MH370: Time for accountability, heads must roll, forum told

BY
JENNIFER GOMEZ

Published: 18 June 2014 | Updated: 18 June 2014 10:39 AM

The Malaysian Insider

After more than 100 days since the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines flight MH370, it is time for Putrajaya to be held accountable for the tragedy, a forum was told last night.

Veteran DAP leader Lim Kit Siang accused Putrajaya of dragging its feet in launching an inquiry to find out what actually caused the plane’s disappearance, adding that “heads should roll”.

“It’s been 101 days and time to demand accountability, heads should roll.

“And we must make it very clear that we cannot accept there will be no investigation until the plane is found,” he said at a forum to commemorate the plane’s disappearance after 100 days.

The forum, “The tragedy of MH370: Accident or human error”, was held at the Selangor Chinese Assembly hall here last night.

Lim said Putrajaya had said that any decision on whether to present a white paper to Parliament, set up a Royal Commission of Inquiry (RCI) or a Parliamentary Select Committee (PSC), would only be made after the plane was found.

He said Putrajaya’s current position was unacceptable and called on the people to send a clear message that Malaysians expected greater accountability and a better system of governance.

Another panelist last night, constitutional law expert Tommy Thomas, made several references to local air traffic control officers and the Royal Malaysian Air Force (RMAF), the first people who should have reacted when MH370, carrying 239 passengers and crew, went missing.

But instead of local aviation officials, he said, the real heroes in the first few hours after MH370 went missing were the Vietnam air traffic controllers, who asked about MH370 six times, he said.

Thomas said Ho Chi Minh had inquired about the flight at 1.38am on March 8, when it did not enter Vietnam airspace.

“So even if the guy at the KL air traffic control was asleep, which I think is probable, he would have been awakened by that enquiry and the penny should have dropped at that point of time,” he said.

He added that even after that point, the way the Malaysian air traffic controllers conducted themselves was “laughable”.

“The Vietnamese air officers were professional and concerned throughout the early hours and we have a sleepy bunch who got some information that the plane was headed to Cambodia.

“And even then, it was Ho Chi Minh who made the effort to ask Cambodia and they were told by Cambodia ‘we don’t know what you are talking about’,” he added.

These gaps, the issue of the stolen passports and whether it was just mangosteens in the cargo hold proved that the information released around the time of the crash and on May 1, when Putrajaya released a preliminary report,  were untruthful, said the lawyer.

“What is clear is that there had been a terrible omission of information,” he said.

(The preliminary report was on the steps taken by the Malaysian authorities between 1.38am and 6.14am on March 8, as well as the cargo manifest, recordings of all communication that took place between the cockpit and air traffic control, maps detailing MH370’s flight path and the likely area it ended its journey in the southern Indian Ocean).

Thomas also took issue with acting Transport Minister Datuk Seri Hishammuddin Hussein’s answers in an interview with an Australian broadcaster, when he was asked why RMAF did not intercept the unidentified plane which appeared on its radar.

ABC’s Four Corners programme had quoted Hishammuddin as saying that Malaysia’s civil aviation authorities had called the military asking them to keep an eye on the plane but the military had allowed the plane to continue its way out to sea.

The plane was deemed not to be hostile and therefore the military did not send a plane up to investigate, the minister had said.

“If (we didn’t) shoot it down, why send it (jet up),” Hishammuddin had said.

Tommy said that the response by Hishammuddin, who is also the defence minister, was “unbelievable and was proof of how low the minister’s understanding of his office actually was”.

“If they had sent the jets up, of course even our dummies know not to shoot it if they saw it was a Malaysia Airlines plane.

“But at least if it (MH370) went down after that because it was being hijacked or if it was a suicide mission, we will know where it crashed,” he said.

He added that one cannot assume anything with an unidentified plane in a country’s airspace, adding that one had to be more guarded when it concerned a “friendly aircraft”.

“Who knows they might have come to hit the PM’s office in Putrajaya or KLCC or something,”  he said to laughter from the crowd.

“It’s a massive tragedy but conducted in such a farcical manner,” he added.

Thomas also said that because the system was not honest or transparent, the integrity and truth of the information could not be accepted and gave rise to many theories.

One such theory raised by Thomas was whether there was a possibility that pilot Capt Zaharie Ahmad Shah had filled up fuel for 12 hours of flying for the six-hour Beijing-bound flight.

“If he did have full fuel, would we be surprised if the record of this has disappeared?” he asked.

Similarly, Thomas also raised the possibility that the air traffic controllers could have communicated with the plane, or even with a hijacker, but added that this information could have also been erased.

Research for Social Advancement, Relevant Facts, Sparkling Analysis (REFSA) senior fellow Lam Choong Fah also found it unacceptable that the air force and defence minister kept insisting that they did not intercept the plane because it was not a hostile target.

He pointed out, however, that until today, the Malaysian authorities had not revealed its standards in determining whether an aircraft was hostile or otherwise.

“According to US FAA (Federal Aviation Administration), an aircraft is a threat if it flies through a country’s boundary without prior filing in a flight plan, of if the aircraft’s radar transponder is not in operation, and it does not maintain two-way radio contact.

“So if this happened in the US, they would have scrambled their jets,” Lam said.

He also questioned the non-existent air accident investigative bureau in Malaysia, saying that apart from countries with big aviation industries like US, UK and France, there is such a body in smaller countries like Singapore, Thailand and Mongolia.

Lam also called for the setting up of an RCI to investigate and restore the country’s reputation following flight MH370’s disappearance.

Forum participant Peter Chong, who is a close friend of Capt Zaharie Ahmad, said the tragedy should never be forgotten and efforts should continue to get to the truth.

“We need to know the truth so that the families can find some closure and to ensure this does not happen again.

“We need to rely on civil society to keep the momentum going,” he said.

An elderly Chinese man asked the panellists if those who were allegedly sleeping on the job in the early hours when MH370 went missing should be sacked.

Lim agreed that heads should roll for negligence of duty, but stressed that there must be due process such as an inquiry.

He added that this was why a PSC was necessary.

Another participant, S. Anbarasu, who claimed to have worked for MAS for over 30 years and retired last year, told the other participants present during question time that as the aviation industry was highly regulated, there was no way over 2,900kg of cargo on board MH370 could remain unidentified.

He also said that journalists were knocking on the wrong door when they demanded answers from MAS, adding instead that the airline’s only responsibility was to passengers and their kin.

“In a situation like this, the airline had to pass all the information to the government, so you should be asking them,” he said.

He added that questions should also be channelled to China, as the receiving country, what formed the 2,934kg of unidentified cargo.

He added that something was amiss with the unidentified cargo.

“Who went to China recently and even came back for a funeral and flew back there?,” he said, referring to Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak’s recent visit to China.

“And whenever China says something about the missing plane, on the other axis, Australia, UK and US will always disagree with it, I feel all this has got to do with that cargo.” – June 18, 2014.

                This entry was posted on Wednesday, 18 June 2014, 11:41 am and is filed under
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UMNO Selangor motion on hudud implementation  withdrawn as Selangor PR State Assembly members from DAP, PKR and PAS fully united and had decided to vote against UMNO motion  in keeping with the PR Common Policy Framework that justice, freedom and good governance and not hudud are the common PR agenda priorities

With 74 days to go to celebrate the 57th Merdeka Day Anniversary and 90 days to celebrate the 51st Malaysia Day Anniversary, the nation’s greatest strengths – our ethnic, religious and cultural diversities – seemed to have become our greatest weaknesses.

Voices of intolerance, hatred, conflict and extremism filled the public spaces and are trying to drown out the voices of tolerance, peace, harmony and moderation, finding surprise  ally in the authorities who have abdicated their responsibilities to uphold the law and keep the peace in the country.

Suddenly, Malaysia has become an even more abnormal country – symbolized by the continuing mystery of the 102-day missing Malaysian Airlines flight MH 370 tragedy/disaster with 239 passengers/crew on board and the 13-month disappearance of the Malaysian Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Najib Razak from major national issues after the 13th General Elections in May last year.

There are so many laws in the country, but Malaysia has never been more lawless in recent weeks.

The Inspector-General of Police should be the Chief Custodian of Law in the country but he has become the No. 1 Law-breaker in refusing to enforce the supreme law of land – the Malaysian Constitution.

There is even a quiet coup d’etat in the Cabinet, with the hitherto third-tier  Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department in charge of Islamic affairs usurping the powers of second-tier and even first-tier Ministers in the Cabinet when the Minister concerned, Datuk Seri Jamil Khir Baharom shunted aside both the Prime Minister and the Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department in charge of law and the constitution, Nancy Shukri to give the unilateral, arbitrary and unconstitutional statement in Parliament that Malaysia is not a secular state.

This is the first time in the nation’s 57-year history that a Minister said in Parliament that Malaysia is not a secular state – in total contradiction to the statement by Bapa Malaysia and the first Prime Minister of Malaysia, Tunku Abdul Rahman who said in Parliament more than half a century ago on May 1. 1958: “I will like to make it clear that this country is not an Islamic state as it is generally understood; we merely provided that Islam shall be the official religion of the state”.

At an official dinner patronized by the  then Prime Minister, Dr. Mahathir Mohamad to celebrate his 80th birthday and attended by the present Prime Minister, the Star reported Tunku speaking on February 8, 1983 with the headline “The Tunku turns 80.  Don’t make Malaysia an Islamic state – Tunku” where he said “the country has a multiracial population with various beliefs. Malaysia must continue with a secular state with Islam as the official religion.”

Five days later, on Feb 13, 1983, Tun Hussein Onn, the third Malaysian Prime Minister, on his birthday, gave his full support to Tunku’s statement as reported in The Star: ‘Hussein says no to Islamic state’.

The most pertinent question today is when the Barisan Nasional Cabinet and the Barisan Nasional Supreme Council made the radical policy shift to justify Jamil Khir’s  parliamentary statement  on behalf of the Barisan Nasional Federal Government that Malaysia is not a secular state – not only going against the assurances of the first three Prime Ministers, Tunku Abdul Rahman, Tun Razak, Tun Hussein and the other founders of the Alliance component parties of MCA and MIC, Tun Tan Cheng Lock, Tun Tan Siew Sin, Tun V. T. Sambantan, but clearly violating the 1957 Merdeka Constitution and the 1963 Malaysia Agreement that Malaysia is a democratic, secular and multi-religious nation with Islam as the official religion but not an Islamic state?

Former MCA Deputy Minister and currently MCA syariah law and policy implementation policy task force chairperson Gan Pin Sieu has called on Najib to drop Jamil in the coming Cabinet reshuffle, warning the  break-up of the federation of Malaysia could be an inevitable consequence of Jamil’s parliamentary reply.

The question is whether the MCA leadership led by MCA President Liow Tiong Lai is  prepared to requisition an emergency meeting  of the Barisan Nasional Supreme Council to repudiate Jamil’s unilateral, arbitrary and unconstitutional statement in Parliament and reiterate the 1957 Merdeka Constitution, “social contract” and the 1963 Malaysia Agreement of Malaysia as a democratic, secular, multi-religious, tolerant and progressive nation with Islam as the official religion but not an Islamic State.

Furthermore, whether the MCA and Gerakan Presidents are prepared to take a principled stand and make it clear to Najib that they are not prepared to be Cabinet Ministers of a Barisan Nasional government which has veered and deviated from the original  position of the nation’s constitution and guarantees  of UMNO, MCA and MIC founders when Malaya as formed in 1957 and Malaysia in 1963 that the nation shall  forever  be  democratic, secular and multi-religious   – especially with  their Cabinet status inferior to that of Jamil?

The Cabinet at its next meeting on Friday should take a clear stand on Jamil’s parliamentary reply – whether to endorse it or to repudiate it – and that  goes for Najib as well.

In retrospect, Jamil Khir’s parliamentary statement that Malaysia is not a secular state is part of a four-step orchestrated political strategy to destabilize and divide the component Pakatan Rakyat parties, viz DAP, PAS and PKR.

It started with Khir’s parliamentary statement on March 27 that the federal government was ready to work with the PAS Kelantan state government to implement the hudud law in Kelantan, followed by  the April 24 statement by Najib in Alor Star that the Barisan Nasional Federal Government had never rejected hudud.

The third ploy was the  motion by the Umno Selangor Assemblyman for Sungai Air Tawar Kamarol Zaki Abdul Malik in the Selangor State Assembly to push for the implementation of hudud, which had to be hastily withdrawn when the motion was accepted by the Selangor Assembly Speaker Hannah Yeoh and UMNO learnt that the Selangor Pakatan Rakyat  State Assembly members from DAP, PKR and PAS were united on the issue and had decided in a pre-council meeting to vote against  the UMNO Selangor motion on hudud in keeping with the PR Common Policy Framework that justice, freedom and good governance and not hudud are the common PR agenda priorities.

It is time that Barisan Nasional parties, especially UMNO, MCA and Gerakan stop “playing with fire”  to try to destabilize and divide the Pakatan Rakyat and instead should focus on national issues as  the common top priorities whether of Barisan Nasional or Pakatan Rakyat – how to ensure that Malaysians, regardless of race, religion, region or political beliefs can live in peace and harmony to fully develop our human, economic, educational, environmental and national resources and  potentials, in a framework of  justice, freedom and good governance where there is no  corruption, cronyism and all forms of abuses of power.

                This entry was posted on Wednesday, 18 June 2014, 1:34 pm and is filed under
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Do Malays need more crutches in business?

– Koon Yew Yin

The Malaysian Insider

19 June 2014

Do Malays need more crutches or “tongkat” to succeed in business? During the past week we have had three different explanations provided by Malay leaders that have made the news.

Tun Daim Zainuddin’s explanation

The first is by Tun Daim Zainuddin, the former finance minister and close ally of Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad, who argued that the lack of talented Malay entrepreneurs is due to the policies of Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim when the latter was the finance minister.

According to him, “I do not want to blame Anwar, but when he took over as the finance minister in 1991, he changed the landscape. He took the easy option by giving out company shares and all of those who were close to him became rich,” he told Berita Harian.

“The mentality became support Anwar, support the finance minister, get shares. After selling the shares, they would become rich.”

The result, according to Daim, was that Anwar’s policies caused the Malays to think that it was easy to become rich and that there was no need to go into business.

The other factor according to the former finance minister was red tape.

“One has to fill up numerous application forms, there are simply too many agencies involved in the economic empowerment of Bumiputeras.”

His conclusion : “I do not know what else should be done to help the Malays become rich. Various affirmative action plans have been introduced to assist the Malays,” said Daim, adding that agencies responsible for helping the Malays and Bumiputeras “are too bureaucratic”.

Daim’s argument that red tape is part of the reason is difficult to accept. After all non-Malays also face red tape and the civil service personnel that they have to deal with are almost 100% Malays!

So how come the Chinese can do business despite the bureaucracy but the Malays cannot.  But note too that Daim indirectly says enough “tongkat” have been provided to Malays to become rich.

Utusan/Perkasa explanation

The second theory comes from Umno-controlled newspaper Utusan Malaysia’s news story that many Bumiputera traders failed to secure places to conduct businesses at klia2 which opened on May 2.

The newspaper reported that its assistant group editor Datuk Zaini Hassan had expressed concern that it was difficult to find Malay food outlets at the airport. Based on this report, the secretary-general of Perkasa, Syed Hassan Syed Ali said Najib’s promises to Bumiputera businessmen remained mere rhetoric.

“The failure of Malay entrepreneurs to get business lots at klia2 is proof that all of Najib’s promises over the last five years to enhance Bumiputera participation in business and commerce were mere lip service,” he said in a statement.

Syed Hassan said Perkasa had always expressed concern that Bumiputera businessmen should be given opportunities but that the issue of Malay traders being marginalised in klia2 was too glaring.

“Bumiputera traders are sidelined not only in klia2 but also at other new business and commercial centres like in KLCC,” he said.

In response to this, MAHB, the authority running the airport, replied that 40% of the businessmen at the airport were Bumiputera who were involved in retail trade.

I should also point out that many of the franchises that operate at the airport – Kentucky Fried Chicken, McDonalds, Pizza Hut, Burger King, etc. as well as the banks and other services that operate in the airport have majority or substantial Malay ownership and control.

In fact, if anything, non-Malays have good reason to complain that in all the areas of the economy where the GLCs have taken control (toll highways, banks, petrol kiosks, farmers markets) they have provided very few opportunities for small Chinese businesses.

Some non-Malays also feel that, after all these years of discrimination, they are the ones who need the crutches.

Zaid Ibrahim’s explanation

The third theory has been provided by Datuk Zaid Ibrahim. In his blog Zaid refuted both the Perkasa and Daim theories.

According to him, Anwar was doing what every finance minister (including Tun Daim and the current prime minister, who is also finance minister) was doing.

“Umno strongmen are good at ensuring that the gravy train is available to their colleagues and those in their team as a result of their loyalty and support. With the money, they then cling to power for as long as they can.”

To Zaid though, Anwar was supportive of economic programmes that helped small businessmen and did many things for rural development.

For me, the most important part of Zaid’s article is his revelation that there are lots of Malay business success stories – “the aristocrats, senior civil servants, ministers and oligarchs in Malaysia are wealthy and they are Malays”.

“But of course they belong to a different class compared to the ordinary Malay,” Zaid said.

“As I mentioned, they (like Daim) would rather remain anonymous and keep control from the background, which is why they are not perceived to be wealthy like the Chinese.

Zaid also noted that wealthy Malays know the game.

In Malaysia, he said, successful business people are politically savvy; and when politics and business mix freely, it is impossible for Malays not to be “successful”.

Finally, Zaid acknowledged that other Malays have also done very well – a fact that Dr Mahathir, Perkasa and other racist organisations and individuals have refused to acknowledge.

According to him, Malay small businesses might not be recognised by Umno as successful because they are not millionaires and might not support the party.

“They work hard at whatever they do. Some sell keropok or kain tudung. Some operate kedai makan while others export halal food to China or trade with Middle-Eastern countries.

“They make good money. They save their profits and they expand when they have sufficient capital. There is no reason to belittle their efforts or to describe them as unsuccessful.

“Other Malays are doing well in professional services and hold executive positions in major corporations. Petronas is successful, for example, and there are many Malays there.

“I wish Umno politicians will cease stereotyping Malays to fit their own ideas of success,” is his conclusion.

In other words, he is saying too that many Malays – especially the rich – do not need crutches now.

They have taken advantage of the system of ethnic preference and should no longer qualify for special privileges or benefit.

Malays are surging ahead

I have pointed out in my other writings that Malays have made tremendous strides in their economic progress.

It is clear to everyone that Malays dominate in every sphere of life in the country – except in the urban housing estates and urban property.

In the economic and educational sphere, they control all the major banks except for Public Bank, the GLCs, Petronas, public universities, civil service, etc.

Any Chinese or orang putih wanting to do business has to kowtow to the Malays for licenses and permits.

Moreover, Malay businesses control some of the monopoly businesses such as water, electricity, toll roads, etc., where it is so easy for them to make more profits by just increasing the price abetted by a Malay-oriented civil service.

They also form the majority in parliament, judiciary, army and police, the MACC and all other important political bodies.

It is important for Malaysians to recognise that the greater part of the country’s wealth is now in the hands of the Malay elite together with their non-Malay partners.

The argument that Malays need more crutches or are marginalised in the economy is a hollow and false one put out to fool the Malay public.

Those that have lost out in the process of Umno’s rule and economic policies that have benefitted the Malay elite are the lower and middle class Malays and non-Malays.

As for those who have gained, there is no better way to describe them than Zaid has – these are “the aristocrats, senior civil servants, ministers and oligarchs.”

To them I would include the group of non-Malay cronies. – June 19, 2014.

                This entry was posted on Thursday, 19 June 2014, 11:27 pm and is filed under
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Pandikar exceeded his powers and functions when he passed judgment on the Malaysian Constitution ruling that Malaysia is not a secular state

Tan Sri Pandikar Amin Mulia exceeded his powers and functions as Speaker of Parliament when he passed judgment on the Malaysian Constitution ruling that Malaysia is not a secular state.

Can the Speaker of Parliament interpret the Constitution and make a Constitutional ruling which becomes an authority quoted by all and sundry as the law of the land?

Of course not, and to be fair to Pandikar, he is fully aware of this, which  is why he qualified  what he said in Parliament as only his interpretation “merely for the purposes of this House” and not an opinion to be “an authority” in the country.

However, such caveat by Pandikar will not prevent his “ruling” from being quoted by various quarters as an “authority” or  even used by Ministers in future parliamentary meetings to justify their arbitrary, dubious and controversial stand that Malaysia is not a secular state.

Furthermore, it is not within the province of the   powers and functions for a Speaker  to give his interpretation or ruling on a “hot potato” issue as to whether Malaysia is  (i) secular; (ii)  not secular; or (iii) Islamic state.

Pandikar should have decided on the issue before him, whether to refer the Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department, Datuk Jamil Khir Baharom to the Committee of Privileges without wading into this political minefield.

Pandikar referred to various sources to reach the conclusion that Islam is the official religion of the country and thus Malaysia is not a secular state.

Significantly, he failed to refer to the historic constitutional documents, in particular the Reid Commission Report 1957, the White Paper on the constitutional proposals 1957 and the Cobbold Commission Report 1962, which clearly provided for Malaysia to be a secular state with Islam as the religion of the federation.

The very example which Pandikar gave for his ruling that Malaysia is not a secular state is the very same example which the Reid Commission, the White Paper and the Cobbold Commission had given for declaring that Malaysia is a secular state with Islam as official religion.

To the proposal by the British members of the Cobbold Commission for  specific provision be inserted on “complete religious freedom as to worship, education, and propagation, in the Borneo territories” to the non-Muslim communites, the Malayan members of the Cobbold Commission, Ghazalie Shafie and Wong Pow Nee gave the views that they “agreed that Islam should be the national religion for the Federation. We are satisfied that the proposal in no way jeopardizes freedom of religion in the Federation, which in effect would be secular.”

The position proposed by the Malayan members prevailed. This episode confirmed that the idea and proposition that the Federal Constitution was secular existed from the very first day of the formation of Malaya/Malaysia.

Article 3 (2) of the Constitution on “Islam is the religion of the Federation; but other religions may be practised in peace and harmony in any part of the Federation” was not a latter-day amendment but was in the original Merdeka and Malaysian Constitution all along.

It did not prevent the first three Prime Ministers, Tunku Abdul Rahman, Tun Razak, Tun Hussein Onn and the other  founding leaders of Alliance, whether Tun Tan Cheng Lock, Tun Tan Siew Sin (MCA), Tun V. T. Sambanthan (MIC) from assuring the rakyat and the world that Malaysia is a secular state.

If Tunku is alive to say in Parliament that “the country has a multiracial population with various beliefs. Malaysia must continue with a secular state with Islam as the official religion” (as Tunku said in his 80th birthday celebrations on Feb. 8, 1983), or Tun Hussein is alive  to fully support Tunku’s position  and say “The nation can still be functional as a secular state with Islam as the official religion” as he did on Feb. 13, 1983, and if Pandikar is  the Speaker of Parliament, would Pandikar tell Tunku and Tun Hussein that both were wrong and misguided?

                This entry was posted on Thursday, 19 June 2014, 5:51 pm and is filed under
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Search for Missing Jet Will Move Southwest, Officials Say

By KEITH BRADSHER

New York Times

JUNE 17, 2014

CANBERRA, Australia — Australia plans to resume searching for Malaysia Airlines’ missing Flight 370 to the southwest of the area in the Indian Ocean where the seafloor was scanned in detail last month, Australian officials say.

The shift to the southwest reflects analyses of a series of electronic “handshakes” between the Boeing 777-200 and a satellite operated by the London-based company Inmarsat in the hours after the plane vanished before dawn on March 8 during a flight from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, to Beijing with 239 people aboard.

The satellite data, suggesting that the aircraft turned south across the Indian Ocean after skirting the northern tip of the Indonesian island of Sumatra, remains the best lead that investigators have in trying to find the plane, said Angus Houston, the retired chief of the Australian military who is overseeing the search.

 “We’re going to have to go deep and do a comprehensive look at the ocean floor,” he said, later adding, “The handshakes are the most robust information we have at the moment.”

The Australian Transport Safety Bureau hired a private company, Fugro Survey, on June 10 to conduct a three-month survey of the ocean floor along the arc of possible final locations derived from the satellite data. The bureau is also seeking tenders by the end of the month for a commercial contractor to deploy a towed deep-sea submersible to scour the seafloor; Mr. Houston said that the towing operation would not need to wait for the completion of the undersea mapping but could start this summer.

Australia’s own long-range, over-the-horizon radar, known as the Jindalee Operational Radar Network, was not focused on the area where the plane apparently flew and did not detect it, he said. Investigators have also not gleaned any useful clues, he said, from an undersea thud detected by acoustic researchers at Curtin University, near Perth, Australia, that roughly coincided with the time when the plane stopped its electronic handshakes and appears to have run out of fuel.

An Australian vessel, the Ocean Shield, did an exhaustive search last month of a small section of seafloor in the northeast half of the arc of possible final locations for the plane. The search was conducted after the ship detected sounds there that were initially interpreted as locator pings from the aircraft’s so-called black boxes, sounds that were later reanalyzed and found not to be the pings.

Chris McLaughlin, an Inmarsat vice president in London, said Tuesday in a telephone interview that the satellite company did not fault searchers for pursuing those signals, which were detected in April to the northeast of the zone identified by Inmarsat’s calculations.

“The Inmarsat model indicated a more southerly reach for MH370 than the earlier pickup of pings appeared to suggest,” Mr. McLaughlin said. “Four other independent analyses of the data,” conducted by experts at Boeing, the French electronics group Thales and investigators in Australia and Malaysia, “have also indicated a more southerly position, closer to the seventh arc” calculated from the final signal Inmarsat’s satellite received from the plane, he said.

“So we believe the next stage of the search will be concentrated around the outcome of this data,” Mr. McLaughlin said.

On Tuesday, the BBC quoted officials at Inmarsat who said that while Australia had understandably paid considerable attention to the detected sounds, Inmarsat’s modeling of the satellite handshakes had long showed the highest-probability zone for the aircraft’s final location as lying farther to the southwest.

But Inmarsat said in a statement on Tuesday, “Because there are many uncertainties due to the lack of aircraft performance and tracking data, a specific final location in the Southern Ocean cannot be identified.”

Australian officials said that their next priority was to map the ocean floor in enough detail that the deep-sea submersible could be safely towed for long distances at a fairly brisk speed in the coming months with little risk that it will slam into previously undetected seamounts.

Australia has no plans for any further searches from the air for floating debris, having concluded that any debris would have sunk by now or would have spent so much time in the water that it would no longer be recognizable as having come from the plane. “After a period of time, nearly everything sinks, including seat cushions and so on, because they become so waterlogged,” Mr. Houston said.

When an Air France flight crashed off the coast of Brazil in 2009, considerable debris was visible on the ocean’s surface for the first few days, but nothing was left on the surface by the 16th day, and by the 26th day the visual search was halted.

In the early days of the search for the Malaysia Airlines plane, one of the worries was that the plane might have landed on a smooth patch of sea somewhere and then sunk, in which case it might have left no floating debris for airborne searchers to find.

But now the possibility, however small, that the plane might have sunk intact is actually the best-case scenario for searchers. An intact aircraft would be less difficult to find on the vast expanses of the ocean floor than one that had broken into many pieces upon hitting the water.

Such pieces would have descended at different rates and in different directions based on their size, shape and water resistance as they glided or tumbled through water as deep as six kilometers, or nearly four miles.

“We could be confronted with a very dispersed debris field,” Rear Adm. Trevor Jones of the Royal Australian Navy said in an interview on Monday.

A further worry has to do with the topography of the seafloor. When the Air France jet crashed, it came to rest on a fairly level sandy plain at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, which facilitated recovery of both black boxes: the cockpit voice recorder and the flight data recorder.

By contrast, sizable areas of the Indian Ocean seafloor where the plane might be located are crisscrossed with hills and ravines and with silt dozens of meters deep in some places. One of the concerns, Australian officials said, is that the black boxes may have plunged deep into the silt, even as lighter articles like clothing may have drifted down slowly and settled on the silt’s surface.

Deep-sea submersibles like the United States Navy’s Bluefin-21, which the Ocean Shield towed last month, have sonar that can penetrate light silt suspended in the water at the ocean floor but may not be able to penetrate thick layers of denser silt.

Australian officials and oceanographers say that silt drifting down on the debris is very unlikely to cover it up in the months and years to come. The rate of deposition is extremely slow, as little as one or two micrometers a year in some areas, a tiny fraction of the thickness of a human hair.

Deposition may be a little faster in the more southerly areas now slated to be searched, as upwelling cold water may sustain more life in the ocean waters above. But the rate of deposition still should not be fast enough to bury debris, said Robin Robertson, an oceanographer at the Australian Defense Force Academy here in Canberra.

Group Captain Craig Heap, the Royal Australian Air Force officer who oversaw the airborne search of large swaths of the Indian Ocean in late March and through April, said that aircraft from Australia, China, Malaysia, New Zealand, South Korea and the United States had logged about 3,000 hours of flying time during the search for debris, including nearly 900 hours of flying over remote areas of ocean where the plane might have come down.

“We’re still very disappointed, and always will be, that we didn’t find anything,” he said, while adding that the search had nonetheless been unusual in producing cooperation among military aviators from China, Japan and South Korea — countries that have had considerable frictions lately over air and maritime sovereignty issues in the East China Sea.

Mr. Houston expressed optimism that the missing plane would eventually be found. But other Australian officials voiced worries that the combination of silt on the ocean floor and the dispersion of debris and the uncertainties about the final flight path may not make it feasible for years, if ever, to find the aircraft and recover its black boxes.

Nicola Clark contributed reporting from Paris.

                This entry was posted on Thursday, 19 June 2014, 9:52 am and is filed under
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Another fatal defect in Speaker Pandikar’s ruling that Malaysia is not a secular state was his sole reliance on Jamil Khir’s explanation and failure to canvass all views in Parliament on the controversial subject, including those from non-UMNO Ministers/MPs from BN

Yesterday I said that Tan Sri Pandikar Amin Mulia had exceeded his powers and functions as Speaker of Parliament when he passed judgment on the Malaysian Constitution ruling that Malaysia is not a secular state.

This is because it is not the role or function of the  Speaker of Parliament to interpret the Constitution and make a Constitutional ruling which becomes an authority quoted by all and sundry as the law of the land.

Although Pandikar has limited his interpretation  to  “merely for the purposes of this House” and not an opinion to be “an authority” in the country, there is no doubt that it would be quoted by various quarters as an “authority” both inside and outside Parliament  to justify the arbitrary, dubious and controversial stand that Malaysia is not a secular state.

Another fatal defect in Pandikar’s ruling that Malaysia is not a secular state was his sole reliance on the explanation by the Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department, Datuk Jamil Khir  Baharom and his failure to canvass all views in Parliament on the controversial subject, including those from non-UMNO Ministers and MPs from Barisan Nasional.

As the DAP MP for Bandar Kuching, Chong Chieng Jen had tried to point out in Parliament after Pandikar’s ruling yesterday, as far as Sarawak and Sabah were concerned with regard to the formation of Malaysia in 1963, Jamil was very wrong to say that Malaysia is not a secular state
“berdasarkan kepada fakta sejarah yang menunjukkan bahawa Malaysia telah ditubuhkan berasaskan Kerajaan Islam Kesultanan Melayu dan Raja Raja Melayu merupakan Ketua Agama  bagi negeri masing masing”
 – as both Sarawak and Sabah (and Singapore, which was a party to the Malaysia Agreement 1963) did not have a history of Malay Rulers.

For 44 years, from 1957 to 2001, no Federal Government had ever questioned Malaysia’s constitutional position as a secular state with Islam as the official religion of the Federation as provided in Article 3 of the Constitution, stipulating that other religions may be practised in peace and harmony.

In 1956, the Alliance party submitted a memorandum to the Reid Commission, which was responsible for drafting the Malayan constitution. The memorandum quoted:

“The religion of Malaya shall be Islam. The observance of this principle shall not impose any disability on non-Muslim nationals professing and practising their own religion and shall not imply that the state is not a secular state.”

The full text of the Memorandum was inserted into paragraph 169 of the Commission Report.

This suggestion was later carried forward in the Federation of Malaya Constitutional Proposals 1957 (White Paper), specifically quoting in paragraph 57:

“There has been included in the proposed Federal Constitution a declaration that Islam is the religion of the Federation. This will in no way affect the present position of the Federation as a secular State….”

The Cobbold Commission also made another similar quote in 1962:

“….we are agreed that Islam should be the national religion for the Federation. We are satisfied that the proposal in no way jeopardises freedom of religion in the Federation, which in effect would be secular.”

It is not for the Speaker of Parliament to contradict the position taken by nation’s founding fathers, in particular the first three Prime Ministers, Tunku Abdul Rahman, Tun Razak, Tun Hussein, the other Alliance founding leaders like Tun Tan Cheng Lock, Tun Tan Siew Sin, Tun V.T. Sambathan and the Sarawak and Sabah leaders who were signatories to the 1963 Malaysia Agreement that Malaysia is a secular state with Islam as official religion.

On Sept. 29, 2001, solely for political purposes, the then Prime Minister Dr. Mahathir Mohamad made his new-fangled and arbitrary declaration on Sept. 29, 2001 that Malaysia is a “Islamic nation”. Now Mahathir says that Malaysia is neither a secular state nor  an Islamic state.

Neither Mahathir nor anyone could rewrite history and deny that Malaya and subsequently Malaysia were formed specifically as a secular state with Article 3 which states:

“Islam is the religion of the Federation; but other religions may be practised in peace and harmony in any part of the Federation.”

Pandikar should seriously consider what he could do to minimise if not to undo the damage his improper judgment as Parliament Speaker  that  Malaysia is not a secular state has done to the entire Malaysian nation-building process, in particular with regard to Sarawak and Sabah’s proper role in Malaysia 50 years after the Malaysia Agreement 1963.

                This entry was posted on Friday, 20 June 2014, 2:51 pm and is filed under
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Putrajaya being ‘deliberately divisive’ to hold on to power, says report

The Malaysian Insider

20 June 2014

Malaysians are wondering whether Putrajaya’s unspoken political strategy is to divide the predominantly Muslim-Malay country along racial lines in a bid to hold on to power following sharpening racial and religious tensions, the Edge Review reported today.

This follows incidents that have rocked Malaysia’s delicate racial and religious relations – acts by Muslim authorities, who snatched a body at a funeral and disrupted a Hindu wedding ceremony on suspicion that the deceased and the bride respectively might be Muslims.

The weekly said there were also signs of a campaign by the country’s civil service to push a religious-inspired agenda.

The report cited other similar incidents, such as the threat by the Selangor Islamic Religious Department (Jais) to destroy the 301 Bibles it seized from the Bible Society of Malaysia and the refusal of Inspector-General of Police Tan Sri Khalid Abu Bakar to follow a court ruling in a highly publicised custody battle that ordered a Muslim convert father to return the children to the mother, who was a Hindu.

The weekly took Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak to task for “not helping the deepening discord”.

“His reluctance to take a firm stand to quell the increasingly shrill public tone has opened him to attacks that he has abandoned his brand of inclusive politics under his much-touted 1Malaysia campaign in favour of a more polarising style of governing,” it said.

This view was echoed by political analyst and Associate Professor of Political Science at the Singapore Management University Bridget Welsh, who was quoted as saying: “Najib is distinguishing himself as premier by the use of any means possible to stay in power.”

The Edge Review said that it was hard to determine the level of political stress these race and religion issues were having on society and how they would act out in the near future.

However, it warned that should tensions deepen, they could put out the little hope the country had on the economic front.

“Global demand is very strong and we could be in for a mother of a rebound this year that will greatly benefit the very open Malaysian economy,” Manu Bhaskaran, director of Centennial Group International told the Edge Review.

“It will take a lot to hurt Malaysia in the short term. But if these policies continue, then we are looking at a slow burn.”

The ruling coalition of Barisan Nasional, the report said, was losing its hold over Malaysian politics because of widespread unhappiness over rampant corruption and Putrajaya’s failure to reform the economy and the political system.

This was seen in the 2008 general election when BN lost its long-held two-thirds majority in Parliament and in last year’s general election, when the Najib-led coalition took a further beating.

“It not only failed to improve its numbers in Parliament, but also lost the popular vote, securing only 47% compared with the opposition’s 51%. The coalition partners scored miserably in the multi-racial urban seats and Umno clung on to most of its rural ethnic Malay seats with reduced majorities,” the weekly said.

Things could worsen in the next GE, the Edge Review said, as growing urbanisation among Malays and the party’s failure to attract younger voters into its ranks were threatening to undermine Umno’s clout in rural areas.

“The party is really living on borrowed time,” a senior Umno official, who is also a member of the party’s policy-making Supreme Council, told the Edge Review.

The Najib administration’s divide-and-rule strategy appeared to be aimed at increasing its numbers in Parliament, political analysts and opposition politicians said.

Analysts were reported as saying that the move to sow racial and religious discord in the country was part of Najib’s strategy to sow distrust in the country’s ideologically diverse opposition.

“For example, the move by several PAS leaders to throw their weight behind the overzealous religious officials in their treatment against non-Muslims has ruptured ties between the Islamist party and the country’s multiracial opposition DAP,” it said.

An unnamed DAP senior parliamentary leader said: “All of us are trying to hold on to our traditional voter base and this is leading to more divisions. But the point is we realise this is Umno’s strategy and whether it succeeds will depend on us.”

However, playing the race and religion card could trigger a backlash from Sabah and Sarawak, which have sizeable Christian populations and have been long supporters of BN.

Najib’s position in this environment appeared to be secure, the report said, but Umno leaders said that there was growing dissatisfaction in the party towards Najib’s leadership.

“His control over the party and government is weak. All you need is a party crisis to trigger open attacks against him within Umno,” a senior Umno official, who served in former PM Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad’s cabinet was quoted as saying.

“Umno is all about self-preservation. If the party thinks it stands to lose power with Najib at the top, they will push against him.” – June 20, 2014.

                This entry was posted on Friday, 20 June 2014, 11:50 am and is filed under
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Three things we learned about: the Islamisation of Malaysia

By Justin Ong

The Malay Mail Online

June 20, 2014

KUALA LUMPUR, June 20 — Malaysia professes to be a multi-racial and multi-cultural federation with Islam as its religion, but there is a mounting movement to turn it simply into an Islamic state.

While defenders of the status quo insist that it is a secular state and Islam’s position is largely decorative, it appears they are fighting a losing battle against the tide of growing Islamisation in the country.

Slowly, but surely, Malaysia is headed down the path where religion permeates not just houses of worship, but all aspects of life.

Here are the three things we learned about the growing Islamisation of Malaysia.

1. The minister of Islamic affairs is more powerful than any other

Datuk Seri Jamil Khir Baharom’s official portfolio is minister in charge of Islamic affairs, but it appears that his purview extends far beyond religion.

On Tuesday, he declared that Malaysia was not a secular state, thereby dismantling a key obstacle towards the introduction of more Islamic laws — including the controversial hudud penal code — in the country.

Yesterday, he took it upon himself to reinterpret the parts of the Federal Constitution pertaining to the conversion of children to Islam, effectively reversing a 2009 Cabinet decision that expressly barred parents from unilaterally changing the religion of their children.

In one fell swoop, he has moved the country further down the path towards becoming a full-fledged Islamic state.

But despite the pivotal consequences of his declarations, few save the usual opposition figures have come out to dispute his assertions.

At the rate Jamil Khir is going, both de facto law minister Nancy Shukri and Attorney-General Tan Sri Abdul Gani Patail may soon find themselves surplus to requirements.

2. Even the elders are concerned

The growing pervasiveness of religion in the administration is palpable to all, even to former prime minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad, who famously proclaimed Malaysia to be an Islamic country in September of 2001.

Now, he has come out to say that Malaysia is neither secular nor Islamic, but simply an “ordinary state” that recognises Islam as its religion.

“We are just an ordinary state that recognises Islam as the official religion of the country, and we practise things that are not against the religion of Islam,” Dr Mahathir told The Star on Wednesday.

In the same report, the country’s longest-serving prime minister said that his previous declaration did not require efforts to make the country “more Islamic”.

His stand now appears more in line with the Reid Commission report that said Islam’s position, as the religion of the federation, did not preclude the country from being a secular state.

For Dr Mahathir to come out and contradict himself on the issue suggests the dangers of allowing Malaysia to continue down this path.

3. Religion is a political tool

The creeping Islamisation of the country may appear on the surface to be about religion, but the worrying truth is that it is being allowed to happen by an administration that sees it as a platform to remain in power.

In a recent index of the “Islamicity” of countries, Malaysia came in 33rd — the highest among Islamic countries, admittedly — but also behind the likes of Singapore and even perennial enemy of the Muslims, Israel.

Why did Muslim countries fare as poorly as they did in professor of International Business and International Affairs at George Washington University, Hossein Askari’s “Overall Islamicity Index”?

“If a country, society or community displays characteristics such as unelected, corrupt, oppressive and unjust rulers, inequality before the law, unequal opportunities for human development, absence of freedom of choice (including that of religion), opulence alongside poverty, force and aggression as the instruments of conflict resolution as opposed to dialogue and reconciliation, and, above all, the prevalence of injustice of any kind, it is prima facie evidence that it is not an Islamic community,” Askari explained.

This is readily observable in Malaysia, where the rhetoric of religion waxes and wanes in tandem with elections.

Unfortunately, since 2008, the country has been trapped seemingly in an eternal campaign ostensibly for control of Putrajaya, though increasingly it appears that what is truly at stake is the nation’s soul.

                This entry was posted on Friday, 20 June 2014, 11:27 am and is filed under
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Apakah Malaysia sebuah negara Islam?

Dr Maza

The Malaysian Insider

20 June 2014

Pada 2011, bulan Disember, semasa menyampaikan ucapan di Oxford, sempena 400 Bible King James, Perdana Menteri UK David Cameron menyebut: “UK is a Christian country and we should not be afraid to say so”.

Sekalipun dalam penghayatan politik UK, elemen agama Kristian kelihatan amat lemah sehingga David Cameron itu sendiri turut menyokong hak berkahwin golongan gay yang ternyata bercanggah dengan pegangan agama Kristian, namun beliau tetap mengakui nilai agama bagi negara UK.

Polemik

 Semasa masih kecil, saya masih ingat bagaimana kami di sekolah agama sering dibawa berbincang apakah Malaysia sebuah negara Islam ataupun negara kafir sekular? Pada umumnya kami semua difahamkan bahawa negara Malaysia ini sebuah negara sekular. Itulah sifat Malaysia berdasarkan ceramah-ceramah politik yang kami dengar.

Kepercayaan seperti itu masih dianuti oleh ramai golongan yang dikatakan ‘beragama’ dalam negara ini. Mereka melebelkan negara ini sebagai negara kafir ataupun sekular. Dulu ia berlegar dalam kalangan mereka yang minat agama Islam.

Hari ini keadaan berubah apabila non-Muslim juga mendakwa hal yang sama, cuma dengan tujuan yang berbeza. Jika dahulu dakwaan itu bertujuan membangkit semangat agar Islam itu lebih ditekankan pelaksanaannya di Malaysia, kini tujuannya agar elemen Islam itu tidak patut ditekankan dalam pentadbiran Malaysia kerana itu bercanggah dengan sifat negara ini.

Sebelum saya bahaskan tentang secularism dalam kerangka kefahaman yang sepatutnya, artikel ringkas kali ini akan bincangkan dulu apakah itu negara Islam?

Sukar

 Seperti yang pernah saya sebutkan, apabila jatuh Khalifah di Turki dan Kuasa-Kuasa Barat menjajah dunia Islam, kesedaran umat Islam tentang tanggungjawab jihad membebaskan tanahair Islam berkembang. Selepas penjajah dihalau keluar, umat Islam memerintah negara sendiri. Kali ini tiada lagi negara khalifah seperti yang ditulis dalam buku-buku fekah lama.

Apa yang wujud adalah ‘nation state’ atau negara bangsa yang mempunyai kedaulatan tersendiri. Dalam proses menstabilkan negara masing-masing inilah munculnya istilah daulah islamiyyah (islamic state atau negara Islam). Ini adalah reaksi kepada penjajahan dan selepas penjajahan di dunia Islam. Padahal istilah ini tidak dikenali sebelum ini.

Dahulu yang ada dalam fekah sarjana silam (sebelum penjajahan) hanyalah istilah Dar al-Islam iaitu Wilayah Islam. Ini merujuk kepada wilayah yang dikuasai oleh umat Islam dan zahir syiar Islam. Sementara Dar al-Harb atau disebut juga Dar al-Kufr merujuk kepada wilayah yang dikuasai oleh bukan Muslim dan bermusuhan dengan Dar al-Islam.

Ketiga, Dar al-Mu’ahadah iaitu negara bukan Muslim yang membuat perjanjian dengan umat Islam. Dalam erti kata lain nilaian terhadap sesebuah wilayah atau negara itu berdasarkan penguasaan umat Islam ke atas wilayah tersebut, dan wujudnya syiar Islam.

Tariq Ramadan dalam To Be A European Muslim menganggap pembahagian ini sebagai ‘Old Concepts’ yang tidak berasaskan al-Quran dan al-Sunnah, sebaliknya ia cetusan ulama di zaman tersebut disebabkan persekitaran politik yang wujud pada tiga kurun pertama dalam sejarah Islam (lihat: Tariq Ramadan, To Be A European Muslim, UK: Islamic Foundation 2002, pg 123-131 ).

Tariq mungkin terpengaruh kepada apa yang disebut oleh Dr Wahbah al-Zuhaili dalam Aathar al-Harb fi al-Fiqh al-Islami. Manakala Dr Wahbah al-Zuhaili terkesan dengan apa yang disebut oleh al-Syeikh Abu Zahrah dalam Al-‘Alaqah al-Duwliah fil al-Islam.

Sementara Dr Yusuf al-Qaradawi dalam Fiqh al-Jihad mempertahankan pembahagian tersebut dengan menyatakan pembahagian itu berasaskan al-Quran dan al-Sunnah serta sesuatu yang mantiqi (logical).(lihat: al-Qaradawi, Fiqh al-Jihad, Cairo: Maktabah Wahbah 2009. Ms 882-888).

Ciri

 Jadi, jika kita rujuk kepada kitab-kitab fekah terdahulu, secara ringkasnya, Dar al-Islam mempunyai tiga ciri utama; pertama; kekuasaan politik berada di tangan kaum Muslimin sekalipun majoriti rakyat bukan Muslim.

Kedua; zahir padanya hukum dan syiar Islam sekalipun tidak sempurna ataupun sebahagian sahaja seperti hukum hakam kekeluargaan Islam. Zahir syiar seperti azan, Jumaat, jamaah solat, Ramadan dan lain-lain.

Ketiga; kaum Muslimin aman beramal dengan agama mereka sementara ahl-zimmah (rakyat non-Muslim) aman berdasarkan perjanjian mereka. (Dr Yusuf Al-Qaradawi, Fiqh al-Jihad, 2/889. Kaherah: Maktabah Wahbah).

Adapun soal sejauh manakah komitmen Islam seseorang pemerintah itu, ia diuruskan oleh umat Islam di bawah tanggung jawab menasihati pemerintah iaitu Amar Makruf dan Nahy Munkar.

Apabila negara-negara membentuk nation state, para pemerintah Muslim ramai yang mewarisi atau meneladani penjajah dalam menguruskan negara, maka istilah Daulah Islamiyyah ataupun Islamic State ataupun negara Islam muncul dan dikembangkan.

Namun, istilah ini kelihatan akhirnya agak sukar untuk mendefinasikan. Ini disebabkan negara baru yang dibentuk selepas penjajahan masih lagi mengikut acuan penjajah namun pemerintahannya berada di tangan umat Islam.

Sebagai bantahan, ada mereka yang melebelkan negara yang diperintah oleh umat Islam pasca penjajah sebagai ‘negara kafir’. Ertinya, mereka melebelkan Dar Islam yang diistilah oleh Sarjana Fekah silam sebagai Dar al-Kufr atau Dar al-Harb yang diperangi atau dimusuhi.

Ini disebabkan kecelaruan identiti negara Islam yang baru muncul dan penilaian siyasah umat Islam itu sendiri yang masih di peringkat awal. Dalam kalangan pengkaji dan sarjana seperti Fazlur Rahman menganggap bahawa adaptasi ini sebenarnya lebih mirip kepada apa yang dilakukan oleh Khawarij dalam sejarah awal krisis antara umat Islam. (Sila lihat: Fazlur Rahman, Revival And Reform in Islam 33-43, England: Oneworld Publications).

Cari definasi

Mencari definasi yang tersendiri bagi istilah Daulah Islamiyyah memang agak sukar disebabkan kitab-kitab fekah lama tidak menggunakan istilah tersebut dan sudah pasti tiada takrifan baginya. Jika memakai penafsiran silam Dar al-Islam yang memberi maksud wilayah yang dikuasai oleh umat Islam, maka hendaklah diiktiraf negara-negara umat Islam sekarang adalah daulah Islamiyyah.

Maka, ada pula yang enggan pengiktirafan itu dibuat disebabkan zahirnya unsur-unsur yang bercanggahan dengan Islam. Jika dipakai takrif lain yang dibuat oleh sesetengah sarjana silam iaitu negara yang zahir padanya syiar Islam seperti azan, solat dan amalan-amalan Islam yang lain, sudah pasti kebanyakan negara umat Islam hari ini diiktiraf sebagai daulah Islamiyyah.

Ada yang agak tegas enggan juga mengiktiraf hal itu. Lalu ada yang menyatakan negara Islam atau daulah Islamiyyah itu adalah negara yang sempurna perlaksanaan Islamnya. Jika takrif ini dipakai, sudah pasti tidak ditemui dalam sejarah umat Islam melainkan beberapa khalifah sahaja, selepas al-Khaulafa al-Rasyidin.

Akhirnya, ada yang seakan menetapkan negara Islam adalah negara yang melaksanakan hudud. Lalu wujud dalam kalangan umat Islam yang apabila disebut negara Islam terbayang kepada mereka ‘pencuri dipotong tangan’, penzina disebat atau direjam dengan batu, peminum arak disebat dan seterusnya. Wajah negara Islam atau negara yang ditegakkan oleh Rasulullah SAW itu terbelenggu dengan gambaran darah, kesakitan, tangisan dan wajah bengis para pemimpinnya.

Hakikatnya, jika menurut takrifan fekah, negara Malaysia adalah Dar al-Islam seperti yang ditakrifkan oleh para ulama silam. Bahkan berasas fekah ini, Dr Yusuf al-Qaradawi juga menyimpulkan bahawa keseluruhan negara umat Islam yang wujud pada hari ini adalah Dar al-Islam.

Sementara kesemua negara bukan Dar al-Islam yang berada di bawah Bangsa-Bangsa Bersatu adalah Dar al-‘Ahd termasuk Amerika. Hanya dikategori sebagai Dar al-Harb pada masa ini ialah negara Zionis Israel disebabkan kerana permusuhan yang zahir dan berterusan dengan umat Islam. (lihat: Al-Qaradawi, Fiqh al-Jihad, ms 888-908. Kaherah: Maktabah Wahbah).

Intipati terpenting

Apapun sebenarnya, perbalahan pasal takrif ini kadang-kala lebih banyak membuang masa daripada realiti yang patut kita tangani. Negara seperti Malaysia tidak akan masuk syurga ataupun neraka. Mereka yang akan dihadapkan di “Mahkamah Masyar” di hadapan Allah pada Hari Kiamat ialah mereka yang menguruskan negara atas apa nama sekalipun.

Jika mereka amanah dan adil seperti yang Allah perintahkan maka mereka akan selamat. Jika mereka khianat dan zalim mereka tidak selamat walau apa jenama negara sekalipun. Raja Najasyi Habsyah bernama Ashamah bin Abjar beriman dengan Nabi SAW tetapi beliau mengepalai kerajaan Kristian Habsyah.

Beliau tidak mampu mengubah kerajaannya, tetapi mampu melindungi sahabah-sahabah yang berhijrah mencari perlindungan di Habsyah dan menegakkan asas-asas keadilan untuk rakyatnya. Nabi SAW berutus surat dengan Najasyi, tetapi baginda tidak memerintahkan Najasyi meninggalkan kerajaannya. Nabi memujinya, sekalipun beliau mati di Habsyah ketika mentadbir sebuah kerajaan Kristian.

Sabda Nabi SAW “Telah mati pada hari ini seorang lelaki soleh. Bangunlah dan bersolatlah ke atas saudara kamu Ashamah (nama Najasyi)”. (Riwayat al-Bukhari).

Nabi Yusuf AS pula pernah menjadi menteri dalam sebuah kerajaan yang pemerintah tidak beriman kepada Allah namun Nabi Yusuf mampu menegakkan keadilan.

Tapi, jika mentadbir negara bernama Islam sekalipun namun zalim dan khianat, tempatnya tetap di neraka. Sabda Nabi SAW: “Allah tidak lantik seseorang hamba itu menguasai sesuatu rakyat kemudian hamba itu mati dalam keadaan dia menipu rakyatnya, melainkan Allah haramkan untuknya syurga” (Riwayat Muslim).

Ertinya, yang penting nilai Islam itu mestilah terus diterapkan oleh pentabir dalam negara ini untuk mencapai erti amanah dan adil bukan sekadar bergantung kepada takrif negara semata-mata. – 20 Jun, 2014.

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Malaysia’s returning expert programme driving out more talent, economist says

By Opalyn Mok

The Malay Mail Online

June 22, 2014

GEORGE TOWN, June 22 — Malaysia’s returning expert programme (REP) is not only ineffective but also indirectly encourages more high-skilled emigration, the head of a Penang think tank said, as the government seeks to woo talent home.

Dr Lim Kim Hwa, Penang Institute’s chief executive officer and head of economics said the REP is simply not attractive enough to entice highly-skilled Malaysian workers based overseas back to the country.

“Our research shows that the REP can only lessen the income loss that the emigrant has to sacrifice by coming back to Malaysia so it is not strong enough to lure them back,” he told a forum here titled “Brain drain: Who gains? Who sacrifices?”

Lim was presenting the results of his research on the causes, effects and fiscal impacts on brain drain.

He noted that the REP, a key policy introduced to lure high-skilled Malaysians to return, offers several incentives which includes a flat 15 per cent income tax rate for first five years.

However, the 15 per cent tax incentive will drive local high skilled workers overseas instead of drawing emigrants back, he said.

He pointed out that a typical high-skilled Malaysian emigrant earns an average RM46,800 more overseas compared to working in the same occupation here.

To illustrate his point, he said a professional armed with just a bachelor’s degree can earn RM20,000 in Malaysia but would have accumulated RM429,100 more for a similar job in Singapore.

If the professional returns to Malaysia, he will have tax savings of about RM31,415 in the first five years, the economist said, although the worker would have also suffered income loss of about RM220,995 in that five years, due to the lower income here.

According to Lim’s calculations, the emigrant professional could gain RM238,520 in 13 years of working; being based in Singapore for the first eight years before returning home and working in a similar capacity for the next five years.

“In comparison, a professional of the same position that earns RM20,000 each month here has to pay income tax of 18.76 per cent from the start and did not get any income gain,” Lim told the forum.

“REP makes it seems that if your want to leave Malaysia to work elsewhere, you can always come back after several years and you get to pay lower taxes on top of other perks,” he added.

He said brain drain in the country is not only about a loss of talents but has serious fiscal impact of about RM8.4 billion per annum.

He arrived at the figure after taking into account the fiscal impact of both immigration and emigration, tax revenues, consumption taxes from brain drain and levies the government collects from foreign labour.

“The government only benefits about RM2.07 billion from levies, consumption taxes and other factors from immigration and emigration,” Lim said.

Citing from the World Bank’s 2011 survey results, the analyst said the top three reasons behind Malaysia’s brain drain were career prospects (66 per cent), social injustice (60 per cent) and salary and benefits (54 per cent).

However, the government could still roll back on the outflow of talent, he said.

First is for the government to impose a policy to raise local wages for high skilled labour, Lim said, but added that such a solution would not be practical.

“Raising local wages to narrow the wage differential has many negative economic consequences such as creating wage inflation and reducing business competitiveness,” he reasoned.

The second possibility is to increase the REP tax incentive, but Lim said the viability was low in coaxing high-skilled emigrants home and may just trigger the direct opposite of what the solution pushed.

The final possibility, he said, is to reduce the Malaysian income tax rate so it can cut back on the incentive to emigrate, adding that such a move may be the best method to keep talent at home.

“We also suggest that meritocracy be embraced wholeheartedly so that people won’t feel disenchanted and leave,” he said.

The sense of “social injustice” felt by some Malaysians is the second top reason for emigration from Malaysia, he pointed out.

“We should learn from Taiwan on how they encourage their high skills emigrants to return despite having to suffer pay cut,” he said.

He noted that in Taiwan, their overseas workers are willing to return even with a pay cut as long as the country welcomes them and the environment is conducive with good career prospects.

“Tackling the brain drain phenomenon requires more than a single policy but a combination of several policies and measures,” he said.

More than two million Malaysians have emigrated since Merdeka.

Last year, a total 308,834 high-skilled Malaysians have moved overseas, with 47.2 per cent going to Singapore, 18.2 per cent to Australia, 12.2 per cent to US and the rest to other countries like UK and Canada.

A majority of them are professionals (36.3 per cent), associate professionals (9.6 per cent), senior officials or managers (8.3 per cent) and clerks (6.4 per cent), with the balance being in other fields such as services, agriculture and crafts.

All emigrants, even in low skilled jobs, earn an average RM46,800 extra annually overseas compared to working here.

                This entry was posted on Sunday, 22 June 2014, 7:24 am and is filed under
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MCA and Gerakan cannot dismiss Jamil Khir’s “Malaysia is not secular state” statement in Parliament as a personal view but must demand a retraction and a clear Cabinet and BN Supreme Council pronouncement that Malaysia is a secular state with Islam as official religion

After more than a week, both the MCA and Gerakan Presidents have finally come out with a position today on the parliamentary statement by the Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department, Datuk Seri Jamil Khir Baharom that Malaysia is not a secular state, but both have tried to evade the issue by dismissing it as merely Jamil’s “personal view”.

The excuse that a Minister is giving his “personal opinion” might be used if the Minister is speaking outside Parliament, but it  is completely unacceptable when a Minister makes a speech or a statement in Parliament.

There is no such thing as a “personal view” when a Minister speaks in Parliament, whether in speeches or in replies to parliamentary questions, as whatever the Minister speaks in  Parliament is in an official capacity on behalf of the Barisan Nasional Cabinet which binds all Ministers under the doctrine of collective Ministerial responsibility.

I am really surprised that the MCA President, Datuk Seri Liow Tiong Lai, as a former  Minister who is hoping to get back to the Cabinet in the shortest possible time, is not aware of this fundamental ministerial principle – or he is merely  putting up a pretence so as  to evade the issue of a Minister making an official statement in Parliament representing the Barisan Nasional Cabinet and leadership completely deviating from the decades-old assurances and commitments in the Malaysian Constitution and the founding fathers of the nation, including the first three Prime Ministers, Tunku Abdul Rahman, Tun Razak, Tun Hussein, the other Alliance founding leaders like Tun Tan Cheng Lock, Tun Tan Siew Sin, Tun VT Sambantan as well as the founding Sarawak and Sabah leaders who were signatories to the 1963 Malaysia Agreement on Malaysia as a secular state with Islam as the official religion of the Federation.

It is just not good enough for the MCA President to dismiss Jamil Khir’s parliamentary statement that Malaysia is not a secular state as “merely his personal view”, arguing that Malaysia’s position as a secular state was clearly defined in the Federal Constitution “drafted to safeguard the rights of not only one race and religion, but of all”.

His further statement that “No one person in this country can have their own interpretation of the Federal Constitution” is an unbelieveably  weak and  a most craven one, totally ignoring the brutal fact that this was a statement made in Parliament by a Minister which, if unchallenged and unretracted, will represent the official position of the Barisan Nasional Federal Government or all serving Ministers and Deputy Ministers, those serving  as well those joining the Cabinet, whether they agree with it in their personal capacity or otherwise.

The position taken by the Gerakan President, Datuk Mah Siew Keong is not very different from that of his MCA counterpart.

While it is good to hear the Gerakan leadership reiterating Gerakan’s stand that Malaysia is a “fully functional secular-based constitutional monarchy with Islam as the religion of the federation”, it has completely ignored “the elephant in the room” – Jamil Khir’s parliamentary statement that Malaysia is “not a secular state” which is endorsed by the Parliament Speaker, Tan Sri Pandikar Amin Mulia.

The Gerakan suggestion of a “special bipartisan committee” to resolve the “varying views on the secular or Islamic state issue” is another classic case of  political evasion, which also puts the cart before the horse.

The nub of the issue is why despite the ‘”varying views on the secular or Islamic state issue”,   the Barisan Nasional Cabinet has taken the stand that Malaysia is not a secular state as represented by Jamil Khir’s parliamentary reply, violating not only the fundamental provisions in the Merdeka Constitution 1957 and Malaysia Agreement 1963 but the  assurances and commitments of the founding fathers of Malaya and Malaysia?

When was this tectonic shift on the fundamental basis of the Malaysian Constitution and state taken by the Barisan Nasional Federal Government Cabinet and was it empowered to do so and  endorsed by the Barisan Nasional Supreme Council?

Surely the Gerakan call for a “special bipartisan committee” to resolve the “varying views on the secular or Islamic state issue” is like “locking the door when the horses have bolted” – both too little and too late!

If Jamil Khir’s parliamentary statement  was both an “unguided” and “misguided” missile making an completely unauthorised and untruthful Barisan Nasional position that Malaysia is not a secular state, why has Jamil Khir’s parliamentary speech not yet been repudiated and disowned by the Prime Minister or the Deputy Prime Minister?

The first thing that must be done is to get back to the basics, to restore the original status of Malaysia as a secular state as stipulated by the original Constitutional provisions and the founding fathers of the nation.

With the issue of desultory and half-hearted “personal” views by  MCA and Gerakan leaders who do not seem to be serious in wanting to ensure that the original intention, both in words and spirit, of the nation’s founders and signatories to  the Merdeka Constitution and Malaysia Agreement 1963 are strictly adhered to, thinking Malaysians are entitled to ask why the Cabinet meeting last Friday failed to  countermand and repudiate Jamil Khir’s new-fangled interpretation of the Malaysian Constitution that Malaysia is not a secular state.

Furthermore, why the MCA and Gerakan Presidents and leaderships have not decided  or dared to requisition an emergency meeting of the Barisan Nasional Supreme Council, where the votes of the 13 component parties would ensure a decisive 12-1 rejection of  Khir Jamil’s parliamentary stand on behalf of the Barisan Nasional Cabinet that Malaysia is not a secular state.

Can Liow and Mah, as well as the other leaders of the non-UMNO Barisan Nasional component parties, explain why they are afraid of requisitioning an emergency meeting of the Barisan Nasional Supreme Council to put to rest, once and for all, all doubts that  Malaysia in accordance with the original constitutional provisions and the assurances and commitments of the founding fathers of nation, was founded and  forever meant to be a secular state with Islam as the official religion?

(Speech at the DAP Bukit Gelugor by-election thanksgiving ceramah in Air Itam, Penang on Saturday, 21st June 2014 at 9.30 pm)

                This entry was posted on Sunday, 22 June 2014, 12:23 pm and is filed under
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Recent revival of hudud controversy another  deep UMNO plot to cause dissension and break-up of Pakatan Rakyat

PAS Shah Alam MP Khalid Samad has accused UMNO behind the controversial raid and seizure of Malay and Iban Bibles by the Selangor Islamic  Religious Department (Jais) and the disruption of the Hindu wedding of Zarinah Abdul Majid to regain power through the backdoor after losing the Selangor state government in two successive general elections.

This was in fact not the only mischief UMNO was up to, as the recent revival of the hudud controversy was another deep UMNO plot to cause dissension and break-up of Pakatan Rakyat.

A study of the recent revival of the hudud controversy will show that it was all initiated by UMNO when the Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department, Datuk Seri Jamil Khir Baharom made the surprise announcement in Parliament during the winding up of the Royal Debate on March 27 declaring that the Barisan Nasional Federal Government was prepared to help the Kelantan State Government to implement hudud law, even suggesting that PAS move a private member’s bill in  Parliament on the matter.

That started off what is to become a three-month-long revival of the hudud controversy, plunging the three Pakatan Rakyat component parties of DAP, PAS and PKR to the second crisis to engulf Pakatan Rakyat in the six-year history of the alternative coalition.

The first crisis faced by Pakatan Rakyat was in September 2011 which nearly led to its break-up and  was also over the hudud controversy.  It was only when Pakatan Rakyat leaders from PAS, PKR and DAP finally reaffirmed the common policy programme proclaimed earlier by PKR, PAS and DAP leaders in the formation of PR as PR’s common  priority agenda that PR was saved from an early demise.

If PR had broken up over the hudud controversy in September 2011, then the historic result of the 13th General Elections last May which saw PR winning 52 per cent of electoral vote and reducing the Najib federal administration into a minority government, with PR winning 89 Parliamentary seats and 229 state assembly seats (excluding Sarawak) would not have been achieved.

I had said in April that if hudud had been a hot controversial issue in the 13th General Elections, the Barisan Nasional would have regained its two-thirds parliamentary majority to redelineate electoral constituencies at will while Pakatan Rakyat might have lost Selangor apart from Kedah, and Johor would have reverted to become an invincible Barisan Nasional “fixed deposit” state instead of becoming a ‘front-line state for UBAH’ after May last year.

It was with these political insights that the deep UMNO plot to use the hudud issue to foment dissension and cause a break-up of Pakatan Rakyat must be understood  – and thus the extraordinary proposal by Jamil Khir in Parliament on March 27 that the Federal Government was prepared to help the Kelantan State Government to implement hudud, even suggesting that PAS MPs present a private member’s bill on the issue, must be understood in this perspective.

Jamil’s statement in Parliament  was completely at odds with the Barisan Nasional official position on hudud, as only on Sept. 25, 2011, the Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Najib Razak publicly stated that the Federal Government will not enforce hudud law in Malaysia.

The Star in a report headlined “Najib: No hudud in Malaysia” quoted Najib as saying at the launch of the Tanjong Tualang 1Malaysia Carnival in Perak that although hudud was accepted in Islam, its implementation must be based on reality.

He said: “The aim of an administration according to Islam is based on the maqasid syariah principle, which among others, entails protecting religion, life, morals and property.”

The Prime Minister said under current laws, the principle and objective of maqasid syariah could be championed.

He said there were already elements of hudud in the system “minus the extreme part”.

But in a matter of 30 months, less than 12 months after the 13GE, Najib’s statement of “No hudud in Malaysia” has been replaced with Jamil Khir’s pronoucement in Parliament that the Barisan Nasional federal government was prepared to help the PAS Kelantan State Government to implement hudud laws, even suggesting a Private Member’s Bill in Parliament for the purpose.

Was this drastic change  in Barisan Nasional federal government policy on hudud made with  the consultation and agreement of leaders and ministers from the other Barisan Nasional component parties, or is this again solely the “personal view” of Jamil?

Unfortunately, instead of taking a stand on principle that any change of Barisan Nasional federal government policy whether on hudud or any other imporant national matter should only be made with the consultation and agreement of all BN parties, MCA and Gerakan decided to play politics by orchestrating a prolonged campaign of  vilification against the DAP on the hudud question – though serving the same purpose of the deep UMNO plot to foment dissension and break-up of PR.

However, the contention that Jamil’s March 27 statement in Parliament was only his “personal view” loses credibility when Najib announced in Alor Setar on April 24 that the Barisan Nasional federal government had never rejected hudud.

In these circumstances, leaders of Pakatan Rakyat parties, whether DAP, PAS or PKR should be vigilant so as not to fall victim to the deep UMNO plot to foment dissension and cause break-up of PR, as we must always be mindful of what should the common policy priorities of PR as agreed by the PR leaders when the PR was formed after the 2008 general elections.

This will ensure that the Pakatan Rakyat is not a one-GE wonder, which succumb easily to the plots of UMNO causing dissension, break-up and demise of PR.

                This entry was posted on Sunday, 22 June 2014, 11:19 pm and is filed under
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Eulogy for Wong Ho Leng

– Lim Guan Eng

The Malaysian Insider

23 June 2014

When I received a message on 21 June 2014 from Petaling Jaya Utara MP Tony Pua of Sdr Wong Ho Leng’s passing, whilst attending a thanksgiving ceramah for DAP’s victory in the Bukit Gelugor parliamentary by-election, I felt sadness over the loss of a dear comrade-in-arms, yet I marvelled at Ho Leng’s fighting spirit.

I was inspired at how long and hard Ho Leng fought in this impossible final battle before he succumbed to cancer. Many had already given up, including doctors who had given him a maximum of three months, when he was first diagnosed in December 2012.

For his perseverance and stamina, he had to thank his wife Irene who was his mainstay and pillar of strength. She gave him the belief that he could overcome and prevail. Holding out for so long, was as much his achievement as hers.

And Ho Leng had many achievements to his credit that both Irene and him can take pride in. He overcame great poverty and adversity to excel academically and realised his ambition as a lawyer. Achieving professional success, he joined the DAP on 19 April 1986, motivated by his desire to serve the community and his state to build a better future for all.

Ho Leng was a likeable politician even amongst his detractors in BN. I remembered speaking to the new Sarawak Chief Minister Tan Sri Adenan Satem at the sidelines of the recent Conference of Rulers’ meeting in Kuala Lumpur, thanking him for the state’s RM1 million contribution for Ho Leng’s medical fees. Tan Sri Adenan said he liked Ho Leng’s personally and was saddened at Ho Leng’s medical condition, as he himself had gone through something similar a few years ago when he almost died of his heart ailments.

As a political novice in electoral politics, Ho Leng was anointed as a political giant killer when he upset then SUPP President Tan Sri Dr Wong Soon Kai in the state seat of Bukit Assek during the 1996 Sarawak state general elections. Wong Soon Kai retired from politics following his defeat, making way for Tan Sri Dr George Chan to take over as SUPP President. George Chan’s ascension as president laid the seeds of SUPP’s future disarray.

Even though Ho Leng lost his Bukit Assek seat in the 2001 Sarawak state general elections, he never gave up but continued to hold the lonely banner of DAP in Sarawak. Ho Leng became Sarawak DAP State Chair on 24 September 2000, a position he held until last year when he retired due to ill-health.

As a result of George Chan’s failure to stand up and condoned the widespread abuse of power and corruption under the long rule of Tun Abdul Taib Mahmud, the people of Sarawak looked for an alternative. Even though Ho Leng had just lost in the 2001 Sarawak state general elections, he never gave up but continued to press for democracy, full accountability and transparency of the corruption and abuse of powers. Ho Leng was rewarded when he was returned in Bukit Assek in the 2006 and again in the 2011 Sarawak state general elections. He also won the Sibu Parliamentary by-election on 16 May 2010.

From his successes in 2006 onwards, Ho Leng brought forth a new generation of young exciting DAP leaders, both men and women in Sarawak, to fight the mighty machine of BN Sarawak and brought SUPP to their knees to face the harsh fact that SUPP has betrayed their founding principles and ideals by becoming part of the very corrupt political machine they had opposed. Abdul Taib Mahmud was also forced to face the political reality that it was time for him to retire as Sarawak Chief Minister.

William Shakespeare had written, “Some are born great, some achieve greatness and some have greatness thrust upon them”. For Ho Leng and Sarawak, Ho Leng first had greatness thrust upon him by circumstances and then achieved greatness for a more democratic, accountable and transparent Sarawak.

To his wife, Irene and children, DAP records our deep gratitude for Ho Leng’s selfless service for the party, people and nation. Indeed may you be comforted not by words but by the deeds of Ho Leng who brought a positive difference in the lives of those around him especially for Sarawak. Ho Leng was truly a giant-killer and a political giant for Sarawak. – June 23, 2014.

                This entry was posted on Monday, 23 June 2014, 4:30 pm and is filed under
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Is anyone running Malaysia?

COMMENTARY BY THE MALAYSIAN INSIDER

24 June 2014

Who is in charge? What is happening in Malaysia? What’s going on? How can this happen?

Any of these questions or all of the above occupies the minds of many Malaysians these days, coming to the fore with vengeance every time there is a misstep by Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak and his comrades or when the rule of law and provisions of the Federal Constitution are supplanted by racial and religious supremacists.

Increasingly, the sense is that the inmates are running the asylum.

The PM and elected representatives are too afraid to put the extremist elements in their place because their cupboards are full of skeletons or they are unsure if their religious credentials can stand up to scrutiny.

So they go with the flow directed and dictated by fringe groups and Islamic religious authorities.

The result: a heap of a mess and more questions than answers.

Questions that keep Malaysians awake deep into the night such as:

* Who is in charge?

Definitely not the man in Putrajaya.

He may live in the plush residence of the prime minister; may have a large security detail and the use of a luxurious jet to travel around the world and may even chair cabinet meetings but Najib is not leading the country.

On any issue from conversions to body snatching to the abysmal state of education in Malaysia to the flexing of power by sultans, he is a follower.

Often he takes a position after the discourse has been influenced and driven by Perkasa, Isma, bit players in Umno, Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad.

His apologists argue that Malaysians have to expect this ambivalence because the voters did not give him the strong mandate he craved and needed at GE13.

That’s a sorry excuse. Anyone who puts himself up to lead Malaysia has to lead once given the mandate, no matter the size of the mandate.

If he believes, that he can only lead with a two-thirds majority control of Parliament to function, then step aside.

But as it stands today, the consensus is that Najib has abdicated decision-making to fringe groups and those who threaten him.

As a result, on any given day, it seems that those who shout loudest are setting the agenda for Malaysia.

* What’s going on?

Inspector-General of Police Tan Sri Khalid Abu Bakar finally ordered the police to go after a Muslim convert for flouting a civil court order.

The inspector-general of police, who had earlier said police would not interfere as two court orders were in force in the interfaith custody battle, has instructed Perak police chief Acryl Sani Abdullah Sani to return Muhammad Ridzuan Abdullah’s daughter, Prasana Diksa, to kindergarten teacher M. Indira Gandhi.

Why did it take the police so long to get their act together? Perhaps, after 200 years of being the police force, they don’t know right from wrong.

That the Malaysian judiciary still has its powers and directives that must be followed.

If the police won’t take action after getting a court order, who else will respect the law? Anyone out there can just ignore the police as much as the police ignore the judiciary.

Won’t that lead to a breakdown in law and order? Or do the authorities care? Are we going by rule of law or rule by fear of religion?

As it is, anyone can threaten to slap or behead anyone else and that is not seen as an offence. Are the politicians convinced that most Malaysians are as full as hot air as they are?

There is the law. But it does not get the respect it deserves and only used when convenient.

* How can this happen?

Billions of ringgit are allocated for welfare programmes in Malaysia and there are substantial number of welfare officers and non-governmental organisations.

So how come we had to read this sad story of Muhammad Firdaus Dullah who was found covered in his own faeces and so malnourished that he could not stand up or even sit down.

The 15-year-old would have died had he not been discovered by chance by Immigration officers conducting checks to nab illegal immigrants in Seremban on June 21.

Yes, the boy’s mother has to bear a chunk of responsibility for leaving him in that sorry state. She has been arrested and could face up to 10 years in jail or be fined RM20,000.

But there are other questions that are troubling.

Why didn’t she reach out to welfare organisations or NGOs? Did she seek help and was turned away? Are there other children out there suffering from malnourishment in the land of plenty?

Did the neighbours know about his condition but choose to look the other way?

This sad, sad story is an indictment of the abject state of the Malaysian system. – June 24, 2014.

                This entry was posted on Tuesday, 24 June 2014, 2:46 pm and is filed under
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Australia Warns of Islamic Militant Migration

By Rob Taylor

The Wall Street Journal

June 24, 2014

Australia Increases Counterterrorism Strategies to Combat Threat

CANBERRA — Australia has warned of a “disturbingly large” migration of Islamic militants from at home and elsewhere joining the conflict in Iraq, and said it was trying to increase regional counterterrorism cooperation to guard against any future threat they might pose.

Australia’s foreign minister, Julie Bishop, hinted at intelligence pointing to militants on the move internationally toward the Middle East to join the ranks of Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham rebels, who have seized control of large swaths of northern Iraq. Prime Minister Tony Abbott is promising tougher security laws giving Australian spy agencies more power to intercept communications to counter a growing threat of homegrown jihadists returning from conflicts in Iraq and Syria and using their skills to launch violent attacks.

Ms. Bishop said some of the militants were from Australia and neighboring countries, heightening concerns among security officials about a repeat of militant attacks launched more than a decade ago by al Qaeda and allies, including the Jemaah Islamiah group responsible for bombings in 2002 and 2005 on the Indonesian tourist island of Bali.

“We are working closely with a number of other nations to counter the threat of people returning who have been radicalized and who have trained as terrorists,” Ms. Bishop said told Australia’s parliament. “We are seeking to expand our counterterrorism cooperation with countries in our own region, including in Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines.”

Security analyst Sidney Jones, who directs the Jakarta-based Institute for Policy Analysis of Conflict, earlier this month warned that scores of Indonesian jihadists had been drawn by the success of ISIS and were considering travel to the Middle East. Around 50 Indonesians were thought to have already traveled to Syria, Indonesian counterterrorism officials were afterward reported as telling the Jakarta Post newspaper, although it was unclear if they had now moved into Iraq to join the ISIS offensive there.

Mr. Abbott earlier Tuesday said his government was considering all possible measures to tackle a growing threat posed by Australians thought to have left the country to fight or train with militant Islamic factions in Syria and Iraq, some of them thought to be in more senior positions. Australia has never seen a terrorist attack on home soil, but it has emerged as one of the biggest per capita source nations of extremists in the current conflict.

“This is not about religion. It’s about extremism, illegality and violence,” Mr. Abbott told government lawmakers. While the U.S. considers whether to launch military attacks in an effort to counter ISIS’s momentum, Mr. Abbott said there would be no repeat of a large scale ground action by Western nations of the kind that occurred against al Qaeda in Afghanistan and in which Australian troops took part.

Ms. Bishop said around 100 Australians were thought to be fighting in Syria and Iraq. Among new security measures under consideration to counter any future threat, Canberra was likely to mirror measures taken in Britain to tackle the threat of returning militants—including stripping dual citizens of their Australian passports, while also handing greater powers to the country’s domestic spy agency to intercept computer traffic among suspected extremists and their associates.

The Australian newspaper last week reported that one Australian militant who fled the country for Iraq, Khaled Sharrouf, had taken part in the executions of Iraqi soldiers carried out by ISIS on the battlefield. Another with a record of militancy in Australia had also been killed fighting with ISIS, local newspapers said, although Australian foreign ministry officials wouldn’t confirm the death.

“We will not let our country down in rising to this latest national security challenge,” Mr. Abbott said.

Canberra was trying to step up counterterrorism cooperation with Indonesia established after the first Bali bombing in 2002 and which in the past has included Australian training for elite Indonesian antiterrorist police, Ms. Bishop said. Other would-be militants were also coming from Britain, Europe and the U.S., underscoring the need for international action.

“Recalling that a number of the convicted Bali bombers trained with al Qaeda, we are building on the strong counterterrorism relationship that was forged with Indonesia in the aftermath of the Bali bombings, including intelligence sharing, border and transport security, and law enforcement,” Ms. Bishop said.

The Australian Privacy Foundation, a civil liberties group, said new curbs on computer communications networks that could include, in extreme cases, the shutting down of an entire network by the country’s domestic spy agency risked a public backlash at a time when the Conservative government is already struggling in popularity surveys.

But Mr. Abbott said while the government respected individual privacies, security necessity outweighed worries about legislative plans to store the Internet and phone data of Australians for two years to aid spy agencies—concerns about which have mounted since revelations by U.S. security whistleblower Edward Snowden last year of Internet data snooping by major Western intelligence agencies.

“It’s important to ensure that our police and our security services have the means at their disposal to ensure that our community is safe,” Mr. Abbott said.

                This entry was posted on Wednesday, 25 June 2014, 10:43 pm and is filed under
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‘Cabinet expansion’ confirms Najib’s inability to revamp Umno line-up

– Liew Chin Tong

The Malaysian Insider

25 June 2014

Today’s Cabinet reshuffle should more aptly be described as a “Cabinet expansion”.

No deadwood was dropped from the Cabinet and more importantly, Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak failed to present a new slate of Umno ministers.

Since the end of 2013, numerous versions of the speculated Cabinet reshuffle have been circulated after all major Barisan Nasional component parties concluded their respective party elections.

Most Malaysians who want to see the country moving forward were anticipating the following:

1. Would the conservative Deputy Prime Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin call it quits to allow Najib to move Umno to a centrist position?

2. Would there be a full-time Finance Minister to handle the mounting challenges on the economic front?

3. As the Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 incident has shown the world that Malaysia needs a new foreign minister, would there be a replacement for Datuk Seri Anifah Aman?

4. Would Datuk Seri Jamil Khir be dropped for causing distress to the prime minister’s supposed centrist agenda?

5. Would the popular Khairy Jamaluddin be promoted further?

6. Would the incompetent Tengku Adnan and the scandal-implicated Hassan Malik be shown the exit?

Instead, Najib failed to move Umno even an inch.

The much anticipated reshuffle instead became a minor expansion of the Cabinet and the Prime Minister’s Department.

Before GE13, the Najib cabinet had 29 ministers – there were 32 after the election and 35 now.

Before GE13, the Prime Minister’s Department had five ministers (excluding the premier and his deputy); there were eight after the election and now 10.

What had earlier required 5 ministers, is now handled by 10.

All this just shows that Najib could not rein in his own party and the nation is still stuck in the mud. – June 25, 2014.

 * Liew Chin Tong is DAP National Political Education Director and MP for Kluang.

                This entry was posted on Wednesday, 25 June 2014, 11:27 pm and is filed under
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