Archive for January 16th, 2016

DAP at 50: Where do we go from here?

Where do we go from here? This is one the most intense debates we have had, and it is important because I think the DAP is at the crossroads after 50 years. As Dr Abdul Aziz Bari mentioned, we don’t have to believe everything that we hear about from pollsters but we will take it seriously.

In this case, our coalition Parti Amanah Negara is three months old. We have heard about the polling position of PKR, DAP and Amanah. The position of the poll reminded us the position of the DAP during in our early months (of 1966). What would be the poll of our standing among the Chinese, Malays and Indians in the early months of the DAP?

Amanah is three months old, similar to that three months of the DAP when it was formed, what would be the poll tells us? How many percent among the votes of the Malays, how many percent of the votes among the Indians, how many percent we got among the Chinese, and others? It was very hard.

We must give serious attention to polling results. But we must not be a slave to polling results. And if the polling results are adverse, it should be an encouragement for us to prove the polling results wrong. And I think that is why we must be serious about these results. Read the rest of this entry »

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Five things Najib must do if he is to uphold Tun Razak’s legacy

At the Special 40th anniversary commemorative seminar on the death of the second Prime Minister, Tun Razak, on Thursday, the Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Najib Razak vowed to live up to the legacy of his father.

There are at least five things Najib must do if he is to uphold Tun Razak’s legacy, as there is no doubt that the second Prime Minister would have done completely differently from what the sixth Prime Minister had done on these issues.

These five things are:

Firstly, stop prevaricating and procrastinating as he had done for the past six months since the Wall Street Journal expose of the RM2.6 billion “donation” in Najib’s personal banking accounts, and to give a full and satisfactory accounting for his RM2.6 billion “donation” and RM55 billion 1MDB twin mega-scandals at the Special Parliament on Jan. 26 and 27 convened for the Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA).

As Nazir, the younger brother of the Prime Minister, said at the special commemorative seminar, their father was selfless in his dedication to nation-building and feared the corruption of absolute power, and would be disappointed that our version of parliamentary democracy has evolved into one where power is too concentrated and the system of checks and balances have broken down.

One example is the RM55 billion 1MDB scandal. It would have horrified Tun Razak that the whole system of checks and balances have become so decrepit that Najib is the only person in the government and the country who knows the ins and outs of the 1MDB scandal in the past seven years – which qualifies as the “most heinous crime without criminals” – as Najib, as Prime Minister, must approve all the major transactions, deals and decisions of 1MDB. Read the rest of this entry »

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To fight Isis, US should encourage moderate Islamic agenda in Malaysia, says report

The Malaysian Insider
15 January 2016

The US should encourage Malaysia to pursue a “genuinely” moderate Islamic agenda if it wants to thwart militant group the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (Isis), according to a report titled “Indonesian and Malaysian Support for The Islamic State”.

The report, produced by the United States Agency for International Development, said Malaysia’s counter-terrorism efforts had achieved some success but was curtailed by government support for conservative Islamic interests.

It said Putrajaya’s right-wing bent, borne out of the need to arrest Umno’s declining support, alienated an important Muslim population that could have helped in combating the militants’ influence.

“At the broadest level, the US government should encourage and support genuinely moderate domestic Islamic agendas in both Indonesia and Malaysia,” read the report, published on January 6 and available online.

“In the Malaysian case, the moderate Islamic image it projects internationally is not reflected in domestic policy that is increasingly sectarian and hostile, not only to minority religious rights but also to progressive Muslim views.” Read the rest of this entry »

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