewed ethnic and religious “violence” that included arson at some churches and desecration of mosques, and controversy over the integrity of key institutions like the judicial system in the sodomy trial of opposition leader Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim.

The PERC report is highly critical of Najib’s premiership, as it states:

“Mr. Razak’s attempt to put the best spin on a bad situation is understandable. He is fighting for his political life and is trying to stop the erosion in confidence in Malaysia’s prospects.

“However, he is wrong in saying that Malaysia is being defined by the way the majority of the population are coming together. It is being defined by the ability of a minority to dominate the political agenda, shaping policy and compromising the reputation of key institutions in ways that hurt Malaysia’s reputation as a stable, attractive place for foreign investors.”

The PERC report said that while Islamic activists which are “threatening Malaysia’s secular credentials” are getting the widest coverage, it was the Umno elites, described as “a fringe group of insiders who have been able to profit disproportionately from the policies of the ruling coalition” that deserved the most attention.

“They are threatened with a loss of political power that could also impinge directly on their substantial business interests. Malaysia’s future will be determined largely by the tactics this group of insider elites resort to in order to stay in power and the success of those tactics. Their commitment to democracy is a major question mark. If they blatantly manipulate the system in order to remain in power, the public backlash could be worse than anything Malaysia has seen in its modern history.”

Yesterday’s latest judicial ignominy in Malaysia – the 5-0 Federal Court judgement attempting to legalise the illegal, unconstitutional, undemocratic and illegitimate power grab by Najib and Umno in Perak last year – is not calculated to inspire or enhance national and international confidence in Malaysia’s international competitiveness.

What is Najib’s response to PERC’s “blistering” report and the prospect of Malaysia becoming even more uncompetitive internationally because of his failing strategy to be “all things to all people”?

                This entry was posted on Wednesday, 10 February 2010, 3:40 pm and is filed under
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Malaysia would have been spared the religious troubles of the past month if inter-religious dialogues had been institutionalized as an important aspect of nation-building in the past five decades

The Pakatan Rakyat Leadership Council decided on 31st January 2010 to convene tonight’s inter-religious dialogue because we believe that the overwhelming majority of Malaysians from all religions are men and women of good will and good sense who want religion to unite and not divide, to build and not to destroy, the nation.

During the course of the historic dialogue tonight, bringing together representatives from all the great religions in Malaysia to freely and frankly exchange views and share their common concerns for the best welfare of the country, I was struck by the thought that Malaysia would have been spared the religious troubles of the past month if inter-religious dialogues had been institutionalized as an important aspect of nation-building in the past five decades.

Bapa Malaysia and the first Prime Minister, Tunku Abdul Rahman, established the Inter-Religious Organisation to provide a common platform to bring representatives of all religions together to work for the common good and it is most unfortunate that Tunku’s initiative was discarded in the past few decades.

Tonight’s inter-religious dialogue is a historic one. As Dr. Herman Shastri has said, the mechanism of trust has broken down and in our challenge and task to rebuild this mechanism of trust,  regular inter-religious dialogues among the different faiths in the country plays an important part.

We pride in holding out to the world that Malaysia is a model multi-religious country in the international campaign to promote tourism to Malaysia. Our leaders go on international forums to advocate inter-civilisational and inter-religious dialogues.

But  the greatest anomaly is that inter-religious dialogues in the country are not encouraged by the authorities concerned, so much so that Pakatan Rakyat has to take this initiative to organize this historic inter-religious dialogue tonight to address the recent spate of attacks on places of worship of different faiths, which is giving Malaysia such a bad name internationally.

The Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak has come out with his 1Malaysia slogan and concept. What is 1Malaysia?

I have always advocated that the objective of nation-building is to create a Malaysian who regards himself as a Malaysian first and his race (whether Malay, Chinese, Indian, Kadazan or Iban), religion (whether Muslim, Christian,Buddhist, Hindu, Sikh) or region second.

But over the years, I had not found any Barisan Nasional leader endorsing my definition of the objective of Malaysian nation-building.

I was pleasantly surprised that this definition has been adopted in the 1Malaysia Government Transformation Programme (GTP) Roadmap – “a nation where, it is hoped, every Malaysian perceives himself or herself as Malaysian first, and by race, religion, geographical region or socio-economic background second”. (p 11)

But is the Barisan Nasional government really serious about this objective of Malaysian nation-building?

If so, there would have been no need for any 1Malaysia slogan and concept for Malaysia today would be a 1Malaysia in fact and reality!

Let tonight’s event  be the belated but historic start of the institutionalization of inter-religious dialogues as an important contribution to Malaysian nation-building, involving all stakeholders including the ruling parties.

[
Closing remarks at the Inter-Religious Dialogue organized by Pakatan Rakyat held at The Club, Bukit Utama Golf Course on Wednesday, 10th February 2010 at 10.30 pm
]

                This entry was posted on Thursday, 11 February 2010, 10:34 am and is filed under
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PDC Board Has Awarded The Open Tender Of Managing The Bukit Jambul Golf & Country Resort(BJCC) That Is Worth More Than RM 40 Million.

By
Lim Guan Eng

The Penang Development Corporation (PDC) Board decided on 9 February 2010 to award the open tender of managing the BJCC to a company that is worth more than RM 40 million over 10 years. Full details of the tender award will be published after the Chinese New Year in accordance with CAT principles of Competency, Accountability and Transparency.

BJCC is run by Island Golf Properties Bhd(IGP), a PDC owned subsidiary company.  At the present moment Bayan Baru MP Dato Seri Zahrain Mohd Hashim is still the Chairman of IGP. Zahrain has been the  Chairman and Director of Island Golf Properties Bhd since 9th July 2008. PDC has informed me that no letter has been sent by either PDC or IGP to any director of IGP of any changes.

Certain actions and claims by Zahrain on the IGP has compelled PDC to monitor IGP closely to ensure that IGP is run in the public interest and in compliance with CAT principles. PDC has been concerned at how Zahrain was leading the IGP, when he and the IGP recommended on 12 January 2009 that the operations of the BJCC be outsourced and awarded to a RM 2 company.

PDC Board meeting on 10 February 2009 rejected Zahrain and IGP’s recommendation that the RM 2 company be selected. Instead the PDC Board agreed with the Chief Minister’s recommendation that a fresh open tender be called.

The Chief Minister had based his recommendation for a fresh  open tender for the management of BJCC on two important reasons. One, to allow a RM 2 private company to win the tender for running BJCC, that involves expenditure of tens of millions of ringgit, would make a mockery of the meaning of open tender system. Two, the RM 2 company had no track record of running a golf club and was established on 29 Sept 2008. The RM 2 company was established a mere two months before the tender, clearly with the sole intended purpose of bidding for the tender in December 2008.

I had refused to heed requests to follow the recommendation by Zahrain and IGP to select the RM 2 company. Instead I had insisted on full compliance with the PDC Board’s  directive that a fresh open tender must be held in line with the CAT principles. The fresh open tender exercise was carried out last year with 7 interested applicants.

The PDC Board decided on 9 February 2010 meeting to select a company that offered a combined value of more than RM 40 million to BJCC over 10 years. The company selected has a track record and most importantly its paid up capital is not RM 2.

The time has come to look at open tenders and government contracts based solely on performance and public interest.

                This entry was posted on Thursday, 11 February 2010, 11:28 pm and is filed under
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Lim Guan Eng
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Muhyiddin’s Myths & Make-Believe

Bolehland’s economy is Stagnant, Shaky, Startling & Sliding

by
Martin Jalleh

Deputy PM Muhyiddin Yassin tries very hard to make sense of what he says most of the time. When he fails to make sense he makes fun of those whom he criticises. He then constructs (make believe) his preferred reality of the country and ends up making the fool of himself.

In a report on Malaysia released at the end of January, the Hong Kong-based Political and Economic Risk Consultancy (PERC) warned: “Events of the past month give the impression that pressures are building and the entire situation is becoming much more unstable”. Malaysia was “veering towards instability” (Malaysian Insider, 10 Feb. 2010).

The PERC reported that the impression that Malaysia has given since New Year’s Day was that the situation in the country is becoming increasingly unstable; a group of elite minorities were dominating the national agenda to the extent that it was hurting Malaysia’s attractiveness to investors; and it is “probable” that no other Asian country is suffering from as much bad press as Malaysia.

Among the developments that caught PERC’s attention were the theft of military jet engines; detention of terror suspects from a number of African and Middle East countries; warnings that Islamic militants were planning attacks on foreigners at resorts in Sabah; renewed ethnic and religious “violence” that included arson at some churches and desecration of mosques; and controversy over the integrity of key institutions like the judicial system in the sodomy trial of opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim.

Lim Kit Siang (LKS) had then asked for Najib’s response to the PERC’s “blistering” report and the prospect of Malaysia becoming even more uncompetitive internationally because of the PM’s failing strategy of (what the PERC called) “trying to be all things to all people, but in the end he might satisfy no one”. But the PM preferred to be silent.

It was Muhyiddin who believed he had something to say that mattered. The report was “nonsensical”. They must be “talking through their nose” and they “know nothing about the country…Maybe those guys are sitting at a table somewhere in a remote corner of Hong Kong. They have to come here and we will be happy to bring them down here and see what is stability, what is security, what is war, what is trouble.”

Muhyiddin claimed that the report appeared to be part of a hidden agenda to destabilise the country. Malaysia is “not asking them to help us anyway. We are helping ourselves and we don’t need their comments because I think a lot of other people know and evaluate ourselves very objectively. We are not basing it on emotions but facts and reality.”

So let’s look at our “self-evaluation report” (that Malaysia is sliding down the slope of becoming even more uncompetitive internationally), made last Dec by our very own Second Finance Minister Husni Ahmad Hanadzlah, who revealed the following shocking facts and reality:

Malaysia’s economy has been stagnating for the past decade (in the wake of the 1998 Asian financial crisis)

It is now trailing badly behind its neighbours like Indonesia in the race for foreign investment.

It’s export-dependent economy has been hit hard by the global recession, contracting by a forecast 3.0 percent  in 2009 and jeopardising its ambitions of becoming a developed nation by 2020.

Malaysia is trapped in a low-value-added, low-wage and low-productivity structure.

Among its peers China, India, Vietnam, Indonesia, Philippines and Thailand, Malaysia’s economic growth over the past three years was second-lowest.

It has lost its competitive edge to remain as the leader of the pack in many sectors of the economy. Its private investment has been steadily in decline. (When the country achieved nationhood in 1957, Malaysia was the second most economically-advanced country in Asia after Japan.- LKS)

While Singapore and Korea’s nominal per capita GDP grew within the last three decades by 9 and 12 times respectively, Malaysia grew only by a factor of four. (Today, South Korea’s GDP per capita is US$16,450, Singapore US$34,346, Hong Kong US$29,559 while Malaysia is still at US$7,469.)

The services sector is underdeveloped, private investment is half the levels before the 1997-98 Asian crisis, and the manufacturing sector is suffering from lack of investment.

(In Oct. Minister of International Trade and Industry Mustapa Mohamed admitted that the Thai auto industry had surpassed Malaysia’s despite entering the game at a later stage.)

(Malaysia fall three places from 21st to 24th ranking in the World Economic Forum (WEF)’s Global Competitiveness Report (GCR) 2009-2010 and a drop of two places in the World Bank’s Doing Business 2010: Reforming Through Difficult Times from 21st to 23rd placing).

Muhyiddin also declared: “The fact is that Malaysians are happy and are not facing any major disaster and there is no racial trouble in the country or war among us. So what are they talking about?”

If Malaysians are so happy then why are more people leaving and intending to leave and what about the PM vow to bringing home talented Malaysian diaspora? Was he also talking through his nose? Let’s look at our “self-evaluation” and the following shocking facts and brain drain realities provided in Dec.2009 in Parliament by Deputy Foreign Minister Kohilan Pillay:

A total of 304,358 Malaysians left the country between March 2008 and August 2009 for better education, career and business prospects

This works out to some 630 Malaysians leaving the country every day – a big leap from the 139,696 Malaysians who migrated to other countries in 2007.

The number of Malaysians who surrendered their citizenship almost doubled in 2009 – about 3,800 Malaysians have given up their citizenships to date compared to 2,000 in 2008.

(“Kohilan has the knack to criticize the Penang state government for not being able to guarantee 1,000 electrical engineers but said nothing about the federal government’s role in pushing away more than 300,000 highly skilled Malaysians with its racist policies, tolerance of corrupt practices, incompetency and inefficiency. – Khoo Kay Peng)

Ugly Umno

The PERC report also said that while Islamic activists who are “threatening Malaysia’s secular credentials” are getting the widest coverage, it was the Umno elites, described as “a fringe group of insiders who have been able to profit disproportionately from the policies of the ruling coalition” that deserved the most attention.

“They are threatened with a loss of political power that could also impinge directly on their substantial business interests. Malaysia’s future will be determined largely by the tactics this group of insider elites resort to in order to stay in power and the success of those tactics. Their commitment to democracy is a major question mark. If they blatantly manipulate the system in order to remain in power, the public backlash could be worse than anything Malaysia has seen in its modern history.”

Could it be this part of the report that prevented Muhyiddin to see beyond the end of his nose. Perhaps the he took umbrage to the ugly things that were said about Umno. Alas, there is really no need for him to be hard-nosed and to turn his nose up at the PERC report.  Why, all he has to do is just look under his nose and he will find a very honest self-evaluation in Umno itself by its very respected member, Tengku Razaleigh!

Tengku Razaleigh recently called Malaysia a sham democracy, one which existed only in name but grievously compromised in substance, reality and fact (how about this fact Muhyiddin?) He added that reforms could not be expected from the incumbents in power.

Launching Ideas, a new think-tank set up to promote democratic ideals, at the Tunku Abdul Rahman Memorial, the veteran Umno leader added that the original founding ideals laid down by Malaysia’s first PM Tunku Abdul Rahman had become warped and the “founder” would not recognise today’s Malaysia because it has been replaced by a domineering style of leadership with the “cult of the great leader”.

“We have left it to the deranged for too long …To expect change from the incumbents (Umno/BN) is to expect, in the Malay saying, the mice to repair the gourd…‘Bagai tikus baiki labu.’ ”

It is crucial for the well-being and economy of our beloved nation that the deputy PM who is still wet behind the ears not to be too quick to open his mouth or thumb his nose and accuse others of speaking through their nose. He should get out of his remote corner of Putrajaya and be all eyes and ears on what is really happening in the country.

                This entry was posted on Friday, 12 February 2010, 11:01 am and is filed under
Martin Jalleh
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Muhyiddin Yassin
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Will Najib now ask Umno executive secretary Abdul Rauf Yusoh to resign for doing a Nasir Safar at an Umno Club function in London?

The
denial
 by Umno executive secretary Datuk Abdul Rauf Yusoh that he had made racist remarks at an Umno Club function in London a few days ago is most revealing for its self-incriminatory and confessional nature.

Rauf, who led an Umno delegation to London to meet with party members in a private closed-door meeting earlier this week was alleged to refer to non-Malays as “bangsa asing” who were trampling on the Malays in “Tanah Melayu”.

In a letter sent to The Malaysian Insider, Ahmad Naim Mazlan, a first-year finance and accounting student heard Rauf saying “
Jangan biarkan bangsa asing pijak kepala kita
.” (Don’t let the foreigners walk all over our heads.)

Ahmad Naim said in his
letter
:

“There was also a vigorous defence of Datuk Nasir Safar’s recent comments against non Malays which branded non Malays as beggars and prostitutes. According to one Umno Youth exco member present, those comments were not racist but quite contrarily, ‘just facts’….

“Throughout the session, non-Malays were treated as the enemy, and whilst they did praise Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak, there was no mention of 1 Malaysia, unity or multiracial nation-building. During some moments in the session, they sounded nothing less than Vikings on the path to war — an Umno Youth exco said something to the effect of Umno willing to fight to the death the threats made by non-Malays. These threats were, strangely enough, never detailed….

“Whatever one thinks of Umno’s sloganeering via 1 Malaysia, the fact is that if even these individuals cannot help but promote the diametric opposite to what 1Malaysia is supposed to entail, then what hope is there for Umno and BN?

“As much as what Najib says and does count above all else, it is most shameful that his generals are doing their best to derail the Malaysian dream. Najib’s decision to fire his aide only last week was commendable, but he was just an aide. Will he take similar measures against people with positions in the party who speak out against 1 Malaysia?  I may be just a kid yet, but if Najib is to succeed as a reformist, then he must make sure the entire — or at least much of the party — follows suit.”

The question asked by the first-year finance and accounting student, who is son of a life-long Umno member, is most pertinent and valid.

Will Najib now ask Umno executive secretary Abdul Rauf Yusoh to resign for doing a Nasir Safar at an Umno Club function in London?

This question is all the more relevant as Abdul Rauf, in his denial of having made any derogatory remarks, has compounded his offence and insensitivity by virtually admitting what Ahmad Naim had written, except to give the excuse that he was speaking at “a closed-door meeting and no one outside should be listening in to what was being discussed”.

Najib should clarify whether he endorses Abdul Raul’s contention that it was all right for Umno leaders to share Nasir Safar’s racist views at the Malacca 1Malaysia seminar labelling Indians and Chinese in Malaysia as “pendatang” and  that “Indians came to Malaysia as beggars and Chinese especially the women came to sell their bodies” so long as they are expressed in internal Umno forums and not publicly?

Would every Umno Minister and MP be required to publicly declare whether they agree with Nasir Safar or not?

How can Najib convince Malaysians that he is sincere and serious about his 1Malaysia slogan and concept to create national unity based on diversity and inclusiveness in a multi-racial, multi-religious and multi-cultural nation when this is openly opposed inside Umno?

Fifty-two years after Merdeka, has Umno itself become the greatest threat to Malaysian nation-building and Najib’s 1Malaysia’s concept?

The questioning by Ahmad Naim, though only first-year finance and accounting student, is proof that there is still hope for the vision of a united and inclusive Malaysian nation where every Malaysian regards himself or herself as Malaysian first, and by race, religion or region second – and that the future of Malaysia is really in the hands of the new young generation of Malaysians who want to move away from the politics of race hatred and religious intolerance rather than the present breed of Umno and Barisan Nasional politicians.

                This entry was posted on Friday, 12 February 2010, 11:03 am and is filed under
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Happy Chinese New Year of the Golden Tiger – make 13th general elections the great turning point for Malaysia

I wish all Malaysians a Happy Chinese New Year.

This is the second Chinese New Year after the historic political tsunami of the March 8, 2008  general elections which witnessed a paradigm shift in Malaysian political thinking and expectations.

What were never thought of as possible in the first five decades of nationhood have become common-place and  are  even in danger of being taken for granted.

All eyes and thoughts are focused on the next general elections – whether the 13th general elections will complete the process prepared by the 12th general elections for Malaysia to have a new ruling coalition in the seat of federal government in Putrajaya apart from the state government level.

The next general elections, whether in 2011 or 2012, will provide answers to many intriguing questions, including:

Whether the most famous political prophecy, RAHMAN on the first six Prime Ministers will be fully completed with Datuk Seri Najib Razak as the last UMNO Prime Minister?

Whether Pakatan Rakyat will end and replace Barisan Nasional as the new national government of Malaysia?

Can Najib’s 1Malaysia and Malaysia.2 new economic model save him and the Barisan Nasional in the next general election?

Can Pakatan Rakyat emerge from the many internal problems of late to become stronger, more cohesive, disciplined and purposive to rally and unite Malaysians to form a new government to achieve Malaysia’s full potential, both in terms of human and natural resources?

These are among the issues Malaysians will ponder while celebrating the Chinese New Year of the Golden Tiger.

Let all Malaysians unite with one resolve – to make the 13th general elections the great turning point for Malaysia to embark on the road of a truly united, just, prosperous and harmonious Malaysian nation where all Malaysians, regardless of race, religion or region can fully identify with and hold their heads high.

                This entry was posted on Saturday, 13 February 2010, 7:00 am and is filed under
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Muhyiddin – don’t be DPM who talks through his nose

Two days ago, Deputy Prime Minister Tan Sri
Muhyiddin Yassin lambasted
 the Hong Kong-based Political and Economic Risk Consultancy (PERC) for “talking through their nose” for raising Malaysia’s risk index and giving the impression that Malaysia was
veering towards instability
.

He dismissed the latest PERC report that foreign investments into Malaysia have not been forthcoming, either in direct form or in the equity markets, and doubting the efficacy of Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak’s 1Malaysia strategy of “trying to be all things to all people, but in the end he might satisfy no one”.

Muhyiddin said:

“We are not asking them to help us anyway. We are helping ourselves and we don’t need their comments because I think a lot of other people know and can evaluate us very objectively.

“We are not basing it on emotions but facts and reality.

“The fact is, Malaysians are happy and are not facing any major disaster or racial trouble in the country… So, what are they talking about?

“I think they (PERC) must be talking through their nose.”

Unfortunately, it is Muhyiddin himself who has come across as the one guilty of “talking through his nose”.

Worse, he also conveys the impression that he is a “frog under the coconut shell” (katak bawah tempurung).

Is Muhyiddin seriously suggesting that Malaysia should ignore all the international reports and surveys pertaining to Malaysia’s international competitiveness? Is Muhyiddin advocating that Malaysia withdraw from the international society to become a hermit state?

Commentator
Martin Jalleh
has written a very eloquent comment piece in the blogosphere debunking the Deputy Prime Minister entitled “Muhyiddin’s Myths & Make-Believe”, but there is really no need to quote Second Finance Minister Datuk Husni Ahmad Hanadzlah’s December speech on Malaysia’s “lost decade of economic stagnation” or Umno veteran Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah’s indictment only last week of the
“sham democracy”
 in Malaysia for anyone to discover that it is Muhyiddin himself who is “talking through his  nose”.

In fact, Muhyiddin seems to be making a habit of “talking through his nose”.

Malay Mail
yesterday reported Muhyiddin’s call on the police to investigate reports lodged against me as well as the ousted Perak Mentri Besar, Datuk Seri Mohammad Nizar Jamaluyddin for sedition for criticizing the Federal Court decision on the 2Perak Mentri Besar case.

Did Muhyiddin know what is the content of the police report lodged against me and Nizar before making such a call?

Did Muhyiddin make any call to the police to investigate former senior aide Datuk Nasir Safar for his racist views at the recent Malacca 1Malaysia seminar labelling Indians and Chinese in Malaysia as “pendatang” and that “Indians came to Malaysia as beggars and Chinese especially the women came to sell their bodies” or that of the Umno executive secretary Datuk Abdul Rauf Yusoh who defended such  racist remarks at an Umno Club function in London a few days ago?

There is another even more recent case of Muhyiddin “talking through his nose” when he was given major coverage by
Utusan Malaysia
,
New Straits Times
 and Berita Harian flaying the Pakatan Rakyat-led Penang State Government for canceling the annual Prophet Mohamad’s birthday procession in the state.

Muhyiddin alleged that the cancellation of the Maulidur Rasul procession showed that the state government did not support the aspirations of the Muslims.

It is most sad and shocking that on such a sensitive subject, the Deputy Prime Minister had not bothered to verify whether rumours of the cancellation of the procession this year was true or not, and instead, he chose to “talk through his nose”.

Equally irresponsible were the mainstream media concerned which “blacked out” the Penang state government’s denial yesterday of any cancellation of the procession and proceeded to give Muhyiddin’s “talk through his nose” extensive and uncontradicted coverage!

Muhyiddin – heed the voice of Malaysians. Don’t be a DPM who talks through his nose!

                This entry was posted on Saturday, 13 February 2010, 10:59 am and is filed under
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