Sri Lankan Humanitarian Crisis Deepens.  What can ordinary Malaysians do?

by
Augustine Anthony

[email protected]

How much more should the Sri Lankan Tamils suffer before the Malaysian government responds decisively, consistent with its previous efforts in condemning the practices of human rights violations such as :-

1.	Apartheid discriminating blacks and coloured in South Africa,

2.	Genocide of Muslim population in Bosnia,

3.	Atrocities against the Palestinians in the Middle East fighting for their homeland.

Almost three decades of civil war coupled with the aftermath of the 2004 Tsunami that displaced more than 500,000 people, the Sri Lankan Tamils had suffered unimaginable hardship.

But  what awaits the Sri Lankan Tamils and the world  in the aftermath of the Armed Forces perceived victory against the LTTE is about to explode into a major international crisis unless sooner averted.

On May 18th 2009 Amnesty International made the following observations;-

“Humanitarian crisis continues to unfold in the country. Amnesty International has called for key steps to be adopted to ensure civilians and captured fighters are protected. There are more than 200,000 displaced people, including approximately 80,000 children, who need relief but also protection from abuses in Sri Lanka”

Barely a month after the above observations, New York Based Human Rights Watch made the following remarks:-

“The Sri Lankan government should end the illegal detention of nearly 300,000 ethnic Tamils displaced by the recently ended conflict in Sri Lanka. Displaced Tamil civilians have the same rights to liberty and freedom of movement as other Sri Lankans.”

“Treating all these men, women, and children as if they were Tamil Tiger fighters is a national disgrace, Displaced Tamil civilians have the same rights to liberty and freedom of movement as other Sri Lankans.”

It is shocking that in less than a month there had been a sharp increase in the number of displaced Tamil civilians in detention camps and one could only conclude that the numbers will continue to increase.

One of the major concerns arising out of the detentions of Tamils in these detention camps is the exercise by the Sri Lankan authorities who are expected to screen persons leaving the war zone to identify Tamil Tiger fighters.

Such screening exercises could most likely lead to serious human rights violations such as physical violence, rape and even murder as seen in the aftermath of many civil wars in other parts of the world.

The world must voice its grave anxiety and fear of these possible human rights violations even before the coming of documented reports.

We, peace loving Malaysians can play a major role in this humanitarian crisis.

So please send or post your comments and suggestions on what we can do for the Sri Lankan Tamils, no matter how unimportant you may think it will be, so that collectively we can do our part in preventing a human catastrophe awaiting.

                This entry was posted on Sunday, 14 June 2009, 7:07 am and is filed under
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Twitter history in Parliament tomorrow

This is from
@limkitsiang
 (twitter).

06/14/2009 09:06 PM

Latest info – My urgent motion tmr 2debate PKFZ scandal in Parliament tmr will be rejected. Reason? MACC investigating! Totally outrageous!

06/14/2009 07:01 PM

Will Ong Tee Keat appear in Parliament tmr? Will the PwC audit report together with all appendices be tabled 4all MPs tmr or more delays?

06/14/2009 06:58 PM

1st item of Parliament business tmr – my emergency motion for Royal Commission Inquiry into RM12.5b PKFZ scandal – will Speaker allow it?

06/14/2009 06:54 PM

1st question Parliament tmr – Najib’s 1Malaysia; 2-Perak May 7 Day of Infamy, police trespass Perak Assembly n physical removal of Speaker

06/14/2009 06:45 PM

Parliament meets tmr oath-taking by Nizar as MP Bukit Gantang 10 am Will twitter from Parliament. Invite other MPs 2make twitter history

                This entry was posted on Sunday, 14 June 2009, 9:13 pm and is filed under
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Will Ong Tee Keat drop everything in France and take the first flight back to discharge his paramount duty as Minister – to  fully account to Parliament on the RM12.5 billion PKFZ scandal?

My three questions (No.46 to No. 48 on the 16th day in the current series) to Transport Minister Datuk Seri Ong Tee Keat on the RM12.5 billion Port Klang Free Zone (PKFZ) scandal today are:

No. 1. – I commend Ong for the prompt answer to my third question yesterday, viz: “As Parliament is periodically asked to approve allocations for the multi-billion ringgit bailout of PKFZ, is Ong ensuring that every MP gets a copy of the PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) audit report of PKFZ, together with the appendices, to ensure that there could be an informed debate and discussion of the issue in Parliament?”

The government portal on the RM12.5 billion PKFZ scandal,
www.pkfznews.com.my
, announced today that

“All MPs to have a copy of the PwC report, including the appendices”
.

I am glad that Ong had changed his mind.  At the two-day Public Accounts Committee (PAC) meeting on Tuesday and Wednesday (June 10/11), Ong had refused to revoke his directive to the Port Klang Authority (PKA) Chairman Datuk Lee Hwa Beng restricting the access of PAC members to the four-inch high appendices only during the PAC meeting.

This is a most ridiculous and unacceptable directive totally contrary to all concept of accountability and transparency as well as  the important principle of responsibility to Parliament.

I had proposed to ask all MPs on Monday  to support a joint motion to censure Ong for contempt of Parliament in refusing to give unrestricted access of the appendices of the PcW Report on PKFZ to the PAC members.

I am confident that this will get the support not only of the  83 Pakatan Rakyat MPs but also Barisan Nasional MPs who cherish and understand the principle of Ministerial responsibility and accountability to Parliament, as the PwC Report and its appendices should not only be made available to PAC members but to all MPs as well!

Ong’s last-minute change of mind has saved the MCA President from the ignominy of a parliamentary censure motion which is not only supported by 83 PR MPs but also by conscientious BN MPs as well, who could differentiate and understand the importance of the distinction between party and parliamentary roles.

The last-minute intervention by Ong is proof that Ong is micro-managing every decision affecting the Port Klang Authority and the PKFZ issue and he should drop all pretences claiming otherwise to indulge in the hypocrisy of claiming credit where he could and disclaiming responsibility when faced with embarrassing questions.

My first question to Ong today is whether he would issue immediate directive for the three-and-a-half-inch high appendices to be put up online, giving easy access to every Malaysian interested about the “mother of all scandals” to  scrutinise and give their input on the  documentation involved.

Question No. 2 – The PwC audit report on the PKFZ, which was put online by PKA for two weeks from May 28 to June 10, was taken off the PKA website on Wednesday evening (June 10).

The very next day, Thursday June 11, as a national service, I had restored online the   PwC report on the PKFZ scandal which is  available on a site available on my blog entry

“The PwC report on the RM12.5 billion PKFZ scandal which PKA has taken off the Internet”
.

This greatly  embarrassed Ong and the PKA and the PwC report was surreptitiously put back online on a new PKA website on Friday.

However, the PwC report on the PKFZ available from my blog is more user-friendly and in accordance with the principles of accountability and transparency than from the official PKA website, because the official website does not allow the PwC report to be downloaded, printed or copy-and-paste, which can be done from the PwC report available from my blog.

My
second question
to Ong today is: will he  instruct the PKA to remove all the user-unfriendly features of the PwC report on PKFZ on the official website so that interested members of the public can download, print or copy-and-paste. Furthermore, whether he will instruct the PKA to do the same when the PwC Report Appendices are placed online to ensure that they are equally user-friendly.

My
third question
to Ong is why he had slipped overseas in so stealthy and secretive a manner as if he has a lot of things to hide, when any overseas trip by a Minister should be a very public and transparent affair.

In view of advent of the era of information and communications technology, where information travels at the speed of light in an 24/7 age, these three questions can reach Ong wherever he has travelled to on this planet.

Is he now aware that his paramount duty as Transport Minister is to give satisfactory accounting to Parliament when it meets on issues of national interest, and as the RM12.5 billion PKFZ scandal is now one such issue, whether he will drop everything in France and take the first flight back to discharge his paramount duty as Minister – to fully account to Parliament on the RM12.5 billion PKFZ scandal?

                This entry was posted on Sunday, 14 June 2009, 1:14 pm and is filed under
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Did Ong Tee Keat get specific approval from the Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Najib Razak to be on the run from Parliament this week to avoid parliamentary accounting on the RM12.5 billion PKFZ scandal?

My three questions (No.49 to No. 51 on the 17th day in the current series) to Transport Minister Datuk Seri Ong Tee Keat on the RM12.5 billion Port Klang Free Zone (PKFZ) scandal today are:

No. 1. – Did Ong get specific approval from the Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Najib Razak to be on the run from Parliament this week to avoid parliamentary accounting on the RM12.5 billion PKFZ scandal, when everybody knows that this will be top on the parliamentary agenda?

Furthermore, Ong should know that last Thursday I had given notice to the Speaker of Parliament, Tan Sri Pandikar Amin that I will move a motion of urgent definite public importance when Parliament reconvenes today on the PKFZ scandal calling for the establishment of a Royal Commission of Inquiry.

Or was Ong so cocksure that my motion for an urgent debate on the PKFZ scandal today would  be rejected by the Speaker that he could just go off overseas, when his first duty as Transport Minister is to be accountable to Parliament for his Ministerial duties and not to scoot off overseas under one pretext or another, like his predecessor Datuk Seri Chan Kong Choy in November 2007!

Did Ong get any indication from Parliament, whether Speaker or Deputy Speaker, that my urgent motion to debate the PKFZ scandal today, would definitely be thrown out?

Question No. 2 – New Straits Times reported today that
Ong will make a ministerial statement on the PKFZ scandal next Monday
 and that he is “expected to answer all points raised by opposition MPs”.

I had in fact asked for a ministerial statement from Ong the previous Saturday on June 6 (No. 24 in the current series), viz:

“Parliament is meeting on Monday, June 15. Is Ong prepared to give a Ministerial statement on the PwC audit report on the RM12.5 billion PKFZ Rip-off, to be followed by a parliamentary debate on the Ministerial statement and the PwC audit report on the PKFZ?”

Instead of doing so, he has run off abroad and is now forced by increasing public pressures, including from inside Barisan Nasional and even MCA, to make a ministerial statement in Parliament.

But this ministerial statement should be made today and not next Monday. Is Ong prepared to cut short his Paris trip and rush back to Parliament to make a ministerial statement in Parliament on Wednesday or Thursday, to make amends for the contempt he has shown Parliament and MPs by scooting overseas without a proper parliamentary accounting of the RM12.5 billion PKFZ scandal?

Is Najib prepared to send out a directive to Ong to cut short his Paris programme to be able to make such a ministerial statement in Parliament on Wednesday or Thursday, to drive home the point that his new government of “1Malaysia. People First. Performance Now” must be taken seriously not only by the Malaysian people but also by Cabinet Ministers themselves?

New Straits Times said that in his ministerial statement, Ong “is expected to answer all points raised by Opposition MPs while outlining the measures taken by the government to save the project”.

Will Ong be answering everyone of the 51 questions I have posed in the past 17 days and at least another 51 questions I have on the PKFZ scandal?

MPs and Malaysians have lost confidence in what Ong is “expected” to do. The only way to ensure that Ong respond to all the points and issues crying out for answer about the PKFZ scandal, in particular how it could balloon from a RM1.1 billion scandal in 2002 under Tun Dr. Ling Liong Sik as Transport Minister, more than quadrupled to RM4.6 billion under Datuk Seri Chan Kong Choy as Transport Minister, and now doubling again to RM7.453 billion and heading towards an astronomical total cost of RM12.453 billion under Ong’s watch, is to have a full debate in the House.

Can Ong give an assurance that his Ministerial statement would be followed by a one-day debate in Parliament devoted to his Ministerial statement?

Question No. 3: Although Ong has finally “consented” (does Ong think he has become royalty?) to distribute the PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) audit report on PKFZ and the appendices to MPs, and we are given to understand by the government portal on the RM12.5 billion PKFZ scandal, www.pkfznews.com.my, that MPs could even get the report and appendices today, this is not the case.

I asked the Secretary of Parliament, Datuk Roosme binti Hamzah and she informed me that the PwC report on PKFZ with the appendices will be tabled in the House together with the Public Accounts Committe (PAC) report on  the PKFZ scandal.

I do not expect the PAC report on the PKFZ scandal to be ready in time to be tabled in the current meeting of Parliament when it ends on 30th June as the PAC is having a third meeting on the PKFZ on Wednesday.

Furthermore, who will have confidence in the PAC report on the PKFZ scandal if the PAC Chairman Datuk Seri Azmi Khalid refuses to  disqualify himself and step aside in the PAC inquiry into the PKFZ scandal because of conflict of interest. Azmi was Minister in the Cabinet which decided on the RM4.6 billion PKFZ bailout in July 2007.

What is the use of dangling the PwC report with the appendices in Parliament, promising to give them to MPs but not actually doing so, with the ridiculous condition that they must await the PAC report which would probably be tabled only at the end of the year?

Why can’t the PwC report and appendices be immediately tabled in Parliament and given to MPs without waiting for the PAC report?

If on such a simple matter, the new Najib premiership cannot demonstrate its seriousness with regard to its motto “1Malaysia. People First. Performance Now”, how can there be any public confidence in the administration of the new Prime Minister?

Finally, is Ong going to apologise for the parliamentary contempt he committed when he restricted access of PAC members to the four-inch high appendices of the PwC report to the 5 total hours when the PAC met on Tuesday and Wednesday and refused to allow PAC members to take back the set of  appendices for more detailed study?

                This entry was posted on Monday, 15 June 2009, 1:08 pm and is filed under
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Pandemonium in the house

This is from
@limkitsiang (twitter)
.

06/15/2009 02:02 PM

7 pr mps suspended 4 2days- nizar ngeh koo ham nga kor ming mahfuz mohd hatta dzulkifli gopalakrishnan 4 bubar dun band

06/15/2009 12:47 PM

Press conference Parliament lobby with Anwar, Seng Giaw, Dzulkifli n PR MPs: 3 more PKFZ questions 2OTK, Suspension of Nizar n 6 PR MPs etc

06/15/2009 12:20 PM

speaker pandikar rejects my urgent motion on pkfz scandal on ground it is not urgent n pwc rept submitted 2macc/pac

06/15/2009 11:36 AM

Sorry, mistake.Tsu Koon was asking Penang CM Guan Eng a supplementary question – forgetting who is in govt.Was outside when this happened.

06/15/2009 11:23 AM

1st negative KPI 4Koh Tsu Koon. He stood up during question time to ask Dy Information Minister a supplementary question n was laughed down.

06/15/2009 10:52 AM

As expected, Hishammuddin blindly endorsed the police abuse of power on that Day of Infamy for Perak and Malaysia.

06/15/2009 10:48 AM

Hishamuddin (Home) answering Anwar’s question on police abuse of power in dragging Perak Speaker out of Perak Assembly on May7 Day of Infamy

06/15/2009 10:46 AM

Unable 2ask supplementary question 2Najib on 1Malaysia.Najib answered several MPs n gave long answer. Speaker refused to allow 3rd sup.query

06/15/2009 10:33 AM

After some 25 minutes of pandemonium, some semblance of order restored with Najib now answering first question on 1Malaysia.

06/15/2009 10:29 AM

Speaker said where in nation’s history an MP taking oath shouted “Bubar Dun” I asked  where in nation’s history illegal power grab in Perak?

06/15/2009 10:25 AM

Speaker refused to entertain point of order when I stood up, first time in 52-yr history.

06/15/2009 10:19 AM

so far 2 dap 2pas 2pkr ordered out of hse

06/15/2009 10:16 AM

speaker orders pas mp out 4 wearing headband ‘bubar dun’

06/15/2009 10:12 AM

2 other pr mps ordered outy of house

06/15/2009 10:11 AM

pandemonium in hse nizar ordered out of house by speaker

06/15/2009 10:02 AM

parliament bell rings 3 mins 2start with nizar taking oath as new mp

Nizar and others kicked out of Parliament

Jun 15, 09 10:32am

Malaysiakini

Seven Pakatan Rakyat parliamentarians, including newly sworn-in Bukit Gantang MP Mohammad Nizar Jamaluddin, were ordered out of the Dewan Rakyat this morning over their call for the Perak state assembly to be dissolved.

Speaker Pandikar Amin Mulia ordered them to leave the chambers and subsequently suspended them for two days.

Apart from Nizar, the others were Nga Kor Ming (DAP-Taiping), Ngeh Khoo Ham (DAP-Beruas), N Gobalakrishnan (PKR-Padang Serai),  Mahfuz Omar (PAS-Pokok Sena), Zulkifly Ahmad (PAS-Kuala Selangor) and Hatta Ramli (PAS-Kuala Krai).

“I didn’t set a definite suspension time but according to the Standing Order, they cannot be suspended for more than 10 days. So (I am suspending them) for two days” said the speaker, explaining that his decision was also based on their violation of the dress code.

He said this does not allow for headbands to be worn, pointing out that Parliament “is not a market”.

Pandikar also reminded MPs not to disrupt the proceedings and to be dignified, noting that “24 minutes were wasted (this morning) for nothing”.

Nga and Ngeh were wearing headbands with the words Bubar DUN (Dissolve the State Assembly) in the House.

This was a reference to the political chaos in Perak, following the collapse of the state government in circumstances that are still being widely disputed. Nizar was the menteri besar at the time.

Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak was present when the ruckus occurred.

Nizar was only sworn in this morning as the member of parliament for Bukit Gantang.

No welcoming speech for Nizar

Trouble started as soon as Nizar was sworn in as a member of parliament when he started saying loudly ‘Hidup rakyat’ (long live the people) and ‘Bubar DUN’ with Pakatan parliamentarians following suit.

Some Pakatan MPs had by now worn the ‘Bubar DUN’ headbands, including Nizar.

Speaker Pandikar Amin tried to get the MPs, especially those from Perak, to be quiet and urged them to remove the headbands.

“Please remove the cloths. That is not part of our uniform,” he pleaded but this only led to more MPs joining in the protest, which resulted in the speaker in first sending off the MPs and then following it up by suspending them.

This was perhaps the first time a newly sworn in MP has been suspended on the same day. Nizar was also denied the opportunity of getting the traditional welcome speech given by the speaker.

“Traditionally after an MP is sworn in, the speaker’s job is to welcome the new member, and in the welcoming speech, the speaker will speak of his hope that the new member will be able to contribute to the House,” Pandikar told the House.

“But this morning I find it difficult to say that, look at the behaviour of the member who was a menteri besar. I don’t care how you behave outside the House, but inside the Parliament please watch your behaviour. And because of this I will not deliver my welcoming address,” he added.

Talking to reporters later, Nizar said he had actually sought permission from the speaker to speak up to inform the House on the situation in Perak.

“In my oath I said that I will defend the constitution therefore I asked for permission from the speaker to inform the members on the constitution which has been sidelined in Perak,” he said.

‘Give Nizar a chance’

According to DAP veteran parliamentarian Lim Kit Siang, a semblance of order was restored after “some 25 minutes of pandemonium”.

Lim, who is providing live twitter updates on the parliamentary proceedings, said Najib then proceeded to answer the first question on 1Malaysia.

Outside the House, security officials told all non-MPs to remove the Bubar DUN headband.

Talking to reporters later, Opposition Leader Anwar Ibrahim said it was unfair for Nizar to be suspended without being given a chance to have his say on the Perak issue.

“As a new MP , who was just sworn in, he has to be given a chance… we all know the context in which he was ousted as the Perak menteri besar and the way the way the legislative assembly proceedings had taken place,” said Anwar.

Looking at these aspects, Anwar said, Nizar should be given a chance to express his grievances.

“If we can’t air our views and protest in Parliament, where else will we able to express our grievances,” asked Anwar.

Security in Parliament House has been tight with a heavy police presence. The two-week sitting started today.

Nizar, Pakatan MPs thrown out after his swearing in

Malaysian Insider

May 15, 2009

By Adib Zalkapli and Shannon Teoh

KUALA LUMPUR, June 15 — Datuk Seri Mohammad Nizar Jamaluddin was thrown out of Parliament moments after he was sworn in this morning as the new Bukit Gantang MP.

He had led Pakatan Rakyat (PR) MPs in chants of “Hidup rakyat (long live the people)” and “Bubar DUN (dissolve the assembly)” as soon as the swearing-in ceremony ended, with some of them seen wearing headbands with the words “Bubar Dun”.

Speaker Tan Sri Pandikar Amin Mulia, who was annoyed by the Perak lawmakers, asked Nizar, M. Kulasegaran, Ngeh Koo Ham and Nga Kor Ming to leave the House, after they refused to remove the headbands.

“Please remove the cloths. That is not part of our uniform,” he had said.

As more MPs joined in to protest the action of the Speaker, Datuk Mahfuz Omar (Pokok Sena), N. Gobalakrishnan (Padang Serai), Teo Nie Ching (Serdang), were also asked to leave.

Pandikar later refused to deliver the customary welcoming speech, saying that Nizar had misbehaved.

“Traditionally after an MP is sworn in, the Speaker’s job is to welcome the new member, and in the welcoming speech, the Speaker will speak of his hope that the new member will be able to contribute to the House,” Pandikar told the House.

“But this morning I find it difficult to say that, look at the behaviour of the member who was a mentri besar. I don’t care how you behave outside the House, but inside the Parliament please watch your behaviour. And because of this I will not deliver my welcoming address,” he added.

Speaking to reporters at the Parliament lobby, Nizar said that Barisan Nasional (BN) was hypocritical as Parliament was sitting while the Perak assembly is in crisis.

“In my oath I said that I will defend the constitution therefore I asked for permission from the Speaker to inform the members on the constitution which has been sidelined in Perak,” said Nizar.

Nizar and the other Pakatan MPs speak to the press after they were ordered out of Parliament.

However, the Speaker did not have time to consider his request before Nizar began the chants.

Mahfuz also pointed out that former Speaker, the late Tun Zahir Ismail, had allowed anti-ISA armband during the 10th Parliament session.

Several Perak PR assemblymen were also present to show support to the ousted Perak mentri besar who was asked to step down by the Perak Sultan last February despite asking for fresh polls.

Nizar won the Bukit Gantang seat in April in a by-election seen as a referendum on the takeover of the state government by BN through defections.

A relatively unknown politician until his appointment as mentri besar last year, Nizar early this month was voted into the PAS central working committee and obtained the highest number of votes.

                This entry was posted on Monday, 15 June 2009, 3:15 pm and is filed under
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PKFZ scandal – Speaker rejects urgent motion for Royal Commission of Inquiry

The Speaker, Tan Sri Pandikar Amin today rejected my emergency motion in Parliament to debate the RM12.5 billion Port Klang Free Zone (PKFZ) scandal to establish a Royal Commission of Inquiry as not urgent on three spurious grounds that:

(i) the Port Klang Authority (PKA) has set up a task force and two committees as follow-up to the PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) report on the PKFZ;

(ii) a copy of the PwC report has been submitted to the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC); and

(iii) the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) is conducting investigations on the PKFZ.

My motion read:

“That the House gives leave to  MP for Ipoh Timor YB Lim Kit Siang to adjourn the House under S.O. 18 (1) to discuss a definite matter of  urgent public importance –  the establishment of a  Royal Commission of Inquiry (RCI) into the RM12.5 billion Port Klang Free Zone (PKFZ) scandal.

“The PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC) audit report into the PKFZ made public on May 28, 2009 was most unsatisfactory as its terms of reference were restricted to “a position review” instead of wide-ranging inquiry as to how a RM1.1 billion scandal in 2002 under Tun Ling Liong Sik as Transport Minister, could more than quadruple to RM4.6 billion under Datuk Seri Chan Kong Choy as Transport Minister in 2007 and now further doubled to RM7.453 billion and heading towards the figure of RM12.5 billion under the present Transport Minister!

“Although the Prime Minister had on 29th May publicly directed the Transport Minister to answer every question raised by any party on the PwC report on PKFZ, and I had been  posing three questions a day on the PKFZ since 30th May, no satisfactory answers had been forthcoming from the Transport Minister.

“RM12.5 billion is not chicken-feed. It is equivalent to five RM2.5 billion BMF scandals. RM12.5 billion can be used to build 25 universities at RM500 million each; 125 hospitals at RM100 million each; 1,250 schools at RM10 million each; 312,500 low-cost houses at RM40,000 each or give everyone of the 27 million Malaysians regardless of age a payout of RM338!

“Only a Royal Commission of Inquiry, where previous  Transport Ministers, PKA Chairmen and Board members, as well as the relevant government officials in the Transport Ministry and Finance Ministry are  summoned to testify on their role can do justice  for accountability and integrity in the ‘scandal of scandals’.”

                This entry was posted on Monday, 15 June 2009, 6:49 pm and is filed under
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PSD scholarships – MCA has again failed to give justice

Letters

by
Tan Hao Chong

I am a 2008 SPM student ranked top 7th in a premier school at Johor Bahru  (S.M.K. Sultan Ismail) .I scored  11A1 and 1A2 in Chinese in SPM. I applied for JPA and was rejected after appeal. I was not even offered for local institutions. I am active in co-curricular activities and I believe I have done well in my interview.

The rejects had brought many sleepless nights for me and my parents. What is most  sad is that students of poorer results were randomly selected in an attempt to confuse the public. My mum took the matter to the Sin Chew Press and Nanyang Press. Thanks to the papers the matter was brought to the attention of many.

I am writing to you as going to Mr. Lim is our only  and last hope for justice now.

Here are some of the facts:

Out of the 800 appeals made through MCA, 250 were of  straight A1s as tabulated below and as far as I know , only 69 cases were successful

 No of A1		No. of students

15			1

14			1

13			9

12			64

11			110

9&10			65

 Immediately after SPM, I attended a seminar organized by MCA Youth  in Johor Bahru and was excited to hear the announcement by Dato’ Wee that 20% ie 400 out of 2000 scholarship will be awarded to students with good results regardless of race, economic background, CCA and interviews. Obviously , this was not done. We are disappointed with MCA for failing to give us justice.

The head of JPA promised to publish the results of successful applicants and until now nothing was announced.

By changing the name of scholarship and promises of more transparency in future  is only going to help the future applicants, which is very unfair to current applicants. We would have missed our lifetime opportunity.

We understand that you are going to bring this matter to the parliament. This is a good news for many of us .We hope your action will bring justice to us and our confidence in the education system and future of Malaysia.

                This entry was posted on Monday, 15 June 2009, 6:34 am and is filed under
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Something Sensible From UMNO Youth

by
M. Bakri Musa

I am heartened that UMNO Youth supports the proposal that a pass in English be mandatory in securing the SPM certificate.  I commend the organization in going further then merely supporting the proposition.  Among others, UMNO Youth suggests increasing the number of English teachers in rural schools and hiring foreign native-speaking English teachers as well as those retired teachers trained under the old system and thus fluent in English.

 I wish that UMNO Youth would be more daring and follow the example of its sister wing, UMNO Puteri, and support the continuation of the teaching of science and mathematics in English.  I would also prefer that they would support the proposal making a pass in MUET be mandatory for university entrance.  That notwithstanding, the stand taken by these two junior UMNO organizations is in stark contrast to that taken by Pakatan Rakyat partners.

            Supporting or adopting a policy is one thing; effectively implementing it is entirely another.  This is where our leaders and institutions have failed us miserably.  And when they fail in executing a policy effectively, the blame would go not on these ineffective and incompetent officials but on the policy itself.  This makes the later resurrection of an otherwise sound policy that much more difficult.

            The policy of teaching of science and mathematics in English is a prime example of this.  When Prime Minister Mahathir introduced it in 2003, I suggested that it be implemented in stages, beginning first with our residential schools.  There the students are generally brighter, teachers more well trained, and facilities much superior.  It would be much easier to work out the inevitable kinks like the availability of teachers and textbooks in such a controlled environment.  When those issues are resolved, the program could then be extended.

            As for textbooks, I suggested that instead of wasting time and effort at re-inventing the wheel, meaning retranslating existing texts in Malay into English, we should buy already available modern textbooks in English from established global publishers.  With the ministry’s purchasing clout (we were looking at literally hundreds of thousands of copies) it should be able to secure substantial discounts.

            Additionally we should convert some existing teachers’ training colleges into exclusively English-medium institutions.  Recognizing that the language skills of new teacher trainees were highly deficient, I suggested that they be given a year of English-immersion classes combined with improving their science and mathematics before they enter teacher training.

            As an added enticement, prepare the more talented students to take the American SAT examination and send the high scorers to top universities in America.  With their now enhanced language skills as well superior proficiency in science and mathematics, they would be more than well-prepared for the SAT.

            We all recognize that the teaching of science and mathematics is not the best way to enhance the English proficiency of our students.  It would however ease their acquisition of new scientific knowledge; we cannot depend on translations because of the inevitable time lag.

Consequently, in addition to teaching science and mathematics in English I suggested also teaching one or two other subjects in English.  My prime candidate would be Islamic Studies because of its high language content as well as the increasing number of literature now written in English.  Next to Arabic, English is now the most important language in Islam.  As an added bonus, it would also broaden our students’ understanding of our faith.  It would also attract others whose mother tongue is not Malay to learn about Islam.

Similarly in making MUET mandatory for university admission, I would introduce the policy incrementally.  To begin with, those currently qualified to enter sans a pass in MUET be given a year or two to make up their deficiency.  Meaning they would have to defer their admission until they pass their MUET.  They would be more likely to make up their deficiency if they were to concentrate only on improving their English.

Incidentally, taking a year or two off between high school and university is now fast becoming very popular with American students.  They use that hiatus to travel, acquire specific skills, or just to earn some money for college.

Had our leaders and officials done these (and many others) our students today – particularly Malays – would have enhanced English language skills as well as superior proficiency in science and mathematics.  That in turn would enhance their value in the market place, quite apart from making them more educated in the broadest sense of the word.

Most importantly, we would not again be distracted by yet another unneeded major controversy in our education policy.

All Is Not Lost

All is not lost, however; we could still recover from our initial fumble by being better prepared this time.  Consider the proposal to hire retired and foreign teachers.

If we hire any Australian or British teacher without carefully scrutinizing their abilities then we would not advance the policy.  Apart from having the necessary academic qualifications, these teachers must also demonstrate an ability to be free from what is euphemistically termed thick “mother tongue influence” (accent).  This is a major problem with teachers and lecturers we recruited from India and Pakistan.  Similarly, a teacher with a thick Cockney or outback accent would be equally incomprehensible in our classrooms.

I suggest that we recruit teachers from English Canada or Midwestern United States because they speak as close as possible to what is termed standard or international English.  Another equally good and much cheaper source would be Eastern Europe.  Learning another language is tough; there is no need to burden our young in trying to decipher a thick Cockney, Australian, or for that matter, a heavy Southern accent.

Having Polish teachers serves another advantage; I am amazed how well Polish students could speak English even though that is not their mother tongue.  They do not even have an accent.  Their success and experience could help our students overcome their own problems of learning a second language.

Recruiting retired teachers too presents its own sets of problems.  As they speak English well, their presence would only expose the glaring inadequacies of current teachers.  This would not sit well with them, especially the headmasters.  When talking to these retired teachers, the greatest obstacle they face (apart from the bureaucratic hoops the have to undergo) is the unwelcome attitude of their current colleagues.  To overcome this we need to give financial incentives for headmasters to recruit these retired teachers or find ways to overcome the resistance of the current teaching personnel.

Regardless, when we do recruit these retired and foreign teachers, we must ensure that they are not assigned alone to a particular school.  We must have at least five or six of them at any one school.  In that way they could find mutual support for each other and because of their “critical mass,” they could influence the students and the rest of the teachers.

Attention to these details is important to a policy’s success.  If our officials ignore them or are not diligent when implementing the policy, it would surely fail.  Then we would end up again with never-ending controversies and divisiveness.

The current controversy over the teaching of science and mathematics in English is not due to the inherent defect of the policy (on the contrary it is a sound policy) rather its implementation had been botched by our incompetent officials.  Let us ensure that we do a better job in trying to enhance the English skills of our students.

                This entry was posted on Monday, 15 June 2009, 6:35 pm and is filed under
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“You Are Not Qualified To Talk About Islam”: How to Respond to Attempts to Close the Public Domain

By
Farish A. Noor

“You are not qualified to talk about Islam”. How many times have I heard and read that same line, again and again? And more often than not, the same sentence is uttered or written by precisely the sort of self-trained autodidact whose own knowledge of Islam came from whatever he or she read on the internet or some cassette he bought at the local market.

It has become rather commonplace for conservative Muslims – as well as conservative Christians, Hindus, Buddhists and Jews – to claim monopoly over the discourse of Islam and to try their best to close off the space of public discourse on all matters religious for the sake of protecting the integrity and sanctity of that discourse. Or so we are told. But one can also argue that such attempts at restricting the participation and contribution of others in a discursive arena that is hotly contested is little more than a conventional and predictable attempt at censorship and the narrowing of the Muslim mind.

A recent case in point is the attempt to once again label the Muslim feminist movement Sisters in Islam of Malaysia as a group of ‘western-educated’ ‘liberal’ feminists who have no right to speak on matters Islamic. And once again we are in a paroxysm of anxiety as to how to deal with such accusations.

Let us therefore calmly and rationally look into the matter and dissect it piece by piece:

First of all, the claim that someone is ‘not qualified’ to speak about Islam simply because he or she did not go to a religious school is a rather bogus and shallow argument that should be exposed for what it is. The comparison that is often made is thus: Only a doctor can speak about medicine as he is trained to speak on medical matters, and only a pilot can speak about flying as he or she is trained in such matters as well; hence it follows that only the learned scholars (ulama) can speak about Islam as they have been trained to do so.

Now allow me to interject at this point: If I were to go to my doctor and complain to her of a headache, and she attempts to cure my headache by cracking my skull open with a hammer, I do reserve the right to object and to tell her that she is not a very good doctor. Likewise if I chose to take a flight to Jogjakarta and end up in Cuba, I do reserve the right to admonish the pilot. I don’t have to be trained in medicine or avionics to register such a complaint, for the simple reason that I am not objecting to the discipline of medicine per se, but rather the normative conduct of my doctor.

Likewise when Muslim feminists object to the abuse of women’s rights at the hands of misogynistic men who hide behind the cloak of religiosity, they are not condemning Islam or religion as a whole, but rather the normative culture of Muslims, and the abuse of law in the name of Islam. At no point is Islam being criticised or rejected, but rather the abuse of the law and the transgression of the egalitarian spirit of Islam.

This is the point that is often lost in the over-heated debates that take place between Muslim progressives and the more conservative Ulama in our midst. Whenever there is an attempt to question, debate, reform or develop the normative religio-cultural praxis of Muslims anywhere in the world, we often see the same reaction from conservative Ulama who will never accept that those who didn’t go to the same schools as they did have the right to speak on matters of religious praxis.

But if we accept this argument of the Ulama then we are in danger of overlooking the reality of history and how the greatest advances in Muslim normativity and thought came from those who were precisely outside the traditional circle of orthodox thought. Today many Islamists claim to have received their inspiration from the likes of Abul Ala’a Maudoodi, Hassan al-Banna, Syed Qutb, et al. But have we forgotten that men like Maudoodi and Qutb were themselves lay Islamists whose own education sometimes was not rooted in classical Islamic teaching? Maudoodi was, after all, a journalist by training.

Dealing and responding to such attempts at discursive closure would therefore require us to look beyond the discursive pyrotechnics of legalism and theology, and to see that beneath all these warnings and demands for closure is nothing more than a strategy of censorship at work. For those who are trying to engage critically and intelligently with the discourse of religion, abiding by the rules of traditional conventional scholarship will simply not get us anywhere.

If, for instance, a Muslim feminist were to abide by the rules set by some conservative male Ulama, they would be forced to conform to all the standards set by men: They would have to start from the beginning, go to the same schools as the ulama did, read the same books, dress and behave the same way, etc. But in the end, they would still be faced with yet another barrier to their participation into the discursive domain: “No, you are not qualified to speak on Islam. Why? Because you are a woman of course!”

In the struggle to understand and render relevant the concerns of religion in the modern age we live in, blind adherence to traditional conventions will get us nowhere; and can only in fact retard our development even further. What holds true for contemporary Muslim praxis is equally true for contemporary Christian, Hindu and Buddhist praxis as well. Conservative Muslims on the other hand have to realise that we now live in an age where modern developments in communication, education and the dissemination of knowledge means that Muslim women are more intellectually emancipated and equipped than ever before. Rather than silencing the voices of Muslim women who are trying to understand and make relevant Islam for the age we live in, the conservatives among us should learn to listen to the critical and often constructive comments of others instead. If Islam is indeed a universal religion, then it has to be open for discussion for all. If Islam is indeed for everyone, then everyone has the right to have a say in it.

                This entry was posted on Tuesday, 16 June 2009, 6:43 pm and is filed under
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Advice to PM Najib to adopt new politics

By
Dr Chen Man Hin, DAP Life Advisor

PM NAJIB MUST GIVE UP PLAYING OLD POLITICS OR HIS 1 MALAYSIA VISION WILL VANISH

One must admit that PM Najib has been trying very hard to push his vision of 1 Malaysia to gain the support of the people, but the people are not seen to resonate to his call. These are the reasons.

HE LACKS SINCERITY. He claims that he wants unity so that we are one people. The next moment he proceeded to Perak and engineered a coup de’tat to take over the PR state government. He has achieved it with the support and co-operation from royalty, the judiciary, the attorney chambers, the police, the election commission and the bureaucracy. Instead of unity, he has created disunity among the people.

HIS 1 MALAYSIA WAS INTENDED TO UNITE THE WHOLE NATION TO CONSIST OF ONE PEOLE, ONE NATION. However at the same time, he continues to support Umno’s policy of ketuanan Melayu. How is it possible for the people to be one people, when at the same time he allows a political party of which he is president to struggle for a divisive ketuanan Melayu policy?

HE LACKS COMPETENCY. PM Najib as finance minister launched two financial stimulus packages totalling some 70billion ringgits to fight off the painful effects of a global credit crunch. When he was appointed PM there was no recession yet, but now the national economy is in recession. all his reassuring words of ‘no recession, only a mild economic downturn’ has fallen flat. for this year, the GDP is estimated to be negative by 5% (7% by independent analysts).

The government has admitted that only 20% of the stimulus packages were used to revive the economy. The money was allocated by parliament, but incompetency and inertia of government bureaucracy sabotaged the stimulus plan.

LACK OF TRANSPARENCY. Any government can have the best of strategies and plans, but if there is lack of transparency the projects will not take off but will flop badly. Corruption is still a national scourge and has cost the nation billions of ringgits. The most recent scandal of  Port Klang Free Trade Zone is a case in point.

The biggest scandals involve the award of tenders of government contracts.  Billions of ringgits are lost through kickbacks.  Tenders are awarded to political cronies and not on basis of merit and experience. These corrupt practices result in the building of faulty bridges, schools sturctures, stadiums and government buildings of parliament and Putrajaya.

THE NEP BAGGAGE. In these hard times of recession, foreign direct investments provide a life to the economy. Unfortunately the FDIs have fallen precipitously last year and projected to dive down by 60% for this years. PM Najib has worked hard to get China and Singapore to invest in Malaysia. We must advise and warn the PM that unless he revokes the investment unfriendly NEP all his efforts will come nought. All the goodwill he has engendered will vanish, when the foreign investor see that Malaysia’s terms are unattractive.

DAP advice to PM Najib. We think your 1Malaysia is a good objective, but it cannot be achieved if you still embrace old politics of race, corruption and racial politics.

In a globalised world the road to success for Malaysia is to preach and practise the new politics of competency, accountability and transparency. Racial politics are out meritocracy is in.

                This entry was posted on Tuesday, 16 June 2009, 11:25 am and is filed under
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Parliament twitter on the “annual begging season” for PSD s’ships by top-scorers

@limkitsiang

06/16/2009 11:09 AM

From Nazri, 2,000 PSD foreign s’ships for 2008 SPM  students – 1,100 bumiputeras and 900 non-bumiputeras. Cost RM659 million.

06/16/2009 10:44 AM

On why govt not spending more 4PSD s’ships 4topscorers when RM12.5 billion in PKFZ scandal can give places for >1,000 students,no answer.

06/16/2009 10:36 AM

Nazri trotted out standard govt line on this issue n refused 2respond when asked why list of 400 s’ships awarded on merit not made public.

06/16/2009 10:34 AM

I asked why there is still “annual begging season” 4top scholars 4PSD s’ships after 1Malaysia anncd by Najib, which must mean colour-blind?

06/16/2009 10:30 AM

I raised JB student Tan Hao Chong (11A1s 1A2) not given PSD s’hips, though MCA Youth Wee said after SPM 400 places awarded solely on merit

06/16/2009 10:08 AM

Parliament begins with 1st question, Nazri answering, on the annual “begging season” by top scholars for PSD scholarships.

                This entry was posted on Tuesday, 16 June 2009, 11:30 am and is filed under
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Where in France have you gone to, Tee Keat, that you dare not announce your overseas programme and travel plans?

My three questions (No.52 to No. 54 on the 18th day in the current series) to Transport Minister Datuk Seri Ong Tee Keat on the
RM12.5 billion Port Klang Free Zone (PKFZ) scandal
 today are:

No. 1. –
Where in France have you gone to, Tee Keat
, that you dare not reveal to Parliament and the Malaysian public  your actual programme of activities in Paris and your travel plans?

Is it because you know that if your overseas programme is made public, you will be nailed as an utterly irresponsible Minister who could run away from his first duty to account to Parliament on the “scandal of scandals”, the RM12.5 billion PKFZ scandal on the most ridiculous pretext of an overseas trip.

When was your Paris programme finalized.  Didn’t you know in advance that the June meeting of Parliament would start yesterday and that the RM12.5 billion PKFZ scandal will  be high on the parliamentary issues of priority?

No. 2 – It is reported that the Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Najib Razak, has directed the Transport Minister to make a ministerial statement on the RM12.5 billion PKFZ scandal in Parliament on Monday.

Does Ong agree that this is most embarrassing for a Minister who is also the MCA President, that he does not know the right and proper thing he should do in Parliament, i.e. make a ministerial statement on the PKFZ scandal on the first day of Parliament yesterday.

This must be the first time in the history of the MCA where the MCA President has to be directed by the Prime Minister and Umno President to make a  Ministerial statement in Parliament. How embarrassing indeed!

Ong had already embarrassed himself and Najib  by openly failing to live up to the Prime Minister’s bold public declaration on 29th May 2009 that his government welcomed all questions about the PKFZ scandal and that Ong will will answer “every question raised by any party”.

I had asked whether Ong could ensure that his ministerial statement would be followed by a one-day debate, but there has been thunderous silence from him.

Ong cannot pretend that he is overseas and does not know about my question.

I believe Ong has made arrangements that within minutes of my daily “three questions on the PKFZ scandal”, he would be informed about them, word for word, as  in this era of instant communications information travels at the speed of light. Or is Ong claiming he is really cut off from what is happening in the country and does not know  developments,  in particular my daily three-questions to him on the PKFZ scandal?

No.3 – Is Ong prepared to appear before the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) to answer all queries about the PKFZ scandal to set the example to all Cabinet Ministers  that they must accept full and final responsibility for their respective ministries – a common feature in developed parliamentary democracies where Ministers have no problem in appearing before their PAC but never done in Malaysia?

If this is done by Ong, the two former Transport Ministers, Tun Dr. Ling Liong Sik and Datuk Seri Chan Kong Choy would be pressured to come forward to account for their roles, whether in PAC or elsewhere, in the “mother of all scandals” of the RM12.5 billion PKFZ scandal – which will be a major step in advancing the cause of accountability, transparency, integrity and good governance in Malaysia.

                This entry was posted on Tuesday, 16 June 2009, 1:00 pm and is filed under
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Najib’s latest tango in the UMNO-PAS “unity government” talks highly suspect as its real motive is to split PAS and divide Pakatan Rakyat

Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak’s latest tango in the Umno-Pas “unity government” talks is highly suspect as its real motive is to split PAS and divide Pakatan Rakyat.

Najib said he believed Pas was sincere in wanting to form a unity government with Umno as proposed by its president Datuk Seri Abdul Hadi Awang and Umno would not reject any co-operation that could bring benefit to the country.

Why has Najib suddenly warmed up to the idea of Umno-Pas “unity government” when only three days earlier  the Deputy Prime Minister and Deputy Umno President, Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin had poured cold water on it, dismissing the proposal as unlikely to become a reality with differences within Pas itself and the Pakatan Rakyat parties.

Muhyiddin even said that Umno was prepared to “to respond to the proposal if it was mutually beneficial but would not do so now. Until today, there is nothing concrete.”

Why has the top Umno leadership suddenly changed tack on this issue, if not to exploit what they perceived as opportunities to exploit differences and contradictions in Pas and Pakatan Rakyat.

What is the reaction of MCA, Gerakan, MIC and the other BN component parties to the idea of a “Umno-Pas unity government” talks? Are they just simply dumb and irrelevant in the highest echelons of Barisan Nasional leadership?

DAP has made clear our position on any Umno-Pas “unity government” talks and the Pakatan Rakyat leadership council will meet on Monday to hear Hadi’s explanation on the issue.

I don’t see MCA or Gerakan asking for an explanation from Najib on the proposed “Umno-Pas  unity government talks”! Why?

The media have been after me for my reaction to the press conference statement  by Pas secretary-general Datuk Mustapha Ali that Pas will hold unity talks with Umno only if the other two Pakatan Rakyat partners, PKR and DAP, are included in the talks.

I will await explanation of Mustapha’s proposal at the Pakatan  Rakyat leadership council meeting on Monday before reacting.

However, I will like to hear not only what Najib and other Umno leaders have to say, but what MCA, Gerakan, MIC and other BN component parties have to say about Mustapha’s proposal. Or are MCA, Gerakan, MIC and the other BN component parties not allowed to react before Umno has decided on the line that must be adhered to by all in BN?

                This entry was posted on Wednesday, 17 June 2009, 5:49 pm and is filed under
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Ong Tee Keat in absconding overseas to avoid parliamentary accounting, which will result in absence from Cabinet meeting and inability to ensure that the Cabinet rectify the continuing injustice of SPM top scorers denied PSD overseas scholarships

MCA President Datuk Seri Ong Tee Keat is most irresponsible in absconding overseas to avoid parliamentary accounting on the RM12.5 billion Port Klang Free Zone (PKFZ) scandal, which will result in his absence from this week’s Cabinet meeting and inability to ensure that the Cabinet rectify the continuing injustice of SPM top scorers denied Public Service Department (PSD) overseas scholarships.

During question time in Parliament yesterday, I had read out an email complaint from a 2008 SPM top-scorer who is ranked No. 7 in a premier school in Johore Bahru, Tan Hao Chong, who scored 11A1 and 1A21 in Chinese, who was not even offered a PSD scholarship in local public universities.

I read out his email in Parliament, viz:

“Immediately after SPM, I attended a seminar organized by MCA Youth  in Johor Bahru and was excited to hear the announcement by Dato’ Wee that 20% ie 400 out of 2000 scholarship will be awarded to students with good results regardless of race, economic background, CCA and interviews. Obviously , this was not done. We are disappointed with MCA for failing to give us justice.

“The head of JPA promised to publish the results of successful applicants and until now nothing was announced.”

In his email, Tan pointed out that out of the 800 appeals made through MCA, 250 were of  straight A1s as tabulated below and only 69 cases were successful:

No of A1

No. of students

15

1

14

1

13

9

12

64

11

110

9&10

65

Datuk Seri Nazri Aziz, the Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department, who was answering the question, had no consolation to the top-scorers in the country or any satisfactory answer to my question why the new Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Najib Razak’s “1Malaysia” programme had not resulted in a revamp of PSD scholarship policy to introduce a “colour-blind” approach, at least for the 20% or 400 of the 2,000 PSD foreign scholarships reserved for “meritocracy”!

I later met Datuk Wee Ka Siong, the MCA Youth leader and now Deputy Education Minister mentioned by Tan at the Parliament lobbly, and he admitted that the injustice of the PSD scholarship selection this year is the worst in the nine years he had been handling such cases.

What  then is Wee doing as Deputy Education Minister and why is Ong committing a gross dereliction of political responsibilities by absenting himself from  this week’s Cabinet meeting, when it will be the last opportunity to do justice to the SPM top-scorers by ensuring that all the top scorers with 9As are given PSD scholarships?

Nobody can accept the argument that the government has no money for scholarships for the best and brightest of our students when RM12.5 billion could be embroiled in the PKFZ scandal – which could give scholarships to 125,000 students at RM100,000 each!

My three questions (No.55 to No. 57 on the 19th day in the current series) to Transport Minister Datuk Seri Ong Tee Keat on the RM12.5 billion Port Klang Free Zone (PKFZ) scandal today are:

No. 1. – When I went to Port Klang Authority (PKA) on May 28 for copies of the PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) report on PKFZ, like MP for PJ Utara, Tony Pua and Selangor State Exco Ronnie Liu, we were made to sign acknowledgement of the conditions under which the report was given to us.

These  conditions still apply, as all who want to download the PwC report from the PKFZ website,
http://www.pkfznews.com.my/download-pka-report
, are required to confirm acceptance of these conditions, one of which states:

“3) You are not authorised to use or rely on the Report to arrive at any conclusion.”

Can Ong explain this ridiculous condition that no one is “authorised to use or reply on the (PwC) Report to arrive at any conclusion” which flies in the face of accountability, transparency and good governance.

If the PwC report cannot be relied upon by anyone “to use or rely on…to arrive at any conclusion”, the PwC report is utterly useless. Then why did Ong direct the PKA Chairman Datuk Lee Hwa Beng to submit copies to the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Agency (MACC) and the PAC, if not just as a cynical PR (public relations) exercise?

Why did Ong rely on the PwC report to set up a Task Force and two committees as a follow-up action on the PwC report?

MPs are still waiting for copies of the PwC report and appendices, Will MPs be required to sign acknowledgement of such silly conditions before copies are distributed in Parliament?

Question No.2 – I have received emails expressing skepticism that the Committee on Corporate Governance on PKFZ headed by Paul Low, Transparency International (TI) President, would be able to probe and get into the bottom of the RM2.5 billion PKFZ scandal, on the ground that Paul Low is a MCA life member and former Chairman of MCA think-tank, the Institute of Strategic Analysis and Policy Research (INSAP) during the time of Liong Sik as MCA Chairman.

I am prepared to give Paul Low a chance to prove that he “walks the talk” on integrity as TI President.

My question to Ong is whether his choice of Paul Low as Chairman of Corporate Governance was in any way influenced by Paul Low’s MCA past, and what guarantees he can give that Paul Low will be given full powers to probe into all abuses of power, conflict-of-interest, malpractice and corruption resulting in the RM12.5 billion PKFZ scandal.

Question No. 3: I have today sent a letter to Datuk Seri Azmi Khalid, Chairman of PAC, asking him to disqualify himself and step down from the PAC inquiry into the PKFZ.

My letter reads:

“17th June 2009

YB Datuk Seri Khalid Azmi,

Chairman,

Public Accounts Committee,

Parliament.

YB Datuk Seri,

I am writing to ask YB to disqualify yourself and step down from the PAC inquiry into the Port Klang Free Zone (PKFZ) scandal because of conflict of interest as YB was a Cabinet Minister from 2004 to 2008, during which time the Cabinet took various decisions on this subject, including the retrospective approval of the four Letters of Support issued unlawfully by the two previous Transport Ministers Datuk Seri (now Tun) Dr. Ling Liong Sik and Datuk Seri Chan Kong Choy as well as the Cabinet approval of RM4.6 billion loan to bail out the PKFZ project in 2007.

YB should be a witness before the PAC inquiry into the PKFZ scandal instead of conducting a PAC inquiry into the PKFZ.

Principles of credibility, legitimacy and integrity of PAC demand that YB take this course of action.

Yours truly,

(Lim Kit Siang)

DAP Parliamentary Leader

MP for Ipoh Timor”

Does Ong agree that Azmi should disqualify himself and step down from the PAC inquiry into the PKFZ because of conflict of interest, and that the PAC Deputy Chairman Dr. Tan Seng Giaw conduct the inquiry?

                This entry was posted on Wednesday, 17 June 2009, 11:22 am and is filed under
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The gobbledegook of Augustine Paul FCJ in the Federal Court’s decision of Zambry v Sivakumar

By
N H Chan

Gobbledegook

Most, if not all, laymen will find the written judgment of Augustine Paul FCJ –  who eventually put in writing the judgment of the unanimous decision of the infamous five –  most perplexing. I am not surprised. I find it unintelligible also – in fact, it is what the word “gobbledegook” means in the English language, “unintelligible language”.

In case you have forgotten

In case you have forgotten, I shall try to jolt your memory. The infamous five were Alauddin bin Dato’ Mohd Sheriff PCA, Arifin Zakaria CJM, Nik Hashim Nik Ab Rahman, Augustine Paul and Zulkefli Ahmad Makinudddin FCJJ. Their story exploded on the front page of the Star newspaper of Friday, 17 April 2009. It carried the startling and outrageous decision of the Federal Court. The headline proclaims, “Court: Siva does not have right to suspend seven”. The report reads:

PUTRJAYA: The Federal Court has unanimously ruled that Perak Assembly Speaker V Sivakumar does not have the power to suspend Mentri Besar Datuk Zambry Abd Kadir and six state ececutive council members from attending the assembly.

It granted a declaration that the seven assemblymen were entitled to take part in all the assembly sittings and to carry out their duties.

Court of Appeal president Justice Alauddin Mohd Sheriff, who chaired a five-men panel yesterday, said the Speaker’s decision to suspend the seven applicants was ultra vires (outside the law) and invalid.

In an article which was posted on the internet at the time, I wrote:

This is a perverse judgment of the Federal Court. It is perverse because it is a decision that was made in blatant defiance of Article 72(1) of the Federal Constitution which says, “The validity of any proceedings in the Legislative Assembly of any State shall not be questioned in any court. The judges of the Federal Court have failed the people and the government of this country when they chose to ignore the law of the Constitution of Malaysia. In other words the judges have reffised to do justice according to law.

Incidentally, ultra vires does not mean “outside the law”. It means “outside one’s jurisdiction, beyond the scope of one’s power or authority”. And we may ask, who is the Federal Court to say what is beyond the jurisdiction of the Speaker when the supreme law of the country says that “the validity of any proceedings in the Legislative Assembly of any State shall not be questioned in any court”.

In case you don’t remember who Augustine Paul J (as he was then) is. It was he whose judgment for convicting Anwar Ibrahim of so-called corruption under s 2(1) of the Emergency (Essential Powers) Ordinance ran to 208 closely printed pages in the Malayan Law Journal. The case was reported as Public Prosecutor v Anwar bin Ibrahim [1999] 2 MU 1. That verbose judgment came to nothing – it was all about known law which any law student can find in the textbooks. But he had earned for himself a place in infamy. This is what I have noted in my book How to Judge the Judges, Second Edition, Sweet & Maxwell Asia, p 8:

It was not the judgment that was criticized (it could even be impeccable) but the way the trial was conducted which attracted so much adverse comment and disapproval from television broadcast abroad and from the international press. The remarks and behaviour from the bench: like when the lawyers for the defence were threatened with contempt of court, in fact one of the defence lawyers was actually charged with the offence, and with the judge being difficult with the witnesses and counsel for the defence at almost every turn of the trial, gave the impression to the media and to those who were there that the judge was one-sided. It did not matter that the judge thought he was not. As Lord Devlin observed, “The judge who gives the right judgment while appearing not to do so may be thrice blessed in heaven, but on earth he is no use at all” (Patrick Devlin The Judge, p 3). Mr. Justice Augustine Paul, like the infamous Judge Jeffreys before him, by the manner in which he had conducted the trial and his behaviour on the bench brought ignominy and embarrassment to the reputation of the courts of this country. The decision could be set aside for apparent bias: see Exparte Pinochet Ugarit (No 2) [1999] 1 All ER 577 (HL(E)).

Augustine Paul FCJ- the judge who misses the point altogether

This time around he did it with 64 pages, on A4 size paper, of gobbledygook. This time, he did not sully his name with apparent bias. This time he did something just as bad – he blatantly disregarded Artcle 72(1) of the Federal Constitution. He had refused to apply the constitutional provision as it stands. He gave a judgment which has missed the point altogether. The late Lord Justice Salmon in an article “Some thoughts on the Traditions of the English Bar” (and I quote from the Perak Bar Bulletin, Vol. 1, No 2, December 2004) gave this advice to budding lawyers:

But remember this, in few cases, however complex, is there usually more than one point that matters. Very seldom are there more than two and never, well hardly ever, more than three. Discover the points that really matter. Stick to them and discard the rest. Nothing is more irritating to a tribunal than the advocate who takes every point possible and impossible. To do so is a very poor form of advocacy because the good points are apt to be swept away with the bad ones. Stick to what matters.

That was very sound advice to budding advocates from a very experienced judge. It seems to me to be very good advice also to judges who are not as competent as they should be. The message of Lord Justice Salmon is clear – don’t bark at the wrong tree or don’t miss the point.

Although Paul FCJ dealt with many points – like any novice lawyer – in his written judgment, there is actually only one point that really matters for the Federal Court to decide on in the present case. Any advocate with some ability will be able to tell you that. And that point is Article 72(1) of the Federal Constitution. It reads:

The validity of any proceedings in the Legislative Assembly of any state shall not be questioned in any court.

All of us ordinary folk knew what the words in Article 72(1) mean. This constitutional provision is couched in simple English without any ambiguity whatsoever so that all of us sensible people could understand. The words mean exactly what they say – no more, no less. No court, not even the Federal Court, can tell us the words mean something else. But then we have the infamous five in the Federal Court who said that the words mean otherwise. Now Paul FCJ, who was one of the five, in his written judgment tries to rationalize the ruling that they have made, which is that the speaker of the legislative assembly Sivakumar had acted ultra vires something or other – we are not told what exactly Sivakumar had acted outside his power – when he suspended Zambry and his band from the assembly. However his reasoning went askew because he missed the point entirely by citing the wrong cases which did not support what he says.

In his written judgment Paul FCJ refers to Ah Thian v Government of Malaysia [1976] 2 MU 112, at 113 where Suffian LP said:

The doctrine of the supremacy of Parliament does not apply in Malaysia. Here we have a written constitution. The power of Parliament and of state legislatures in Malaysia is limited by the Constitution, and they cannot make any law they please.

What Suffian LP says is that Parliament, that is the legislature, is not supreme. The legislature cannot make any law which the supreme law does not allow. th other words, although Parliament can make any law, that law must not be a law which is prohibited or is not sanctioned by the Constitution. But how can this case be relevant to Article 720) which says “The validity of any proceedings in the Legislative Assembly of any State shall not be questioned in any court”? Article 72(1) is a provision in the Constitution itself. It does not require the Constitution to sanction it. It is the Constitution itself . This case has no bearing whatsoever on the point in issue.

Next, he relies on Lim Kit Slang v Mahathir Mohamad [198711 MU 383 where Salleh Abas LP said this, at 386:

The courts are the final arbiter between the individual and the state and between individuals inter se, and in performing their constitutional role they must of necessity and strictly in accordance with the constitution and the law be the ultimate bulwark against unconstitutional legislation or excesses in administrative action.

Salleh Abas LP was speaking of unconstitutional legislation and excesses in administrative action. So, how can this be relevant to Article 72(1) which says that “The validity of any proceedings in the Legislative Assembly of any state shall not be questioned in any court”? What happens inside the assembly cannot be questioned in any court. But the law passed by the legislature itself or its enforcement can be questioned if it is shown to be unconstitutional or ambiguous. A statute is unconstitutional if it is not sanctioned by the Constitution. If a statute or any of it provisions is capable of having more than one meaning then it is the function of the court to interpret it. In the case of an administrative action, the remedy of judicial review is available.

The next case which Paul FCJ relies on is Tim Mohamed Adnan Robert v Tun Mustapha [1987] 1 MU 471 where Abdul Hamid CJ said this, at 485:

The mere fact that a litigant seeks the protection of a political right does not mean that it presents a political question. Whether a matter raises a political question; whether it has been committed by the Constitution to another branch of government is itself a matter of judicial determination because the Constitution has made the Courts the ultimate interpreter of the Constitution.

What do you think of this remark? It seams like gobbledygook to me. All that gobbledygook just to say “the Constitution has made the Courts the ultimate interpreter of the Constitution.” All of us reasonable people can understand the plain meaning of the words in Article 720). How can the court interpret the obvious meaning of the words in• Article 72(1) where there is nothing to interpret at all? “Interpret” means “explain the meaning of”. Only someone with the mentality of Humpty Dumpty would say a word means whatever Humpty Dumpty would want it to mean. The words in Article 72(1) mean exactly what they say. Only Humpty Dumpty or his ilk will say that the words mean something else.

Paul FCJ also refers to Tan Chiaw Thong J in the High Court whose judgment according to Paul FCJ was approved in the case above, at p 475:

The first authority is the case of Fan Yew Teng v Government of Malaysia [1976] 2 MU 262 and it was contended on that authority, that once a LA has dealt with a matter, in this case the matter of the appointment of the Chief Minister and who in that capacity commands the confidence of the majority of members, the Court should not interfere directly or indirectly, in the same matter. With respect, as a proposition, this in my view is obviously too wide, as the authority of the LA must necessarily be confined to matters within its constitutional and legal powers and functions.

Actually what this High Court judge was trying to say is that he did not agree with Fan Yew Teng which was a decision of Chang Mm Tat J in the High Court. Now, let us take a look at Fan Yew Teng v Government of Malaysia [1976] 2 MU 262. It was a decision on the interpretation of Article 48 of the Federal Constitution. Fan was a member of Parliament who was convicted of sedition and was fined $2,000. In his judgment Chang I said, p263:

The conviction and fine imposed would appear to bring him within the scope of Article 48 of the Federal Constitution. This Article provides that –

“(1)  Subject to the provisions of this Article, a person is disqualified for being a member of either House of Parliament if –

 …….

(e)   he has been convicted of an offence by a court of law in the Federation ……… and sentenced to imprisonment for a term of not less one year or to a fine of not less than two thousand dollars and has not received a free pardon.”

Fan applied to the High Court to declare that he has a constitutional right to exhaust his legal right of appeal up to the Privy Council and if unsuccessful to apply to the King for a free pardon before any question as to his disqualification can arise.

He succeeded before Chang Mm Tat J who granted him the declaratory orders applied for. But Tan Chiaw Thong J, according to Paul FCJ, disagreed. So there you are. It was a case on the interpretation of Article 48 of the Federal Constitution. The question is whether Fan has to be disqualified for membership of Parliament or was he entitled to exhaust his remedy of appeal all the way to the Privy Council, even to the Agong for a free pardon, before he could be disqualified. Again, this is not a case where Article 72(1) of the Federal Constitution is concerned.

After Paul FCJ has referred to the above Malaysian cases, he followed with two Indian cases: Indian Supreme Court in Cooper v Union of India AIR 1970 SC 1318, 1320 and Raja Ram Pal v The Hon ‘ble Speaker, Lok Sabha & Ors SCC 3 [2007] 184, para. 57.

He also included a South African case, The Speaker of the National Assembly v De Lille MP & Anor ZASCA 50.

None of these foreign cases have Article 720) or its equivalent in their country’s Constitution. Therefore all these cases are irrelevant to the application of Article 72(1) of the Federal Constitution..

Whether the speaker Sivakumar has the power to suspend Zambry and his band of six is not justiciable because Article 72(1) of our Federal Constitution says that “The validity of any proceedings in the Legislative Assembly of any State shall not be questioned in any court”. The suspension of Zambry and his band of six in the Legislative Assembly of Perak was a proceeding in the Legislative Assembly. And the Federal Constitution in Article 720) says that the validity of the proceeding in the Assembly shall not be questioned in any court. Who is Paul FCJ to question the peremptory decree of the Constitution, the supreme law of the land?

Yet, in spite of the constitutional decree of Article 72(1) of the Federal Constitution that no court shall question the validity of the proceeding in the Legislative Assembly of Perak where speaker Sivakumah had rightly or wrongly suspended Zambry and his band of six, Paul FCJ has blatantly refused to apply the constitutional provision of Article 72(1) as it stands. Defiantly, or pompously like Humpty Dumpty, he says:

……. Article 72(1) must be read as being subject to the existence of a power or jurisdiction, be it inherent or expressly provided for, to do whatever that has been done. The Court is empowered to ascertain whether a particular power that has been claimed has in fact been provided for.

So what? Even if the speaker does not have the power to suspend Zambry and his band of six, Article 72(1) of the Federal Constitution has decreed that the validity of the proceeding in the Legislative Assembly in which the speaker had suspended Zambry and his band of six from attending it, shall not be questioned in any court.

Duty and function of a judge

The duty of a judge is to ensure a fair trial. After that, the only function of a judge is to administer justice according to law.

The infamous five with Augustine Paul FCJ among them have blatantly refused to administer justice according to law in that they have refused to apply Article 720) of the Federal Constitution as it stands.

Lord Denifing in What Next in the Law, p 319 said:

Every law enacted by Parliament must be obeyed to the letter. No matter how unreasonable or unjust it may be, nevertheless, the judges have no option. They must apply the statute as it stands.

More so if the law is the Federal Constitution. The judges of the Federal Court have no option. They must apply Article 72(1) as it stands. If they failed to do that then they have failed to administer justice according to law. By not administering justice according to law, the judges could have breached section 3(1)(d) of the Judges’ Code of Ethics 1994.

Section 2(2) of the Judges’ Code of Ethics 1994 provides:

(2) The breach of any provision of this Code of Ethics may constitute a ground for the removal of a judge from office.

And s 3(l)(d) of the Code states:

3. (1) A judge shall not

(d)    conduct himself dishonestly or in such a manner as to bring the

Judiciary into disrepute or to bring discredit thereto;

I think the words ins 3(l)(d) of the Code are plain enough – we all know what they mean. So that if a judge brings the Judiciary into disrepute or to bring discredit to it, as the infamous five Federal Court judges have done by not administering justice according to law, they could be removed from office under this provision of the Code.

                This entry was posted on Wednesday, 17 June 2009, 9:40 pm and is filed under
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“You Are Not Qualified To Talk My Religion”: How to Respond to Attempts to Close the Public Domain- Part 2

By
Farish A. Noor

If I were to tell someone that I don’t like Satay, loathe batik shirts and cant stand keroncong music, does it follow from that that I hate Malay culture in toto? Now one would have to be deliberately and consciously paralysingly stupid to believe that, by assuming that the rejection of some aspects of normative culture amounts to a total rejection of an entire culture as well. If that is the case with culture, then why cant we see that the same rule applies to talk of religion as well?

I raise this point because it has become ever so trendy in Malaysia these days to assume that any rejection, critical questioning or even debate over some normative aspects of religious epiphenomena amounts to a total rejection of the religion per se. This arises because of the unscrupulous manner in which some religiously-conservative individuals have erroneously equated the normative aspect of religiosity with the dogmatic aspect of religion in general. The two spheres, however, are distinct and should remain so.

This explains in part why groups such as Malaysia’s Sisters in Islam have been in the limelight for so many years, and why this group of Muslim feminists have been attacked again and again, and accused of being anti-Islamic. The fact however is that Sisters in Islam (SIS)
has never raised any questions or doubts about Islamic orthodoxy, but rather have questioned the application of Islamic law and the praxis of Muslim norms in the country that go against the spirit of Islamic orthodoxy itself.

Now we are faced with several questions that include: Do lay Muslims and non-Muslims have the right to speak, debate and question Muslim religio-cultural praxis? Does the questioning of religio-cultural praxis amount to a criticism of religion in general? And can one even comment on the religio-cultural praxis of other faith communities?

Let me try to address these questions by way of an analogy or two:

Not too long ago during the bad ol’ days of Apartheid we will remember that the practice of racial discrimination in South Africa was justified on both political as well as religious grounds. Conservative Christian fundamentalists sought religious justification for the practice of racial discrimination by selectively quoting Biblical scripture and the old Testament to find sources that would explain, rationalise and justify racial differences. This reminds us of the point argued by the scholar Ebrahim Moosa who once noted that ‘the danger with religious elites is that they can make religious texts say whatever they want because they have read them and know how to manipulate them.’

Likewise in North America there still remain Christian fundamentalist sects that equally fall back on religious scripture to justify their perceptions and understanding of racial difference. For some of these fundamentalists, Africans are not even human beings and classified as sub-human, according to old Testament accounts of the African race.

Now in both these instances we see the practice of discursive manipulation at its most blatant and abusive. The scripture of the Bible is taken out of context, selectively appropriated to justify everything from Apartheid to racial profiling. Is this a Christian virtue? Can we say that this is the kernel of Christian humanism and universalism? Obviously not.

Anyone with even the most shallow understanding of Christian scripture will tell you that such abuse of religious scripture is political in nature, and reveals the truly rotten state of Apartheid and religiously-inspired racist politics. I do not have to be a practicing Christian to see that, and I certainly do not have to be a Christian to point that out. Does a critical rejection of such skewered religiously-inspired racist politics amount to an attack or rejection of Christianity? Certainly not. Nobody is arguing about Christian orthodoxy here, but rather the socio-religious and political praxis of Christians in their daily lives.

On a point of comparison we can note the same rejection of the abusive cultural practices of the Taliban in Afghanistan, whose abuse of human rights was justified in the name of Islam. The criticism that was levelled against the Taliban then – by both non-Muslims and Muslim scholars like Sheikh al-Qaradawi, et al – was not directed towards Islam, but rather towards the abusive practices of the Taliban themselves. One instance was when Sheikh al-Qaradawi condemned the bombing of the Bamiyan Buddha statues by the Taliban, which he noted went totally against the Islamic injunction against the destruction of all religious sites. So was Sheikh al-Qaradawi attacking Islam when he issued his statement? Were we being anti-Islamic when we condemned the Taliban’s abusive treatment of women and religious minorities in the country?

Dealing with the standard admonition “You do not have the right to speak about my religion” therefore entails having the courage and consistency to insist that when we reject, criticise and condemn certain cultural practices we are not engaged in religious hate-mongering. We cannot allow conservative fundamentalists from any religious community to equate religio-cultural norms and behaviour with the religion itself, for the two are distinct and may even contradict each other. Just because someone is born a Muslim doesn’t mean that he or she is an immediate expert on Islam; and the same applies to those who are born Christian, Hindu, Buddhist, etc.

If all these religions wish to entertain the notion that they contain universal truths applicable to humanity, then they have to demonstrate their worth and relevance to humanity as a whole as well. So let us not fall into the trap of cultural and religious essentialism, and let us not tolerate the abuse of human rights whenever it comes under the cloak of religiosity. Christian fundamentalists who justified Apartheid and the Taliban who justified the destruction of Buddhist temples may have felt that they were doing God’s work on earth, but it takes a sensible and courageous soul to turn the mirror to these extremists and expose them for the hypocrites they were and are.

                This entry was posted on Thursday, 18 June 2009, 4:00 pm and is filed under
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Act of sabotage

Kit Siang’s car tyres punctured outside Parliament (Update)

By
LEE YUK PENG | The Star

KUALA LUMPUR: A tyre of the car belonging to veteran Member of Parliament Lim Kit Siang (DAP-Ipoh Timur) parked at the MPs’ parking lot at Parliament building was delibrately punctured with a needle on Wednesday.

Lim, who raised the matter it at the Dewan Rakyat during the Question Time Thursday asked: “How can this act of sabotage happen at Parliament building?”

He said he planned to drive out for lunch at 1:15pm when he discovered that the rear left tyre had deflated.

An aide said he went to a nearby petrol station to inflate the tyre and returned to Parliament building after lunch.

However, he discovered the same tyre had deflated again at 4pm.

The car was then sent to a tyre shop where the needle hole was found near the rim of the tyre and not at the surface.

Lim said he was not going to lodge a police report but Parliament chief administrator Datuk Kamaruddin Baria has spoken to him about it.

—-

NST | DEWAN DISPATCHES
: Lim Kit Siang’s flat tyre: sabotage, vandalism, prank, threat, warning or shoddiness?

By : Azmi Anshar

So irate was his reaction to discovering the needle in the tyre on Wednesday that he raised the matter during Question Time, much to the amusement of the House but Speaker Tan Sri Pandikar Amin Mulia is always a hard sell for sob stories.

“My car was sabotaged. I found a needle. In my 40 years of experience, I have never experienced such things,” Kit bellowed in disgust. “How secure is the security in the Parliament?”

Pandikar Amin immediately exuded unsympathetic vibes, shrugging off Kit’s complaint by instructing him to refer the question to the relevant Ministry rather than waste floor time lamenting about his flat tyre. However, Information, Communication and Culture Minister Rais Yatim was genuinely concerned and demonstrated empathy. Although agreeing that Kit’s predicament had nothing to do with the question before the house, Rais volunteered to help Kit by having a word with Parliament security.

“He and I have a long history together. I do not mind going to the security in parliament. That should be sufficient for him,” Rais preambled before delivering his reply.

Dissatisfied, Lim proceeded straight to the Parliament lobby and called for an impromptu Press conference. As usual, a ready audience in the battery of media reporters were waiting eagerly for Kit’s revelation. He had gone for lunch with his DAP colleagues in his Honda CRV and during the drive, they all felt that the car was not cruising as stable as it should be. When they arrived at the restaurant, they found the left rear tyre punctured and quickly brought it to a nearby mechanic to have the problem fixed.

Kit didn’t think much of the flat tyre when he returned to Parliament House after lunch but when he was about to leave at 4pm that day, he was stunned to see the same tyre deflated again. After replacing the flat with a spare, Kit took damaged tyre to the mechanic where this time, a needle mark was discovered. “This is no accident. It was a clear case of sabotage,” he cried. However, Kit elected not to lodge a police report despite the ruthless outcome but had raised it with parliament administrative director Datuk Kamaruddin Baria, who sought out Kit to establish the incident.

Before any elucidation is made to Kit’s catastrophe (a big word considering the action but it is in keeping with Kit’s fondness for hyperboles), let it be stated here that no vehicle owner should ever be burdened with a needle puncture in a tyre, deliberate or otherwise. The hassle it takes to repair the tyre is reason enough for a bout of hyperventilation. That stated, was it sabotage to begin with in its proper definition? Kit might not want to rue other motives as to why someone would persevere to bang a nail into his Honda’s tyre but if he opts to, these are four other possibilities:

:: Vandalism: Vandals have been known to burn cars in certain housing areas out of spite or some measure of warning. House owners, irritated with inconsiderate motorists who haphazardly park their vehicles in front of their gates, have been known to let out air of the tyres. Low-rent tow truck operators have been known to shower highways with nails in the hope of “nailing” an unsuspecting car with a big towing payday.

:: Prank: Some probable suspects who nail the tyre are the scores of MPs who might have an unsettled grudge with Kit over the years but lacks the courage or the intellectual brute to take him on inside the House for a face-off. Khairy Jamaluddin (BN-Rembau) has no such hang-ups when tangoing with Kit head-on in the past year, so he won’t waste time with such delinquent tendencies. But KJ did see the gallows humour to the incident in his day’s Twitter tweet: “Kit Siang claims his CRV tires deliberately punctured in Parliament yest. Nasharuddin PAS missing from Dewan. I think he slashed the tires…” Oh, that’s low.

:: Threat: Politicians are prone to receiving all kinds of threats, from disgruntled rivals who vow to “fix you” in the polls or in a policy decision setting, or discontented supporters who threaten to withdraw their backing if they are not paid in cash or contracts. If Kit had crossed any of such persons, a nail in the tyre is retribution or retaliation of sorts.

:: Warning: Vicious mobsters or even resentful rival politicians are known to deliver bullets in the mail as a deadly warning for Kit to back out of a certain unpopular stance. Kit has taken up many, many politically incorrect stand over the decades, when he riled against corruption, mismanagement, abuse, chicanery and negligence against as many characters as he can spew off his fingertips. Would a nail in a tyre serve as “bullet in the mail?” Karpal Singh is the best man to help Kit answer this disturbing probability.

With these four motives as strong backdrops for the tyre puncture, Kit insisted on defining the flat tyre incident as sabotage. Perhaps he has a point. Sabotage, according to the definition by the Random House Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary, is “any underhand interference with production, work, etc., in a plant, factory, etc., as by enemy agents during wartime or by employees during a trade dispute. Or any undermining of a cause.”

Kit wasn’t part with of any production work in a plant or factory but the Dewan Rakyat could be considered as a factory of sorts and House business could be loosely interpreted as production or work. Enemy agents? There’s a long list of people out to get him, starting from the ones within his organisation to the ones trying to shut him up. In keeping up with Kit’s hyperbolic mind, politics is war and its machinations could be deemed as a “trade dispute”

Certainly Kit has a cause, many causes in fact that many detractors would love to undermine. So sabotage could be the original motive.

Or there could be a more plausible one: the mechanic who examined and repaired the flat tyre the first time may have simply done a shoddy job (it happens to mortals like all of us all the time) and the air inside the tyre lasted just about enough for Kit to drive back to Parliament House but not enough to prevent him from stoking up a fuss inside the House and launch into the histrionics that lives up to his reputation.

                This entry was posted on Thursday, 18 June 2009, 7:21 pm and is filed under
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Broadband is snailband

Rais: No plan to register bloggers

By Husna Yusop and Giam Say Khoon | The Sun

KUALA LUMPUR (June 18, 2009) : The government has no plans to list or register bloggers and they are still free to post information on the internet, Information, Communications and Culture Minister Datuk Seri Dr Rais Yatim said today.

“There are various processes of disseminating information these days. Whatever the authorities do, the websites are still free to post any information on the Internet.

“At the moment, we do not list or register bloggers operating on the Net. And, there is no plan to do that. However, to maintain harmony in society, they (bloggers) must follow the laws,” he told Lim Kit Siang (DAP-Ipoh Timur).

Lim in his supplementary question said the plan to register bloggers, made by some quarters recently, was a backward move.

Last month, Rais was reported saying the proposal was good but required indepth study.

Lim also complained about the broadband service which he said can also be called “narrowband” or “snailband”.

To this, Rais said the government has put aside RM2.4 billion to improve the service in the long term so that it could meet the original objectives.

He said at present, the rate of IT penetration in households is at 23% and the government is confident it can reach 50% by end of next year.

“At the moment, this service is widely enjoyed by the people in the Klang Valley. However, we will do more to improve it to reach the remote areas and all schools,” he added.

To the original question from Datuk Ismail Abdul Muttalib (BN-Maran), Rais said from 2005 until now, action has been taken against 24 cases involving compounds worth more than RM380,000 under the Communications and Multimedia Act 1998.

“These private broadcaster were compounded for various offences, including breaching the conditions set under the broadcasting licence,” he added.

As for offences regarding abuse of websites, six cases involving eight individuals have been brought to court for insulting the Sultan of Perak whereby one of them had pleaded guilty and fined RM10,000.

                This entry was posted on Thursday, 18 June 2009, 9:37 pm and is filed under
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