Democracy in Southeast Asia: A Conversation Between Michael Vatikiotis and Bridget Welsh

ASEAN Studies Program

The Habibie Center

Jakarta

[Journey through the ebbs and flows of democracy in ASEAN via a conversation between Michael Vatikiotis, a veteran journalist and writer living in Singapore, and Dr. Bridget Welsh, who is a Senior Associate Fellow of the Habibie Center in Jakarta. Their conversation on the state of democracy in Southeast Asia traces the history of the push for democracy in the different countries of the region, current challenges and future prospects. (This article is first published in special issue.)]

Michael Vatikiotis is a writer and journalist living in Singapore. After training as a journalist with the BBC in London, he moved to Asia and was a correspondent and then editor of the Far Eastern Economic Review. He has written two novels set in Indonesia.

Dr. Bridget Welsh is a Senior Research Associate at the Center for East Asia Democratic Studies of the National Taiwan University; a Senior Associate Fellow of the Habibie Center in Jakarta; and a University Fellow of Charles Darwin University in Darwin, Australia. She analyzes Southeast Asian politics, especially Malaysia, Myanmar, Singapore, and Indonesia.

Bridget Welsh (BW): Michael, why don’t you begin. Where do you think the state of democracy is in the region?

Michael Vatikiotis (MV): Well, if you take a glass half-full approach, then I suppose you would look at the long arch of history of democracy over the last 40 years. I argue that in many countries of Southeast Asia there has been a gradual improvement in the forms of governments that have begun to look more and more institutionally like functioning democracies.

So to break that down, you have of course a wave of democratization that began with the People’s Power revolution in the Philippines in mid-1980s which was itself an outgrowth of Portugal’s Carnation Revolution in the mid-1970s that sparked what Samuel Huntington called the ‘third wave of democratization.’ This eventually reached the shores of Southeast Asia and manifested itself initially in left wing movements, student disruptions and protests in mid 1970s. Thailand saw a crackdown on student movements that led to people fleeing into the jungle and joining the communist insurgency. Similarly in Indonesia, there was the Malari incident which led to a crackdown on campus politics. In Malaysia too, there was a student agitation in the mid-1970s. By the early 80s things had come to a head in the Philippines with the implementation of martial law, the corruption of Marcos’ rule and the deep sense of unease that many people felt because of the way that they were treated by Marcos, either arrested, detained or worse. In 1983, with the murder of Benigno Aquino as he stepped out of a plane from Taiwan at Manila Airport, these finally weld up into a massive popular protest.

At the time I was a young journalist in BBC. I remember covering it from London, and it was a very exciting time, especially the whole notion of ‘people’s power.’ This was well before any of the colored revolutions that have taken place in this century. This was before the end of Cold War. It was also the very first time that CNN had covered this sort of story so far away with live camera shots of the protests. There was a sense that nothing like this had really happened before in postcolonial Southeast Asia. It was shown and reported in a very vivid manner and it also very quickly brought an end to very despotic ruler. Within a matter of weeks Ferdinand Marcos was on a plane to Hawaii.

As a side note, I think it was also very important time because up until the mid-1980s, the United States and other Western powers firmly back autocratic regimes because they were anti-communist. This changed with the ‘people’s power’ revolution on the streets of Manila. The color of the revolution was yellow, not red. You had this mild-mannered widow of Benigno Aquino who took over. She was not threatening. She didn’t seem to be communist. This allowed the United States and other Western powers to embrace a popular revolution without having to abandon their sort of anti-communist credentials. There was a sense of relief that they didn’t have to support an autocrat, because he was anti-communist.

This set the region on the path where people expected greater openness and democratization, but it was a faltering path. It led in 1989 to a rash of students protests in Indonesia, where there was pressure on Indonesia’s government to become more open. Soeharto grudgingly allowed more openness, but it did not really bring about democratization. Similarly in Malaysia, we saw attempts to have more open system. This was met by a crackdown in Operation Lalang. Initial pressures on governments to be more open did not really work. Most tragically in Burma, the 1988 student uprising which did take its inspiration directly from ‘people’s power’ failed, spectacularly and tragically so with a huge loss of life. The assumption that ‘people’s power’ would lead to greater democratization essentially let us all down and we experienced another decade of demi-democracy at best.

Then we had the financial crisis. In 1997 there was another round of turmoil, and again there were assumptions made about the impact of the economic financial crisis on the way it would affect authoritarian or semi-authoritarian regimes. It was assumed that now governments would need to be reformed, need to open up and be more transparent; and better serve the people. There was pressure in Malaysia. Obviously, what happened in Indonesia was the Soeharto regime fell, collapsed under the weight of its own authoritarian inefficiency. However, once again, we all felt that there was going to be a democratic dividend from the financial crisis. If one recalls the first few years of the Indonesia transition, the initial two or three years were disappointing. You essentially had a bunch of people who had served Soeharto who basically changed their shirts and became democrats all of sudden. There was marginally more open government, but it took at least five years for the reform period to have an impact. Decentralization of government in 1999 was a first good step. But, do not forget there was also a lot of violence associated in the reformasi period in Indonesia. Many people were generally unhappy with the first few years of that period.

There was no real democratic impact on the rest of the region. Burma continued to be ruled by a nasty military regime. Mahathir continued to rule the roost in Malaysia. In the Philippines during this period there was several setbacks to democratic government in a form of attempted military interventions and impeachments of politicians. So again, while there were these promises of reform and democratization, the overall regional democratic impact was less than expected.

BW: I think if we look at the situation now, we have three different patterns. The first of which is a democratic deficit in the region’s more democratic countries, namely Indonesia and Philippines. Here there are demands for better governance that are not being met by democratic governments. This is true particularly over the issue of corruption, but this extends to social services and economic policies that are not addressing the needs of the masses. This has fueled authoritarian nostalgia, support for more autocratic rule. This was evident in Indonesia’s 2014 election and more recently with the election of Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines. Large shares of these societies want more strongman rule because of a lack of effective democratic governance. Furthermore, democratic conditions in democracies are contracting, with the rise of intolerance toward minorities and violations of civil liberties.

The second trajectory is the continued stranglehold of one party dominant systems in the region.  This is the case in Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Malaysia and, of course, Singapore. The trend has been increasing use of authoritarian measures against opponents. While opposition in all of these countries has expanded with greater access to information and rising aspirations of new generations, perhaps with the exception of Laos, Southeast Asians governments have used their control of political systems to stay in office. From the manipulation of electoral rules to arrests and control of the media, the incumbents are holding on. Some of these measures are more blatant than others, such as Malaysia’s Najib Tun Razak’s government’s arrest of opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim and more recently the imprisonment of Bersih chairperson Maria Chin-Abdullah for ‘terrorism,’ but the trend has been across the region. We have witnessed a broad democratic recession in Southeast Asia in the past five years, especially in the one-party dominant countries.

The third pattern is one of regime change in two Southeast Asian countries. The first is military takeover in Thailand with the May 2014 coup. The Prayut government has arguably been one of the most repressive military governments in Thai history, with fear and repression deeply felt. Sadly, the other country affected by Huntington’s third wave, which began democratizing gradually from the late 1980s, is serving as the prime example of the region’s growing authoritarianism. The second has been in Myanmar, where the election of Aung San Suu Kyi National League for Democracy (NLD) has fundamentally opened up the system.  Myanmar is facing the same troubles you spoke about just now after 1999 in Indonesia. There is violence especially on the periphery, contributing to the serious humanitarian conditions of the Rohingyas, and other concerns for ethnic minorities. There are real challenges in weakening the power of the military as well, which extends to the economy as well as security situation. Democracy in Myanmar remains fragile.

MV: The question to answer is why. If we move from glass half full at the end of last century to the glass half empty at the beginning the 21st century, the question is what can explain the democracy deficits? To be honest, it is quite hard to find a simple explanation that embraces the breadth of situations in the region. I believe we must categorize the failures.  I think the first failure is institutionalization. In all the countries where we see democratic progress, one of the weakest elements of the reform program has been institutionalizing the changes that have been made. That is mainly because the nature of political culture in Southeast Asia is personal. It largely involves groups of followers owing allegiance to individuals whether they are in bureaucracy or in the political establishment. There has never been a need to institutionalize these networks, because they are fluid and rest on a great deal of patronage. It is very paternalistic and in a paternalistic system you do not actually want to build an institution that would succeed you. I think this sort of combination of personality politics and leadership has contributed to a lack of institutionalization.

For me, the best example is Indonesia. It is one of the tragedies of Indonesia. While there is no real question that Indonesia’s democratic foundation is firm, and no one would say that there is a danger of moving back to the system that they had before, an authoritarian leader would be unaccountable or even perhaps the military playing a role in politics. Although I think one can never completely rule these out.

BW: Indeed, we should never said ‘never.’

MV: Yes. If you look at the real weaknesses of the system and its hostage to extreme elements of prejudice whether they are racial or religion, it is because the political parties are weak. There are no platforms to speak of. The institutions for mature political debates and exchange are simply underdeveloped and not respected.

You have at the same time have successful decentralization. Many people would argue that the strengths lie here. The elections at regional and local levels are among the most successful. They are bringing forward the future politicians. They have already given Indonesia a president. Having said that, institutional weaknesses plaque Indonesia’s democracy and those of the region.

BW: I would take this issue of institutionalization a little bit further, Michael. It is not just about the relationship between the personal and institutions in places like Indonesia and Philippines and in political parties, but rather we see the weakening of political institutions that did exist. Previously functioning institutions have become personalized.

Perhaps the best example is that of Malaysia where the line between the dominant party UMNO and the system is not there anymore. Essentially all of the checks on executive power have been removed in a systematic way as power has become concentrated around the person who holds the executive office. The office is the person and the person is the office.  We see this pattern throughout the region, in Cambodia and Singapore as well. In the latter institutions function, but they closely reflect the leadership of the PAP.

MV: Well, I tend to agree, but I would break it down into two different factors. One is whether or not this was avoidable or unavoidable. I think in the case of Malaysia, it was avoidable, because the institutions and checks were working. Mahathir weakened many of them, with his very firm, autocratic sort of style of rule. Don’t forget there was this interregnum with Abdullah Badawi when many of different power centers and institutions came a life again because he allowed them to.

BW: Because he was so weak rather than due to any genuine desire for democracy. He needed to look like a reformer to win power, but when he left office there was actually very little substantive reform.

MV: Because he was weak. Najib came to power in 2009, essentially promising further reform. Many of people of the time including myself saw Najib as a competent parliamentary politician but weak. He was weak as a personality, and therefore did not seem as necessarily much of a threat if things would not go his way. As we see, things did not go his way. The precipice that Malaysia has fallen down from in terms of the undermining of the last remaining institutions of democracy essentially was brought about by the 1MDB scandal. He suddenly found himself led in that direction.

BW: Najib was doing the leading, he is the key person in the 1MDB scandal. He was weak and greedy and has abused his office to prevent prosecution.

MV: Exactly, because of that, the 1MDB scandal, he has completely turned everything on its head for democracy in Malaysia. He needs to defend his position to assure that he does not go to the jail. I have known Najib for many years. I do not recognize him now at all. He is the man who is actually more English than Malaysian. He does not even speak the Malay language properly, who essentially was led there because of the wife.

BW: There is this tendency to blame her, as women are often blamed. It is a partnership. For me he is the prime minister and he is ultimately responsible.

MV: Fundamentally he is weak. for whatever reason. He is never going to stand up either to his wife or to anything that is the least bit trouble and so therefore everything had to change. The direction has to change. The thing that I least understand and this gets back to the what we said earlier, is why there has not been any real opposition to him. Najib is not a particularly strong person. I know that a lot of people have talked about the use of the money and the payments that have been made to keep people in line. This is the idea that people are selfishly essentially going along with it because why bother to resist, why make trouble for yourself when you could essentially make money out of this situation. In that sense I shift the blame a little bit away from Najib onto a generation of politicians, many of whom I knew when they were quite young, who essentially don’t appear to have any moral principles either.

BW: Well, I think there is something more fundamental going on. There is no question that in a serious moral vacuum in terms of the incumbent Malaysian leadership. I would extend this to the Islamist party as well, that has turned away from decent political principles and in effect endorsed corruption. I would say, however, that this is not just about the politicians. It is about the whole state-business nexus, the way the economies in the region work. They are driven by those who control political power, and businesses have very strong crony relationships that feed corruption and buttress incumbent elite rule. Look at the Economist’s list of the top countries in the world for crony-capitalism. The proportion of Southeast Asian countries in top is striking, Malaysia is no.2; Philippines is no. 3 Singapore is no. 4; Indonesia is no 7 and Thailand is no 12.

MV: This is the second factor that I was going to bring up after institutionalization, the utter selfishness of elites. They really do not care. If you take the corruption issue, why would you address corruption when in a case of Thai, Cambodian, Malaysian or Indonesian elite, it means you would have to queue up; it means you would have actually dismantle this system that essentially enhances your status and gives you a privileged position. Why would you dismantle a system where you benefit from it so directly? You just perpetuate it; it keeps your family and your relatives basically in a much better position than everyone else. This has been going on for decades, and this has meant that whatever happens to the economy, there is a consistent and very discernible increase in inequality. Even with the middle class now, the middle class now is so far remote in terms of income from members of elites in many of these countries. The elite share of the amount of money accumulated perpetuates their position. They can buy whatever political process, whether is semi-democracy or even a more democratic context. They can simple buy their way into power.

BW: I think you place too much emphasis on individual politicians in the system. The political-economic relationship has evolved for years, shaped by decades of business-political ties. The structure is as important as the agents.

MV: We have variation. In Indonesia, you have a much more horizontal society because of the geography. You have more cities of more than a billion than another part of the region, and that actually breaks things out a little bit.

BW: Agreed, but Indonesia is still very hierarchical. At a fundamental level, they are few incentives to engage in fundamental economic and political reforms. The role that elites, especially business elites play, should not underestimated. When we look at a place like Malaysia and its trajectory, the business elites have been Najib’s enablers, his bankers and business partners. This extends across borders. Businessmen prefer to work with someone who they can pay off and make a deal with. Najib as minister of finance was the par excellence deal maker. Sadly, most Malaysians have been on the losing end of the deals.

MV: I think this brings us to the third reason for the region’s democratic deficit: a complete lack of sufficient counterbalance by the rule of law to political or corporate power. I have seen this situation fairly close up in Malaysia, in Thailand, less so in Indonesia. There are huge problems with a functioning judiciary. You see this in Thailand in particular, where there has been aggressive politicization of the judiciary. There is a misplaced sense that the judiciary should be politically controlled rather than apply moral pressure to the corrupt politicians. In a case of Malaysia the judiciary was one of the strongest institutions bequeathed by the British at the end of colonial period. It is striking to go back and look at some of the High Court decisions that were made in early years of independence, cases that were referred to the High Court of United Kingdom before Mahathir stopped this practice. Kelantan actually tried to bring a case to a High Court to succeed before the Federation was fully formed. That case was allowed. None of that would not happen today.

BW: Never said ‘never’. Pressures in East Malaysia are growing.

MV: Indeed, never said never. Nevertheless, the insufficiency of the law to provide a check and balance on what we talked about earlier in terms of weak institutions and elite power is a major factor in the deficit of democracy.

BW: I’m not sure whether or not this is also a reflection of public opinion. We find in multiple surveys that many Southeast Asians do not support checks and balances such as an independent judiciary in any meaningful sense. I am drawing from the Asian Barometer Survey. Southeast Asians do not conceptualize horizon accountability with check and balances, because in part of the legacy of strongman rule and the personalized and hierarchical nature of politics that we spoke about earlier. The problem goes beyond the judiciary. It is the lack of other effective horizon accountable institutions such as independent election commissions and anti-corruption bodies. These institutions do not have any real power in most of the countries of the region. Southeast Asians have few meaningful checks within the system. Laws surrounding these bodies are often manipulated in a very fundamental way to suit those in office. It is a vicious cycle, the lack of operating checks contributes to a lack of support of these institutions and further political manipulation of these institutions for political ends.

MV: We have to consider the other side of situation which are the responses by ordinary people. This is much less clear. For example, impunity is another major problem in Southeast Asia. The lack of resolution of issues does not mean people do not suffer and do not want redress. Throughout this period, there have been successful ways in which civil society has brought pressure and staved off, in some cases, some of the worst excesses or abuses of power. It is not completely a black and white picture. I would say that civil society has in some cases made considerable progress. But, maybe not enough, as they too have hampered because by the strong or selfish grip of elites in the system. They are often just scratching at the surface of some of the problems. Nonetheless it is important to acknowledge the aspirations of people and those who have been on the frontline in the struggle for democratic change.  In the thirty plus years I have been in the region, I have met some of the most inspiring people who work in small NGOs, small law offices or in opposition political parties. They really struggle. It is not always a violent struggle, although at times it is. We see Southeast Asia punctuated time and time again by needless violence, more often than not violence for political reasons. It is very often a mundane, sometimes lonely, fight for change.

BW:  I think you quite rightly point to the bravery of ordinary people. Here too, however, when we look at society, we see two very worrying trends. The first of which has been the deepening of political polarization across the region, the red and yellow shirts. You talked about the yellow shirts of the Philippines in the 1980s. Now we have open clashes in Thailand and Malaysia, large splits in Cambodia and Singapore with very different perspectives shown in survey research and divides in Indonesia, Myanmar and the Philippines as evident in recent elections. Even in Myanmar where everybody talks about the Aung San Suu Kyi’s ‘landslide,’ she only won 57% of the popular vote. Prabowo almost won in Indonesia in 2014. Duterte only won with 38% of the vote. Across the board in Southeast Asia, we have very deeply politically polarized societies. Governments often use this polarization to their advantage, either to as an excuse for intervention in the case of Thailand or they perpetuate this polarization in a place like Malaysia. Divisions are used as a way to justify authoritarian rule and perpetuate their power in the name of stability. Sadly, large shares of the political aspirations of Southeast Asian societies have been dismissed politically, as they are being so economically as well.

MV: Yes, I think the polarization has always been there. Now certainly there is a greater ability to mobilize and simultaneously to exploit the polarization as you pointed out. I think one of the things that interests me about the polarization is the limited channels for addressing differences and grievances. I am struck by the steady narrowing of opportunities for different ideologies, for the ideology of sort of the socialist’s nature that would revive channels for people to actually ask for more in a political context. The collapse of communism and the end of the Cold War is still to a large extent being felt across the Southeast Asia. This great fear of the left wing persists.  What is happening is that people channel a lot of the polarization into sort of racial or religion sentiments. The reality is that people do suffer and despair under the weight of equality. They yearn for some kind of inspiration, a motivational ideology that gives them an avenue for protest. If it is in fact cut off because communism is still banned in places such as Indonesia, or frowned upon the Philippines and Thailand. In Thailand the leader of the red shirts is in fact a former communist. She has tried to establish a party that aspires to represent the massive of people. It is very difficult then to actually channel that polarization into something less violent, more constructive.

BW: We know that in terms of research, most Southeast Asians conceptualize democracy in terms of equality disproportionately compared to other parts of the world. We also know that there are no real substantive open policy debates taking place in most of the region’s political environment. Admittedly, there are some areas and some pockets that we do not want to dismiss those, but at the sense of meaningful discussion of the directions of development policy or allocations of funding, there are real discussion vacuums. In the last five years especially, a lot of government policies had been low hanging fruit, basically throwing money to stave off problems. If there is one area that has been focused it has been infrastructure, hard development, an area that has created few jobs for the region’s youth and reinforced corruption. Regional governments are not meaningfully dealing with underlying challenges that these countries are facing in terms of moving their economies forward and transforming their societies towards the future, especially for the younger generations. The promise of greater social mobility is not being realized.

A second worrying concern in society involves the violations of others by members of society themselves.  Disproportionately, governments are not intervening on the significant human right violations that are being conducted by non-state actors, whether they are in the name of religion, drugs or greed.

MV: That is true. Let me come back to that. There is something else needs mentioning. In the early period of independence in Southeast Asia, many of these countries were conceived of as democracies, the pre-1965 period in Indonesia, pre-1962 period in the Burma, even in the very first year after 1954 in Cambodia. These formation democracies were led by a group of people who had been imbued with the notion of democracy from the outside. They had received education outside. If you look at some of the early leaders of Indonesia, they were essentially were Fabian Socialists. They brought these values to the establishment of the republic. That had all gone by the 1980s. One of the things that I find most interesting about what is driving this democratic deficit is the emergence of a generation of leaders who actually did not share democratic values in the same way. They simple didn’t. Mahathir never went to the West for his education. Lee Kuan Yew is another example. The whole ‘Asian values’ debate in the 1990s, was built around a lot of resentment and frustration by a generation that succeeded the founding fathers. In a patronizing way, the departing colonial powers left it to the founding leaders to set up democracy, because they were imbued the same values. That was all gone by the 1980s. Instead you have a generation who were imbued with traditional notions of power and politics.

BW: I think you continue to place considerable emphasis on leaders and their values. For me, this was broader, it was about the wealth they were accumulating and the synergy between economic and political power. Many of these leaders allied with business and other elites, and were willing to challenge those that challenged them. They were not really willing to share power.

MV: The successive generations emerging in power were not imbued in these democratic values. That is why it was very difficult for them to accept change or reform.

Now we come to the issue of human rights. In my view Southeast Asians have a really good sense of survival, family and land. Security for themselves and their families was the most important. Very often these things are prioritized against more universal things you think might be important to people. You know, if you look at the victims of 1965 in Indonesia, maybe what they want in return is not so much justice, but compensation.

BW: There should not be a trade-off. They should get both.

MV: They should get both, but I think in the end what people often settle for is the material and not the other. There helps us understand the issue of human rights not being enshrined or carried out properly. Weak institutions and power holders are simply not interested. You also have a society that is unfortunately less interested than you expect them to be in pushing for these things.

BW: Advocated for human rights are clearly minority across Southeast Asia, but this is not as simple as you suggest. A majority of Southeast Asians want better, fairer and moral governments. It is much more than the material you suggest. Survey research in the Asian Barometer Survey provides insights. For example, there is no majority of public opinion supporting a secular government a single country in Southeast Asia, including Singapore.

MV: Indeed, the growth of Christian community in Singapore is one of the most understudied phenomena in Southeast Asia.

BW: I also think have the emergence of a religious nationalism that is intolerant and undemocratic. This is not just the extremism we associate with terrorism, but an intolerance that is eating away at the fabric of society. There are clearly counter forces, but the authoritarian rhetoric and closed education systems of many governments reinforce this lack of nuance, empathy and understanding. Civic education is missing, as many governments often work against creating problem-solving and critical thinking in their education systems. Many of the forces that are challenging democracy are coming from below, shaped of course by the institutional and leadership context in which they operate.

MV: Indeed, many dynamics are coming from below. In Indonesia there is more primordialism

BW: Well, it is broader than primordialism in my view.

MV: We have reached a point in the second decade of 21st century, where we have to all ask ourselves are we going to see incremental progress. Can we assume that these hiccups along the way for democracy that we have described will continue to be hiccups and ultimately these societies are reaching the goal of becoming more democratically countries? I am doubtful frankly. I see continuing cycles of upheaval. It is possible for instance in Indonesia that what we saw in the last couple of weeks, the ability of hardline extreme group to put pressure on a very popular elective president could see the undermining not so much of his legitimacy, but of his power. People will exploit the weakness of the presidency. They will not think of the institution of the presidency. They will simply think of their own interests. They all are thinking of their own interests. This could spin-off into a cycle of instability.

Similarly, Cambodia is facing elections in the next two years, the commune election this year and general election after that. It is clear that a younger generation of voters, increasingly a majority of voters, want change. It is also clear that the ruling party and Hun Sen is not prepared to provide them with that change. He wants his son to take over the prime minister eventually when he decides to retire. He wants to retire not according to the electoral schedule.

In Thailand, we have a military that is now entrenched in power. It is not likely that they will give up power in a time soon. There might be an election in 2018. In Myanmar as you point out democracy is fragile.

BW: Democracy is definitely stagnating. but let me take an alternative view. You may be doubtful about the future, but I am hopeful. I think these authoritarian leaders, the Najib, Hun Sen and others are not delivering on expectations either. There are very serious governance deficits in Southeast Asian societies, especially in many of those led by autocrats. This is why we have seen the democratic recession in the region; they are fighting to hold on. Today we have the big catch: we have a contracting economy. We have a very different global and regional economic conditions now. It is not increasing as it was in the 1990s or even in the 1980s. The democratic pendulum can swing back. I am confident it will. There are large shares of Southeast Asians ready to accept change, with the poles on the other side ready and waiting for the tipping point to move in their direction.

MV: I am doubtful. We had exactly the same conditions in the late 1990s, and there was no a hint of the time that there was a Duterte on the horizon or that the military was going to come back to power in Thailand. We cannot use that kind of analysis because economies contract and grow again; leaders do not rise and fall in that basis. We are not see the evidence of autocrats losing power. In fact, quite the opposite. Look at Duterte, who only basically decided to run for election a few months before the election itself. He is widely popular. This is in spite the death of four thousands or more people without the judicial process. We simply can’t predict that won’t happen again.

BW: Populist autocrats are a real possibility in democracies. This is happening across the world, especially in democracies. Trump’s election is case in point. Southeast Asia is different, as the dominant mode is more authoritarian governments rather than democracies. Authoritarianism rather than democracy will be targeted. Failures of economic reform are important and now more than ever this lack of economic and political reform is affecting the system. We are not in the 1990s. There is more information and reservoirs ready to embrace change, the excludes political poles. There is unprecedented pressure on autocrats in terms of their abilities to deliver and serious shortcomings in this regard. The leaders lack the same level of legitimacy than earlier leaders, with more impatient, diverse and demanding societies. This opens up the possibility for hope.

MV: It opens up the possibility but more people like Duterte will come along

BW: Maybe, maybe not.

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Game Changers for 2017

Koon Yew Yin

31st December 2016

As we enter into 2017, I am hopeful that the new year will finally bring positive change to Malaysia. But this positive change must begin with voting out the BN government and the installation of a new government.

For now, we see the BN big guns using the media to criticise the opposition for being divided and lacking cohesion. They also allege that there is no agreement on who is to be Prime Minister if the opposition wins. Or which opposition party will take over which portfolio.

Frankly, I do not see these as being big issues or problems. In fact by raising them, it shows how frightened the BN is over the prospect of losing power so that they will use all kinds of scare tactics.

Don’t forget that in the last GE the opposition won more than 51% of total votes. BN ended up with more state and parliament seats because most of the Malay rural areas voted for UMNO. But in the next GE, we have Pribumi, headed by Dr. M, Keadilan headed by Anwar and Amanah headed by Mat Sabu and the PAS moderates.

I believe PAS will eventually work with the opposition when they realise UMNO is making use of them to win. In any case we will definitely have more Malay parties competing for the rural seats.

The Game Changers

For me, all that matters is what position the BN and opposition has on three key issues which have screwed up Malaysia and Malaysians.

The first relates to providing clean and less corrupt government. As a former businessman I know the importance of money. I also think that money should be earned and not stolen or obtained through fraud or cheating. This is particularly the case for politicians or civil servants.

Unlike Malaysians from the private sector who use their own money and who understandably are trying to make profits from every deal, politicians and civil servants do not use their own savings or pockets. Instead they draw on our national Treasury whose funds come from taxpayers and consumers. Today we see that BN politicians and their appointed civil servant cronies do not care how money is obtained with the result that corruption has reached an absurdly abnormal level with the worst cases among the highest ranking politicians and civil servants.

Will the opposition if it comes to power be as corrupt as the BN government today? Possibly. But after so many years of having the devil we know play Malaysians out again and again and destroy our financial future, I am ready for the deep blue sea of the opposition taking over power.

We all know that it takes a thief to catch a thief. With our experts and champions in corruption, BN in the opposition, this will definitely act as a check against any Pakatan corruption.

The two other key issues are race and religion. Everyone knows how the BN has brought our nation to its current crisis in which racial and/or religious clashes are now predicted as likely to take place in the future. Again here, the culprit in instigating racial and religious intolerance and hatred is BN, or more accurately Big Brother with the big stick, UMNO.

Will the opposition make the racial or religious division in the country worse? The answer is no. In fact the position of the opposition parties and leaders (except for some PAS leaders ) on racial and religious issues has been consistently moderate, fair and rational. Compare this with the hard line, kamikazi record of UMNO leaders such as Jamal “Ikan Bakar” who wants to barbecue Malaysians who oppose the Red Shirts and UMNO.

There is one danger from an opposition election victory. This is the possibility that some UMNO leaders will use the election loss to stir up trouble. This happened during May 69 when UMNO’s Selangor Mentri Besar Dato Harun Idris rallied extremists to engage in mob violence. However, I think our situation today is so bad that many Malaysians are willing to take this risk of another May 69 by voting for the opposition.

Common sense will tell you that there will not be any riot simply because the new Prime Minister will be Dr Mahathir or Anwar if the opposition controls Putrajaya. This time though if there is an opposition victory the whole world will be watching and celebrating.

The BN’s black record on corruption, race and religion should be sufficient game changers for most ordinary Malaysians. At the same time, I expect opposition to UMNO to come from three key constituencies. They have been the main supporters of UMNO in the past but they have also have turned out to be the biggest losers.

The three biggest losers of UMNO’s power monopoly are:

1. Felda settlers and their families.

2. The younger generation of Malay Malaysians below 25-30 years

3. The native voters in Sabah and Sarawak

Felda settlers and their families have suffered enormous financial losses as a result of the UMNO-engineered listing of Felda Global Ventures Holdings (FGV). UMNO’s representatives and proxies managing the company have been involved in one bad decision after another with the latest scandal resulting in payment of RM2.27 billion for a minority share of an Indonesian plantation company when the share pricing should have been considerably less than half.

At the same time, the company’s share price has dropped from an initial IPO price of RM4.55 per share to its present RM1.55. Congratulations to PKR member of Parliament, Rafizi Ramli, for taking this matter into the Malay heartland. We must all support him.

As for the younger generation of Malay Malaysians, UMNO’s ketuanan policies have mainly benefited UMNO’s elite and cronies. Malay graduates now find that many tens of thousands are unemployable because of the bad policies and low standards set by an UMNO-dominated educational system. They will be aware that the future for them is bleak if the BN continues in power.

The third group of now disillusioned UMNO supporters are the natives of Sarawak, that is, Dayaks, Iban, Bidayuh, and Orang Ulu; and Sabah, that is, Kadazan-Dusun, Bajau, and Murut. Each of these groups has been played out by their leaders working together with UMNO so that the two states – potentially the richest states – are now among the poorest.

                This entry was posted on Saturday, 31 December 2016, 6:31 pm and is filed under
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Malaysian Leader Najib Razak Promised Openness, but Dissent Over 1MDB Stifled

By YANTOULTRA NGUI, CELINE FERNANDEZ and PATRICK BARTA

Wall Street Journal

Dec. 30, 2016

Government uses assortment of laws to silence critics of its handling of global scandal over state fund

KUALA LUMPUR—Graphic designer Fahmi Reza is facing up to two years in prison. His problem? He painted red clown lips on a picture of Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak and sent it around.

Mr. Najib pledged a new era of civic freedom when he came to power seven years ago in a country known for penalizing political foes. Instead, his government has become increasingly intolerant of critics as it tries to limit fallout from a sprawling corruption scandal related to a state economic-development fund.

International investigators believe associates of the prime minister siphoned billions of dollars from the fund, known as 1Malaysia Development Bhd., or 1MDB. The U.S. Justice Department has moved to seize $1 billion of assets prosecutors say were purchased with money misappropriated from the fund.

Mr. Najib and 1MDB have denied wrongdoing and promised to cooperate with lawful investigations. The Malaysian attorney general early in 2016 cleared Mr. Najib of wrongdoing.

While pledging to investigate 1MDB fully, Mr. Najib’s government recently has silenced critics under an assortment of laws, arresting dozens. It has barred some from traveling abroad. The government also shut down a probe related to 1MDB by Malaysia’s anticorruption agency, which, according to a person familiar with the matter, had called for criminal charges against Mr. Najib.

Rafizi Ramli, an opposition legislator, was convicted in November of violating Malaysia’s Official Secrets Act by revealing some details of a government 1MDB audit, which came from an agency whose findings are normally public. According to a person who was briefed on the audit, it said $7 billion in 1MDB assets and transactions overseas couldn’t be verified or traced.

The legislator was sentenced to 18 months in prison. He denies guilt and is appealing.

Malaysian government leaders said the country remains open to dissent and critics are trying to destabilize it. In charging people such as Mr. Rafizi, the government is simply enforcing Malaysian law, said a minister in the prime minister’s office.

Maria Chin Abdullah, head of a group that organized a November rally where some called for Mr. Najib to resign, was held in solitary confinement for 10 days under a counterterrorism law as part of an investigation of possible activity detrimental to parliamentary democracy. Violations carry up to 15 years’ imprisonment. Police haven’t yet said whether they will file charges against Ms. Chin, who is currently free. Her lawyer says she was unfairly targeted.

Mr. Fahmi, the painter of clown lips, has been charged with violating a law prohibiting communications that cause annoyance, because he posted his altered Najib image on social media. Mr. Fahmi, who has pleaded not guilty and is out on bail as he awaits trial, said he was voicing anger that the prime minister hadn’t been held accountable for 1MDB.

“In any other mature democracy, this would be nothing,” Mr. Fahmi said.

Malaysian rights organization Suaram counts 31 instances of people being targeted under the law Mr. Fahmi ran afoul of, called the Communications and Multimedia Act, in the first half of 2016. That compares with five in all of 2014.

In addition, last year at least 91 people were arrested, charged or investigated under a 1948 Sedition Act, according to Amnesty International, which said that was nearly five times the total arrested during the law’s first 50 years.

The clampdown leaves Malaysians with shrinking space to question official accounts about 1MDB, especially since the government also has blocked or pressured news websites reporting on the scandal.

The director of online news portal KiniTV.com was charged under the communications act in November after the site uploaded videos of a ruling-party dissident who criticized government handling of 1MDB. The director, who has pleaded not guilty and said the video was from a news conference, faces up to two years in prison if convicted.

Malaysians who raise questions about 1MDB also may face a hard-line group called the Red Shirts. Videos of Red Shirts activists kicking protesters and punching car windows have gone viral in Malaysia.

Members of Mr. Najib’s ruling United Malays National Organization paid some Red Shirts to show up at one protest demonstration, a politician from the party told local media last year.

“We are here because of money,” a 19-year-old named Faris said last month after arriving at a protest rally on his motorcycle. He and several other Red Shirts said they had been paid to attend. One showed an invitation received via Whatsapp specifying payments equal to $11 a head to attend.

The young men said the message was from a leader of the ruling party. A man answering the number the message came from said he didn’t know who the Red Shirts were. A representative of the ruling party said it didn’t pay Red Shirts, and the government said it wasn’t affiliated with them.

The Red Shirts’ leader was detained after complaints by opposition members and Ms. Chin’s group but was released without charges.

Mr. Najib founded 1MDB in 2009 to spur local development. When he faced a re-election battle in 2013, however, his allies spent millions of dollars of 1MDB money to help his party win, The Wall Street Journal has reported, citing Malaysian investigative documents and people familiar with the matter.

 In 2015, with 1MDB-related allegations swirling, Mr. Najib told Malaysia’s auditor general to compile a report, for review by parliament’s Public Accounts Committee.

By mid-2015, Malaysia’s then-attorney general was close to filing criminal charges against Mr. Najib related to 1MDB, according to a person familiar with the matter. The government abruptly announced that the attorney general was leaving, for health reasons.

A successor cleared Mr. Najib of wrongdoing and shut down the separate investigation by Malaysia’s anticorruption agency. The government also declared the auditor general’s report classified.

The former attorney general couldn’t be reached. The current one didn’t respond to a request for comment. He has told local media he would be willing to reopen the anticorruption agency’s probe if it obtained fresh evidence. The agency referred questions to the police, who said they were investigating 1MDB.

The auditor general also didn’t respond to a comment request but has said in the past the report was classified to prevent leaks and so the Public Accounts Committee could do its work without interference.

Mr. Rafizi, the legislator convicted of an Official Secrets Act violation for revealing some details of the audit report, said he had found an excerpt left anonymously on his desk.

The excerpt, he said, showed 1MDB had failed to pay about $90 million it owed to a unit of Malaysia’s armed-forces pension fund. Mr. Rafizi seized on this as evidence 1MDB’s troubles were hurting Malaysians, with some veterans not getting their checks. He was arrested about a week later.

The 1MDB fund confirmed it had a cash-flow mismatch in 2015 but said this didn’t affect pension payouts. The pension fund said there were payment delays but they were related to incomplete documentation rather than 1MDB.

After Mr. Rafizi’s arrest, parliament’s Public Accounts Committee said it found weaknesses at 1MDB and unexplained payments. It called for further investigation. The police who are investigating have given no timetable for a result.

                This entry was posted on Saturday, 31 December 2016, 9:57 pm and is filed under
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Message of wind-down of MACC special operations division is clear – MACC should catch more “ikan bilis” but leave the ‘ikan yus” alone!

2017 New Year Message

In his 2016 New Year message exactly a year ago, the Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak told Malaysians that his RM50 billion 1MDB and RM2.6 billion donation twin mega scandals had been resolved and were no more issues.

Najib could not be more wrong as Malaysia’s international repute and standing suffered an even worse battering this year with the ferocious pounding of the twin mega scandals in the international marketplace of opinion, to the extent that Malaysians felt embarrassed in admitting that they are Malaysians when abroad.

In the past 12 months, Malaysia went from   the third “worst corruption scandal of 2015” by international website foreignpolicy.com in the last week of last year, to  second worst example of global corruption by Time magazine in March, second place in the index of crony capitalism by the Economist’s ranking in May, and full-blown “global kleptocracy” when in July, the US Department of Justice (DOJ) filed the  largest kleptocratic lawsuits to forfeit US$1 billion of 1MDB-linked assets in the United States, United Kingdom and Switzerland from US$3.5 billion international 1MDB kleptocratic embezzlement and money-laundering scandal.

These were not the only woes for the country for this year – as the country is going through the worst multiple crisis of confidence as evidenced by the worst plummeting in the value of the Malaysian ringgit,  the worst racial and religious polarisation in the nation’s history and the unspeakable shame in being excluded from Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA)2015 because of data cheating and bungling by the Ministry of Education.

We are ending the 2016 year with news of the downsizing of the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission’s (MACC) special operations division, which had handled high-profiled cases related to the 1MDB and Felda.

The message is very clear – MACC should arrest and prosecute more  “ikan bilis” but it should leave the  “ikan yus” alone.

China can catch and imprison “tigers” while Indonesia net the “crocodiles” in their anti-corruption campaigns, but Malaysia cannot go on a spree against “sharks”!In 2017, Malaysia will continue to be haunted and hounded by our international ignominy and infamy of a global kleptocracy and the multi-billion dollar 1MDB kleptocratic money-laundering scandal.

What went wrong and how can we put the country right again, so that Malaysians can hold their heads high, whether at home or abroad?

Malaysia would have been spared the international multi-billion dollar 1MDB money-laundering scandal and the infamy and ignominy of being regarded worldwide as a global kleptocracy if the Government and government leaders had not abandoned and  strayed away from the five Rukunegara principles and objectives.

The first three Prime Ministers, Tunku Abdul Rahman, Tun Razak and Tun Hussein would not have stood idly by if Malaysia had been regarded worldwide as a global kleptocracy during their time.

The fourth Prime Minister of 22 years, Tun Dr. Mahathir,  is taking an uncompromising stand against the 1MDB scandal, Malaysia’s infamy and ignominy as a “global kleptocracy” and “Cash is King” mentality.

Malaysians must return to the basics of nation building – the Malaysian Constitution, Malaysia Agreement 1963, Rukunegara and even Vision 2020 if Malaysia is to have any salvation.

Let all Malaysians recommit ourselves to five national objectives, to achieve a greater Malaysian unity; maintain a democratic way of life; create a just society in which the wealth of the nation shall be equitably shared; ensure a liberal approach to our rich and diverse cultural traditions; and build a progressive society which shall be oriented to modern science and technology.

If Malaysians  remain true and faithful to these five objectives and the five Rukunegara principles of Belief in God; Loyalty to King and Country; Upholding the Constitution; Rule of Law and Good Behaviour and Morality, then Malaysia can be saved from the kleptocracy, injustices and inequalities of today for there will be no be no more future 1MDB kleptocratic scandals in Malaysia!

A sober and sombre New Year of 2017 for all Malaysians indeed!

                This entry was posted on Saturday, 31 December 2016, 1:38 pm and is filed under
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Pensiangan Formula to  address  the political and constitutional stalemate created by UMNO’s support for Hadi’s private member’s bill motion on RUU355

An idea came to me during my visit to Pensiangan and Sook in the last three days on a formula which could address the political and constitutional stalemate which had haunted Malaysia for the best part of this year as a result of the initially surreptitious support of key UMNO leaders for PAS President Datuk Seri Abdul Awang Hadi’s private member’s bill to amend the Syariah Courts (Criminal Jurisdiction) Act (Act 355).

I was visiting Pensiangan as part of my visit to the Sabah Interior which also include Tenom and Keningau together with DAPSY leader and Perak DAP State Assemblyman for Canning, Wong Kah Woh; National DAPSY Publicity Secretary Henry Shim; Sabah DAP Chairman and MP for Sandakan, Steven Wong; Sabah DAP Adviser and MP for Kota Kinabalu, Jimmy Wong;  Sabah DAP Deputy Chairman and Sabah State Assemblyman for Kepayang Dr. Edwin Bosi; DAP Sabah Vice Chairman and Keningau DAP Branch Chairman Peter Saili; Sabah DAP Publicity Secretary Phoong Jin Zhe;  Sabah DAP Director of Political Education, Adrian Lasimbang; Melalap DAP Branch Chairperson Grelydia Gillod; Pensiangan DAP Assistant Co-ordinators Clare Taunek and Robinson Rusikan.

The majority of the people in Tenom, Keningau and Pensiangan are Christians.

The MP for Pensiangan is Tan Sri Joseph Kurup, the Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department in charge of national unity.

But Kurup was not in any “national unity” mindset when he warned Putrajaya  in May this year that Sabahans and Sarawakians may demand to split from peninsular Malaysia if Hadi’s private member’s bill is passed in Parliament.

Kurup said Hadi’s private member’s bill risks dividing East and West Malaysia and called for its withdrawal.

He said: “If it is forced into Parliament and passed, I’m afraid it will trigger more feelings among the people of Sabah and Sarawak to go their separate ways.

“They [Federal government] shouldn’t have the slightest thought of introducing this law.”

On the last  day of the Budget meeting in November when Hadi’s private member’s bill was expected to come up again, the MCA mouthpiece, The Star, devoted the whole of its front-page to Hadi’s private member’s motion with the headline “Solid ‘NO’ to Hadi’s Bill”, featuring the quotes and pics from leaders of five Barisan Nasional leaders, namely from MCA, Gerakan, MIC, PBB and PBS.

But at the Parliamentary meeting on the same day, all the Ministers of the non-UMNO BN component parties, in particular the Presidents of MCA, Gerakan, MIC and from the Sabah and Sarawak Barisan Nasional component parties gave tacit support to Hadi to stand up to amend his private member’s motion and bill.

Talk then was that the leaders of other 13 BN component parties had agreed to  support Hadi’s amended private member’s motion provided Hadi’s private member’s bill is taken over by UMNO as a government bill in the March meeting of Parliament.

Hadi’s private member’s bill motion had therefore made progress  and moved one step further to  the March meeting of Parliament when it is expected to  be passed with support of  UMNO and Barisan Nasional MPs – which would be equivalent to the first reading of Hadi’s private member’s bill.

However, thanks to two UMNO leaders, it is now clear that some  UMNO leaders have set up a “political trap” for all the other 13 BN component parties and their leaders and MPs.

We must thank two UMNO leaders, the Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department, Datuk Jamil Kamil Khir Baharom and the Deputy Minister for International Trade and Industry, Datuk Ahmad Mazlan for letting the cat out of the bag in their speeches to the UMNO Overseas Club Alumni annual general meeting in Kuala Lumpur on 18th December 2016.

Jamil admitted that Hadi’s Private Member’s Bill to amend the Syariah Courts (Criminal Jurisdiction) Act (Act 355) enabled the government to circumvent the due constitutional process, as requiring consensus from all states, the National Islamic Council and the Rulers’ Conference.

Jamil explained: “You can’t bring it to the Rulers Conference if you don’t have consensus from 14 states, but a private member’s bill requires only one state or one person to table it.”

Jamil said that when Hadi’s private member’s bill motion moves to the second reading stage, it would be taken over by the government and read out by him.

Ahmad Maslan, on the other hand, said BN component parties will not be able to object against amendments to the Syariah Courts (Criminal Jurisdiction) Act (Act 355) once the relevant bill is taken over by the Federal Government as BN component parties are compelled to support the bill as part of the ruling coalition.

What Jamil and Ahmad Maslan revealed  is clearly a double-pincer strategy of subterfuge involving two circumventions – first, circumventing the constitutional process to secure the consensus from the 14 states and the support of the National Islamic Council and the Rulers’ Conference; and secondly, circumventing the Barisan Nasional consensus of all the 14 BN component parties for any policy or measure to be adopted in the name of Barisan Nasional Government.

In fact, Ahmad Mazlan went one step further and publicly admitted that the ulterior objective of UMNO’s support for Hadi’s private member’s bill motion was to cement UMNO’s “unity” with PAS!

Former Law Minister, Datuk Zaid Ibrahim said that Jamil is wrong and that whether the bill is moved by Hadi or Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak, the requirements are the same – that the consensus of the states as well as the consent of the Malay Rulers are necessary prerequisites before such a bill can be passed by Parliament into law, as Islamic laws are under the purview of the states and the Malay Rulers.

But what Malaysians, whether in Sabah, Sarawak or Peninsular Malaysia, want to know is whether the other 13 Barisan Nasional component parties, and their leaders and Ministers, are so naive and gullible that they can  so easily walk into the “trap” laid out by some UMNO leaders on Hadi’s private member’s bill motion.

The perfidy of some UMNO leaders who have no qualms in reneging and destroying the much-vaunted principle of Barisan Nasional consensus which proved that Barisan Nasional is a coalition of equals and not a coalition of UMNO hegemony must be a grave cause for concern and even consternation – not only to  Barisan Nasional leaders and members, but to  ordinary Malaysian citizens as well.

This is  Barisan Nasional’s worst  crisis since its formation in 1973 – as the Barisan Nasional “consensus” principle is being smashed into smithereens by surreptitious UMNO support for Hadi’s private member’s bill motion, despite overwhelming opposition by the majority of the other BN component parties.

The formula – which I would call the Pensiangan Formula  – to address the political and constitutional stalemate created by Hadi’s private member’s bill is for the leaders and ministers of the other 13 BN component parties to requisition emergency meetings of BN Supreme Council and the Cabinet to reach a two-point consensus:

•	Firstly, the government should not take over Hadi’s private member’s bill, which should remain on the parliamentary order paper; and

•	Secondly,  formation of an all-party Parliamentary Select Committee to study and make proposals on how to strengthen inter-religious relations in Malaysia based on the Malaysian Constitution, Malaysia Agreement 1963 (MA63) and Rukunegara, and which should study all proposals relating to religion, including Hadi’s private member’s bill motion.

The  13 other BN component parties, their leaders and Ministers, should  not  walk into the trap prepared by some UMNO leaders.

But do the ministers and leaders of the other 13 BN component parties have the courage of conviction and political principle to requisition for an emergency meeting of the Barisan Nasional to reach a two-point to address the political and constitutional stalemate caused by UMNO’s surreptitious support for Hadi’s private member’s bill motion?

Malaysians  will get the answers to these questions soon enough!

                This entry was posted on Saturday, 31 December 2016, 10:46 am and is filed under
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SABAHANS UNITED AGAINST DECEPTIVE ATTEMPTS ON RELIGIOUS FREEDOM

by Rev. Datuk Jerry Dusing

Borneo Today

December 25, 2016

COMMENT

As we bring 2016 to a close, we thank God for His love, blessings and protection on us throughout the year. We thank God for the strengthened unity amongst the Church and the people of Sabah of various beliefs.

In the midst of the political and economic challenges of our nation, this Christmas season reminds us that there is hope in God for Sabah and Malaysia. We are a Malaysian family and what we truly desire is for peace within us and amongst us.

The underlying chord that keeps us united as a family is our innate moral sense of love for one another, compassion, respect, honour, fairness, truthfulness and integrity endowed upon us by the Almighty.

These are the qualities of our nation’s moral soil that will allow us to dynamically progress as a pluralistic nation. We should continue to nurture our soil towards a stable political and economic structure now and for our children’s generation.

Our prayer for Malaysia is that truth and truthfulness be established especially amongst those in authority and governmental power. Henry Clay in his speech at the Lexington on May 16, 1829 said:

“Government is a trust and the officers of the government are trustees; and both the trust and the trustees are created for the benefit of the people.”

What is the truth of 1MDB? As Malaysians are left in the dark, we find ourselves frustratingly waiting for foreign nations to expose the truth about this mystery. The lack of truth breeds the lack of trust and this compromises the willingness of citizens and businesses to respond to public policies and contribute to a sustainable economic recovery.

What is the truth about the Hudud Bill and all other efforts of the Federal Government of Islamising East Malaysians by threats, intimidation and deception?

Sabahans are united in our stand against any deceptive attempt that challenges our guaranteed religious freedom under the Malaysia Agreement 1963. Under this Agreement, secularism is guaranteed. Sabah and Malaysia are secular nations.

The Federal Government’s policy of determining one’s citizenship and religious identity through the National Registration Department (NRD) has caused chaos to the demographics of Sabah.

Firstly, the spirit of the provision for ‘Citizenship’ under the Inter-Governmental Committee Report (IGC) and MA63 is that the Federal Government’s policies must not discriminate the inhabitants of Sabah.

Secondly, the choice of religious belief and identification of our people should be the sole discretion of the individual himself as per MA63. We call upon the Sabah State Government to stand steadfast and take authority in defending the rights of true Sabahans in accordance with MA63.

The recent amendment to the Income Tax Act 1967 that seeks to tax donations for non-Muslim religious bodies has caused lots of confusion. We urge the Prime Minister to explain the rationale behind the amendment, define clearly the intended targeted bodies and clarify why it involves only ‘non-Muslim’ religious bodies.

As Sabahans are intensively seeking the truth of MA63 and embracing our rights and inheritance as a sovereign nation under the same, we look to the future with hope for our people and our land. We do not ask for more than what we have been promised.

All we ask is for the truth to be established and justice restored in accordance with MA63. We pray for divine intervention in the challenging state of affairs of our nation for our sake and the sake of our next generation.

This Christmas Season, our prayer for Malaysia is that we stay united as a family in truth, justice and peace. We look in hope in God for the restoration of a rich moral soil for a new Malaysia – a pluralistic nation that is exemplary of her love, compassion, respect and honour for one another with a government that in trust practises fairness, integrity and responsibility to her people.

Jesus preached that we should ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind’ and to ‘Love your neighbour as yourself.’ May the practice of these high ideals grow in us all in 2017.

To All Christians, a Blessed Christmas and a Happy New Year. Peace be unto all of you.

God Bless Sabah and Malaysia!

REV. DATUK JERRY DUSING is president of the Sabah Council of Churches and head of the SIB church in Sabah.

                This entry was posted on Saturday, 31 December 2016, 6:54 pm and is filed under
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Have Liow Tiong Lai, Mah Siew Keong and S. Subramaniam secretly agreed with UMNO  to support BN government take-over of Hadi’s private member’s bill that MCA, Gerakan and MIC cannot respond positively to the Pensiangan Formula to deal with Hadi’s private member’s bill?

I have been puzzled as to why the MCA President, Datuk Liow Tiong Lai, the Gerakan President, Datuk Mah Siew Keong, the MIC President, Datuk S. Subramian is so lukewarm to my proposal of a Pensiangan Formula to address the political and constitutional stalemate created by UMNO’s support for PAS President Datuk Seri Abdul Awang Hadi’s private member’s bill to amend the Syariah Courts (Criminal Jurisdiction) Act (Act 355).

The Pensiangan Formula came to me when I was visiting Pensiangan on Thursday, 29th December after Tenom and Keningau in the interior in Sabah, where the overwhelming majority are Christians and non-Muslims – and after the inspiring and  eloquent Christmas Message of the President of the Sabah Council of Churches, Rev Jerry Dusing, calling for the truth to be told  on national issues concerning the people, whether 1MDB or Hadi’s private member’s bill.

Pensiangan is the parliamentary constituency of the Tan Sri Joseph Kurup, the Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department in charge of national unity.

But Kurup had failed in his Ministerial duty, as the country had never been faced with greater threat to national unity arising from the triple woes of racial and religious polarisation and the failure of Putrajaya to honour the Malaysia Agreement 1963 to give equitable and fair treatment to Sabah and Sarawak in the Malaysian Federation.

As a result,  Kurup was not in much of a  “national unity” mindset when he warned in May this year that Sabahans and Sarawakians may demand to split from peninsular Malaysia if Hadi’s private member’s bill is passed in Parliament.

If this should come to pass, it would be the greatest tragedy for the Malaysian Federation.

What is the best way to address the political and constitutional stalemate caused by Hadi’s private member’s bill motion?

The Pensiangan Formula is probably the best approach  to address the political and constitutional stalemate caused by UMNO’s support for  Hadi’s private member’s bill, viz:

•	Firstly, the Barisan Nasional government should not take over Hadi’s private member’s bill, which should remain on the parliamentary order paper; and

•	Secondly, the  formation of an all-party Parliamentary Select Committee to study and make proposals on how to strengthen inter-religious relations in Malaysia based on the Malaysian Constitution, Malaysia Agreement 1963 (MA63) and Rukunegara, with the Parliamentary Select Committee specifically assigned to study Hadi’s private member’s bill motion.

I first spoke about the Pensiangan Formula when I was in Sook on Thursday and I am surprised at the pin-drop silence particularly from the non-UMNO parties and leaders in Barisan Nasional at this new approach to the political and constitutional stalemate caused by UMNO’s support for Hadi’s private member’s bill.

Have Datuk Seri Liow Tiong Lai, Datuk Seri Mah Siew Keong and Datuk Seri Dr. S. Subramaniam secretly agreed with UMNO  to support BN government take-over of Hadi’s private member’s bill in the March meeting of Parliament that MCA, Gerakan and MIC cannot respond positively to the  Pensiangan Formula to deal with Hadi’s private member’s bill?

After the Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Najib Razak’s announcement in his UMNO Presidential speech at the UMNO General Assembly on Nov. 30 that the Barisan Nasional Government would take over Hadi’s private member’s bill after Hadi’s private member’s bill motion is passed by Parliament in the March meeting, Liow announced that the MCA and Chinese guilds and associations will set up a legal committee to look into Hadi’s private member’s bill.

Liow should convene an urgent meeting of this joint legal committee the MCA has set up with Chinese guilds and associations to discuss the Pensiangan Formula to address the political and constitutional stalemate created by UMNO’s support  for Hadi’s private member’s bill.

Or is Liow estopped from taking such a move because he had given UMNO an undertaking to support the passage of Hadi’s private member’s bill motion in March Parliament as a first step for the BN government takeover of Hadi’s private member’s bill?

If Liow wants more explanation about the Pensiangan Formula, I am prepared to meet him to elucidate the matter.

But Liow and all leaders and Ministers of the 13 non-UMNO Barisan Nasional component parties should be aware that UMNO and PAS leaders are jointly meeting Malaysian students overseas to explain their co-operation on Hadi’s private member’s bill.

Furthermore, they should take note of what two UMNO leaders told the UMNO Overseas Club Alumni annual general meeting in Kuala Lumpur on 18th December last year:

•	The Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department, Datuk Jamil Kamil Khir Baharom revealing that Hadi’s Private Member’s Bill to amend the Syariah Courts (Criminal Jurisdiction) Act (Act 355) enabled the government to circumvent the due constitutional process, as requiring consensus from all states, the National Islamic Council and the Rulers’ Conference. According to Jamil, the BN government cannot propose such a bill to the Rulers’ Conference if there is no consensus from the 14 states, but a private member’s bill requires only one state or one person to table it.

•	The Deputy Minister for International Trade and Industry, Datuk Ahmad Mazlan who said that BN component parties will not be able to object against amendments to the Syariah Courts (Criminal Jurisdiction) Act (Act 355) once the relevant bill is taken over by the Federal Government as BN component parties are compelled to support the bill as part of the ruling coalition.  Ahmad Mazlan went to  admit that the ulterior objective of UMNO’s support for Hadi’s private member’s bill motion was to cement UMNO’s “unity” with PAS!

There is nothing in the Parliamentary Standing Orders to prevent the establishment of an all-party Parliamentary Select Committee to strengthen inter-religious relations in the country, which had lately come under considerable stress and strain because of a string of unresolved controversies. One such controversy is Hadi’s Private Member’s Bill.

An all-party Parliamentary Select Committee can be set up by way of a motion on the first day of the March meeting of Parliament.

If MCA, Gerakan, MIC, SUPP and the other Sabah and Sarawak component parties agree with the Pensiangan Formula proposal, they should also requisition a meeting of the Barisan Nasional Supreme Council as well as the Cabinet to officially adopt and endorse the Pensiangan Formula.

                This entry was posted on Sunday, 1 January 2017, 9:36 am and is filed under
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Call for Royal Commission of Inquiry to Save FELDA, to listen to grievances of Felda settlers particularly on Felda’s EHP acquisition and Felda Global Ventures (FGV) and to make recommendations

DAP calls for a Royal Commission of Inquiry into FELDA, to listen to grievances of FELDA settlers particularly on FELDA’s Eagle High Plantations (EHP) acquisition, Felda Global Ventures (FGV) and to make recommendations to Save Felda and to ensure that FELDA does not become as great a national embarrassment and shame as the international 1MDB kleptocratic money-laundering scandal.

I am sure former Law Minister, Datuk Zaid Ibrahim, who is with us today, is fit and qualified to be a member of this Royal Commission to Save FELDA, and I am also prepared to serve on the RCI to Save Felda.

A fit and proper Chairman of the Royal Commission of Inquiry to Save FELDA would be Datuk Seri Nazir Razak, the CIMB Chairperson, the son of Tun Razak who set up FELDA and the brother of the Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Najib Razak.

PKR MP for Pandan, Rafizi Rami would be most suitable to be engaged to head an investigation team by the RCI to Save FELDA.

There have been a battery of complaints and grievances against FELDA, the latest being FELDA’s decision to acquire a 37 per cent stake in Indonesia’s PT Eagle High Plantations (EHP)  – at US$505.4 million (RM2.26 billion)  purchase at almost three times above the market value – without any control over access to EHP’s 425,000 hectares of land.

Decisions surrounding access to Eagle High’s land and other issues would still be determined by Indonesian billionaire Peter Sondakh, who would remain in control of EHP, despite having a reduced stake of 31.6 percent via his Rajawali Group.

There were also complaints and grievances about FELDA’s housing projects with signs of mismanagement and misappropriation, as Felda’s financial statement ending year 2014 revealed that RM193 million that was supposedly being pumped into that project had been “written-off”.

Another issue which Rafizi had brought up was Felda’s replanting scheme, which had the highest spending at RM25 billion a year and exposed the scheme to various risks of abuse and corruption.

Rafizi has said that over the past few years, whistleblowers from Felda had consistently approached him with concerns over corruption and mismanagement of the replanting scheme.

There is also the long-standing and deep-seated grievances about Felda Global Ventures (FGV), greatly aggravated with  EPF’s disposal of all its FGV shares over the year until it has no longer any stake in the company.

The poor performance of FGV in the stock market is most shocking, falling to RM1.55 per share at the end of the year, compared to its IPO price of RM4.45 in 2012.

In 2012, Putrajaya had promised the listing of the country’s largest oil palm plantation would herald a new era and urged settlers to acquire FGV shares through loans.

With EPF having offloaded its substantial share in FGV, had the FELDA settlers been taken for a ride and wrongly advised to take loans to buy the FGV shares?

In September this year, former Deputy Prime Minister, Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin said that if there is a four per cent swing against UMNO/BN in the 14th General Election, the UMNO/BN coalition would lose 45 seats, the majority of which are UMNO seats.

This would mean the UMNO/BN coalition getting even less seats than what the Pakatan Rakyat won in the 13th General Election.

With the loss of 45 seats, the UMNO/BN coalition would be reduced to 88 parliamentary seats and would occupy the Opposition benches in Parliament.

Muhyiddin should know what he is talking about as he was the Election Director of UMNO/BN coalition until he was summarily sacked as Deputy Prime Minister because of his disagreement with the Prime Minister over the international multi-billion dollar 1MDB kleptocratic money-laundering scandal.

We do not want to have a phoney or fake opposition to win some 25 parliamentary seats in the 14GE and to play the role of “king-maker” who could throw their lot and support to the UMNO/BN coalition to ensure that Najib Razai can continue as Prime Minister, although Najib won an even lower percentage of voter support than in the 13GE in 2013!

Is it possible to ensure a four per cent swing of voters against the UMNO/BN coalition in the 14th General Election?

The four per cent swing of voters against the UMNO/BN coalition in the 14GE is not an impossible goal, especially as there is an unprecedented degree of restiveness and opposition to Najib and the UMNO/BN coalition, even among the Malay-dominated civil service whether at national or state government level!

Patriotic Malaysians, regardless of race or religion, cannot accept recent adverse developments where the country is regarded worldwide as a “global kleptocracy”.

What is a “kleptocracy”? I explained in the recent budget meeting of Parliament that “kleptocracy” is a government of 3Ps – Pencuri, Perompak and Penyamun.

Malaysians are entitled to ask: In the world-wide anti-corruption campaign, “tigers” in China and “crocodiles” in Indonesia” are being caught and jailed. Why is it in Malaysia, only the “ikan bilis” are being nabbed while the “ikan yus” get away scot-free?

This is why in the 14GE, let us work for what is regarded as the “impossible” by analysts to happen –  to remove the UMNO/BN federal government in Putrajaya so that all Malaysians, whether Malays, Chinese, Indians, Kadazans or Ibans have a new chance to make Malaysia great again instead of heading towards a failed and a rogue state.

[Speech (2) at the dialogue organised by DAP MP for Raub, Dato’ Mohd Ariff Sabri b. Hj. Abdul Aziz in Kampung Gali Tengah, Raub on Sunday, 1st January 2017 at 5 pm]

                This entry was posted on Monday, 2 January 2017, 11:52 am and is filed under
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MACC is only allowed to net ikan bilis but not ikan yus (sharks)  in Malaysia

The end of the year underlines one important aspect about the anti-corruption campaign in Malaysia – the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) is only allowed to net ikan bilis but not the ikan yus (sharks) in Malaysia, or the MACC itself will be targeted by the powers-that-be in the country and those responsible will be punished and disempowered.

This was highlighted by the end-of-the-year corruption news of the “transfer out” of the six senior officers in the MACC Special Operations Division (Bahagian Operasi Khas – BOK) who were directly involved in the SRC International investigations.

As reported by Malaysiakini, the six who were transferred out included Tan Kang Sai, the division’s deputy.

The special division was formed in 2010 to handle high-profile cases as well as cases involving corruption of more than RM1 million.

Two from the team were transferred out in October, while the rest, including Tan, were removed this month. Some of the posts vacated by those transferred out of the special unit have not been filled.

According to Malaysiakini, four of them had been transferred to MACC’s investigation division, while others were transferred to state MACC offices and other government agencies.

Their transfers came in the wake of an earlier transfer at about the same time last year of BOK’s deputy public prosecutor (DPP) Ahmad Shazalee Abdul Khairi.

Ahmad Shazalee, who was the DPP involved in remanding a number of key witnesses in the SRC International probe, was initially transferred to another department in MACC, but earlier this year he was moved to the Attorney-General Chamber’s Trial and Appeals division.

Malaysiakini quoted sources that the “transfer out” of the six MACC officers could be yet another move to further derail the commission’s investigations into SRC.

The SRC, which was previously a subsidiary of the troubled sovereign wealth fund 1MDB and now under the Finance Ministry, was probed for depositing RM42 million into Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak’s personal bank account.

Malaysiakini also reported the downsizing of the special investigation division, which was also responsible for probing the Felda purchase of hotel property in London and the water infrastructure corruption case in Sabah.

Malaysiakini’s report has not come as a surprise to Malaysians or to foreign observers of developments in Malaysia, as this is the reason for the drop and decline of Malaysia’s position in Transparency International’s annual Corruption Perception Index, both in ranking and score.

Although the former Transparency International Malaysia President Datuk Paul Low had been induced and  co-opted by Najib to be a Minister in his Cabinet  and appointed as the Minister in charge of integrity and good governance, Paul Low dared not appear in Parliament to answers questions about government integrity or the campaign against corruption.

He always left it to  the Deputy Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department Razali Ibrahim to answer issues about corruption, integrity and  transparency.

It was in the winding-up of the 2017 budget debate in Parliament in November that Razali made the startling statement that Sabah’s Watergate scandal did not involve any politician, either from Sabah or at the federal level as the MACC investigation only focused on the involvement of government officers who took bribes or abused powers.

Who would believe Razali  that no politicians were  involved in Sabah’s Watergate scandal where MACC itself said that 60 per cent of the RM3.3 billion earmarked by the federal government to improve water supply to Sabahans  had been “siphoned off” by corruption, and where the MACC had the biggest ever seizure in its 49-year history, recovering RM114 million from the two top officials of the Sabah Water Department – including RM53.7 million in cold hard cash in Malaysian and  various foreign currencies which took more than 30 MACC officers 15 hours to count?

If only government officers were the only culprits involved without political leaders as the real masterminds in the Sabah Watergate corruption scandal, then corruption in Malaysia is even worse than everybody had expected!

I for one do not believe Razali, and I trust that the overwhelming majority of Malaysians agree with me.

It is clear that the MACC remit does not extend to deal with Barisan Nasional leaders involved in corruption – the “ikan yus” – and unless the MACC has the independence and professionalism to deal with the corrupt, without fear or favour, however high their position, the war against corruption will never come near the anti-corruption campaign in China or Indonesia, where “tigers” and “crocodiles” are caught and jailed for their corruption offences.

It is significant that the latest international news on the campaign against corruption is the announcement in China of  new anti-corruption pilot schemes  in Beijing, Shanxi and Zhejiang  to create an independent watchdog role, similar to the highly successful Corrupt Practices Investigation Bureau in Singapore and the Scandinavian ombudsman system, which will be independent of the Communist Party of China which has a stranglehold of key state positions.

Malaysia is losing out in the international anti-corruption battle front, as countries with reputation of being more corrupt in the past have either overtaken or about to overtake Malaysia in terms of public integrity of government and political leaders.

What is worse, Malaysia is now  regarded worldwide as a “global kleptocracy”.

Will the MCA President and the MP for Bentong, Liow Tiong Lai, raise this important issue in the first Cabinet meeting of the new year on Wednesday, 4th January 2017?

(Speech at the DAP ceramah at Simpalek N/V, Raub on Sunday, 1st January 2017 at 9 pm)

                This entry was posted on Monday, 2 January 2017, 5:48 pm and is filed under
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The inability of  UMNO leaders, propagandists and cybertroopers to find any  proof from the more than  10 million words I had written or spoken in the past 51 years of my political struggle is the most powerful  proof of their politics of hate, falsehood and fake news

I have been in politics for 51 years.

I have never operated underground.  The country’s Special Branch, which is one of the best of its kind in the world, having been trained  by the British and which had the unique distinction of being the only intelligence apparatus in the world to have beaten the communists in a war for the “hearts and minds” of the people, knows that my political struggle is an open book as I had never engaged in any below-ground subterranean activities.

I do not think there is another political leader in Malaysia who had been so demonized in the past half a century, maligned and defamed as anti-Malay, anti-Islam and anti-Malay Rulers.

I have written and spoken almost daily in the past 51 years of my political struggle for an united, democratic and most just Malaysia, and every word is on public record.

Assuming an average of some 600 words a day – and it is not unusual for my speeches in Parliament in my  first three decades in Parliament from the seventies to the nineties to  range from 8,000 to 10,000 words in major debates, whether budget, the royal address or important bills  – I would have spoken or written some 10 million words in my political life for the past 51 years.

The inability of UMNO leaders,  propagandists and cybertroopers  to  find any  proof from the more than 10 million words I had written or spoken in the past 51 years of my political struggle to substantiate their allegation that I am anti-Malay, anti-Islam and anti-Malay Rulers is the most powerful proof of their politics of hate, falsehood and fake news!

It is overwhelming evidence to prove two things:

•	Firstly, that they were indulging in  utter lies and falsehood  to demonise me as anti-Malay, anti-Islam and anti-Malay Rulers; and

•	Secondly, that it is the UMNO leaders, propagandists and cybertroopers who are guilty of the most irresponsible and immoral gutter of politics of lies, hate and bigotry.

My challenge to UMNO leaders, propagandists and cybertroopers to produce evidence from the more than 10 million words I had spoken or written in the past 51 years to prove that I am anti-Malay, anti-Islam and anti-Malay Rulers still stands – and they are welcome to comb through what I had said or written in the past 51 years, including the rooms of records of my statements, books, tapes and videos  in the Special Branch, to produce proof that I am anti-Malay, anti-Islam and anti-Malay Rulers.

Of late, new lies have been told about me. I have been accused of being the cause of the May 13 riots in Kuala Lumpur in 1969 as well as being a “communist”.

Discerning Malaysians will realise that these new allegations against me were concocted after the “political tsunami” of the 2008 General Elections, when UMNO leaders, propagandists and cybertroopers suddenly realized that DAP was a political force to be reckoned with.

The allegations that I was the cause of the May 13 riots in 1969 or a “communist” were never made before the political tsunami of 2008.

Why?  The reasons are simple –  there is no basis or truth to such lies and falsehoods!

The UMNO leadership  of the first four Prime Ministers, Tunku Abdul Rahman, Tun Razak, Tun Hussin and Tun Mahathir, never made these two allegations against me for the Special Branch of the period would know whether I had been the cause of the May 13 riots in 1969 or whether I was a  communist.

If I had been the cause of the May 13 riots of 1969 in Kuala Lumpur or a communist, the Special Branch would have been utterly incompetent instead of being one of the best in the world, to allow me to operate for half a century when the detention-without-trial Internal Security Act (ISA) would be easy weapon to be used against me until the ISA abolition in 2012.

I had been detained twice under the Internal Security Act, the first time after the May elections in 1969 and the second time during Operation Lalang in October 1987, but I had never  been detained because of the May 13 riots or because I was a communist.

In fact, I was not even in Kuala Lumpur during the tragic days of May 13, 1969.

I was contesting in the Bandar Melaka parliamentary seat in 1969, and the last days of the 1969 general elections campaign were really hectic ones, which included waiting for the results of the May 10, 1969 general election, as the counting of votes were not completed and the results announced until the  early hours of Sunday, May 11, 1969.

I returned to my Petaling Jaya house on Sunday evening and simply collapsed from the accumulated tiredness of the campaign.

Early on Monday, May 12, 1969, I returned from Petaling Jaya to the Bandar Melaka constituency to thank the voters and I had a  thank-voters public rally on Monday night – probably the only elected MP in the 1969 general elections to have a thank-voters public rally before the clampdown on political activities as a result of the May 13, 1969 riots and declaration of emergency.

This was because I was in a hurry, as I was scheduled to fly to Kota Kinabalu the next day on the morning of Tuesday, May 13, 1969 to help the election campaigning of independent candidates in Sabah as voting in Sabah would only be held some two weeks after the voting in Peninsular Malaysia.

The first time I heard that trouble had broken out in Kuala Lumpur – what became known as the May 13, 1969 riots – was when I was speaking at a public rally in Kota Kinabalu that evening.

But “revisionist” UMNO leaders, propagandists and cybertroopers are now spreading lies that I was in Kuala Lumpur during the May 13 riots, leading illegal processions and hurling anti-Malay and anti-Islam slogans marching through the Malay heartland in Kampung Baru in Kuala Lumpur on May 13, 1969 – when I was never in Kuala Lumpur after the May 10 general election!

I am also accused of being a communist – an accusation that was never leveled before the “political tsunami” of 2008, for the simple reason that the first four UMNO Prime Minister knew from Special Branch briefings that this was impossible.

In fact, in the 1969 general election, apart from having to contest against the Alliance, DAP had to contest against an invisible foe – the Labour Party and the Malayan Communist Party which were  advocating boycott of the 1969 general election on the ground that elections in Malaysia was a fraudulent process, advocating instead “street protests”.

It is true that the Alliance suffered  some setbacks when MCA candidates were routed  in the 1969 general elections, losing out to the Opposition, but Labour Party and the Malayan Communist Party suffered even greater setbacks because the voters rejected their call to boycott the general elections and came out solidly to cast their votes.

Malaysia is unique as a multi-racial, multi-religious, multi-lingual and multi-cultural Malaysia.

I have always believed that a person who is anti-Malay and anti-Islam cannot be a true Malaysian, just as a person who is anti-Chinese or anti-Indian, anti-

Buddhism, anti-Christianity, anti-Hindusim, anti-Sikkhism could not be a genuine Malaysian for he or she  will be denying the multi-racial, multi-religious and multi-cultural diversity  and heritage in Malaysia which is the country’s great strength to be a world-class nation.

I would urge UMNO leaders, propagandists and cybertroopers to stop their gutter-politics of lies, falsehood, fake news and hatred if they really love Malaysia, for the degeneration of Malaysian politics to the gutter level is to take Malaysian nation-building to the cleaners as well!

We can differ, however strongly or vociferously, about what is best for Malaysia but let us not take leave of decency, truth, honesty and honour, or we risk condemning Malaysia to the fate of a failed and rogue state!

(Speech at the dialogue organised by DAP MP for Raub, Dato’ Mohd Ariff Sabri b. Hj. Abdul Aziz in Kampung Gali Tengah, Raub on Sunday, 1st January 2017 at 5 pm)

                This entry was posted on Monday, 2 January 2017, 9:18 am and is filed under
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