Chinese-Malaysian a ‘living treasure’ in NZ

Introducing cells to suicide

by
Jane Tolerton
 | NZ Listener

A breakthrough strawberry-birthmark treatment discovered by a New Zealand surgeon and his team points the way to treatments for other tumours.

Swee Tan is a master of the rhetorical question. Outlining how his research into strawberry birthmarks could lead to a new way of treating cancer, he asks: “Would that be a good thing?” Suggest he could be making big money in cosmetic surgery overseas, and he asks, ‘Would I be a happy man?”

Hutt Hospital’s director of surgery should be happy enough – because what began as his research into disfiguring strawberry birthmarks has just won his four-strong research team a major international science prize. The implications for cancer treatment and regenerative medicine are so valuable that news of the award has been under wraps for a couple of months while the intellectual property involved has been registered internationally.

But the prize Professor Tan really has his eye on is a national research institute he plans at Hutt Hospital, being named after the two great pioneers of plastic surgery, New Zealanders Sir Harold Gillies and Sir Archibald McIndoe. That Tan and his team have done their breakthrough research without such facilities and with little funding is testimony to their dedication – and their willingness to spend huge amounts of time working for free.

Strawberry birthmarks grow from nothing into tumours that often cover much of the face within a year – and then shrink over about a decade. The usual strategy then, in the absence of an easy, effective treatment, was “just sit and wait”.

In one in 10 cases doctors had to intervene as a birthmark moved to cover an eye or obstruct the windpipe, threatening death by asphyxiation. High-dose steroids were the first line of attack. “This is a terrible thing to do to young children,” Tan says. “It’s like using a machine gun – and it doesn’t necessarily work. In 30% of cases the birthmark shrinks dramatically, and in 40% it stops growing – but in 30% it just keeps growing. When we got desperate, we used to use daily injections of interferon – with the side effect, in one in four children, of spastic in the legs. Because of that, people moved to chemotherapy. Treating a birthmark with chemotherapy – you have to be pretty desperate.”

That moment in April when Tan’s team won the John Mulliken Prize for the best science paper at the conference of the International Society for the study of vascular anomalies amazed their international colleagues. But Tan must be getting used to being considered amazing. Vicki Lee, the CEO of Cure Kids (formerly the Child Health Research Foundation), calls him “a cross between a genius and a saint”. The Museum of Wellington has made him a Living Treasure. Nicholas, a patient who blogged about his operation and recovery declared, “Swee Tan is part Chinese, part New Zealand and part Jedi.”

Tan has a gentle charisma. But within the velvet glove of charm, the iron fist of determination is clearly evident. His wife, Sanchia, says people once told him he could never be a surgeon with his hands, roughened by hard physical work as a child.

One of 14, he was born in a little village in Malaysia. “As children, we worked in the plantations – coconut, coffee, palm oil. Life was always a struggle, but I wanted to rise above that and have a professional life, and being a doctor was my dream.”

His father had only primary-school education, his mother none. They sent Tan to a Chinese school – “which means you can’t go anywhere, not even to the local university. It was madness, but they believed they should keep the heritage. In order to go to a Western country, I had to learn English. So after high school, I went to a college run by Australians in Kuala Lumpur for nine months. The way I learnt English was to read the newspaper from page one to the last page every day. But if you want to go somewhere, that’s what you’ve got to do. You can feel sorry for yourself and do nothing or get up and do something useful – and look beyond what you’ve got.”

Australia was offering free tuition to a limited number of students from developing countries, and having gained a place Tan started at the University of Melbourne’s Medical School in 1980. He got up at 5.00am three times a week to clean a supermarket. “In my final year the surgical registrar took me aside and said, ‘I don’t think it’s good for you to be half an hour late every morning’, and I had to tell him. He said, ‘Why don’t you take out a loan, and I’ll be the guarantor.’ He took that risk with me and gave me a hand. This is something I never forget and I do for the next generation – because it is the right thing to do.”

By then he had already experienced life across the Tasman. In their fifth year students could do an elective anywhere in the world, “so I came to New Zealand – and fell in love with this country. People here are so friendly, just so accepting, interested in you, not pretentious – and they are colour-blind.”

In 1987, having worked for a year in Melbourne Hospital, where he met Sanchia, then training as a nurse, he had to leave Australia under the terms of his scholarship. He took a job at Waikato Hospital, and Sanchia joined him after graduating.

“My first run was plastic surgery, which I knew nothing about. I was fascinated by the life-transforming nature of plastic surgery – and the creativity. You had a problem and you had to work out a solution. There’s no doubt people who want to do plastic surgery are naturally quite creative people, but no doubt that plastic surgery gives people the opportunity to be creative. It’s kind of a mutual attraction. Why did it attract me? It was the fascination when you see something happen – ‘Wow, I’d like to do that. It is an adventure.’”

There were only four positions in plastic surgery for training every three years. “It was almost laughable – mad! So, give it a go – and again people gave me a hand,” says Tan.

After two years at Burwood Hospital, he arrived at Hutt, where he qualified as a plastic surgeon and Sanchia had the first of their three children, now aged 17, 15 and 11. He won a fellowship to Oxford to do further training in craniofacial surgery – “you cut out eye sockets and move them, basically” – and to Harvard Medical School to do research. It was his boss there – John Mulliken, the man for whom the prize is named – who got him interested in strawberry birthmarks, or haemangioma.

“Life unfolds as you go along, not as you expect, and quite often much better than we expect. I believe in that. You have to take every opportunity and cherish everything that comes along. People often don’t realise opportunities at their doorsteps. It’s a matter of recognising them, because opportunities will keep coming and going – and they can just bypass you.”

When he arrived back in New Zealand in 1996 looking for a medical school post so he could get on with his strawberry-birthmark research, the only job on offer was one for just over half time in the Wellington Regional Plastic, Maxillofacial and Burns Unit. Based at Hutt Hospital, it now treats 12,000 people a year in the Central Region, stretching to Wairoa and taking in Nelson and Marlborough.

Tan was delighted to return to Hutt because he liked the culture – “very open, informal and unpretentious. If you had ideas, people would listen.”

He did have ideas, and he enrolled to do a part-time PhD with Otago Medical School to explore them. One was that there had to be a better treatment for children with strawberry birthmarks. But the big idea, even then, was that these birthmarks would give clues to dealing with other tumours, including cancer.

“It was clear to me where I should be investing my time – and that was going into the lab and understanding the mechanisms regulating the growth and remission of strawberry birthmarks.” To fund this research he also set up a private practice – doing cosmetic as well as reconstructive surgery. And he begged time in laboratories around the country in which to do his work.

“What was fascinating to me is that the growth and remission of the strawberry birthmark would involve a lot of cell multiplication and then cell death, and that therefore there must be mechanisms controlling that,” he says.

In 2000 Tan discovered the gene responsible for the regression of strawberry birthmarks, and shortly afterwards he and Wellington School of Medicine senior scientist Dr Paul Davis discovered the gene involved in their growth. But Tan’s most significant discovery was the origin of strawberry birthmarks – stem cells – and the way these cells are controlled.

“In the body, you’ve got the Renin-Angiotensin system. This system has been known for centuries, but it’s only been known to regulate blood pressure,” he explains. “What we’ve discovered is that the Renin-Angiotensin system is a vital mechanism controlling these stem cells. Now we’ve found you can use a beta blocker, Propranalol, which is usually used for treating high blood pressure, to treat strawberry birthmarks by blocking renin to stop cell multiplication – which causes them to commit suicide.

“So now we’ve got a very simple treatment. If a child is three months old, the strawberry birthmark is expected to grow three times as big by age one. We treat them with a beta blocker, and it is shrunk in three days and gone three months later. So just think about this concept of fighting a tumour with an anti-hypertensive drug – to manipulate the Renin-Angiotensin system – instead of using chemotherapy. This is why I say we will be called heretics. This is a brand new concept. We believe this research will set the scene for research for the next 60-100 years. It is completely different from what people have been pursuing for the past 60 years. We are talking about treating the tumour without trying to kill the cells – you just make them commit suicide.”

The discovery has an obvious implication for treating cancer, but there are others. “The wider implication comes from knowing the roadmap to the mechanisms that control embryonic development – and therefore tissue regeneration and cancer growth. We believe we know that roadmap, and at least one of the control mechanisms. Because of this we are able to grow red blood cells and bone tissue and fat tissue from the stem cells we take from strawberry birthmarks. Potentially, we could use these cells for bone marrow transplant in leukaemia treatment. We could grow blood vessels across a blockage in a coronary artery or a diabetic foot. We could replace a piece of missing bone, in situ.”

It was the research on the Renin-Angiotensin system and strawberry birthmarks that won the international science prize for Tan and his team – Darren Day and PhD student Tinte Itinteang from Victoria University’s School of Biomedical Sciences, where the lab work is done, and Hutt Hospital pathologist Helen Brasch.

Itinteang – from Kiribati via scholarships to St Patrick’s College, Silverstream and the University of Melbourne Medical School – was supposed to present that paper in Belgium. But as volcanic ash spread over Europe, the New Zealanders were told to go to Montreal and give their seven papers via video conference. As it was too late for Itinteang to get a visa for Canada, Day presented the winning paper. The response of their international colleagues went two ways, says Day. “Every one was going, ‘It’s so obvious! Why didn’t we think of it?’ But there was also a feeling of, ‘Who are these people from New Zealand, and what would they know about it?’”

The team did not want to patent their research. They wanted everyone to be able to use it. But a patent attorney advised them against this approach – telling them that if they didn’t, someone else would.

So the Gillies McIndoe Research Institute now holds the patents for what is termed a series of “inventions” – even though the institute doesn’t exist yet in terms of bricks and mortar. The first significant move towards putting the institute on the drawing board came in 1998 when Tan’s old boss at Oxford asked if his top student could help with the research – and Tan had to turn him down because it was unpaid.

Tan hatched a plan. “One evening I invited some people to my house to dinner. After some wine they got really happy and I said, ‘I’ve got this idea – a charitable trust to raise money and invest it, and then we can carry on the research.’”

Those guests and their host formed the Reconstructive Plastic Surgery Research Foundation to fund a research fellow position.

Then, in 2000, when Tan was about to have three months off to write up his PhD thesis, the director of plastic surgery at Hutt Hospital, Dr Max Lovie, suddenly died after 30 years in the job, and Tan was asked to run the unit. “I thought, ‘Where shall I invest my time?’ It was an easy thing for me to give away cosmetic surgery.” He has kept just half a day a week of private practice.

When Tan was persuading his guests to set up the research foundation, he deliberately presented only part of his plan. “I knew, having worked in med school, that if I really want to make a difference, I needed a lab dedicated to this.”

He kept putting “research institute” on the agenda, and finally the board backed it. With the aim of making it a national, rather than regional, institution, that board now has members from the country’s other plastic surgery units in Christchurch, Hamilton and Auckland.

The Gillies McIndoe Research Institute for Reconstructive Plastic Surgery was formally launched in May 2009. But what was actually launched was a fundraising effort – $3.5 million to set up six laboratories in the empty ward above the plastic surgery unit at Hutt Hospital, and then $10 million for an endowment fund to keep them running.

Tan notes that the Hutt Valley District Health Board’s business is patient care, not research. But it has supported the research and is happy to host the institute – a most uncommon feature for a New Zealand public hospital. He is wedded to the public health system. “I think I am a born socialist,” he declares, “but with one caveat. I believe everyone should be equal as long as the level is high, not low – as long as everyone is able to drive a Mercedes-Benz.”

His professorship is from the University of Otago’s Wellington School of Medicine, which has set up a chair of plastic surgery at the Gillies McIndoe Research Institute – and appointed him to it. Cure Kids is raising money to fund the chair in perpetuity, and has got about $1 million so far. But the fundraising effort to fit out the ward with laboratories has yielded less than $1 million, some of it just in kind or pledges.

The only time Tan looks other than completely relaxed and confident is when he talks about his fundraising efforts. “I’m not good at saying, ‘Can you give?’” Hutt City Mayor David Ogden, who is also a member of the Hutt Valley District Health Board and is leading the institute’s fundraising campaign, likens Tan to a “gospel preacher” when he’s in front of an audience. He makes it sound spiritual – and good fun at the same time. However, “it is an adventure, a journey, with lots of ups and downs”, says Tan. “The money dries up, and you have to make the decision to carry on. You have to have that deep conviction that you are not going to give up. But it’s going to be hard. This whole thing is hard. Set up a research institution. Make something out of nothing. It is very ambitious. You want to be able to create tissue, to grow bone or a piece of cartilage or a tooth. That’s ambitious. People can call you mad, or they can call it exciting. I choose to believe it’s exciting. And it’s not just me, it’s a whole bunch of people – who do the work for free. None of this could have happened without team members believing in this common madness.”

That madness will become orthodoxy in a short time if Tan’s team keeps up its momentum. Last month, Day and Itinteang gave three presentations at the eighth annual meeting of the International Society for Stem Cell Research in San Francisco. Tan has been picked by the New Zealand Association of Plastic Surgeons to speak at the American Society of Plastic Surgeons conference in October.

“They wanted us to pick the best science paper,” says the New Zealand association’s president, Howard Klein. “There was no question it had to be Professor Tan, who is recognised internationally by his peers as doing the highest quality work in this area. He’s a treasure for everybody – an exceptional researcher, a good administrator, a wonderful teacher. He’s really the total package in terms of what you want as a surgeon – and he’s a lovely guy.”

Tan, a surgeon first and foremost, says it’s a privilege.

“I have the privilege to see the human spirit, the courage people have and the tenacity to get through all this. Some people have surgery, radiotherapy and even chemotherapy. But they come through the other side. And I think a lot are better people – much better people. They appreciate the compassion people have for them. They realise what the human being can do for other people, what they can do for themselves. And they also realise the unique opportunity everyone has being alive. I don’t have any science to prove it, but I think people are more drawn to earth, more human.”

                This entry was posted on Tuesday, 10 August 2010, 6:25 pm and is filed under
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Denying Anwar Natural Justice

By
Dr Chen Man Hin

IT IS NATURAL JUSTICE FOR ANWAR IBRAHIM TO HAVE ACCESS TO ALL EVIDENCE IN SODOMY 2 TRIAL

Denial of clinical evidence from Anwar Ibrahim to defend himself to face a charge of sodomy is a denial of natural justice for Anwar. Before this, he was also denied of evidence several times on previous occasions in the course of the trial.

In any trial, any one charged with a crime, surely has a right to ask his accuser (the prosecution) to produce  the evidence. To deny the accused of the so called charge is surely a denial of natural justice for the accused.

This is substantiated by a clause in the INTERNATIONAL COVENANT IN CIVIL AND POLITICAL RIGHTS passed by the United Nations, ‘which guarantees the accused the right to have adequate time and facilities to the preparation of defence. Article 14 (3) (6) of the Covenant guarantees that legal representation of the defendant should have access to all relevant material and evidence.’

A check on the covenant revealed that Malaysia has not ratified the covenant, nor is she a signatory. We have SUHAKAM which is supposed to uphold human rights in the country. Can SUHAKAM act on this?

Malaysia must observed human rights if there is sincerity to respect human rights. Suhakam should come up openly to support Anwar’s peitition in court to have access to all evidence which is currently withheld by the Prosecution.

THE WORLD IS WATCHING THE TRIAL OF ANWAR.

Al Gore and Paul Wolfowitz on August 4th told the Asian Wall Street Journal that although Anwar is tried in  Malaysia, the trial is watched by interested leaders all over the world. Anwar’s trial is actually a trial before the people of the World. Al Gore said that it was a trial for democracy and justice. He is quite convinced that the charge of sodomy as trumped up, was purely to get rid of Anwar, as he was posing a threat to the Prime Minister Najib Razak.

DPM Muhyddin dismised Al Gore’e remarks claiming that he has no right to interfere in the affairs of the country. It is relevant to remind Muhiyddin, the persecution of Aung San Suu Kyi of Myanmar was an internal matter, but the whole world is clamouring for release of ASSK. So also in Anwar’s case the whole world is clamouring for a just and fair trial for Anwar.

Muhyiddin should not dismiss Al Gore’s comments carelessly, Al Gore was a vice president of America,  he is a champion of a carbon free environment and a Nobel Laureate. He is a fighter for justice and during the early days of Reformasi, Al Gore defended Anwar at an Apec dinner meeting in Kuala Lumpur during Sodomy 1 days.

A TIMELY WARNING

A corrupt judiciary or unfair trials are one of the reasons why foreign investors fight shy of Malaysia, causing it to have a lower ranking in FDIs in Asean, below Thailand, Vietnam and Indonesia. A foreign investor would not put his money here, if he does not a get a fair trial, should his company be involved in a legal tussle.

Therefore, it would be prudent for PM Najib to ensure that Anwar get a fair trial, and to see that all evidence relevant to the Sodomy 2 trial be handed over to Anwar’s defence counsel. Not only are Malaysians watching, in fact, the WORLD IS WATCHING. WE WOULD ADVISE HIM TO DROP ALL CHARGES AGAINST ANWAR.

                This entry was posted on Tuesday, 10 August 2010, 10:06 am and is filed under
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Has Hishammuddin changed his mind about having a new IGP when Musa Hassan’s twice-extended contract expires next month?

Home Minister Datuk Seri Hishammuddin Hussein said the government will announce the status of Tan Sri Musa Hassan’s contract as Inspector-General of Police (IGP) at an appropriate time.

He said:

“This is not the right time to talk about it.

“When the time comes, we will make the appropriate announcement.”

This has caught the whole country and entire police force by surprise, as it  is in complete variance with the stand taken by Hishammuddin in Parliament five months ago on March 15, when  had told the press that Musa would be replaced as IGP.

He said:

“It is not only specific to the IGP but four out of the seven division directors of PDRM. I already know who is going to replace the IGP. I already know who will replace the commercial crime investigation department director.

“I already know those who will take over, so there is no use speculating or reporting without basis.” (Sun March 16, 2010)

As a result of Hishammuddin’s statement in Parliament on March 15, the country had been waiting patiently for the announcement of the new IGP but now there seems to be a dramatic reversal of the situation as Musa seems to be very much in the running to be re-appointed as IGP.

What had happened to the new IGP-designate?  Has he been found wanting in the qualifications and qualities needed to be the country’s IGP that the government has now to fall back on Musa Hassan to extend his tenure for another term?

It will be the most powerful evidence that despite all the sloganeering about reform and government overhaul, the Najib administration is just incapable of walking the talk if Musa is again appointed for another term of duty as IGP.

                This entry was posted on Tuesday, 10 August 2010, 3:19 pm and is filed under
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Spies, secrets and smart-phones

by
P.C. | The Economist

SOME sort of a deal seems to have been thrashed out over the weekend, according to reports from Saudi Arabia, under which its spooks will be able to snoop to their heart’s content on messages sent over BlackBerrys within the kingdom. All last week, as it negotiated with the Saudi, United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Indian authorities over their demands for monitoring, the smart-phones’ Canadian maker, Research In Motion (RIM), was dodging journalists’ demands for proper explanations about what exactly is negotiable about the phones’ security. The Economist asked five times in four days for an interview, and got nowhere. Other news organisations had a similar experience.

The best we could get from the company was a series of tight-lipped statements, of which the least cryptic was this one:

    RIM has spent over a decade building a very strong security architecture to meet our enterprise customers’ strict security requirements around the world. It is a solution that we are very proud of, and it has helped us become the number one choice for enterprises and governments. In recent days there has been a range of commentary, speculation, and misrepresentation regarding this solution and we want to take the opportunity to set the record straight. There is only one BlackBerry enterprise solution available to our customers around the world and it remains unchanged in all of the markets we operate in. RIM cooperates with all governments with a consistent standard and the same degree of respect. Any claims that we provide, or have ever provided, something unique to the government of one country that we have not offered to the governments of all countries, are unfounded. The BlackBerry enterprise solution was designed to preclude RIM, or any third party, from reading encrypted information under any circumstances since RIM does not store or have access to the encrypted data.

    RIM cannot accommodate any request for a copy of a customer’s encryption key, since at no time does RIM, or any wireless network operator or any third party, ever possess a copy of the key.  This means that customers of the BlackBerry enterprise solution can maintain confidence in the integrity of the security architecture without fear of compromise.

Seems, at first glance, pretty categorical and reassuring, doesn’t it? But hang on. First, all of the reassurances about message security seem only to apply to “enterprise” customers—large organisations that give BlackBerrys to their staff, and which route messages through a server on their own premises. RIM’s statement appears to make no promises to the millions of BlackBerry users worldwide who are contracted directly to a mobile-telecoms operator. Their messages are routed via RIM’s own servers, which are dotted around the world. Wherever RIM puts them, it has to comply with local authorities’ demands for access. It is reported that RIM has agreed to put servers inside Saudi territory, which would of course be under Saudi jurisdiction. Presumably the other governments demanding greater access to message monitoring will want something similar, since the company does say it co-operates with all governments “with a consistent standard”.

RIM’s guarantee of the impregnability of customers’ encryption keys is also less impressive than it appears. Let’s leave aside for a moment the long history of “uncrackable” codes proving crackable after all. All that RIM is saying is that while the message is encrypted it is not possible to provide a key to decrypt it. What about at either end of the encryption process? E-mails sent encrypted from a BlackBerry handset at some point have to be decrypted and sent to the recipient’s e-mail server. That is done either by the “enterprise” server, for those large BlackBerry users that have them, or in RIM’s own servers in the case of people who have their BlackBerry contract with a local telecoms firm. So at the very least, anyone who has a BlackBerry contract with a Saudi telecoms operator, or whose Saudi employer provides his Blackberry, would now seem to have his e-mails at risk of being read if the authorities demand this.

But what the Saudis were concerned about was not so much e-mails but those “uncrackable” instant-messaging chats. When the company says it does not have, and cannot provide, a key to decrypt them as they travel from handset to handset, what this may mean, says Ross Anderson, professor of security engineering at Cambridge University in England, is that a new key is generated for each chat, and that only the paired handsets at either end have that key. If that is the case, he says, it might be rather difficult to decode those messages’ contents while they are encrypted and in transmission (though it would not be hard to detect who has sent a message to whom, and when).

The weakest link

However, as we have reported before, the handsets themselves are the weakest link in BlackBerry security. Last year the UAE’s state-controlled telecoms operator, Etisalat, sent out what it insists was a software patch to improve BlackBerrys’ performance. RIM put out an indignant statement saying that  “independent sources” had concluded that the patch could “enable unauthorised access to private or confidential information stored on the user’s smartphone.” In plain language: it appeared to be spyware. RIM gave users advice on how to remove it from their handsets.

The easiest way for spooks to read all of a surveillance target’s messages (including e-mails, texts, web forms) might be to do more stealthily what Etisalat seems (if you accept RIM’s theory) to have tried so clumsily to do: push a piece of spyware out to his handset—perhaps disguised as, or hidden in, a software update. This blogger receives software patches regularly and without warning on his company BlackBerry and would have no idea if one of them were part of a dastardly MI5 plot (paranoid, moi?).

According to an Indian government document leaked to the Economic Times last week, RIM has promised to provide the “tools”, within 8 months, for Indian spooks to read BlackBerry instant-messaging chats. It would be a huge blow to its reputation if it were ever found to have helped spy agencies put spyware on users’ handsets. So perhaps RIM itself would not risk that. But maybe others can provide a “solution” that can push snooping software on to handsets. America’s spies seem to think China’s spies can do this: last year Joel Brenner, then a senior counterintelligence official, told a security conference near CIA headquarters that during the Beijing Olympics “your phone or BlackBerry could have been tagged, tracked, monitored, and exploited between your disembarking the airplane and reaching the taxi stand at the airport. And when you emailed back home, some or all of the malware may have migrated to your home server. This is not hypothetical.”

Mark Rasch, former head of the computer crimes unit at the United States Department of Justice told Reuters that the ability to tap into messages is routine for security agencies around the world, and he should know. American authorities have huge powers, under the post 9/11 Patriot Act and other laws, to demand compliance with wiretapping orders, to gag those who are complying with them and grant them immunity against any legal consequences. So basically, it’s a licence to fib, or at least to keep stumm: if any smart-phone or telecoms provider were letting Uncle Sam take a peep at our messages, they wouldn’t be able to tell us, and even if we found out we couldn’t sue them. Is it plausible that the American authorities, after 9/11, would let people walk around with devices that send completely uncrackable messages? Surely they can read them, says Bruce Schneier, another internet-security expert, “You know they do.”

Given India’s tough line (unsurprising, given its terrorism worries), if it doesn’t get the “tools” to read messenger chats, then RIM may be shut out of a huge market; on the other hand, if BlackBerry services are not blocked in India in the coming months, this is bound to raise suspicions that its authorities have somehow gained (not necessarily from RIM itself) the means to read chats and other messages.

All this leaves RIM in a difficult situation. It doesn’t want to be, and perhaps may not be able to be, entirely open about what sort of access to messages it offers the authorities in different countries. The trouble is, as it notes in its statement, it has to a large degree built its brand on the supposed uncrackability of BlackBerry messages—more than rival brands have done. The feature that set its products apart from other smart-phones is now being thrown into doubt: and at an especially awkward time. The launch last week of the new generation BlackBerry, the Torch, was overshadowed not just by the disputes with various governments over monitoring, but by a Nielsen survey which showed that, unlike iPhone and Android users, only a minority of BlackBerry owners are thinking of buying another BlackBerry next time. The company’s evasiveness on the security issue is hardly going to encourage them to stay loyal.

Pretending not to listen

What about all those other supposedly hack-proof means of communication, such as Skype internet telephony and Google Mail, both of which are “encrypted”. A security pundit interviewed on BBC television’s “Newsnight” a few days ago speculated that the American authorities are only pretending when they claim they still can’t tap into Skype calls. This was then put to Lord West, a former British security minister. His response was fascinating:

    When I come on a programme like this I’m always very nervous, ‘cos I know so much. And also people…don’t necessarily always tell the truth. That sounds an awful thing to say but do you want anyone to know that you can get into very high-encrypted stuff? No, you can say “we don’t, we can’t do it”.

He then went on to say how “mind-boggling” are the capabilities of America’s National Security Agency and its British counterpart, GCHQ. To this blogger, that sounded like: “Yes of course we can hack Skype calls and all the rest, but we have to pretend we can’t”. Mr Anderson notes that there are all sorts of other internet-based services that provide encrypted messaging, including various dungeons-and-dragons online games. As these proliferate, providing terrorists and crime gangs with secure cyber-meeting places, the spooks will have to keep chasing them: serving papers on the hosts where possible, seeking deals with them otherwise. This is tricky but not impossible if you are the United States. For less powerful nations like the UAE, it is harder to get co-operation, and simply blocking all such secure-message services would do great economic damage.

Not all governments may get all of the snooping powers they want (RIM seems to be trying to persuade some to make do with the “metadata” of messages—who sent a message to whom, and when—rather than their contents). Even so, whether you are an international terrorist, an investment banker, or indeed an intelligence agent, given the technical capacity and the legal powers at the disposal of the big world powers, it seems that even on “secure” and “encrypted” channels, you can never be quite sure that someone isn’t listening in:

    Number Two: We want information, information, information…

    The Prisoner: You won’t get it.

    Number Two: By hook or by crook, we will.

—————

SKMM kaji BlackBerry

PUTRAJAYA Suruhanjaya Komunikasi dan Multimedia Malaysia (SKMM) sedang menyiapkan laporan berhubung penggunaan telefon bimbit pintar BlackBerry di negara ini ekoran tindakan beberapa negara menggantung perkhidmatan telefon itu atas alasan keselamatan.

Menteri Penerangan, Komunikasi dan Kebudayaan, Datuk Seri Dr. Rais Yatim berkata, laporan itu kini dalam proses untuk dilengkapkan sebelum dikemukakan dalam satu mesyuarat minggu ini.

Laporan itu adalah tentang dakwaan kononnya perkhidmatan BlackBerry telah digantung di beberapa negara. Kita akan umumkan hasilnya selepas mesyuarat nanti, katanya pada sidang akhbar selepas menyempurnakan Majlis Pelancaran Malaysia Selamat (Msafe) di Ibu Pejabat Polis Daerah (IPD) Putrajaya di sini semalam.

Turut hadir pada majlis itu ialah Menteri Dalam Negeri, Datuk Seri Hishammuddin Tun Hussein.

Pada 4 Ogos lalu, pengawal selia industri telekomunikasi Arab Saudi dilapor mengarahkan perkhidmatan BlackBerry di negara itu digantung mulai Jumaat lepas kerana pengeluarnya gagal memenuhi syarat-syarat yang dikenakan pihak berkuasa negara itu.

UAE pada Ahad lalu pula mengumumkan, pihaknya akan menggantung perkhidmatan utama BlackBerry iaitu pengiriman mesej, e-mel dan pelayaran Internet mulai 11 Oktober ini disebabkan isu keselamatan.

                This entry was posted on Tuesday, 10 August 2010, 7:40 pm and is filed under
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Ten questions about ‘Teoh’s note’

The Malaysian Insider

KUALA LUMPUR, Aug 10 — Questions are now popping up over a “note” found last year in Teoh Beng Hock’s sling bag ‘that may throw some light regarding his death’ after the Attorney-General’s Chambers denied suppressing evidence in his death inquiry.

The AG’s Chambers issued a statement last night about the discovery of the note by Investigating Officer ASP Ahmad Nazri Zainal last October 7, more than two months after Teoh’s death.

Question 1 — Why did the investigating officer take two months to say he found the note in Teoh’s sling bag a day after the political secretary to Selangor executive councilor, Ean Yong Hian Wah, was found dead on July 16 last year.

Question 2 — Why do the police look like they are lackadaisical in investigating this death? Did they need a psychiatrist to tell them to look for a suicide note?

Question 3 — Why would the police even consider it a suicide case before finding the note? Were they looking for evidence to show its suicide?

Question 4 — Why did it take time after the note was translated to verify it? Wasn’t it a matter of utmost urgency?

Question 5 — Is it really a note in Teoh’s handwriting? What proof is there?

Question 6 — Why is the AG’s Chambers revealing it now and not immediately after it tested the note for authenticity or at the outset of the inquest? If the AG wasn’t satisfied then, why is he satisfied now to speak about the existence of the note?

Question 7 — Will the AG be satisfied to reveal the note on August 18 when the inquest resumes and hears Dr Pornthip Rojanasunand’s testimony? She did say it was probably 80 per cent homicide and only 20 per cent suicide.

Question 8 — How many people had access to the sling bag before the police officer found the note? Is there a chain of evidence and custody to show the bag has not been tampered with? The inordinate amount of time is suspicious.

Question 9 — Why would a man about to be married to the mother of his unborn child commit suicide after overnight questioning? Did a psychiatrist think such a man would consider suicide?

Question 10 — Is this ‘note’ the tipping point to end the inquest, to clear the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) and to remove the need to have a Royal Commission of Inquiry into their investigating procedures?

The public has a right to know as the AG’s statement last night was scarce on details.

All it said was Ahmad Nazri recently owned up that he did find the note when he searched the sling bag on July 17 last year but did not realise the significance of it as other documents were also found and that they were written in both Chinese and Roman characters.

The statement said the AG’s Chambers was equally startled by the discovery of the note and had instructed an investigation to be carried out.

The note was immediately translated and there was sufficient cause to send it to be analysed by a document examiner at the Chemistry Department on October 9 and subsequently on October 20 last year, it added.

It said the document examiner prepared his report and they were considered by Attorney-General, Tan Sri Abdul Gani Patail, himself and who was not convinced of the authenticity of the note due to insufficient samples to verify the handwriting, in particular the Chinese characters.

In addition, the note was said to have been discovered some two over months after Teoh’s death and that this would raise suspicion over its authenticity and discovery.

It statement noted that the AG’s Chambers was earlier briefed by the investigation officer that he conducted a thorough search after being advised by a psychiatrist that, ordinarily, a note would be left in a suicide case.

“As a result of this, the attorney-general decided to put the note in and directed the investigation officer to explain this in court to avoid any repercussion in future and let the coroner decide on its weight after considering the explanation by the investigation officer and the document examiner’s report,” it said.

The statement said the AG’s Chambers felt that there was no suppression or withholding of evidence and that the decision for not tendering the note earlier was made based on the document examiner’s report as well as the discovery of the note which could give rise to suspicion.

“The Attorney-General’s Chambers will tender the document as evidence only when and until it is satisfied that any shroud of suspicion surrounding it is lifted,” it added.

                This entry was posted on Tuesday, 10 August 2010, 11:24 am and is filed under
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Why Be Afraid of PAS?

by
Kee Thuan Chye

 SHOULD non-Muslim Malaysians be afraid of PAS?

That is a question that will be extremely pertinent when the next general election comes around. With a large percentage of the non-Muslim population being currently disillusioned with Barisan Nasional (BN), how would they vote if they were faced at the next general election with choosing between a candidate from BN and one from PAS?

The people who are most suspicious of and averse towards PAS are the Christians. Not all are like that, however; for instance, I know Christians who voted for PAS in the 2008 general election, including a pastor in Kedah.  A Catholic friend in Penang says she and her church members fully support PAS. And many among the flock of the Church of the Divine Mercy in Shah Alam, who gave PAS MP Khalid Samad a standing ovation when he visited it in 2008, must have voted for him.

But on the other hand, I have also come across Christians who are educated, middle-class and very sensible, but who are so scared of PAS that their fear seems irrational.

The religious aspect is of course of utmost concern to them. They are scared that if PAS came into power, it might establish an Islamic state, and that would serously affect Christian worship. Considering that the Christians have become a beleaguered lot over the last 20 years because of increasing restrictions being placed on them by the Government, their worry about facing worse circumstances may be understandable.

For example, getting a permit to build a church, which is probably the most basic of their concerns, now takes an inordinate amount of time. The Catholics of Shah Alam had to wait 14 years before the then BN Selangor State Government allowed them to build their church. Christian groups wanting to circumvent this problem have resorted to registering themselves as non-religious organisations.

New churches are now expected not to look like churches. Some of them look like factories, especially the St Ignatius Church in Petaling Jaya, which reportedly was prohibited from putting a cross on top of its building. Furthermore, many churches are now located in shophouses because getting religious land for the building of churches is next to impossible.

On top of that, from time to time, some BN MP would kick up a fuss in Parliament or elsewhere about crosses existing on the facades of missionary schools and agitate to have them all removed.

Would all this get worse if PAS came to rule the country?

First of all, it is unlikely that PAS can do that on its own. It now has 23 seats in Parliament. It must win 112 of the total 222 seats to gain a simple majority and become the ruling party. That would amount to a huge quantum leap.

But even if that near-impossible event did become a reality, and PAS wanted to turn Malaysia into an Islamic state, it would still need to get enough support to amend the Federal Constitution for that purpose. It would need a two-thirds majority to pass the Bill, i.e. 148 votes. Where would it get the extra 36 to add to its 112?

It may then be argued that if Pakatan Rakyat (PR) got elected to form the government, PAS would be part of it. That is true. But if it still insisted on going ahead with its Islamic state agenda, it would need the support of its coalition partners to vote for the Bill. Given that its partners are PKR and the DAP, how many votes is it likely to garner from them? Enough to make two-thirds?

I reckon that even if BN, which would then be in the Opposition, relinquished the whip in the voting on the Bill, thereby allowing its MPs to vote according to their conscience rather than follow the party line, it would still be very unlikely that the two-thirds will be obtained.

Mathematically, then, the fearful Christians need not fear that PAS can impose an Islamic state. But for the sake of argument, even if it could and did, how much different would it be from what we’re in now? After all, Najib Razak has already declared Malaysia an Islamic state, which he did in July 2007. Since becoming Prime Minster, he hasn’t retracted that declaration.

Let’s have a look at PAS’ idea of an Islamic state. In its document on the establishment of such a state, it makes clear that Syariah law will hold sway but only Muslims will be subjected to it. Non-Muslims can choose to be subjected to it or to the current penal code of the land. In other words, there is no change for them.

It also guarantees “the rights and freedom of the individuals and the citizens of the state”, and among the rights protected are freedom of religion and right to cultural expressions; freedom of speech, political association and assembly; freedom to private ownership; freedom of education; freedom to engage in business; and so on.

It pledges to uphold parliamentary democracy as PAS has accepted democracy “as the best methodology” for realising its political struggle, and to take full cognisance of the reality and sensitivities of Malaysia’s multi-ethnic, multi-religious and multi-cultural make-up.

From the look of it, there is not much difference in principle from the current state. The one major difference in PAS’ idea of an Islamic state, however, is that Islam will be the basis of socio-political life and it will be implemented as a comprehensive way of life.

This may be the difference that the Christians would recoil from. Even if they stopped to consider that Islamic principles are rather similar to those of Christian ones, especially in relation to the concepts of justice, equality, humanity, and that these principles are, in fact, consistent with the guarantee of religious freedom, they will not be comfortable with the setting-up of an Islamic state.

I am not a Christian myself but I do not want an Islamic state either. Neither do I want a Christian state or a Buddhist state or whatever-religion state. And that’s simply because I am strongly in favour of Malaysia being a secular state.

MCA president Chua Soi Lek recently came out to say that if PR wins the next general election, the prime minister might be from PAS. He was of course capitalising on the non-Muslims’ fear and distrust of PAS. But even if what he said does materialise, the PAS prime minister would most likely behave accordingly. The PAS politicians are not new to the game, and they are pragmatists too. They will rise to the occasion. And that occasion is recognising the realpolitik.

Malaysia is a diverse society and its major interest groups have to be pacified. The PAS prime minister would not be so naïve as to jeopardise his position by alienating them. The lessons of March 8, 2008, have been properly learnt.

Furthermore, can a PAS prime minister be that awful an option? Not if he is the likes of Nik Aziz or Nizar Jamaluddin. Both are held in high regard even by non-Muslims. Nizar even came to be adored by non-Muslim Perakians in just the short time he was their Menteri Besar. It is true that when he was named MB, there was initial apprehension among non-Muslims, but when they saw his subsequent performance, they became full of admiration for him.

Of course, it may be argued that neither of them will become PM, anyway, and in all likelihood the position would fall to Abdul Hadi Awang. He, too, is an old hand. He would know that as PM, he would not be able to behave as he would as PAS president. His constituency would be radically different, and he would have to juggle the needs of a whole spectrum of groups – ethnic, religious, cultural, etc – and keep them satisfied. He would have to sustain their support for him. Otherwise, the outcome at the following general election would be disastrous not only for him but also for his party and coalition.

There would be things he could not do. Just as an example, it would be foolhardy (no pun intended) to ban alcohol. Not only would this anger non-Muslims who drink (and even some Muslims who do); the international community would leave in droves. Then how would Malaysia obtain foreign direct investment? Malaysia would be seen as a repressive and regressive state. How would it be competitive in this globalised world?

The rules of the political game are different now from those of the past. If Hadi were to take a hardline Muslim stance in his policies as PM, his partners in PKR and the DAP would not let him, not to mention those in Sabah and Sarawak.

Christians and non-Muslims who fear PAS need to therefore reassess their feelings. This is not a country that is homogeneous. There is a large non-Muslim population that cannot be ignored. They might also consider that PAS’ stand on the “Allah” issue has been consistent and in support of Christian usage of the word. Pit that against a BN government that is deadset on banning it by appealing against the High Court ruling that allowed it.

Personally, I believe that a religion-based party is anathema to the harmonious development of our diverse society because politicisation of religion can be divisive. But PAS is a political reality that cannot be wished away, and it has the potential, in partnership with PKR and the DAP, of unseating the incumbent government, which needs to be removed for the sake of real and positive change.

As such, when the time of reckoning comes at the next general election, some of us when faced with the option of having to vote for PAS or BN would have to exercise the option without the baggage of irrational fear. If we don’t set aside these fears, we might end up making the wrong choice.

                This entry was posted on Tuesday, 10 August 2010, 11:17 pm and is filed under
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Enough is enough of Little Napoleons

By
Thomas Lee

It surely comes as a big surprise that less than two weeks after the cabinet lifted the iniquitous illegal curb on non-Muslim religious clubs and societies that a Little Napoleon school head should unilaterally reject the application to set up a Chinese society in his school.

The Sin Chew Daily reported that parents of a school in Petaling Jaya are upset that its school head has rejected the application to set up a Chinese society in school.

A parent was quoted by the Sin Chew Daily that he had been fighting for the establishment of a Chinese society in his son’s school since February this year, but the school head did not give his approval even though there are Chinese language teachers willing to supervise the proposed society.

The Education Ministry has on 4 August 2010 revoked a decade-old directive compelling those who want to form non-Muslim clubs or societies in schools to first obtain its permission.

The federal government decision to revoke the directive came about following the public disclosure of several sham treatments of non-Muslim religious clubs and societies in several schools.

DAP parliamentary leader Lim Kit Siang, who was at the forefront in demanding for the removal all restrictions on the non-Muslim religious clubs and societies in schools, had contended that such a policy and practice were a direct contradiction of Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak’s 1 Malaysia initiative to foster national unity among multi-ethnic Malaysians.

Kit Siang has pointed out that the discriminative policy is against Najib’s 1 Malaysia policy and the New Economic Model objective to educate a critical, creative and innovative generation of Malaysians

“What is the use of boasting about Malaysia as a model of ethnic, cultural, religious and biological diversity and Malaysia’s rich and unique cultural heritage when restrictions continue to be in place affecting the formation of non-Muslim societies in schools?” Kit Siang had asked.

Following widespread discussion and debate on the issue, with heightened political and social pressures, the federal government finally conceded to the public demand and revoked the controversial directive.

The month-long controversy was resolved about two weeks ago when the cabinet ordered the Education Ministry to withdraw the directive. Is it truly resolved?

Yet, one obstinate school head has been reported this week to be flexing his Little Napoleon muscles to abuse his authority to prevent the formation of a Chinese society in his school.

I had foreseen that such a scenario would happen. In one of my previous Comments, I said: “I hope the school heads, some of whom practise the Little Napoleon culture, will not make things difficult for the students who want to form such clubs or societies. In fact, the school heads should help the students by providing the meeting place and appointing teachers to be advisors to guide them. If there is the unlikelihood or improbability that a school may not have a teacher practising the faith of any such club, the school concerned should allow a pastor, a priest or a religious elder acceptable to the parents of the students to act as the religious advisor. The school should also allow speakers from the churches or temples to be invited to speak at the meetings of such clubs or societies.”

[Whose credit? Not MCA’s, of course
http://www.mysinchew.com/node/42891
 ]

The latest complaint by parents of the Petaling Jaya school should not be taken lightly. How the federal government handles this case has far-reaching consequence to other schools, now and in future.

The federal government, through its Education Minister, should step in immediately to order the recalcitrant school head to stop his nonsense and carry on his duties without any discrimination and bias. If he doesn’t toe the line after a firm warning on the matter, disciplinary action should be taken against him. This is to send out the message loud and clear to other Little Napoleon school heads not to abuse their authority in running their schools according to their own whims and fancies.

Enough is enough! We have tolerated the nonsense by such Little Napoleons for far too long, and we want to see the federal government cracking the whip to bring the contumacious civil servants to toe the line.

If nothing positive and concrete is done to ensure that our civil service is unblemished and impeccable, as far as humanly and practically possible, then it will be a mere illusion that our nation can progress to a developed nation status.

For a start, the civil service needs a thorough mental revolution to ensure that the civil servants are neutral, impartial and non-partisan in the performance of their duties and in serving the elected government of the day.

For example, the recent case of state development office Nik Ali snubbing Penang Chief Minister Lim Guan Eng on an Umno platform should not simply be written off, without disciplinary action taken against the unruly officer for participating in a partisan political press conference held by Umno. It is most unfortunate that even the chief secretary to the government doesn’t understand the civil service culture and code of conduct, and condoned the violation of the principle of neutrality and impartiality of the civil service.

Of course, the enormous bureaucracy of the nearly million-strong Malaysian civil service will require a determined Hercules effort and time to reform, but it is not humanly impossible to change it.

In fact, one fundamental objective of the Nasjib administration is the transformation of the government machinery, which is basically the civil service.

The total transformation of the civil service can only happen from top down. The revamp must start from the top with the mental reconditioning, performance recasting, and image remodeling of the topmost civil servants.

Is Najib serious about the need for the transformation of the civil service? If so, he must start cracking the whip, and get the civil servants, especially the Little Napoleons, to toe the line. Enough is enough! We want to see concrete changes, not political propaganda.

                This entry was posted on Wednesday, 11 August 2010, 5:30 am and is filed under
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Rebuttal to Josh Treviño on Anwar Ibrahim’s Trial

by

Azeem Ibrahim

Research Fellow, Harvard Kennedy School’s International Security Program

August 10, 2010

In Malaysia, opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim has been put on trial for sodomy. In the main, the Western political establishment is skeptical about the trial, believing it to be a politically motivated attempt to remove the popular opposition leader from the political scene before he can take power. As is the Malaysian public. Only 11 percent believe the charge, and 88 percent think it’s a political conspiracy.

Public Relations professional Joshua Treviño has been on “attack-Anwar” mode lately, authoring several pieces in recent months critiquing Anwar and questioning his credibility in the West. In his most recent piece, Treviño doesn’t come right out and say that the trial is genuine, but he does try to give a few reasons as to why we should question the conventional wisdom that the trial is merely a political maneuver to get rid of Anwar. Those reasons fall short. Let us look at them one by one.

In the article Treviño argues that Anwar’s relative popularity in the West is based on the mistaken impression that he shares many of the West’s political values.

But Anwar is popular in the West because he has consistently called for democracy, good governance, accountability, and dialogue of civilizations. Compare this to the current Prime Minister, or any of his predecessors, who have said relatively little about such things in Malaysia and done even less to reform a system saddled with endemic corruption.

What’s more, if Treviño really had a good reason to believe that Anwar did not support such values, he would surely have used his article to say so. The fact that he did not take the opportunity implies that he knows that compared to his predecessor, Anwar does in fact share many of the West’s political values.

If we look at the specifics of the trial, there are more reasons to be skeptical of Treviño’s argument.

Firstly, he accuses the Western media of not taking the substantive accusations against Anwar seriously. He is accused of sodomy – a crime in Malaysia – with Mohd Saiful Bukhari Azlan, a young former political aide.

It is true that most Western media have not taken the accusations too seriously. There are three good reasons for this.

The first is that the Malaysian government has falsely accused Anwar of sodomy to remove him from the political scene before. In 2000, after feuding with Prime Minister Mahathir bin Mohamad, Anwar was publicly denounced by the Prime Minister as a homosexual, tried, and sentenced to fifteen years in prison – a punishment which under Malaysia law means he could not engage in political activities for five years after the end of his sentence. His accusers later recanted their accusations, saying that they had been coerced into making them. Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch both expressed doubts that he got a fair trial. And indeed, the year after Mahathir left office, Malaysia’s highest court overturned the conviction, citing contradictions in the prosecution’s case. Treviño concedes that the first trial was indeed a politically motivated plot by the government to get rid of Anwar. He also concedes that the reason most Western media are not taking the accusations seriously “lies in the circumstances of Anwar’s first trial.”

It certainly seems that way. This time, when Anwar had reemerged from the political wilderness as popular opposition leader and potentially the next Prime Minister of Malaysia, he was accused of sodomy again.

The second reason why the Western media have not taken the accusations too seriously is lack of evidence. At the moment, it is the word of the aide against the word of Anwar. Not only is there no substantial evidence in the public domain to back up the accuser’s case, there are also medical reports in the public domain, which refute the accuser’s claims.

The third reason is that the trial is being held amidst great secrecy, for no good reason. Today, over six months into the trial, Anwar Ibrahim’s defense team is still denied access to documents, forensic reports, and CCTV recordings held by the prosecution. One has to ask why, if the government is really so confident of its case, it would want the trial to be subject to so little scrutiny.

Another reason to think that the trial is politically motivated is that the accusers cannot get their story straight about what Anwar did wrong. Treviño says that although Anwar “is on trial for violation of Malaysian anti-sodomy law, this is effectively ancillary to his alleged crime: a sexual assault.”

Treviño does not explain why Anwar is not being charged for the main crime he is being accused of. He does not explain why, if the putative encounter was forced, medical reports conducted only forty-eight hours afterwards showed no signs of an assault. He does not explain why, if it was forced, Anwar – a man who can barely walk up the stairs because of the injuries he sustained in prison – could have forced himself on a man of twenty-three years. And he does not explain, given that the charges are for consensual sex, why it is not both individuals on trial to be consistent with Malaysian laws. In any attempt to defend the fairness of the judicial process, these are serious omissions.

Treviño argues that we cannot assume that the trial is a political plot because we are no longer in the Mahathir era (he does concede that the marginalization of Mahathir doesn’t prove that Anwar’s present trial is legitimate). Surely though, the trial and the way it has been conducted raises questions about whether the spirit of Mahathir has survived his Premiership.

The real point, though, is that it is not about Mahathir — it is about the system as a whole. Mahathir may be gone, but his party, the United Malays National Organization (UMNO), is still in power, and the system even under Prime Minister Najib is generally unchanged. UMNO is primarily concerned with survival, and Anwar is viewed as the biggest threat to that survival. As a result, none of the democratizing reforms which Malaysia needs have been undertaken. The judiciary remains compromised, the press is shackled (three opposition newspapers were suspended in July, one was reinstated with restrictions), and the opposition, in general, faces a repressive environment including the looming specter of detention without trial under the Internal Security Act. This trial is just the latest incarnation of those facts.

Finally, Treviño argues that if the Malaysian government did want to marginalize Anwar, they would not do it like this, both because Anwar emerged from prison more popular last time, and because they would not want to draw attention to him. Treviño suggests that in fact, the current government probably just prefers that Anwar would go away.

On this, I think Treviño is probably spot on. As a popular opposition leader and main threat to their supremacy, they probably do want him to go away. And it looks very much like they have found a way to do it: trying to get him imprisoned on a charge of sodomy. Like last time.

Azeem Ibrahim is a Research Scholar at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, Member of the Board of Directors at the Institute of Social Policy and Understanding and Chairman and CEO of Ibrahim Associates.

                This entry was posted on Wednesday, 11 August 2010, 1:31 pm and is filed under
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Was Teoh Beng Hock “forced to commit suicide” when he plunged to his death from 14th floor of MACC headquarters in Shah Alam on July 16 last year?

The Attorney-General Tan Sri Gani Patail should be censured for the travesty of justice in exposing details of “new evidence” not yet tendered in the Teoh Beng Hock inquest.

This is in addition to the gross irregularity and impropriety of the Attorney-General in suppressing the “new evidence”, which should have been introduced at the beginning of the inquest as it would affect the whole course and direction of the inquest through cross-examination of witnesses.

Because of deliberate “leaks” in the media, the country is awash with talk that there is a “suicide note” left by Teoh Beng Hock, which has been countered and challenged by Teoh’s family counsel Gobind Singh Deo.

Even if the veracity of the “suicide note” is eventually not established, great damage has been done, not only in getting to the truth as to how a young, healthy idealistic political worker looking forward to his  marriage preparations the next day, could be forced to end up plunging to his death from the 14th floor of the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) headquarters in Plaza Masalam in Shah Alam, but in further undermining national and international  confidence in the independence, professionalism and integrity of key national institutions with far-reaching economic and nation-building implications.

Putting aside the questions of the veracity of the  note and whether it  is a “suicide note”, does the “new evidence” show that Teoh Beng Hock had been placed under great stress and pressures, whether mental and/or physical, by the MACC interrogators  and if so, was this aspect fully pursued by the Attorney-General through the Public Prosecutor in the inquest?

I was asked by a member of the public about the  possibility that Teoh Beng Hock was “forced to commit suicide” when he plunged to his death from the 14th floor of the MACC headquarters on July 16 last year and whether it wouldn’t be a crime to force a person to commit sucide.

This is a question that must be fully and thoroughly investigated by the inquest.

                This entry was posted on Wednesday, 11 August 2010, 4:05 pm and is filed under
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Bumbling in desperation – and where’s the dignity?

By
Mariam Mokhtar

Wednesday, 11 August 2010 14:05

OPINION
 Teoh Beng Hock’s death was an undignified one. He was found dead on the rooftop of a building adjacent to the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) offices after an overnight interrogation to answer corruption allegations involving his boss.

Teoh’s family maintain that he was murdered, but the MACC contend that he took his own life.

Even after burial, Teoh Beng Hock had an undignified eternal rest. His body was exhumed for a second examination by a team of pathologists.

Disagreements about how he died plagued the inquest. The expert Thai pathologist Dr Pornthip Rojanasunand, who appeared for Teoh’s family, was positive there was an 80% chance of homicide. Pathologists acting on behalf of the government claim that his injuries were consistent with a fall from a great height.

When Teoh’s child was born, his son was thrown into the limelight, with calls that he should be named after his dad and be used as a tool to shame the MACC and the government. It is undignified to use his son as a pawn.

A Royal Commission into Teoh’s death was disallowed and so there was a convoluted inquest, which has not proceeded smoothly.

It appears that even as his family sought to clear Teoh’s name, efforts behind the scenes continue to manipulate events.

The latest attempt to besmirch Teoh’s good name, is the purported discovery of a ‘suicide note’, ostensibly written and signed by Teoh, which was found two months after his death.

Is there no depth to their depravity? Can they not spare further pain, for this family in mourning?

Teoh’s family, already under enormous strain, does not require further emotional distress, and must be protected from the intense public scrutiny and media pressure.

If the family feels the pain, it is also the patience of the Malaysian public that is being tested.

The authorities have displayed a spectacular lack of procedure and professionalism.

The circumstances of Teoh’s death, pales into insignificance, although they are important and relevant.  But it is the chain of events, culminating in this latest revelation that are damaging.

It is clear that the judiciary, the police and the prosecutors are conspiring  for reasons unknown. Well, that is the impression portrayed.

They are seen as confused and bumbling idiots, who are both incompetent and unprofessional. Most of all, they seem desperate.

They are oblivious to the fact that their credibility and integrity are compromised. Even the highest law in the land is complicit.

In normal civilized countries, the head of such an outfit, would have assumed responsibility for such a bungled investigation. Thus, the attorney-general  should  have offered his resignation.

Apparently not, in Malaysia.

So, the charade continues, in an attempt to dupe Teoh’s family and the public. The demand for a fair inquest seems unattainable.

The whole investigation has descended into chaos and is mired in controversy from the start. The MACC, the investigating officer, the police, the prosecutors and the attorney-general should be ashamed of holding positions of responsibility. The whole outfit is tarnished and staffed by people who lack accountability.

If Teoh Beng Hock’s name is synonymous with dignity, it is the other people in positions of responsibility, who have lost all credibility.

                This entry was posted on Thursday, 12 August 2010, 10:28 am and is filed under
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Escaping the middle-income trap

by
Michael Schuman
 | Time

August 10, 2010

I returned a few days ago from Kuala Lumpur, the capital of Malaysia, where the talk of the town – well, at least among economists — is the “middle-income trap.” What’s that, you ask? A developing nation gets “trapped” when it reaches a certain, relatively comfortable level of income but can’t seem to take that next big jump into the true big leagues of the world economy, with per capita wealth to match. Every go-go economy in Asia has confronted this “trap,” or is dealing with it now. Breaking out of it, however, is extremely difficult. The reason is that escaping the “trap” requires an entire overhaul of the economic growth model most often used by emerging economies.

Malaysia’s caught in the “trap” right now, and getting out if is going to be tough. Simply put, Malaysia needs to change what it has been doing economically for the past 40 years. How Malaysia got itself into the “trap,” and how it could escape from it, can provide us with some valuable lessons on development and, more specifically, how developing nations can graduate into becoming fully advanced economies.

The concept behind the “middle-income trap” is quite simple: It’s easier to rise from a low-income to a middle-income economy than it is to jump from a middle-income to a high-income economy. That’s because when you’re really poor, you can use your poverty to your advantage. Cheap wages makes a low-income economy competitive in labor-intensive manufacturing (apparel, shoes and toys, for example). Factories sprout up, creating jobs and increasing incomes. Every rapid-growth economy in Asia jumpstarted its famed gains in human welfare in this way, including Malaysia.

However, that growth model eventually runs out of steam. As incomes increase, so do costs, undermining the competitiveness of the old, low-tech manufacturing industries. Countries (like Malaysia) then move “up the value chain,” into exports of more technologically advanced products, like electronics. But even that’s not enough to avoid the “trap.” To get to that next level – that high-income level – an economy needs to do more than just make stuff by throwing people and money into factories. The economy has to innovate and use labor and capital more productively. That requires an entirely different way of doing business. Instead of just assembling products designed by others, with imported technology, companies must invest more heavily in R&D on their own and employ highly educated and skilled workers to turn those investments into new products and profits. It is a very, very hard shift to achieve. Thus the “trap.”

South Korea is probably the best current example of a developing economy making the leap into the realm of the most advanced. Companies like Samsung and LG are becoming true leaders in their fields. Taiwan isn’t far behind. China’s policymakers are fully aware that, with labor costs rising, it needs to follow suit. (More on Time.com: See a stimulus report card at the one year mark)

Malaysia, though, is quite far from where it wants to be. That’s a bit surprising based on its remarkable recent history. Malaysia has been among the best performing economies in the world since World War II, one of only 13 to record an average growth rate of 7% over at least a 25-year period. The country has an amazing record of improving human welfare. In 1970, some 50% of Malaysians lived in absolute poverty; now less than 4% do. Yet Malaysians also feel that they’ve become somewhat stuck where they are. GDP growth has slowed up, from an annual average of 9.1% between 1990 and 1997 to 5.5% from 2000 and 2008. Meanwhile, other Asian economies have zipped by Malaysia. According to the World Bank, the per capita gross national income (GNI) of South Korea in 1970 was below that of Malaysia ($260 versus $380), but by 2009, South Korea’s was three times larger than Malaysia’s ($21,530 versus $6,760).  Malaysia is getting “trapped” as a relatively prosperous but still middle-income nation.

Can Malaysia escape? The initial indications are not encouraging. The economy’s growth engine remains unchanged – export-oriented manufacturing backed by foreign investment. Its companies are just not innovating or adding much value to what they produce. You can find all of the ugly details in a very thorough study by the World Bank, released in April. Private investment has sunk precipitously, from more than a third of GDP in the mid-1990s to only some 10% today. Labor productivity is growing more slowly than in the 1990s. The “value-added” in manufacturing in Malaysia trails many of its neighbors – an indication that Malaysian factories are mainly assembling goods designed elsewhere. R&D spending remains frighteningly low, at about 0.6% of GDP (compared to 3.5% in South Korea). If Malaysia is going to break the “trap,” it has to reverse all of these trends.

How can Malaysia achieve that? The World Bank report has pages of recommendations. The basics include slicing apart the bureaucratic red tape that stifles competition and suppresses investment, bolstering the education system so it can churn out more top-notch graduates, and funneling more financial resources to start-ups and other potentially innovative firms. To its credit, the government of Malaysia is fully aware of what it needs to do. In March, Prime Minister Najib Razak introduced a reform program called the New Economic Model. You can read the initial report here. The NEM shows that Najib realizes that excessive government interference in the economy is dampening investor sentiment and holding back Malaysian industry. All eyes now are waiting for the more detailed policy recommendations for the NEM (though it is not clear when those might appear).

Yet I’m wondering if getting policy right is really enough. Of course, it would help, by setting in place better incentives for private businessmen to invest in innovative projects, and creating the tools they need to make those projects work. But I don’t think that’s the whole story. I’ve been musing on the differences between South Korea and Malaysia. Why has Korea jumped so far ahead? I think the reason is embedded in the different methods the two countries used to spur rapid growth.

Both countries relied exports to create rapid gains in income, but they did so differently. South Korea, from its earliest days of export-led development in the mid-1960s, had been determined to create homegrown, internationally competitive industries. Though Korean firms supplied big multinationals with components or even entire products, that was never enough – Korea wanted to manufacture its own products under its own brands. The effort was often a painful one – remember Hyundai’s first disastrous foray into the U.S. car market in the late 1980s and early 1990s – but Korea is where it is today because its private companies have been working on getting there for a very long time, backed in full by the financial sector and the government.

Malaysia, on the other hand, relied much, much more on foreign investment to drive industrialization. That’s not a bad thing – multinational companies provide an instant shot of capital, jobs, expertise and technology into a poor country. MNCs, however, aren’t going to develop Malaysian products; that has to take place in the labs and offices of Malaysia’s private businesses. But those businessmen have been content to squeeze profits from serving MNCs and maintaining their original, assembly-based business models.

In other words, what is needed for Malaysia to break from the “middle-income trap” is a greater national commitment to innovate on its own. Entrepreneurs and bankers have to be willing to take more risks to support inventive ventures and new technologies. Talented workers have to be willing to take jobs at home instead of Silicon Valley. The Malaysian private sector has to be more devoted to the country’s future. This is fuzzy stuff, outside of the realm of usual economics. But I fear the kind of commitment needed to escape the “trap” unfortunately can’t be created by government initiatives alone.

                This entry was posted on Thursday, 12 August 2010, 11:37 am and is filed under
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Malaysia in the Era of Globalization #27

By
M. Bakri Musa

Chapter 4: Modern Model States

Don’t Cry For Argentina

 Argentina, like the rest of Latin America, conjures a certain indelible image.  The phrase Banana Republic is both evocative and descriptive:  a country dependent on a single commodity.  It is banana for Honduras, sugar for Cuba, tin for Bolivia, and meat for Argentina.  It also refers to military dictators in their crisp uniforms seizing power every now and then.  Indeed such khaki attires are now chic, a trademark of the Banana Republic brand. Alas, these caricatures are all close to the truth.

             There have been many ready explanations for Latin America’s social and political instabilities.  These range from cultural, racial, religious, and even geographical.  The famous Latin temper seems a reasonable enough explanation.  Then there is the entrenched role of the Catholic Church.  The cultural explanation, once favored, is now being resurrected.  After all it was the “laid back” Southern Europeans rather than the presumably more “cultured” Anglo Saxons who colonized Latin America.

             In the late 1950s and early 1960s there was the prevailing view, promulgated primarily by American social scientists, that if only Latin America could be modernized, the ensuing economic growth would generate social changes that would in turn make the region more politically stable.  This modernization would, so the theory went, create a large and stabilizing middle class, as in America.  Unfortunately elegant theory alone does not guarantee success.  There was indeed economic growth but instead of creating a large middle class, it aggravated the inequities.  The gap separating urban dwellers from rural peasants widened, so too between owners and workers.  The small middle class, instead of being a stabilizing factor, merely joined in with the aristocrats.  Stability still eluded the nation.

             In many regards Argentina experienced what Malaysia went through in the decade following independence.  Malaysia’s socioeconomic gaps were aggravated by their superimposition along racial lines.  No such gross ethnic lines were present in Argentina but the end results were the same:  increasing polarization of society.  Traditional elected governments were unable to respond to such challenges; that in turn bred military regimes to handle the inevitable crisis.

             Malaysia went through its harrowing May 13 1969 “incident” and with it the suspension of parliamentary democracy.  Argentina is experiencing its own recurring May 13 nightmares, albeit without the added viciousness of racial and ethnic factors.

             Latin American scholars had their own pat explanation for the adverse consequences of that modernization venture.  Specifically they blamed their country’s dependency on developed countries.  This dependencia theory goes something like this.  Argentina would get investments from Europe to develop its beef industry.  As long as the Europeans were paying a good price on the product, the Argentineans would live high off the hog, well, actually cows.  As the pampas owners and meat processors grew rich, they began importing luxury goods and remitting their profits back to the parent company in Europe.  Little of that wealth circulated locally, except for the lowly wages paid to the workers.

             With a large pool of cheap labor there was little incentive to pay high wages; consequently little of that wealth trickled down, to use a pop economic term.  When Europe suffered a recession and cut its beef imports, Argentina reeled.  The workers, not having shared the riches in good times, were unwilling to bear the pain.

             Proponents of the dependencia theory viewed the world as made of an “industrial center” (Western Europe and America), and the commodity-producing “periphery” (Argentina).  To them, trade is a “win-lose” proposition, with the periphery at the mercy of and being exploited by the industrial center.  Thus dependencia proponents advocated massive state intervention to break this dependency on the industrial center.  Hence high import barriers, closed economy, and general denigration and distrust of markets.  All these arguments were artfully cloaked in nationalistic terms and camouflaged as “national security.”  To the dependencia advocates, foreign trade was just another form of colonialism by the West.

             The massive state presence in the economy merely encouraged corruption and the formation of various pressure groups out to get their share of the bounty from the public trough.  The preoccupation of both the government and the governed were less with creating wealth, more on redistributing it to the various favored groups.  This only encouraged deepening polarization and increasingly divisive fights for the ever-diminishing wealth.  Traditional democratic governments could not easily deal with such diversely competing interests; they were preoccupied with satisfying their own constituencies while ignoring the broader national goals.  Thus the ensuing cries of the populace for someone, anyone, to “take charge.”

             Enter the military.  In reality the generals who replaced the elected leaders were equally inept in economic matters and just as corrupt.  They essentially treated the nation like an army, meddling in every aspect of the economy.  Thus not only did the generals leave their barracks to command the government ministries, they also meddled in the marketplace.  They nationalized key industries, created new ones to compete with the private sector, and abandoned any semblance of fiscal discipline.  Argentina followed this pattern of massive state intervention until late 1980’s, when the non-military President Carlos Menem was elected and began instituting fundamental economic reforms toward free market.

             Unlike the government involvement in the marketplace we saw in South Korea that produced such phenomenal success, the experience of Latin America was akin to the Soviet model, with creaking state industries, inept public and private management, and highly protected and inefficient domestic markets.

             Why government intervention in East Asia produced spectacular successes while in Latin America abysmal failures remains the biggest unanswered question in developmental economics.  The obvious difference is that the South Korean Generals used their power to push their nation towards free and global markets, while the Argentineans went the opposite way, to withdraw.  Briefly put, the Koreans were outward looking; the Argentineans, inward.

             Nature has been kind to Argentina.  It has plentiful fertile land, vast resources, and moderate climate.  With an area exceeding a million square miles and a population of just 34 million, the country is indeed blessed.  It is appropriately called Argentina, silver in Spanish.  Although it lacks that rich mineral, the country’s other wealth more than compensated for that deficit.

             Argentina should have been a charter member of the G8, the organization of leading economic powers.  Instead it stumbles from one economic mess to another.  The IMF might as well own the airline that plies between Buenos Aires and Washington, DC, for the number of times its officials have to make that trip.

             Argentina reminds me of some of my clever classmates.  They knew that they were smart; good grades came easily to them without much effort.  Besides, the teachers were constantly reminding them of that fact.  But when final examinations came, they stumbled for lack of diligence.  Some were given a second chance, and suitably chastened, buckled up and succeeded.  Others were not so lucky, or if they were given another chance, merely treated that opportunity as a reaffirmation of their innate superior ability and put no more effort than before, and ended up with the same grief.  I am sure that back in their kampong, these former classmates of mine are regaling their grandchildren about how back in the old school days they had managed well and bested others without studying.  And if they had learned their lesson, they would add a cautionary advice:  that is, natural endowment alone, no matter how superior or generous, is not enough.

 Next:   Don’t Cry For Argentina  (Cont’d)

                This entry was posted on Thursday, 12 August 2010, 11:05 am and is filed under
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Najib should give his personal attention to stamp out the unhealthy and disturbing trend towards very ugly, intolerant and vicious politicking illustrated by M16 bullet threat to Tony Pua

The Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Najib Razak should give his personal attention to stamp out the unhealthy and disturbing trend towards very ugly, intolerant and vicious politicking illustrated by the M16 bullet threat to DAP National Publicity Secretary and MP for Petaling Jaya Utara Tony Pua yesterday.

Pua received a live 5.56mm bullet used in M-16s with a threatening note posted from Tangkak, Johor mailed to his service centre in Damansara Utama yesterday.

The note threatened:  “Tony Pua Kiam Wee. You are so brave? What do you want now? You better watch out.

“We know about your family, your house, your office, your car.”

Pua believes that the threat was probably related to his recent proposal to the Selangor government to slash Bumiputera discounts for luxury homes and commercial property in the state to improve competitiveness and  restore investor confidence while retaining  the seven per cent discounts enjoyed by Malays and other Bumiputeras for homes below RM500,000.

Selangor Umno Youth lodged 22 police reports against Pua after the UMNO information chief and Deputy Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department, Datuk Ahmad Maslan warned Pua not to “play with fire” for being seditious in attacking Article 153 of the Constitution and the “social contract”.

The Prime Minister should know that Pua’s proposal was no attack on Article 153 of the Constitution or “the social contract”. In fact, it is fully in line with the New Economic Model (NEM) proposed by the Prime Minister to reform affirmative action programmes to be “market-friendly and merit-based” and to focus on the bottom 40 percent of lower income earners.

There can be disagreement and  debate as to whether Pua’s proposal is suitable and timely but it is irresponsible politics of the highest order to attack it as anti-Malay and a challenge to Article 153 of the Constitution or to incite communal hatred against Pua.

The trend towards very ugly, intolerant and vicious politicking makes a total mockery of Najib’s 1Malaysia slogan which is why the Prime Minister must provide the leadership to stamp out such un-1Malaysian tendencies in Malaysian politics.

                This entry was posted on Thursday, 12 August 2010, 5:14 pm and is filed under
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Race card won’t add Umno’s Malay votes, analysts say

By
Adib Zalkapli
 | The Malaysian Insider

KUALA LUMPUR, Aug 12 — The attacks against Penang Chief Minister Lim Guan Eng’s administration for allegedly discriminating against Malay traders would not work in favour of Umno to harvest more Malay votes, said analysts.

The Umno-owned Utusan Malaysia last week rapped the Penang government with banner headlines “Malays still oppressed”, highlighting claims that the state was preventing Malay traders from setting up Ramadan stalls.

It continued the diatribe yesterday, calling on Malay rights groups in the state to hold weekly demonstrations at the state secretariat, emulating the practice of federal opposition leaders in Kuala Lumpur.

UKM’s Professor Agus Yusoff, however, warned that the party should focus on winning the support of the non-Malays that it lost in Election 2008.

“Penang is a non-Malay-majority state. If Umno wants to hold weekly demonstrations, for example, it will backfire,” Agus told The Malaysian Insider.

He said most Malay voters are loyal supporters of either Umno or the Pakatan Rakyat (PR) parties.

“The Malays have made up their mind who to vote for. They are very compartmentalised. There will be no significant swing to the other side. The real issue for BN is to win back the support of the non-Malays,” said the political analyst.

“But looking at the current development it is still very hard for BN to get back their support,” he added.

“They have to find ways to get their support, fanning racial sentiments would not help,” he said.

His colleague, Professor Samsul Adabi Mamat, however, said the campaign on Malay political survival was necessary to inform members of the community who are not aware of the adverse impact of losing political power.

“The Malays’ fear of losing political power started soon after Election 2008 and it continues until today, especially in states where DAP has strong influence over the government. But of course it is not felt by the Malays in PAS because they are comfortable with Pakatan Rakyat,” said Samsul Adabi.

“There is a strong basis for this concern as the Bumiputeras only form about 56 per cent of the population. A split in the community because of Umno-PAS would affect the Malays,” said the political scientist.

He said even if the issues raised do not help Umno secure more Malay votes, it would at least make PAS leaders realise their duties.

“Raising this issue would at least enlighten the Malays who are in their comfort zone, when PAS leaders share the same concern they would act accordingly as an assemblyman or an MP,” said Samsul Adabi.

“The proposal for a unity government, for example, reflects such a concern,” he said.

“It may not necessarily translate into votes, but it should at least enlighten the community, that is more important,” he added.

Penang PAS, however, has refused to be dragged into the issue, arguing that it would not affect the party.

“This has been Umno’s strategy for the past two years, turning everything into a racial issue, but PAS will not play the racial game,” said state PAS deputy chief Dr Mujahid Yusof.

“The Komtar case, for example, it does not concern the majority of the Malays, it was only a technical issue turned racial by Umno,” he said, referring to the allegation that the state was preventing Malay traders from setting up Ramadan stalls inside the building.

It resulted in a demonstration by more than 100 traders led by Komtar Merchant Association (KMA) vice-chairman Mohamad Ghani Abdul Jiman at Komtar early this week.

Deputy Prime Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin also said the state government had victimised Malay traders.

The Penang Development Corporation (PDC) had clarified that the Malay traders were not being discriminated and that the issue arose from the failure of KMA to pay rent it had collected from the traders.

“They portray DAP as anti-Malay, try to divide PAS and break Pakatan Rakyat,” said Mujahid.

“They have been organising similar demonstrations before. If they really can make an impact we would not have been around anymore,” he said.

                This entry was posted on Thursday, 12 August 2010, 11:21 am and is filed under
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A referendum will show that overwhelming majority will vote for a new IGP

When Tan Sri Musa Hassan’s extension of service for another year as Inspector-General of Police was announced on Sept. 3 last year, former Selangor Police Chief Datuk Yahaya Udin was quoted by the media as saying that the one-year extension should be sufficient for Musa to complete his “unfinished work”.

Now, it would appear that Musa has still  got “unfinished work” and he is angling for another extension of service.

Let me reiterate what I had said last August, when opposing any extension of service for Musa as the No. 1 Policeman in the country.

I had said that I have no doubt that if the issue of whether the country needs a new IGP is put to a referendum in the country or the police force, the result will be an overwhelming “yes” for a new IGP.

Let me reiterate that I have no personal axe to grind against Musa and am purely taking a stand  in the national interests, to roll back the tide of crime in the past six years as well as to inject the Malaysian police force with the adrenaline, dynamism and a reinvigorated sense of purpose that only a new police chief could evoke in another attempt to scale the goal to become an efficient, incorruptible, professional world-class police force respected internationally for its competence, ability and success to fulfil the three core police functions to keep crime low, eradicate corruption and protect human rights.

Malaysians as well as the 100,000-strong police force just cannot believe that the present batch of police leadership are so short of leadership material that the Prime Minister cannot find a single one from the topmost 100 Police officers of Deputy IGP, CPs, DCPs, SACs I and II to qualify to be the new IGP.

Is the Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Najib Razak prepared to put the issue to a referendum among the top 2,000 police officers from ASP upwards to enable  a secret poll to get their true and authentic voice and vote of  whether the overwhelming majority of the top police officers are in favour of a new IGP?

                This entry was posted on Friday, 13 August 2010, 3:08 pm and is filed under
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