DAP remains committed to be an inclusive party embracing the rights and interests of all races and religions in Malaysia, and not just for any one race or religion

The PAS President, Datuk Seri  Abdul Hadi Awang let off a time bomb in Harakah yesterday, and  the reverberations are still going off all over the country, creating shock, anguish and dismay not only among DAP and PKR leaders and members, and the majority of Malaysians who have placed their trust and hope in Pakatan  Rakyat, but also among PAS leaders and members as well.

For the past 45 years, the spectre of May 13 had been the favourite weapon of  unscrupulous UMNO leaders to intimidate voters from freely and democratically exercising their constitutional right to vote, but I had never expected that a day would when it would also be invoked by an Opposition leader in a manner which UMNO leaders had never done before – as UMNO leaders have yet to threaten the spectre of May 13 if local elections are restored, but which they will now do readily with the precedent set by Hadi.

It is not only wrong to equate the restoration of the third vote, which the people in the country had enjoyed in the fifties and early sixties, Hadi also made a grievous mistake in giving a racial twist by suggesting that the restoration of local government elections is a grab for political power by the Chinese in the urban areas.

This is totally ignoring the process of Malay urbanisation in the past five decades, as out of 49 local government authorities in the urban areas (comprising three city halls of Kuala Lumpur, Kota Kinabalu and Kuching Utara, nine city councils and 37 municipals councils), 39 have Malay majorities of over 50% of the population, three have Chinese majorities, with seven have a  plurality of races with four with Chinese dominant and three with Malays dominant.

Kuala Lumpur City Hall
 has a plurality of races, with the Malay population (45.9%) outnumbering the Chinese population (43.2%), the rest being Indians 10.3% and Others 0.6%.

The other two plural  local government authorities with a dominant Malay population are:
 Kluang
– Malays (47.1%), Chinese (42.6%), Indians (9.9%), Others (0.5%) and
Petaling Jaya
: Malays (46.2%), Chinese (39.6%), Indians (13.3%), Others (0.9%).

The four plural local government authorities with a dominant Chinese population are:

Johor Bahru Tengah
: Malays (38.8%), Chinese (47.2%), Indians (13.4%), Others (0.6%)

Ipoh:
 Malays (39.8%), Chinese (45.5%), Indians (14.5%) Others (0.2%).

Subang Jaya
: Malays (42.3%), Chinese (44.7%), Indians(12.4%), Others ().6%).

Teluk Intan:
 Malays (38.8%), Chinese (39%), Indians (22%), Others (0.2%)

The three local government authorities with Chinese majorities are
Sibu
 (Chinese 63.4%),
Pulau Pinang
 (Chinese 56.4%) and
Kuching  Selatan
 (62.5%).

All the other 39 local government authorities, including the  two City Halls of Kota Kinabalu (Malays 70.4%) and Kuching Utara (Malays 84.8%) and six out of nine City Councils of Johor Bahru (Malays 54.1%), Alor Setar (Malays 76.9%), Melaka (Malays 60.6%), Shah Alam (Malays 71.1%), Kuala Terengganu (Malays 96.2%)  and 31 out of 37 Municipal Councils including Batu Pahat (Malays 53.4%), Pasir Gudang (Malays 91.4%),  Muar (Malays 54%), Sungai Petani (Malays 66.2%), Kulim (Malays 63.6%) Kota Bharu (Malays 93.1%), Seremban (Malays 50.9%), Kuantan (Malays 78.5%), Temerloh (Malays 75.7%), Taiping (Malays 53.4%), Kangar (Malays 88.4%), Klang (Malays 50.7%), Dungun (Malays 97.3%) and Kemaman (Malays 95.2%) have Malay majorities.

All the local government authorities in all the state capitals have Malay majorities.

A restoration of the third vote for elected local government will be a restoration of the democratic right of Malaysians, particularly Malays as well as the Chinese, Indians, Kadazans and Ibans to participate and determine their local government decision-making process.

These statistics are from the 2010 census data. Five years have passed, and with the higher rate of increase of the Malay population and the continued Malay urbanisation process, there would have been further changes in these population figures in the various local government authorities in favour of an increase in the Malay ratio as compared to non-Malay ratio.

Teluk Intan, which had 38.8% Malays, 39% Chinese, 22% Indians and 0.2% Others in 2010 would have by now become a local government authority with a plurality with Malays instead of the Chinese as the dominant racial group.

Why should  this been turned into a racial issue?

It is difficult to understand what Hadi meant when he said that DAP’s insistence on holding local council elections could cause a deeper racial divide as well as tensions, especially in the Chinese majority areas – when according to the 2010 census, there are only three local authorities which were Chinese-majority, namely Sibu, Pulau Pinang  and Kuching Selatan!

However, it is important for DAP at all levels of leadership to reaffirm that the DAP remains committed to be an inclusive party embracing the rights and interests of all races and religions in Malaysia, and not just for any one race or religion.

Since the formation of DAP 49 years ago, we have championed the rights and interests of all Malaysians, regardless of race, religion or region and we will continue in our cause for a multi-racial, multi-religious and multi-cultural nation.

The DAP is not a  party for the Chinese or Indians but for all Malaysians – whether Malays, Chinese, Indians, Kadazans or Ibans.

Fifty years ago, local government elections were suspended on the ground  of the threats of Indonesian Confrontation, leading to the denial of the rights of Malaysians to the third vote in the past five decades.

Even the Athi Nahappan Royal Commission of Inquiry set up to make recommendations on the future of local government recommended the restoration of local council elections.

The time has come for the restoration of  the democratic rights of Malaysians to the third vote, which had been recognized in the fifties and early sixties, so that Malaysia can be in the mainstream of world democratic development instead of continuing to lag behind the world-wide democratization process.

The issue of the restoration of the third vote must be seen from the aspects of democracy, accountability and good governance and not through any tinted spectacles of race.

(Speech at the DAP Kedah/Perlis Political Retreat held in Bukit Mertajam on Sunday, January 25, 2015 at 5pm)

                This entry was posted on Monday, 26 January 2015, 12:15 pm and is filed under
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Get real PAS, differences within PR not minor

– T K Chua

The Malaysian Insider

26 January 2015

PAS vice-president Datuk Tuan Ibrahim Tuan Man said it correctly that people were getting fed up with the bickering within Pakatan Rakyat.

I think “fed up” is too mild a word. I think most Malaysians are completely pissed off.  Many are in fact wondering whether PR is still a viable alternative to Barisan Nasional.

Worse still, I think Tuan Ibrahim has completely misdiagnosed the real problems in PR.

What happened within PR is not about minor differences. What happened in PR is about major and substantive differences which all parties must come to an agreement before proceeding further.

If these differences are not resolved, it is better for each to go its separate way.

I have a simple hypothesis: If PR components parties cannot get along before attaining federal power, the disagreement will only become more acute and protracted once they are in power.

This is when each party within the coalition will flex its muscle to further its own political ideology to the detriment of PR’s common policies.

What lies within PR are differences over worldview, work culture, the role of religion, secularism, democracy, and theocracy.  These differences are not minor or superficial.  They cannot be resolved by their common desire to get rid of BN.

These differences can only be settled through changes in worldview, value, and political ideology.

Right now, each party within PR is enticing supporters based on its own party policies and platform.

Hence, DAP has its “democratic secularism” while PAS probably has its “theocracy governed by divine guidance”.

PKR is probably somewhere in between depending on expediency and circumstances. How then could the common policies of PR work?

For how long could PAS keep its theocracy ambitions in the backburner?

For how long could DAP tolerate continued encroachment into democratic socialism and secularism?

And for how long could PKR play its middleman role pretending everything is fine?

No, PR, you can’t have the cake and eat it too.

It is about time this nation decides who and what we want to be. This decision should be based on pragmatism and on empirical evidences of success stories around the world and not based on narrow ideology and fictional worldviews which are dogmatic, archaic and impractical.

Education, knowledge and science must make a difference to life. Tuan Ibrahim, please make use of all these.  If you want to make a political statement based on your conscience, please be bold and direct.  There is no half measure. – January 26, 2015.

                This entry was posted on Monday, 26 January 2015, 5:00 pm and is filed under
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Greece shows what can happen when the young revolt against corrupt elites

Paul Mason

The Guardian

25 January 2015

The rise of Syriza can’t just be explained by the crisis in the eurozone: a youthful generation of professionals has had enough of tax-evading oligarchs

At Syriza’s HQ, the cigarette smoke in the cafe swirls into shapes. If those could reflect the images in the minds of the men hunched over their black coffees, they would probably be the faces of Che Guevara, or Aris Velouchiotis, the second world war Greek resistance fighter. These are veteran leftists who expected to end their days as professors of such esoteric subjects as development economics, human rights law and who killed who in the civil war. Instead, they are on the brink of power.

Black coffee and hard pretzels are all the cafe provides, together with the possibility of contracting lung cancer. But on the eve of the vote, I found its occupants confident, if bemused.

However, Syriza HQ is not the place to learn about radicalisation. The fact that a party with a “central committee” even got close to power has nothing to do with a sudden swing to Marxism in the Greek psyche. It is, instead, testimony to three things: the strategic crisis of the eurozone, the determination of the Greek elite to cling to systemic corruption, and a new way of thinking among the young.

Of these, the eurozone’s crisis is easiest to understand – because its consequences can be read so easily in the macroeconomic figures. The IMF predicted Greece would grow as the result of its aid package in 2010. Instead, the economy has shrunk by 25%. Wages are down by the same amount. Youth unemployment stands at 60% – and that is among those who are still in the country.

So the economic collapse – about which all Greeks, both right and leftwing, are bitter – is not just seen as a material collapse. It demonstrated complete myopia among the European policy elite. In all of drama and comedy there is no figure more laughable as a rich man who does not know what he is doing. For the past four years the troika – the European Commission, IMF and European Central Bank – has provided Greeks with just such a spectacle.

As for the Greek oligarchs, their misrule long predates the crisis. These are not only the famous shipping magnates, whose industry pays no tax, but the bosses of energy and construction groups and football clubs. As one eminent Greek economist told me last week: “These guys have avoided paying tax through the Metaxas dictatorship, the Nazi occupation, a civil war and a military junta.” They had no intention of paying taxes as the troika began demanding Greece balance the books after 2010, which is why the burden fell on those Greeks trapped in the PAYE system – a workforce of 3.5 million that fell during the crisis to just 2.5 million.

The oligarchs allowed the Greek state to become a battleground of conflicting interests. As Yiannis Palaiologos, a Greek journalist, put it in his recent book on the crisis, there is “a pervasive irresponsibility, a sense that no one is in charge, no one is willing or able to act as a custodian of the common good”.

But their most corrosive impact is on the layers of society beneath them. “There goes X,” Greeks say to each other as the rich walk to their tables in trendy bars. “He is controlling Y in parliament and having an affair with Z.” It’s like a soap opera, but for real, and too many Greeks are deferentially mesmerised by it.

Over three general elections Syriza’s achievement has been to politicise the issue of the oligarchy. The Greek word for them is “the entangled” – and they were, above all, entangled in the centrist political duopoly. Because Syriza owes them nothing, its leader, Alexis Tsipras, was able to give the issue of corruption and tax evasion both rhetorical barrels – and this resonated massively among the young.

And here’s why. In a functional market economy, the classic couple in a posh restaurant are young and close in age. In my travels through the eurocrisis – from Dublin to Athens – I have noticed that the classic couple in a dysfunctional economy is a grey-haired man with a twentysomething woman. It becomes a story of old men with oligarchic power flaunting their wealth and influence without opprobrium.

The youth are usurped when oligarchy, corruption and elite politics stifle meritocracy. The sudden emergence of small centrist parties led by charismatic young professionals in Greece is testimony that this generation has had enough. But by the time they got their act together, Tsipras was already there.

From outside, Greece looks like a giant negative: but what lies beneath the rise of the radical left is the emergence of positive new values – among a layer of young people much wider than Syriza’s natural support base. These are the classic values of the networked generation: self-reliance, creativity, the willingness to treat life as a social experiment, a global outlook.

When Golden Dawn emerged as a frightening, violent neo-Nazi force, with – at one point – 14% support, what struck the networked youth was how many of the political elite pandered to it. People who had read its history could see a replay of late Weimar flickering before their eyes: delusional Nazis feted by big businessmen craving for order.

I’ve reported the Greek crisis since it began, and what changed in 2015 was this: Syriza had already won the solid support of about 25% of voters on the issues of Europe and economics. But now a further portion of the Greek electorate, above all the young, are signalling they’ve had enough of corruption and elites.

Greece, though an outlier, has always been a signifier, too: this is what happens when modern capitalism fails. For there are inept bureaucrats and corrupt elites everywhere: only the trillions of dollars created and pumped into their nations’ economies to avoid collapse shields them from the scrutiny they have received in Greece.

We face two years of electoral uncertainty in Europe, with the far left or the hard right now vying for power in Spain, France and the Netherlands. Some are proclaiming this “the end of neoliberalism”.

I’m not sure of that. All that’s certain is that Greece shows how it could end.

                This entry was posted on Monday, 26 January 2015, 5:35 pm and is filed under
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Hadi, ketahuilah, 13 Mei mustahil berulang

– Haris Zuan

The Malaysian Insider

26 January 2015

Peristiwa 13 Mei ialah isu eksklusif Umno-Barisan Nasional (BN) dan orang lain yang mahu menyebut, dan apatah lagi membincangkannya, boleh didakwa di bawah Akta Hasutan.

Hanya Umno bebas menggunakan isu 13 Mei (versi mereka sudah tentu) untuk membodoh dan menakut-nakutkan bangsa Malaysia, khasnya orang Melayu dan Cina.

Namun, kali ini, Presiden PAS, Datuk Seri Abdul Hadi Awang, mengeluarkan ancaman yang biasanya hanya dilaungkan oleh Umno – 13 Mei akan berulang jika pilihan raya kerajaan tempatan diadakan semula – dan kali ini Umno tidak pula marah dengan kenyataan Hadi Awang ini.

Kisah ini awalnya mudah sahaja. PAS membangkitkan isu pilihan raya kerajaan tempatan kerana mahu menyanggah dakwaan bukan hudud sahaja yang tidak diputuskan secara bersama di peringkat Pakatan Rakyat, pilihan raya kerajaan tempatan juga – yang diperjuangkan oleh Pulau Pinang dan Selangor.

Maka, dengan menggunakan logik ini, pada PAS, menjadi hak Kelantan untuk melaksanakan hudud di negeri tersebut secara bersendirian (atau dengan kerjasama Umno – parti pemerintah yang hanya menunjukkan minat terhadap Hudud setiap kali terdesak kehilangan kuasa).

Kemudian PAS nampak agak anti-demokrasi apabila dilihat tidak pro kepada pilihan raya kerajaan tempatan yang merupakan hak undi ketiga rakyat selepas Parlimen dan Dewan Undangan Negeri yang dinafikan oleh Umno-BN sejak tahun 1960-an.

Maka, Hadi Awang yang mahu menyerlahkan kewibawaan dan kebijaksanaannya, mengeluarkan hujah yang sangat menggemparkan, kononnya, PAS tidak menyokong pilihanraya kerajaan tempatan atas dasar tanggungjawab dan kemaslahan yang lebih besar – mengelakkan berlakunya rusuhan kaum 13 Mei.

Tulisan ini tidak berminat untuk membincangkan sama ada wajar, atau tidak untuk Hadi Awang membandingkan hudud dengan pilihan raya kerajaan tempatan.

Namun, tulisan ini hanya mahu menyemak kenyataan Hadi Awang berkenaan tragedi 13 Mei. Hakikatnya, sejak tahun 1969, situasi sosio-ekonomi Malaysia dan politik dunia jauh berubah yang tidak memungkinkan tragedi hitam 13 Mei berulang dengan sebegitu mudah.

Perubahan ekonomi

Pertamanya, 13 Mei dikatakan berpunca daripada ketidakseimbangan ekonomi. Pada dasarnya masyarakat Malaysia pada tahun 1960-an masih merupakan masyarakat pertanian dengan lebih separuh penduduk terlibat dalam sektor pertanian (kebanyakannya orang Melayu).

Bagaimanapun, sektor perindustrian mula berkembang mulai tahun 1970, sungguhpun dari segi keseluruhannya masih kecil untuk menampung keperluan pekerjaan dan pembangunan sebuah negara baru.

Setelah perlaksanaan dasar perindustrian berorientasikan eksport dan Dasar Ekonomi Baru (DEB), sumbangan sektor pembuatan dan pembinaan berkembang dengan ketara. Seiring dengan perindustrian, sektor perkhidmatan juga turut berkembang – sumbangan sektor ini terhadap pekerjaan berkembang daripada kurang 30% pada tahun 1970 kepada lebih 50% pada tahun 2000.

Perindustrian dan urbanisasi

Apabila tumpuan ekonomi beralih kepada industri, bandar-bandar baru mula dibuka, khusus untuk menampung kilang-kilang baru.

Urbanisasi ini juga selari dengan penghijrahan ramai penduduk desa, khasnya anak muda Melayu, ke bandar-bandar perindustrian baru seperti Pasir Gudang, Seberang Prai dan Shah Alam.

Daripada sekitar 10 juta penduduk Malaysia pada tahun 1970, kurang 30% tinggal di bandar manakala selebihnya tinggal di kampung-kampung. Manakala pada 2010, lebih 70% penduduk Malaysia merupakan warga kota.

Di samping hasil migrasi penduduk kampung ke bandar-bandar, lonjakan urbanisasi negara ini juga kerana pendefinisian semula konsep bandar dalam Banci Penduduk 1991.

Semua proses ini, perindustrian dan pembandaran menyumbang kepada pembentukan dan perkembangan kelas-kelas sosial moden, khususnya kelas menengah dan kelas pekerja.

Malah, semakan terhadap komposisi etnik bagi Wilayah Kuala Lumpur pada tahun 2010 menunjukkan bilangan orang Melayu mengatasi lain-lain etnik.

Namun, masih ramai orang Melayu yang tinggal di bandar-bandar besar masih menjadi pengundi berdaftar di kampung halaman mereka.

Maka sebab itulah, setiap kali pilihan raya, semua parti politik merayu untuk para pengundinya pulang mengundi. Jika pilihan raya tempatan diadakan, hal ini tidak seharusnya berlaku kerana penduduk sesuatu perbandaran sewajarnya mengundi di tempat mereka menetap.

Hasil perlaksanaan dasar afirmatif ini, masyarakat kelas menengah Malaysia (dan khasnya kelas menengah Melayu) menjadi jauh lebih besar berbanding sebelumnya.

Semasa zaman kolonial, Malaysia (ketika itu Malaya) memperlihatkan pembahagian kelas yang hampir sama dengan jalur kaum ketika itu.

Ketika baru merdeka, aristokrat Melayu mengambil alih kuasa pemerintahan daripada British, sementara kuasa ekonomi tempatan dikuasai oleh etnik Cina, dan etnik India mendominasi kerja-kerja buruh, pengkeranian dan perladangan getah.

Sejumlah besar etnik Melayu menjadi petani. Penguasaan ekonomi utama dan perhubungan global sudah tentu di tangan orang Eropah.

DEB bersama beberapa perkembangan ekonomi serantau dilihat berhasil bukan sahaja mengubah struktur ekonomi malah melunturkan jalur identifikasi ekonomi berasaskan kaum ini.

Kini, di bandar-bandar besar, jumlah orang Melayu semakin besar dan saiz kelas menengah Melayu juga secara relatifnya membesar.

Meskipun jurang ekonomi inter-etnik pada satu tahap, berjaya dirapatkan sedikit, malangnya jurang intra-etnik pula semakin melebar, malah lebih menakutkan lagi.

Ertinya, hubungan kaya-miskin tidak lagi mengikut garis etnik (contohnya, Melayu-Cina) tetapi juga antara sesama etnik (contohnya, Melayu-Melayu dan Cina-Cina).

Situasi ini merupakan cabaran semasa masyarakat Malaysia kini, namun perkembangan ini berbeza dengan tahun 1960-an dan 1970-an dan harus dibincangkan secara berasingan.

Geopolitik serantau

Pada masa yang sama, situasi politik serantau yang melatari tragedi 13 Mei juga tidak lagi wujud pada masa kini. Ketika itu, ancaman komunisme dalam negara masih nyata dan perang Vietnam sedang rancak serta dunia berada dalam situasi perang dingin antara dua blok ideologi ekonomi.

Elemen komunis ini dikatakan berlaku di peringkat politik kerajaan tempatan apabila banyak kerajaan tempatan dikuasai oleh parti yang cenderung kiri.

Infiltrasi komunis juga didakwa antara yang membawa kepada tragedi 13 Mei. Namun kini, semenjak termaterainya Rundingan Damai Haadyai pada tahun 1989, komunis bukan lagi ancaman dalam negara.

Awal daripada itu, Perang Vietnam tamat pada tahun 1975 dan komunisme runtuh bersama Tembok Berlin.

Teknologi maklumat dan generasi baru

Sejak akhir tahun 1990-an pula, berlaku satu lagi perkembangan yang tidak mungkin difikirkan terjadi semasa tahun 1969 – pendemokrasian maklumat.

Berbeza dengan tahun 1969, kegelisahan dan kegusaran awam umumnya diolah melalui media massa yang dikawal pemerintah. Pada waktu ini, Utusan Malaysia dimiliki sepenuhnya oleh Umno yang membelinya pada tahun 1961, dan ruang perbezaan pandangan sangat terhad.

Namun, dengan adanya kecanggihan teknologi maklumat kini, sebarang kejadian yang berlaku dapat diketahui dengan pantas dan hampir serta-merta. Pada masa yang sama secara umumnya, masyarakat Malaysia lebih kritikal terhadap media massa arus perdana dan mula menyemak setiap fakta yang mereka perolehi.

Pada masa yang sama, generasi yang akrab dengan media sosial ini juga merupakan golongan anak muda yang secara konservatifnya ditakrifkan sebagai mereka yang berusia bawah 40 tahun – ertinya mereka ini lahir selepas tahun 1969.

Mereka tidak mempunyai hubungan memori dan emosi dengan peristiwa 13 Mei. Malah, generasi muda kini mula mempersoalkan kisah sebenar 13 Mei yang selalu dimomokkan Umno-BN.

Hingga filem berkenaan Tun Razak yang sebahagian latarnya adalah tragedi 13 Mei dikiritik dan dipandang sinis. Mudahnya, propaganda 13 Mei tidak laku kepada generasi muda.

Mana buktinya?

Setakat ini, mungkin kalangan penyokong tegar Hadi Awang akan berkata, perbincangan di atas hanya membentangkan perubahan yang berlaku sepanjang 40 tahun terakhir sejarah negara.

Namun, bagaimanakah perubahan ini boleh menjamin tragedi 13 Mei tidak akan berlaku lagi?

Perubahan demografi Malaysia bukan sahaja menyebabkan komposisi etnik di bandar-bandar utama negara berubah, malah lebih penting lagi perubahan ini datang bersama perubahan cara fikir serta harapan sosial dan politik.

Sikap ini ditunjukkan dengan jelas dalam dua pilihan raya umum terakhir yang memperlihatkan ada kesediaan masyarakat Malaysia untuk mengundi merentasi garis etnik.

Sedar mahu pun tidak, prestasi Umno-BN dalam PRU13 lalu merupakan prestasi terburuk dalam sejarah, malah lebih buruk berbanding tahun 1969 – yang menyebabkan tragedi 13 Mei tersebut.

Namun, adakah rakyat Malaysia resah dan marah? Tidak, malah kita semua merayakannya walaupun sedikit hampa kerana Pakatan Rakyat (PR) gagal menawan Putrajaya. Tiada aeorang pun yang membangkitkan 13 Mei.

Selain itu sejak kekalahan teruk Umno-BN dalam PRU12 dan PRU13, terlalu banyak anasir etno-nasionalis sempit cuba mengapi-apikan hubungan etnik di negara ini.

Provokasi demi provokasi – kepala lembu, kepala babi, bakar gereja, masjid, anjing – digunakan untuk menimbulkan keresahan masyarakat.

Meskipun benar pada satu tahap, isu-isu ini meresahkan dan kadang-kala membingungkan, namun kenyataannya, tidak pernah mampu untuk mencetuskan panik besar-besaran.

Datuk Ibrahim Ali beberapa kali cuba menggerakkan demonstrasi besar-besaran tetapi gagal.

Malah, kerana Perkasa dilihat terlalu gasar, nampaknya strategi terbaru kini terpaksa menggunakan hujah pseudo-akademik oleh kumpulan seperti Isma untuk memancing sentimen etno-nasionalisme.

Jelas, 13 Mei hanya hujah lapuk yang digunakan Umno-BN dan kuncu-koncunya yang tidak lagi mampu mengejar masyarakat Malaysia yang sedang berlari pantas menuju perubahan.

Maka apabila Hadi Awang membangkitkan 13 Mei, apakah beliau juga sudah lelah mahu ikut berlari ke arah perubahan?

                This entry was posted on Monday, 26 January 2015, 8:03 pm and is filed under
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Is Davos just an excuse for the 1% to have a bonding session?

Larry Elliott

The Guardian

23 January 2015

Thomas Piketty wasn’t there but they were talking about his ideas: they’re committed to progress as long as nothing changes

Committed to improving the state of the world. That’s the motto of the World Economic Forum, which wraps up in Davos tomorrow with the rich and powerful pondering whether to listen to Mark Carney’s views about the global economy or head for the ski slopes.

Many will opt for the latter, not because they have anything against the governor of the Bank of England. On the contrary, the former Goldman Sachs banker picked by George Osborne to run Threadneedle Street is very much part of the Davos family. It is simply that one of the reasons the WEF is held in Davos and not in Atlantic City or Blackpool is that it has plenty of black runs available for those who, after four days, have had enough of hearing Christine Lagarde warn about the risks of rising inequality.

All of which raises a couple of obvious questions: is Davos simply an excuse for the 1% to have a big bonding session in which they convince themselves that we are all in it together? And does it actually do any good?

Yes, it does, says to John Cridland, director general of the CBI, who reckons business leaders have taken on board the criticism of capitalism made by French economist Thomas Piketty. “I sometimes think there is a perception that the people in the world business community come to Davos and talk about world business in a self-indulgent way. But most of the conversations between chief executives here are about Piketty-type issues. They talk about things they wouldn’t be talking about back in the boardroom.”

Brendan Cox, director of policy and advocacy at Save the Children, has a slightly different take: “My main impression is of rich people using Davos to devise plans to get even richer. But there are two positives: the gathering of so many rich in one place provides an opportunity to highlight and interrogate their role in inequality, poverty, climate change, and so on. Given how unaccountable so many of them are, that is a good thing.

“Secondly, though getting richer is the main business, there are also people who use [Davos] for serious discussions about how they can play a role in building a fairer, more sustainable world.”

There was a time when Cox would not have been allowed inside the ugly concrete bunker that houses the WEF. Over the years, though, Davos has embraced civil society, NGOs and the more mainstream critics of global capitalism. Winnie Byanyima, executive director of Oxfam International, was one of the co-chairs of this year’s meeting.

This reflects a conscious decision on the part of Klaus Schwab, the man who founded Davos in the early 1970s. Despite having the appearance of a Bond villain, Schwab is by nature a social democrat and has done his best to nudge the WEF in a more progressive direction. The financial crisis of 2008-09 helped by generating a more contemplative mood among those who had previously considered themselves masters of the universe.

That said, there are limits to what Schwab can do. Davos is not a decision-making forum, it is a gab fest. A gab fest for some of the richest and cleverest people in the world, but still a gab fest.

And the quality of the gab depends on those who show up. Piketty was not in attendance this year, which was like putting on Hamlet without the prince. Everybody would have liked to hear from Mario Draghi, but the president of the European Central Bank was busy in Frankfurt trying to save the eurozone from deflation. Vladimir Putin was another notable non-attender.

Another problem, identified by Lord Turner, the former head of the UK’s Financial Services Authority, is that Davos has a settled world view that changes at a glacial pace, if at all. There was nobody at this year’s WEF, for example, arguing that Europe would be better off without the euro. Nobody gives it to the status quo with both barrels. Al Gore on climate change was as radical as it got.

This groupthink is potentially dangerous but perhaps inevitable. For Davos man and woman, life is pretty sweet. Which is why there are some who say the true motto of the WEF should be: committed to improving the state of the world provided nothing much changes.

                This entry was posted on Monday, 26 January 2015, 5:59 am and is filed under
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Sorry, Mr PAS President, I beg to differ

By Mohamed Hanipa Maidin

Malaysiakini

Jan 25, 2015

MP SPEAKS
 Is it true that local government elections would lead to instability or May 13? I seriously doubt such a weird proposition, regardless whoever made that statement.

After all, local government’s elections were in this country before BN government unjustifiably abolished them.

In fact, those elections predated May 13. Thus relying on such an unfortunate event to flatly reject the revival of such elections is indeed mind boggling to say the least.

Globally speaking, local government’s election is a universal phenomenon especially in developed countries including Muslim countries.

In fact in the United States where federalism is widely practised almost all of public offices’ appointments are made via election. Thus we see the district attorney and the states’ judges in America have been electorally appointed until now.

In the Muslim world local government’s elections are not alien ideas. Two former Iranian and Turkish prime ministers namely Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Recep Tayyip Erdogan were the byproducts of mayoral elections.

They were elected by urbanites in Tehran and Istanbul respectively.

Joko Widodo (left) was a mayor who was appointed via direct election before he assumed his premiership.

The Indonesian Parliament received fierce criticism when it voted for the abolishment of direct election of mayor and governor in 2014.

The law was backed by the coalition behind the then former presidential candidate, Probowo Subianto.

It is interesting to note that the proponents of such laws never cited the issue of instability as their justification to scrap the elections.

On the other hand the issue of hefty costs and corruption were the main reasons of such a move.

Accountability and transparency

Islamists should not be unduly worried about the term ‘election’. After all ‘election’ is not inherently a dirty word. On the contrary local government elections imply accountability and transparency in the public office.

Those two criteria are the hallmarks of good governance. Be that as it may, local election is an efficacious mechanism to promote those ideals.

PAS’ President Abdul Hadi Awang is duly concerned that local government’s election would cause instability. In his view the local government would be inundated by Chinese councillors in certain big cities if elections are held.

It would, in his view, become the prime source of instability and ultimately lead to a bloody tragedy such as May 13. And if such a tragedy takes place in future, the real culprit would be local government’s election.

With the greatest respect the PAS president’s view is unfortunately misplaced. It presupposes that all big cities in this country are dominated by a single ethnic group, namely the Chinese.

He presumes that the Malays would not be duly represented in Chinese dominated urban population.

Using his own logic, the Chinese would be equally unproportionately represented in Malay belt states in the event local government election is duly revived.

So long Malaysians elect any Malaysians in any local government’s election we should not be unduly worry. Let such unwarranted worriesome feelings be reserved to Perkasa, Isma or Utusan.

If Chinese were not worried to elect PAS candidates in the last general election why would Malays be worried if they are represented by Chinese, Indian or Malay councillors?

What the Malaysians need to be afraid of is having inefficient, corrupt and irresponsible councillors whatever races they represent.

To be honest I really hope any PAS’ leaders would be the last person to succumb to racial lines in promoting any idea to any issue, cropping up in this country.

It is just not right and goes against the very notion of PAS for all which it seeks to promote.

After all May 13 is not PAS’ political baggage. PAS should be proud and stand tall in that when May 13 happened, Kelantan, governed by PAS at that time, was completely free from any racial insurgency.

Why would the PAS’ president, all of sudden, need to use that baggage to undermine a noble idea – the revival of local goverment elections?

May 13 would have not happened if BN graciously conceded defeat in the general election then and respected the people’s mandate of choosing other political parties than BN to govern the country.

It is submitted that the merits of local government’s election outweighs its demerits thus it should necessarily become the common policy of Pakatan.

The benefits of such an election are too many to be simply ignored.

If at all there are concerns that certain ethnics would be marginalised and not duly represented in the local government the remedy to such concerns is not by rejecting the local government’s election.

Certainly there are other effective ways of addressing such grievances such as having a quota system, if necessary, for the appointment of certain numbers of councillors.

They may be appointed by way of other mechanism. The local government’s election should not become a sacrificial lamb for any unwarranted fears of the past.

Election has been the language of democracy and good governance.

MOHAMED HANIPA MAIDIN of PAS is MP for Sepang.

                This entry was posted on Monday, 26 January 2015, 9:51 am and is filed under
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When accountability takes a backseat to race

COMMENTARY BY THE MALAYSIAN INSIDER

25 January 2015

Local government elections have suddenly become an explosive issue in Malaysia, no thanks to PAS president Datuk Seri Abdul Hadi Awang who suggested it can lead to race clashes last seen on May 13, 1969.

Umno-owned mouthpiece Utusan Malaysia has supported him, as has one federal minister who said the third vote can lead to greater racial polarisation as Malaysians voted along racial lines.

These two politicians and Utusan are probably still digesting the results of the last two general elections through their rose-tinted glasses of race and religion rather than figuring out that more Malaysians are colour-blind to race these days.

While those from Umno do see the world according to racial lines, it is sad to see that Hadi trumpet the same tune although his party puts Islam at the front and centre of its political struggle and eschews race as a platform.

Didn’t PAS talk about an Islamic welfare state in the last general elections and keeps talking about Islam – whose adherents come from all races across the world, and not just Malays?

Or was it just a ploy to get votes from all demographics and races to win federal and state seats? If race was an issue, PAS should have kept Kedah in 2013 and Terengganu in 2004. But it did not.

And that is a lesson that Hadi and politicians who think like him must learn about democracy, elections and voters.

Malaysians have become mature about their votes. The results of the past two general elections have shown that voters want good governance and their politicians accountable to them.

Former prime minister Tun Abdullah Ahmad Badawi won the largest parliamentary majority in the 2004 elections with over 91% of the federal Parliament. He also lost the biggest federal majority when his Barisan Nasional (BN) was defeated at the 2008 polls, losing their customary two-thirds parliamentary super-majority.

His successor and current prime minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak, who came on his 1Malaysia drive and poured billions of ringgit for the people, fared even worse in the 2013 general elections.

Accountability has driven more Malaysians to choose who or what party they vote for, not race or religion. But that is not a word in Hadi’s vocabulary. He rose up in PAS on the basis of attrition, not accountability.

He has lost a state, federal and state seats, and yet remains PAS president. Any party that practises democratic principles and accountability would have kicked out a loser like that.

It is also not a word in most race-based parties. Their leaders move up on the same basis and use race to justify their politics.

A third vote would allow for city mayors, council presidents and councillors to be accountable for their policies and decisions to the taxpayers, who pay the same rates despite their ethnic origins.

But in Malaysia, a third vote is just another racial issue. Because race issues are a good distraction from the real issues of governance and accountability in Malaysia. – January 25, 2015.

                This entry was posted on Monday, 26 January 2015, 5:32 am and is filed under
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Why We Know So Little About The Horror In Northeast Nigeria

The Huffington Post | By Charlotte Alfred

01/20/2015

Fighters from the extremist group Boko Haram laid waste to a cluster of towns in northeast Nigeria earlier this month, inflicting a massacre that Amnesty International said may be the bloodiest in the Islamic militants’ history.

The assault on the fishing town Baga and 16 surrounding communities in Borno state began on Jan. 3. Two weeks later, crucial details about what took place remain unclear.

Witnesses described the mass slaughter of men, women and children, and many estimated that hundreds of people had been killed. A senior official in the Borno state government told the BBC that some 2,000 people were dead. The Nigerian military has fiercely disputed this figure, saying on Monday that 150 people, including Boko Haram fighters, had been killed.

How Boko Haram was able to take control of the area is also subject to dispute.

 Civilian militia fighters told the Associated Press that the army ordered them to withdraw, leaving Baga defenseless. Soldiers at a nearby military base that was captured by Boko Haram fought back for almost nine hours, but received no reinforcements and eventually dumped their weapons and ran, eyewitnesses and a local official told The Guardian. Nigeria’s national security spokesman said Monday that military reinforcements were battling Boko Haram in the area, but one Baga resident told CNN there was no sign of the forces.

Why is it so difficult to confirm even basic facts about what happened in Baga? The BBC notes that the Nigerian government did not provide any information until several days after the massacre. When officials did confirm the attack, details were scant. The scale of the destruction has trickled out in horrifying eyewitness accounts as well as satellite images of the razed towns released by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.

Part of the confusion arises from the difficulty of getting information from isolated communities in northeast Nigeria. The sparsely populated, largely impoverished region has become even more isolated due to years of Boko Haram violence. The militants have blown up telecommunications infrastructure in the northeast, leaving patchy Internet and cell phone access. Few local or international journalists are able to travel to the areas under relentless assault from Boko Haram. Even the state governor has not been able to get to Baga since the attacks, according to The New Yorker.

“People have to physically travel out of the area in order to provide information,” Osita Benjamin Chidoka, a senior official in the Nigerian government, told The WorldPost. He said the national government had released information about the attacks as soon as it could possibly be confirmed. The vast desert terrain also affects how long it takes the military to send reinforcements, said Chidoka, adding the army was conducting the “fastest possible intervention without losing other areas under their control.”

It is also hard to assess the true scale of the killing and destruction while fighting still rages around Baga. Fleeing residents said bodies litter the area, but no one had stayed behind to count them. Local officials told CNN on Monday that it was still not safe for authorities to collect the dead for burial.

Politics may factor into the confusion. Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan, up for re-election next month, has been sharply criticized for failing to speak out about the devastation in Baga while condemning the terror attacks in Paris. Critics have long accused him of ignoring violence in the northeast, and his administration’s failure to rescue more than 200 schoolgirls kidnapped by Boko Haram last year is a particular sore spot.

“The military tries to downplay incidents they find embarrassing,” Nnamdi Obasi, senior Nigeria analyst for the International Crisis Group, told The WorldPost. The president has no interest either in discussing an insurgency that has so damaged his reputation while he is on the campaign trail, Obasi said.

Nigeria’s governance problems, including a sluggish bureaucracy and little sense of accountability to the public, may have hampered the government’s response to the attacks, Obasi said.

The government, meanwhile, accuses its critics of exaggerating the casualties from the Boko Haram insurgency and the problems with the military in order to make it look bad. “Everywhere in the world there is bipartisan consensus against terrorism, except in Nigeria where this consensus is not strong,” Chidoka said. “In an election year, people want to paint the government as incompetent.”

“Misinformation and manipulation of information cuts across both sides,” Obasi said. “People in the northeast feel shut out of power,” he said, explaining that local politicians are angling to regain influence and believe that their region has been neglected by successive leaders hailing from Nigeria’s south.

On Thursday, President Jonathan visited the Borno state capital, Maiduguri, for the first time since March 2013. Yet local distrust runs deep. Baga has been razed to the ground before, in April 2013, but the earlier destruction came at the hands of government soldiers in revenge for a Boko Haram attack on their forces, according to human rights groups and reporting at the time.

                This entry was posted on Monday, 26 January 2015, 6:33 am and is filed under
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If PAS has no confidence in  Pakatan Rakyat achieving great victories if local government elections are restored nationally, PR must return to the drawing board as this  does not  bode well for PR’s grand design to win  Putrajaya in the 14GE

I just do not know whether to laugh or to cry.

Yesterday, the Malay Mail Online carried a report entitled
“DAP seeking full ‘control’ of country through third vote, Isma claims”
, quoting the latest vitriol by the Deputy President of Islamist group Ikatan Muslimin Malaysia (Isma), Aminuddin Yahaya alleging that “the move to restore  local government elections is part of the DAP’s strategy to take over Malaysia as the opposition party already has control of nearly 60 per cent of the state seats in the country”.

He said that DAP lawmakers make up 58 per cent of the total state constituencies in Malaysia and that the figure could reach 60 per cent, with the help of urban based PKR.

This caused me to tweet: “Ignoramus. Don’t even have Std 5 maths std”.

If Aminuddin is right and talking sense, then DAP on its own will be well on the way to capturing power in Putrajaya and forming the Malaysian government. But he is of course talking nonsense.

What a pity  Isma has such a Deputy President who is so shallow in basic maths, which does not speak well for the organisation.

Out of a total of 505 State Assembly seats (excluding Sarawak) contested in the 13th General Elections on May 5, 2013, Barisan Nasional won 4,515,228 or 47.25% of the national vote, but 275 state assembly seats or 54% of the total of 505 seats; while Pakatan Rakyat won 4,879,295 votes or 51.06%  of the national vote but only 229 State Assembly seats or 45% of the total of 505 seats. One state assembly seat in Sabah was won by a non-Pakatan Rakyat opposition party.

These statistics bespeak of  the injustice, inequity and iniquity  of the electoral system, with Pakatan Rakyat winning more votes but less seats!

Such injustices were also reflected in the separate state results for the  State Assembly seats, for example in Johore, Barisan Nasional secured 53.98% of the vote but 68% of the total of 56 state assembly seats (i.e. 38 out of 56 seats when the proper  application of the  “one man, one vote, one value” principle would mean 30 BN seats and 26 PR seats in Johore).

Similarly, BN won a disproportionate number of state assembly seats in Malacca, Pahang, Perlis and Sabah compared to the percentage of votes they secured.

The Isma Deputy President must be hallucinating when he claims that the DAP won 58 per cent of the total state constituencies, when the total state assembly seats won by Pakatan Rakyat were only 229 seats or 45 per cent.

This is broken down into 85 State Assembly seats for PAS, 95 for DAP and 49 for PKR,  or 16.8% for PAS, 18.8% for DAP and 9.7% for PKR out of he total of 505 state assembly seats.

Where did the ISMA Deputy President get the fact that DAP won 58 per cent of the total state assembly constituencies in the 13GE?

I don’t know what maths Aminuddin used when he further said that with DAP allegedly making up 58 per cent of total state constituencies, the figure could reach 60 per cent with the help of the urban-based PKR, for such a calculation just  make no mathematical or even common  sense whatsoever.

DAP leaders are  very flattered that ISMA  feels that DAP alone  is capable of capturing full control of the country through the third vote, for this could only mean that the lies about DAP being “anti-Malay” and “anti-Islam” have no traction and DAP must be doing something very right to secure increasing support from the Malays and Muslims  in keeping with our commitment to be a political party for all Malaysians, regardless of race, religion or region, and not to be a party for anyone one  race or religion only.

But being “flattered” is one thing, being realistic is another.  In fact, I dare not even say that the Pakatan Rakyat with three component parties of DAP, PKR and PAS is capable of capturing full control of the country, as a precursor to  winning Putrajaya in the 14GE, if there are local government elections with the restoration of the third vote.

My hesitancy has been reinforced by the  controversial statement by the PAS President, Datuk Seri Abdul Hadi Awang about the restoration of local government elections, which could only mean that the PAS President is not optimistic about PAS electoral chances if local government elections are held throughout the country.

This is because victories in local government elections in other countries have always been a forerunner to  victories in national elections, as evidenced by the election of Joko Widodo  as Indonesian President after successful election and performance as Governor of Jakarta, and the route taken by  Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Recep Tayyip Erdogan as respective Mayors of Tehran and Istanbul to become Presidents of Iran and Turkey respectively.

This phenomenon is not confined to the Muslim world, as there are expectations that the incumbent mayors of Seoul and New Taipei, Park Won-Soon and Eric Chua  are presidential hopefuls for South Korea and Taiwan for their country’s next presidential elections.

This is a  question which had vexed me  in the past two days, as to why the PAS President Datuk Seri Abdul Hadi Awang has no confidence that PAS could do well in the local government elections if the third vote is restored.

The ethnic composition of the local government authorities have changed significantly over the decades as a result of the process of Malay urbanization.

The percentage of the Malay population in the urban areas (in Peninsular Malaysia) has increased from 21% in 1957 to 27.6% in 1970 to 37.9% in 1980 to 45.3% in 1991 and 48.3% in 2000. During the same time period, the percentage of the Chinese population in the urban areas has decreased from 62% in 1957 to 34.8% in 2000.

It has been estimated that this percentage of Malays in the urban areas in Peninsular Malaysia is now close to 60%.

Based on the 2010 Census, there are 148 local authorities in Malaysia, comprising three City Halls, nine City Councils, 37 Municipal Councils and 99 District Councils.

Out of these 148 local authorities,132 have Malay majorities of  over 50% of the population, three have Chinese majorities, with 13 having a plurality of races with seven Chinese dominant and six Malay dominant.

Three Chinese majority local authorities out of 148 is only two per cent of the local authorities, or  even taking into consideration the seven Chinese-dominant plurality local authority areas, 10 out of 143 local authorities is only  6.7%.

Where does the Chinese grabbing for political power if there is a restoration of the third vote comes from?

This is why the Deputy Prime Minister, Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin, while talking vaguely about “imbalanced” racial representation when  jumping in to support Hadi’s invocation of May 13 race riots if there is restoration of local government elections, also tried to create a red herring by asking  whether restoring the third vote would lead to tax hikes – when of course, it should not.

Muhyiddin should explain why is he talking about “imbalanced” racial representation if  there is  local council elections when 132 of the 148 local authorities have Malay majorities and six with plurality of races have dominant-Malay populations, i.e. 93.2% of the 138 out of 148 local authorities?

If Pakatan Rakyat is serious about capturing Putrajaya in the 14GE in two or three years time, PR must have supreme confidence in capturing the majority of the 148 local authorities if local elections are held with the restoration of the third vote.

Out of these 148 local authorities, 95 have Malay/bumiputra population of over 70%, including 12 in Kelantan, six in Terengganu, nine in Kedah and seven in Pahang.

If PAS has no confidence in  Pakatan Rakyat achieving great victories if local government elections are restored, PR must return to the drawing board as this  does not  bode well for PR’s grand design to win  Putrajaya in the 14GE.

                This entry was posted on Tuesday, 27 January 2015, 10:25 am and is filed under
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Kemelut dalam Pakatan boleh selesai

A Shukur Harun

The Malaysian Insider

27 January 2015

Walaupun dilihat kemelut dalam Pakatan Rakyat (PR), terutamanya antara pemimpin PAS dan DAP berterusan, tetapi ada perkembangan baru yang melegakan hati yang memungkinkan keharmonian wujud kembali dalam PR.

Dalam masa yang sama, sudah ada tanda PAS dan Persatuan Ummah Sejahtera Malaysia (PasMa), tidak lagi dilihat dalam suasana permusuhan.

Pada peringkat bawahan, yakni akar umbi, antara pendukung PasMa dan PAS kelihatan tidak ada masalah, justeru mereka dari keluarga besar yang tidak mungkin dipisahkan hanya kerana perbezaan pendapat.

Sementara itu, ada perkembangan yang menarik di peringkat akar umbi PAS dan DAP yang tercetus ketika banjir merempuh Kelantan dan negeri lain baru-baru ini.

Pemimpin utama DAP, Lim Kit Siang dan anaknya, Lim Guan Eng datang sendiri ke Kelantan memberikan bantuan kepada mangsa banjir, di mana Lim Kit Siang yang turut mengharungi banjir sudah 3 kali ke sana.

Beliau berada di Kota Baru bersama Exco Kerajaan Tempatan dan Pengurusan Trafik, Chow Kon Yeow, Exco Hal Ehwal Tanah dan Pembangunan Tanah, Penerangan dan Warisan Phee Boon Poh diiringi Pesuruhjaya PAS Pulau Pinang Haji Mohamad Sabu.

Delegasi pemimpin DAP dan kerajaan negeri Pulau Pinang itu disambut Adun Salor, Datuk Husam Musa dan Ahli Jawatankuasa PAS Pusat, Dr Dzulkifli Ahmad.

Pelbagai bantuan DAP Pulau Pinang itu diserahkan kepada pimpinan PAS dalam majlis penyerahan ringkas baru-baru ini.

Sementara itu, penyelaras bantuan banjir DAP Selangor, Eddie Ng Tien Chee pula menghantar trak UBAH ke Gua Musang berisi barangan bantuan untuk mangsa banjir di kawasan berkenaan.

Selain itu, DAP melancarkan Tabung Bencana Banjir DAP di mana semua kutipan derma untuk itu diminta dimasukkan dalam satu akaun khas iaitu ‘Tabung Dana Kecemasan’ (Ambank 8881002244649).

Ini usaha sangat murni atas dorongan rasa kemanusiaan yang melimpah dan sewajarnya boleh menjadi pemangkin meredakan ketegangan politik antara DAP dan PAS. Malah ia mampu meruntuhkan tembok perkauman setebal mana pun.

Sementara itu, satu perkembangan lain yang juga sangat menarik ialah suasana ‘Kenduri Rakyat’ atas inisiatif PAS Kuala Kedah di mana di majlis itu Presiden PAS Datuk Seri Abdul Hadi Awang sebagai tetamu khas dan duduk bersama YDP kawasan tersebut, Phahrolrazi Mohd Zawawi yang juga Presiden PasMa.  Beliau juga Adun Pengkalan Kundur.

Majlis itu yang juga dihadiri pemimpin PAS Kedah memperlihatkan keharmonian dan hubungan antara mereka, isyarat jelas tidak ada masalah untuk membina hubungan antara PAS dan PasMa.

Pada pendapat saya, PasMa bukanlah musuh PAS. Ia ditubuhkan hanya mahu memperkukuhkan Pakatan Rakyat, iaitu untuk memastikan PAS terus bersama Pakatan Rakyat dan juga memastikan keutuhannya.

Di peringkat akar umbi, nampaknya, tidak ada masalah. Pendukung PAS dan PasMa dari akar yang sama, mempunyai matlamat yang sama, maka tidak ada sebab untuk bermusuh. Mereka sama-sama makan gulai kawah, nasi dagang dan gulai asam pedas, malah boleh sama-sama bertakbir di majlis yang perlu bertakbir.

Adapun yang menjadi masalah ialah segelintir golongan fanatik, yang penuh emosi, prejudis dan fikiran tidak terbuka di dalam PAS sendiri. Golongan ini, saya kira, jumlahnya kecil saja di dalam PAS dan sudah tentu ia bukan mainstream di dalam PAS.

Golongan minoriti ini tidak dapat menerima hakikat berlainan pendapat, malah dengan mudah saja memainkan isu wala’ (kesetiaan) kepada pemimpin. Maka berbeza pendapat dianggap menentang pemimpin.

Jika menurut pemikiran waras, wala’ itu bukan saja kepada jamaah. pemimpin utama dan tertentu, tetapi juga kepada semua AJK PAS Pusat yang dipilih Muktamar Tahunan PAS.

Malang sungguh jika isu wala’ disalahgunakan, nescaya ia boleh memecahbelahkan jamaah kerana menimbulkan syak wasangka, malah fitnah. Maka itu, berhati-hatilah apabila menurunkan ‘cop mohor wala’ dan tidak wala’ itu. Jangan sewenang-wenang membubuh label ini jika mahu melihat peraduan di dalam jamaah PAS.

Berbeza pendapat sudah berlaku sejak zaman Nabi Muhammad dan tidak ada masalah, malah Nabi Muhammad menerima pendapat yang berbeza dalam beberapa peristiwa seperti yang dirakam dalam sirah Nabi. Inilah jiwa besar Baginda yang sangat perlu dicontohi.

Ketakutan golongan tertentu di dalam PAS untuk menerima perbezaan pendapat itu, walau apa hujah pun, adalah daripada watak yang lemah, kurang membaca, kurang berfikir dan kurang pemahaman terutama erti demokrasi dan pra-syarat dalam menangani politik kontemporari.

Sementara itu, sesuatu yang ‘mengerikan’ apabila ada unsur pemikiran perkauman atau assabiyah apabila tercetusnya isu Pilihan Raya Pihak Berkuasa Tempatan (PBT).

Isu Cina ramai di bandar tidak timbul kerana orang Melayu sudah ramai di bandar, berbeza dengan suasana zaman berlakunya 13 Mei 1969 dulu. Keadaan sudah berubah sama sekali.

Malah masyarakat sivil, khususnya generasi baru hari ini, sudah melupakan peristiwa hitam itu dan. Kini sejarah 13 Mei itu hanya menjadi bahan akademik.

Masyarakat sivil dan generasi baru yang semakin ramai di bandar mahukan pilihan raya – sama ada parlimen, negeri dan PBT – diadakan secara telus dan adil.

Rakyat akan memilih calonnya yang terbaik, peduli rakyat, amanah, jauh daripada rasuah dan penyelewengan, tanpa mengira calon itu datang daripada kaum mana pun.  Inilah asas yang diperlukan oleh masyarakat madani.

Dari itu tidak wajar persoalan calon pilihan raya, walau dalam apa peringkat pun, dilihat dari sudut kaum. Justeru yang penting ialah kualiti calon itu dari mana pun datangnya.

Boleh disimpulkan semua masalah dan isu yang berbangkit boleh saja diselesaikan dengan harmoni.  Syaratnya, pemimpin dan ahli yang mendukung Pakatan Rakyat, berfikiran terbuka, bersikap rasional dan mempunyai advanced thinking.

Dengan elemen itu, Pakatan Rakyat boleh diperkukuh. Maka dengan peristiwa yang saya sebutkan di atas tadi, antaranya – bantuan banjir dari DAP dan PAS-PasMa – boleh menjadi pendorong utama ke arah itu.  – 27 Januari, 2015.

                This entry was posted on Tuesday, 27 January 2015, 8:43 pm and is filed under
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Pastoral letter in reference to Herald case

 – Julian Leow

The Malaysian Insider

27 January 2015

My Dear People of God,

“I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.” 2 Timothy 4:7

We have come to the end of a long journey which began in 2008 when we were told that we cannot call God in the way the majority of our Catholics in Malaysia have been used to for centuries.

We mounted a challenge in the court to exercise our constitutional right to manage our own religious affairs. The Church took the position that the minister’s restriction went against the spirit as well as the letter of our Federal Constitution.

My dear Brothers and Sisters in the Lord, we have fought the good fight. Our team of lawyers must be congratulated for defending our right to practice our faith unhindered.

They have presented the issues clearly and succinctly. From the beginning it had been an uphill journey, fraught with many challenges and obstacles. Yet, our team persevered and we have now finished the race.

Insofar as the Herald’s case is concerned, we have exhausted the legal process to challenge the minister’s position which affects all Bahasa-speaking Christians in Malaysia.

We must now keep the faith. Do I know my faith well enough to defend it? I must deepen my understanding of why I believe what I believe.

I must re-commit myself and my family to strengthening our faith. I must ensure the faith is passed down to the next generation intact. I must also attend formations that reinforces the faith that has been handed on to us.

The government has said that the decision of the Court of Appeal is only confined to the Herald’s case. We shall, therefore, take the government at its words. In no way does it include a prohibition in our holy scripture, the Alkitab as well as in our praise and worship during our celebration of the holy mass and prayer sessions.

We do not know what the future holds or what the repercussions of the decision of the Court of Appeal will be on rights of the minorities to practise their faith in the manner they consider in keeping with their religious practice, but we do know that we are a people of Faith and Hope.

We believe all things happen for a reason. We must see with the eyes of faith and I believe we have gained much from this whole saga. We need to make a stand on the side of justice and truth.

We need to protect the rights of the minority and the voiceless. We need to engage and to dialogue with the ignorant and bring about understanding.

We need to forgive and to reach out in love, especially to those who misunderstand and are misinformed. It is only love that conquers all and God is love.

Let us continue to worship and praise such a compassionate and loving God of ours. – January 27, 2015.

* Most Rev Julian Leow is the Archbishop of Kuala Lumpur and president, Catholics Bishops Conference of Malaysia.

                This entry was posted on Tuesday, 27 January 2015, 12:10 pm and is filed under
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The measure of Najib as prime minister

– Sakmongkol AK47

The Malaysian Insider

27 January 2015

I recently wrote an article “Menilai Najib”. It was reproduced in Free Malaysia Today.  People commented on that. Many of the comments were not objective. Indeed most were irrational rants.

I think most of the commentators didn’t read the original article on my blog. They prefer instead to read the stylised FMT version. Accordingly, most of the comments never debated the issues I raised but chose instead to vilify me as a person.

The points I raised were (1) what made Datuk Seri Najib Razak a bad prime minister and (2) what made him a bad finance minister. I was hoping for a more robust counter. Instead, it’s the usual ad hominem attacks.

They are commenting on the article re-written and interpreted by FMT. They vented their anger. They asked who am I to assess Najib. They accused me of repeating what my “tokongs” say. Fortunately, I am immune to that kind of insulting riposte.

So don’t be angry if I refer them as mental gnomes. These include the die-hard Umno supporters and the uncle-tomming non-Malay supporters.

No one can stop anyone from saying Najib is the best PM we have had thus far. I don’t have a problem with this belief. Please continue. Najib needs support from the pliant crowd. He has an army of apple polishers and media minders to ensure the hallelujah-ing from the balcony and the gallery keep on coming.

But please accord me the freedom to also believe the opposite. And as to the claim that he is the best PM and the best FM, I can only suggest these people who make such claims, to have their heads examined by a psychiatrist.

Fortunately, I know Najib more than most of these people. I make it my business to criticise Najib’s leadership.

When I say that Najib has failed as a PM, I put up my reasoning. When I say Najib fails as a finance minister, I also do the same. The rejoinder and retort to my statements would acquire more credibility if they are in the form of reasoned arguments.

Dismissing my arguments by snide remarks and sneering do nothing to advance the credibility of counter arguments. I know for a fact that my reasoning may not be sound, but unless they are demolished by reasoned counters and rejoinders, I will maintain my belief that Najib is the worse PM we have ever had. Politically, Najib has performed worse than Pak Lah according to Dr Mahathir.

So those pro-Umno and BN people, whether you love it or hate it, learn to accept the fact that the PM is mediocre.

Leaders provide leadership first.

They articulate first and clearly about the objectives and vision of this country. Do we want a country with two legal systems? One for the Malays and Muslims and the other for non-Malays and Muslims.

You do not run a country like this unless some parts of Malaysia were ruled by another power for almost a century. Malaysia is not Hong Kong and mainland China.

Najib has failed to provide leadership to this country, give our country a clear vision and articulate the vision; he has failed to give content to this vision other than a smorgasbord of acronyms.

His grand vision of 1Malaysia has not found resonance with the people. No one understands what 1Malaysia means. To Malay firsters, 1Malaysia means Malaysia under Malay rule.

I have often asked this question; if the population of Malaysia were all Malays, there will still be differences. It’s the inability of this government that doesn’t know how to deal with the differences that is the crux of the problem.

Consider the economy of the Malays. For every single ringgit earned by the Malays as a whole, 65 sen will go to the top 20%. I am not even sure if it’s even the top 20% – it can even be the top 1-2%. In that case, the majority of Malays will never accept and kowtow to that kind of arrangement.

The presence of 24% Chinese and 11% others is both a bane and way out for the Umno people. It’s an excuse to scare the rakyat from seeing the problem as it really is. Which is, the problems we have now with social relations, breakdown of political institutions, the mess with the economy are caused by leadership incompetence and bad management of the economy.

What are the threats to 1Malaysia? The chief threat will be the unwillingness of the government to act tough. Najib hasn’t got the political will. You look at the government statistics on the population census, they clearly show that almost 90% of the towns have Malay majorities.

So the reservations and objections to having local elections are misplaced and simply wrong.

The problems as I see it are two. One – Umno cannot secure the confidence of the entire Malay community. Two, MCA cannot be depended on to secure Chinese votes.

Now, let us ask and answer honestly why MCA cannot get the confidence of the Chinese. Because the Chinese by and large see the MCA as a party driven by people who just want to secure businesses and contracts and the Chinese perceive MCA as a corrupt party.

They are thus willing to reject MCA although it’s a 100% Chinese party. The Chinese know how to object to corruption and a party who they see as being part of the problem.

So what do you have? You have the Chinese majority who are convinced they don’t want to be part of a corruption culture.

How is Najib’s lack of political will manifested? It is reflected by his romancing and flirtations with the various extremist pressure groups.  They appear to dictate the government’s conduct.

Najib is just flirting with concepts without giving real commitment.

Where is our country going? The pro Umno people and the uncle-tomming non-Malays are ignoring the fact that the Malaysia is fast becoming the sick man of Asia. What does it mean to be Malaysia?

Investors are running away from Malaysia because they don’t have confidence that the present government can handle good governance. The various financial scandals plaguing the Malaysia economy are making investors nervous about putting money into Malaysia.

Najib has failed as the finance minister. We shall elaborate on this further.

Najib likes to demonstrate the soundness of the Malaysian economy by pointing out at the KLCI numbers. In his October 2014 budget speech, he likes to differentiate himself from his predecessor. Thus he starts by reminding the people that when he took office the KLCI was 884 points and in July 2014 after 5 years of taking over – the KLCI was 1892 points.

What he failed to own up was during the very month he read the Budget in Parliament the index was 1,855. Now in January 2015, it is 1,750. The numbers are going down.

Public sector debt which is debt incurred by the government which consists of official debt as stated in the 2015 Budget, contingent liabilities which are loans taken by GLCs and other government owned businesses that are guaranteed by the government, financial letters of support which carry with them financial obligations or pure financing of projects which are not documented or not captured in any documents may well reach 80% of our GDP.

I say “may” because, the government is not forthcoming and transparent when it comes to owning up. I hope the FMT journalists can discern such nuanced arguments. We are not sure for the simple reason, this government hides from us its liabilities.

In 2014, the cumulative public debt is around RM570 billion. Contingent liabilities amount to some RM170 billion.

That’s RM740 billion already. Add to this amount, the value of support letters carrying financial obligations and pure financing that are not documented- we can only assume to be another RM150 billion. That’s RM890 billion.

Given an economy of slightly more than 1 trillion – we have a public debt level of almost 80%. This is a plausible proposition appreciating the fact that household debt has already reached 87% of GDP. We are a nation of debtors – the household and the government.

Then this was this bozo who wanted to act smart by repeating that our assets are worth RM50 billion, our liabilities worth RM47 billion. Father, mother asked you to go to school, you run away – those are figures quoted by Najib about 1MDB lah – not public debt. That is another financial horror story.

We may well be staring at a government which will be printing all the Banana tree money which I used to play when I was a kid. – sakmongkol.blogspot.com, January 27, 2015.

* Sakmongkol AK47 is the nom de guerre of Raub MP Datuk Ariff Sabri Abdul Aziz.

                This entry was posted on Tuesday, 27 January 2015, 11:48 am and is filed under
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UMNO leaders launched a two-prong attack on DAP to exploit Hadi’s “May 13 if third vote restored” statement, including UMNO cybertgroopers launching a campaign of lies and demonization on social media, including twitter-bombs, against DAP leaders

UMNO leaders launched a two-prong attack on the DAP to exploit PAS President, Datuk Seri Abdul Hadi Awang’s “May 13 if third vote restored” statement, including a vicious campaign of lies and demonization on social media against DAP leaders by UMNO cybertroopers.

In past few weeks, my twitter account had been spared twitter bombs by UMNO cybertroopers, but in the last few days after Hadi’s statement, it became the target of several series of twitter bomb attacks, through trolls and fake multiple accounts, spreading lies and defamatory messages and graphics.

One theme of the twitter-bombing was to accuse me of being the cause of the May 13 race riots in Kuala Lumpur, such as the tweet “
TAHUKAH ANDA? @limkitsiang adalah pencetus Rusuhan Kaum 13 Mei.. #DAPRasis #S14
”.

Another was the defamatory graphic depicting me as a communist in the garb of Mao Tse Tung, with the quote and caption: “
’MELAYU KELUAR! APA LAGI DUDUK SINI, KITA HENTAM LU, SEKARANG KITA SUDAH ADA KUASA” LIM KIT SIANG (BAPA 13 MEI)

Those who sent these twitter-bombs know that this is pure defamation, as I never said these words, and I was never in Kuala Lumpur from May 11-13, 1969 or was in any way involved with the May 13 race riots – which is why those who posted these tweets dare not use their true names and identities for they would be hauled to court to pay heavy damages for defamation.

I am still intrigued as to why I am now accused as a “communist” by the faceless Umno cybertroopers after the 2008 and 2013 General Elections, as none of the six Prime Ministers, from Tunku Abdul Rahman onwards to Tun Razak, Tun Hussein, Tun Mahathir, Tun Abdullah and Datuk Seri Najib Razak, had ever dared to make any such accusation in the past 49 years of my political life for they know it is not true.

Otherwise, we are witnessing one of the biggest failures of the Special Branch in the past five decades – to allow a “communist” to be in Parliament for over four decades!

The blitzkrieg of lies and demonization by the UMNO cybertroopers against DAP leaders in the past few days is the latest proof of the hypocrisy of the Minister for Communication and Multimedia, Datuk Shabery Cheek about taking firm action against internet abuse in the country, especially those involving the dissemination of slanderous and seditious matter on social websites.

In fact, Shabery Cheek must answer whether he is responsible for these defamatory and seditious attacks by UMNO cybertroopers as it stretches the imagination that such internet abuses could occur under his nose without his knowing about them.

The second prong of UMNO offensive was for UMNO leaders to jump into the fray to give instant and unstinting support to Hadi for his “May 13 if third vote restored” statement, and in the past few days, Hadi’s statement was given greater prominence than those of the UMNO President and Deputy President in Utusan Malaysia – the first time in the history of the UMNO mouthpiece!

When Deputy Prime Minister and Deputy UMNO President, Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin claimed that Malaysia was among the “most democratic” of democracies despite the absence of the third vote, Malaysians are immediately reminded of another of his memorable sayings – that Malaysia has “one of the world’s best education system” when Malaysian universities have fallen out of the world’s top university rankings and Malaysia’s 15-year-olds are four or five years behind their peers in Shanghai, Singapore, South Korea, Hong Kong and Taiwan in the three critical subjects reading, science and maths according to international student assessments.

But what takes the cake was when Muhyiddin took side with Hadi and questioned the adverse effects on unity in a restoration of local council elections, referring to “imbalanced” racial representation where “the majority of urban areas have a heavy concentration of non-Bumiputeras”.

By this logic, State Assembly and Parliamentary elections should also be abolished.

Will Muhyiddin next made such suggestions, though still claiming to be the “most democratic of democracies in the world”!

In any event, what right has Muhyiddin to talk about national unity when he still claims that he is “Malay first, Malaysian second”?

                This entry was posted on Tuesday, 27 January 2015, 6:10 pm and is filed under
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Why Saudis Are Holding Strong on Oil

By Meghan L. O’Sullivan

Bloomberg

JAN 26, 2015

A consensus has emerged since the death of King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia that the kingdom will not change course on oil policy. This consensus is probably right, at least for the short term.  It is, however, correct for reasons other than the ones that most observers have invoked.

Moreover, while it looks unlikely that the kingdom will alter oil production in the coming months, barring a major change of heart of non-OPEC producers, interesting changes to Saudia Arabia’s cabinet roster and other energy policies and could be closer than most realize.

The basis of the conventional wisdom is rooted in personalities. New King Salman bin Abdulaziz has pledged continuity, stating he will adhere to the “correct policies” of his predecessors. He also said that oil minister Ali Al-Naimi will stay in his post.

While personalities certainly matter a great deal in Saudi Arabia, the real imperative to stay the course has little to do with the individuals who have come or those who will stay. Culture, as is often the case, plays a huge role determining why, at least in the short term, the kingdom will not cut oil production unilaterally.

It is nearly a truism to say that nothing is more respected than strength in the Middle East. And, in the wake of a transition of power at the highest levels, projecting strength is more important than ever. Despite the smoothness with which the dynasty has passed on to Salman, many inside and outside the kingdom have spent years fretting about the possibility of domestic unrest at this juncture. Moreover, with the region more volatile than at any point since the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, understanding the importance of projecting strength is key to accurately anticipating Saudi actions.

If the need to project strength is your touchstone for analysis, you’ll conclude the Saudis are most likely to hold course in the near term. If you believe that the Saudi policy is first and foremost inspired by a desire to undermine the Iranian regime, you’ll conclude that now would be the worst time to modify that approach. Some observers have suggested that the new king could cut oil production unilaterally, to relieve the economic vise squeezing Tehran and start a more constructive dialogue between the two countries. Indeed, since Abdullah’s death the Iranian regime has been on a PR campaign pushing a “good neighborly approach” to regional problems. Don’t count on it. In the region, such a Saudi gesture would be seen not as an olive branch extended from a position of strength, but as an indication that the new king will lack the resolve of Abdullah.

What to expect, then, if you believe (as I do) that the Saudis are not primarily driven by geopolitical reasons? Then you will still come to the conclusion that change is unlikely in coming months. Saudi officials remain singed by the experience of the 1980s, when, in the face of a non-OPEC supply surge, Saudi Arabia cut production — yet was still unable to bolster price. Looking at the changing dynamics of the oil market, particularly in light of the boom in U.S. shale production, Saudi officials are concerned about a repeat performance of that 1980s dynamic.

Even before Abdullah’s death, these same Saudi decision-makers almost surely worried that a unilateral cut in production, with no resulting boost to price, would suggest that Saudi Arabia had lost control of the oil market. Better not to try, than to try and not succeed. Nothing would project weakness more definitively. Now, as a new king assumes the thrown, this logic holds more than ever.

So much for short-term change. But it would be over-confident to assume that the status quo will remain for the indefinite future. Technically, perhaps, Saudi finances can withstand low prices for many years. The budget for 2015 is expansionary, with a predicted $40 billion deficit. (And it appears to assume a slightly higher oil price than the currently sub-$50 per barrel levels, so the deficit could be even larger.) But running such deficits year after year is only sustainable if one assumes that oil prices will eventually rebound to higher levels, allowing Saudi Arabia to restore its coffers. So, what if these recent market trends are not outliers but the “new normal”? Saudi Arabia’s most astute decision makers certainly have that possibility on their minds.

Moreover, despite recent pronouncements that the succession will not result in cabinet changes, there are some good reasons to anticipate new ministers over the next half year, with resultant changes in policy, although not necessarily regarding oil.

First, new kings have traditionally liked to make their own appointments to power ministries. If Salman’s first cabinet appointment — his 34-year-old son to succeed him as defense minister and also become chief of the royal court — is any indication, the king will not be shy about reinforcing his influence in key posts. In addition, the selection of a grand-nephew of King Abdullah, Mohammed bin Nayef, as deputy crown prince and deputy prime minister did more than resolve the nerve-jangling question about how the crown will move from the generation of the sons of Saudi founder, King Ibn Saud, to that of his grandsons. It may also mean changes in the cabinet in the months ahead, as it would be unusual for the 55-year-old prince to preside over a cabinet of so many older princes of his own generation.

Finally, several top officials, including Naimi, the 79-year-old oil minister, and the ailing foreign minister, Saud al-Faisal, have been in their posts a long time — and are rumored to have been kept on largely due to their personal relationships with King Abdullah. After the initial succession jitters have subsided, it may be an opportune moment for them to move to less stressful endeavors.

While a new oil minister may or may not mean immediate changes in oil policy, it is likely to directly affect other significant internal energy debates. Of these, perhaps the most interesting surrounds the possible opening natural gas development to foreign companies. In 1998, Saudi Arabia launched a “gas initiative” and welcomed some multinational firms to explore the country’s gas potential. Little came of the endeavor; there was apparently tension between technocrats behind the initiative and royal family members who questioned the wisdom of bringing outside companies in to develop Saudi Arabia’s natural wealth. (Keep in mind that state-owned Saudi Aramco is almost exclusively responsible for the production of Saudi oil.)

Yet the question of developing Saudi natural gas is again front and center, as the kingdom’s domestic energy consumption grows unabated and the country continues to burn oil — which would be better exported — to generate electricity. Getting some assistance to develop the hard-to-reach natural gas deposits not associated with oil production could be a good idea.

So, as Salman settles into office, don’t expect big increases oil prices — unless, of course, a contingent of both OPEC and non-OPEC producers including Russia and Mexico agreed to make significant production cuts alongside Saudi Arabia. The new king and his advisers will be rightly focused on projecting strength and confidence — and that will mean staying on the current course. But it would be unwise to take the initial pronouncements of a new king to be long term policy and personnel commitments.

                This entry was posted on Tuesday, 27 January 2015, 8:17 pm and is filed under
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Cabinet should reprimand and repudiate Abdul Rahman’s stand that local government elections could worsen racial polarization as it is not only untrue but opens the dangerous door for future  suspension of State Assembly and Parliamentary elections

The Cabinet meeting today should reprimand the Minister for Urban Wellbeing, Housing and Local Government, Datuk Abdul Rahman and repudiate the stand he has taken that the restoration of local government elections could worsen racial polarization as it is not only untrue, but  opens the dangerous door for the future suspension of State Assembly and Parliamentary elections.

This is the first time in 50 years that any Barisan Nasional (previously Alliance) Government Minister has taken the ridiculous and outrageous stand that the holding of local government elections would lead to greater racial polarisation – or even risks the repeat of May 13 race riots, as stated by the PAS President, Datuk Seri Abdul Hadi Awang which has received the support of top UMNO leaders.

In March 2010, the Penang and Selangor state governments wrote separate letters to the Election Commission asking for local government elections to be conducted in their respective states.

Their reason for doing so were to strengthen democracy by having local representatives elected and not appointed, which would enhance accountability, transparency and good governance.

In an immediate reaction, the Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Najib Razak rejected this, stating that reviving local government elections would only give rise to politicking at the local government level and would not improve services for the people.

He said the focus should be on improving services to the people and not the process involved in selecting councillors who would serve.

There was no reference to problems of “racial polarisation” or “imbalanced racial representation” in the past 50 years as the reason why there should be no restoration of the third vote!

The Cabinet must not only take cognisance of the dangerous line taken by the Urban Well-being, Housing and Local Government Minister linking the abolition of local government elections to problems of “racial polarisation” for the first time in 50 years,   it must act boldly to reprimand Abdul Rahman for such a statement and dissociate the Cabinet from it.

Abdul Rahman’s argument that local government elections would promote “racial animosity and distrust” must be slapped down hard by the Cabinet today, as local government is not about racial politics but  about promoting a better quality of life for all ratepayers with safe, efficient and pleasant living environment for all, regardless of race or religion.

It is an open secret that the real reason for the 50-year suspension/abolition of local government elections has nothing to do accountability, efficiency and good governance of local government but because the Barisan Nasional politicians have no confidence that in a democratic elections, despite the many flaws in the electoral system, they can win the trust and mandate from the local electors to get elected to the various local councils.

It is most shocking that 50 years after the suspension/abolition of local government elections, the issue of race has now been injected as a new factor as to why there should not be a restoration of the  third vote.

If such a reason could be accepted, then it could be extended to the suspension/abolition of State Assembly and Parliamentary elections, resulting in the death of democracy in Malaysia!

The de facto Minister for National Unity, Tan Sri Joseph Kurup hit the nail on the head when he said yesterday that it was the extremists who played up racial and religious issues who are the “public enemy number 1” –  culprits responsible for the worsening of racial and religious polarisation in the country.

Unfortunately, Kurup in his speech to the 17th Malaysia Strategic Outlook Conference 2015 was not prepared to name these “public enemy number 1”, detracting considerably the effect of his admission of these “extremists” – who are “instilling fear in our society, jeopardising our painstakingly built unity and trying to hijack the Malaysian way of life” and “trying to implement their extremist and sectarian agenda in the garb of religion” which could “fuel violent extremism”.

The spectre of May 13 and  race politics with the restoration of local government elections must not be allowed to rear their ugly heads again.

I strongly believe that  if Pakatan Rakyat has no confidence that it could achieve great victories if local government elections are restored, PR must return to the drawing board as this  does not  bode well for PR’s grand design to win  Putrajaya in the 14GE.

Based on the 2010 Census, out of the 148 local authorities in Malaysia (comprising three City Halls, nine City Councils, 37 Municipal Councils and 99 District Councils), only two per cent or three of  the local authorities have Chinese majorities, namely Sibu (Chinese 63.4% Malay/bumiputra 35.7% Indians 0.4% Others 0.5%);  Kuching Selatan (Chinese 62.5% Malay/bumiputra 36.4% Indians 0.6% Others 0.5%) and Pulau Pinang (Chinese 56.4% Malays 33.7%; Indians 9.5% Others 0.4%).

Local authorities with Malay majorities of over 50% of the population number 132 or 89.2% of the 148 local authorities, with the balance of 13 having a plurality of races with seven Chinese dominant and six Malay dominant.

The Pakatan Rakyat Election Bureau should make a study how many of these 148 local authorities PR could win if there are local government elections.

The 148 local authorities in Malaysia are made up of:

State

City Hall

City Council

Municipal C

District C

Modified

K’tan

–

–

1

11

–

T’gnu

–

1

2

4

–

Pahang

–

–

3

8

–

Kedah

–

1

3

7

–

Perlis

–

–

1

–

–

Perak

–

1

4

10

–

Selangor

–

2

6

4

–

N.Sembilan

–

–

3

5

–

Malacca

–

1

2

–

–

Johor

–

1

6

8

–

Fed Ter

1

–

–

–

2

Sabah

1

–

2

18

1

Sarawak

1

2

2

19

2

Total

3

9

37

94

5

If local government elections are held, can Pakatan Rakyat win the overwhelming majority of the local authorities in Kelantan, Terengganu, Pahang and Kedah?

There are a total of 12 local authorities in Kelantan, ranging from the lowest of 92% Malays in Kuala Krai to the highest of 99.7% Malays in Dabong.

Terengganu has seven local authorities, ranging from the lowest of 95.2% Malays in Kemaman to the highest of 99.7% Malays in Setiu.

Pahang has eight local authorities. Apart from Cameron Highlands which has a plurality of races with Chinese 42.8%, Malays 33.7% and Indians 22.8% and Others 0.6%, the other seven local authorities range from the lowest of 57.3% Malays for Bentong, to 63.1% Malays for Raub, 67.2% Malays for Bera,  75.7% Malays for Temerloh, 78.5% Malays for Kuantan, 84.7% Malays for Jerantut, 85.3% Malays for Lipis, 95.7% Malays for Maran, 95.8% Malays for Rompin and 96.9% Malays for Pekan.

For Kedah, the 11 local authorities range from   63.6% Malays for Kulim, 66.2% Malays for Sungai Petani,  76.9% Malays for Alor Setar, 82.1% Malays for Bandar Baru, 88.3% Malays for Kubang Pasu, 89.7% Malays for Pendang, 90.9% Malays for Baling, 92.5% Malays for Padang Terap, 92.6% Malays for Langkawi, 92.8% Malays for Sik and 93.2% Malays for Yan.

The Pakatan Rakyat Election Bureau should study whether PR is capable winning the majority of the 41 local authorities in Kelantan, Terengganu, Pahang and Kedah where  local authorities with more than 70% Malays constitute 92% while local authorities with more than 90% Malays comprise 67%.

All political parties and Malaysians  should take note of the ringing declaration for democracy in  the1968  Athi Nahappan Royal Commission Inquiry report on Local Authorities which recommended the restoration of local government elections:

“Nominated advisers cannot effectively voice the interests of the ratepayers because they are not answerable to them. Nomination is no real substitute for elective representation.  If anything, nomination is an anachronism and a relic of colonialism. It is antithetic to democracy.” (Athi Nahappan 1968: 99)

The issues at stake in the restoration of third vote is about democracy, accountability and good governance and has nothing to do with race.

                This entry was posted on Wednesday, 28 January 2015, 10:52 am and is filed under
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