Archive for category Tunku Abdul Aziz
DAP mahu rakyat buat perubahan
Posted by Kit in DAP, Tunku Abdul Aziz on Saturday, 27 August 2011
- Muda Mohd. Noor
Free Malaysia Today
August 27, 2011
PETALING JAYA: Naib Presiden DAP Tunku Aziz Ibrahim menyeru rakyat di negara ini melakukan perubahan kerana kerajaan Barisan Nasional sudah lama sangat memerintah negara ini.
“Sudah tiba masanya rakyat melakukan perubahan kerana selama 54 tahun itu kerajaan yang ada tidak pernah berubah atau melakukan reformasi,” katanya ketika ditemui FMT pada majlis iftar Ramadhan anjuran parti itu di ibu negara kelmarin.
Ujar beliau, “saya percaya perubahan yang akan berlaku nanti (dalam pilihan raya umum ke 13) merupakan satu perubahan yang sangat bermakna kepada rakyat.” Read the rest of this entry »
50 years on, returning to my university
Posted by Kit in Tunku Abdul Aziz on Friday, 19 August 2011
by Tunku Aziz
The Malaysian Insider
Aug 19, 2011
AUG 19 — I have just returned from a pilgrimage of sorts to my old stamping ground, Hobart, Tasmania where I went to university. It was exactly 49 years ago that I arrived to take up residence at Hytten Hall.
This recent visit was made in response to an invitation by the Chancellor of the University of Tasmania to accept the degree of Doctor of Laws (h.c) in recognition of “your long-standing campaign to promote transparency and integrity in government and business…”
It was a humbling experience that my own university had seen fit to honour me in this way for my small contribution to the fight against corruption inside my country as well as in the wider world. You could have knocked me down with a feather when I was told some months ago that the Council of the University of Tasmania had decided to admit me to the degree of LL.D honoris causa. Read the rest of this entry »
‘Someone had to say it’
Posted by Kit in Tunku Abdul Aziz on Wednesday, 8 June 2011
By Aneesa Alphonsus
June 8, 2011 | Free Malaysia Today
PETALING JAYA: Twenty years ago, a book like Someone Had to Say It by Tunku Abdul Aziz would have been ‘launched’ very quietly or not all since his strong opinions about the ruling party were written without any apologies.
It would have been deemed seditious and defamatory. A book like this would be heard only in the grapevine . Purchasing such an elusive book would only be possible via various non-governmental organisations or from some other related gathering.
Today, you can walk into any good bookstore, and find it standing upright on the shelves. The times they have changed indeed, Tunku Abdul Aziz writes about what many other Malaysians are thinking but lack the avenue and perhaps writing skill in order to express it.
He describes Some Had To Say It as a book which, “… cover a wide range of topics; social, economic, political and ethical issues that I felt to be in need of ventilating in a responsible, open and direct manner. Read the rest of this entry »
Tunku Aziz: I have failed to attract Malays
Posted by Kit in DAP, Tunku Abdul Aziz on Wednesday, 18 May 2011
By Shannon Teoh
May 18, 2011 | The Malaysian Insider
KUALA LUMPUR, May 18 — Tunku Abdul Aziz Tunku Ibrahim admitted today that his appointment as DAP vice chairman in 2008 has failed to bring in Malay support to the party that has been labelled as Chinese chauvinists by its critics.
However, he said that this was not the fault of the party whose members are largely Chinese as it has shown its commitment to multiracial policies, but that Malays and Bumiputeras were the ones choosing to hold back.
“If it was to recruit more Malays, then I admit that I’ve failed completely,” he said of his appointment as vice chairman three years ago. Read the rest of this entry »
Now every crook can fight corruption
Posted by Kit in Corruption, Tunku Abdul Aziz on Friday, 1 April 2011
by Tunku Aziz
The Malaysian Insider
1st April 2011
April 01, 2011APRIL 1 — In late 2006 as I was completing my term of office as a Special Advisor to the Secretary-General of the United Nations in New York, I received an unexpected invitation to deliver a speech at an anti-corruption conference in Jerusalem, Israel. It was an important gathering of academics, senior government officials and NGO luminaries.
The president of Israel, Moshe Katsav, the guest of honour, made a stirring speech about the evils of corruption, enjoining us all to fight it in our society.
Even as he was extolling the virtues of integrity in personal and public life, the police were crawling all over the presidential mansion rummaging through documents as part of an investigation into multiple allegations of rape and sexual harassment by several members of his female staff, over an extended period of time going back to when he was the tourism minister. He was finally sentenced to seven years in prison last week by a Tel Aviv District Court.
I mention all this for two reasons. The first is that I have never known any president, prime minister, chief minister or even a garden variety politician, however corrupt he is known to be, opposing measures to fight corruption. Many are so sincere and convincing that you think a new corruption-free dawn is about to break.
In our case, we have political leaders swearing blind that corruption is evil. They, by any standard, even if you want to be charitable, cannot in all honesty be described as morally upright where corruption is concerned. Read the rest of this entry »
A gun for hire I am not
Posted by Kit in Articles, Tunku Abdul Aziz on Saturday, 8 January 2011
By Tunku Abdul Aziz
8.1.2011
One of the crucial qualifications required of a politician, even one subsisting on the fringe of the magic circle such as I, is a capacity to develop a thick hide, quickly, to absorb, withstand and endure cheerfully the innuendos, aspersions and imputations of improper motives, that will assuredly come his way whatever he does, says or writes.
Although I am much the same person that I was before I made a conscious personal decision to throw in my lot with the DAP, I am today viewed with a degree of suspicion.
Some of my readers believe that I write as a party propagandist, yet others are of the view that I should refrain from commenting on the shortcomings of the Pakatan Rakyat, and worse, I should not say anything that might cast a shadow on my own party image.
I write as an independent columnist and comment on issues of the day as I see them, motivated not by sycophancy, as accused by a New Straits Times leader writer and others of his ilk or out of a misguided sense of loyalty to my own party, no matter what.
I despise anything that smacks of the putrid odour of decaying doctrinaire with its cultivated blindness to the importance of critical thinking. I am not a party political spin doctor. For that you must turn to APCO. Read the rest of this entry »
Singapore redefines braggadocio
Posted by Kit in Articles, Tunku Abdul Aziz on Saturday, 18 December 2010
By Tunku Aziz
MySinchew.com
2010-12-18
FOUR years ago, on 18 October 2006, I wrote an opinion piece from my 30th floor office in the UN Secretariat, New York, for the New Sunday Times. The title, Singapore is simply a neighbour too far, I thought fairly described my assessment of the state of our relations with neighbouring Singapore. It upset a great many Singaporeans; it also made many realise that “what’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.”
A Singaporean behaves too much like an insecure lover, forever seeking assurance that she is the fairest of them all and that she is much admired and loved. The insatiable craving for praise and adoration would, in normal circumstances, point to a serious flaw in the national character. This much I remember from the Child Psychology lectures I attended in college all those long years ago. How else can you explain their supercilious behaviour towards us, the Japanese and Indians, all falling into the category of “stupid?”
Singapore is not an unknown quantity to us in Malaysia. In a sense it is of us, but not part of us. Forget the so-called historical ties that are supposed to underpin our relations because they amount to nothing in practice.
To view them through rose-tinted spectacles as is our wont would distort even further a relationship that has never been known for its convergence of views on even the most pedestrian of issues. Rather, it has always had all the makings and attributes of a potentially protracted and acrimonious future. Read the rest of this entry »
The unfinished Malaysian corruption story
Posted by Kit in Articles, Corruption, Tunku Abdul Aziz on Tuesday, 14 December 2010
I was honoured last month by the Australian Corporate Lawyers Association with an invitation to deliver the International Keynote Address at their 2010 Conference at the Sydney Hilton.
Three hundred corporate lawyers participated in the two-day conference, with some 400 attending the ACLA Awards Dinner. I was invited to perform a similar task last year by the association, but to my regret and utter shame, I was forced to cancel, at great cost to my Australian hosts, my appearance in Melbourne, their 2009 conference venue.
I found myself a reluctant patient at the Gleneagles Hospital in Kuala Lumpur, with a serious lung infection. The doctor pumped, yes, pumped enough antibiotics into my body to float a destroyer and maybe keep our two valiant submarines happily submerged forever.
It transpired that I had picked up a virus in the Netherlands while attending an ethics conference at the Amsterdam Free University. I was very surprised, to say the least, when I received a repeat invitation from ACLA very early this year. I asked the organisers, in jest, if they realised that they were taking a risk as the same thing might happen again.
Overcoming Corruption: A Regional Challenge was the title of my address. I assured them that there was really no need to feel concerned about the state of health of corruption in the region. Read the rest of this entry »
Daulat Tuanku!
Posted by Kit in Constitution, Tunku Abdul Aziz on Saturday, 4 December 2010
By Tunku Aziz
My Sinchew
3.12.10
In an article I wrote recently, Rulers for all Malaysians, I had suggested, in a spirit of helpfulness, that their highnesses the rulers should drop the word “Malay” and instead use the more commonly understood title Sultan, for example, of Selangor or Sultan of Kedah as the case may be.
Continuing to describe themselves as Malay Rulers at a time when inclusiveness is what is required as part of the process of integrating our disparate community of races seems to be a little perverse.
His Highness the Sultan of Selangor, in decrying the suggestion I had made in my article, has, I fear, got the wrong end of the stick. Even a cursory reading of the article will show that the position of their highnesses in the constitutional arrangements of our nation remains inviolate, and Malaysians do not want it any other way.
We recognise the crucial importance of stability in the life of a nation. Stability is inherent in the system of constitutional monarchy. Rulers in today’s terms must be forward looking and open to ideas. It is no longer appropriate, at the drop of the hat, to invoke the divine rights of kings, used in the past by kings and emperors the world over, to legitimise absolutism. Nothing in the nature of things is permanent and if we cannot adjust to change, we are doomed to extinction.
Of course, we respect the institution of rulers because we respect our Constitution. We believe the institution represents all that is noble; the fountain of honour and justice for all. It would be senseless to replace an institution that has worked well. Read the rest of this entry »
Rulers for all Malaysians
Posted by Kit in Constitution, Tunku Abdul Aziz on Tuesday, 2 November 2010
NOV 2 — “RESPECT CONSTITUTION” screamed the New Sunday Times front page. There is really no need for the “Malay rulers” to have undue misgivings about their humble subjects occasionally dipping into the Constitution and questioning some aspect or other they do not fully understand.
Common, ordinary people like me are not Constitutional experts, unlike at least one of their Highnesses. Fear us not because we are not thinking even remotely of storming the Bastille. Such an unworthy thought has never crossed our minds, and certainly not mine.
We only want to know, as citizens, where we stand in Constitutional terms. It is our right to be enlightened. In other words, what are our Constitutional rights and obligations?
I can understand the rulers’ unease and apprehension after what Mahathir did to denigrate and run their institution into the ground, spewing filthy lies and uncharitable innuendoes against them individually and collectively. And, generally, he succeeded in causing public disaffection. Why was he not charged?
Read the rest of this entry »
CORRUPTION: The Pass Mark Eludes Malaysia
Posted by Kit in Articles, Corruption, Tunku Abdul Aziz on Saturday, 30 October 2010
by Tunku Abdul Aziz
Judged internationally, by almost every performance indicator known to man, Malaysia is a duffer, and that is putting it charitably. Our report card is drowning in a sea of red ink. The 2010 Corruption Perceptions Index just released shows Malaysia scoring 4.4 points at number 56 out of 178 countries surveyed. Many have questioned the methodology used and have gone so far as to suggest developing our own index. But let me just say this. Whatever we may think, the Transparency International Corruption Perceptions Index enjoys a reputation second to none as the world’s most authoritative index of its kind. A similar sentiment has been expressed about the world’s top universities index. Shoot the bearer of bad news and retreat to hide under our tempurung and croak our lungs out for the entire world to hear about our version of Malaysia’s achievements. We have become a nation of bad losers.
When Datuk Anwar Fazal, Raja Aziz Addruse, Datuk Param Cumaraswamy and other like minded men and women of the highest integrity met in the Royal Commonwealth Society one night many years ago to discuss forming the Malaysian Chapter of Transparency International Malaysia, they had seen enough, and had become greatly concerned at the speed with which corruption in national life had destroyed the moral fabric and consumed the very soul of our people. It was not the easiest of undertakings to operate an anti-corruption non-governmental organisation during Mahathir’s corrupt and repressive regime.
Read the rest of this entry »
Carnage on our roads
Posted by Kit in Tunku Abdul Aziz on Saturday, 16 October 2010
By Tunku Abdul Aziz
The Malaysian Insider
16th October 2010
[Tunku Aziz, one of the prime movers in setting up Transparency International Malaysia, in happier times was regarded by Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi as "one man (who) was able to harness his personal passion and deep commitment to the values of ethics and integrity, give it a larger purpose and meaning, and turn it into a force to transform society for the better." Why then was he left out of the MACC Advisory Group? He is regarded as being too outspoken for comfort and, therefore, difficult to handle.]
Much of Malaysian television news time is taken up by ghastly scenes of unspeakable carnage on our state of the art highways. We have the highest number of fatalities of any country in the world based on car ownership per capita.
The road transport department, long known for providing a haven for some of the most corrupt civil servants in the country, must accept full responsibility for the abysmal driving standards and the shocking road manners that contribute to an unwholesome and dangerous experience for law abiding motorists whose only wish is to be left alone to complete their journey in one piece.
Read the rest of this entry »
A plea for sanity over Perak DAP crisis
Posted by Kit in DAP, Perak, Tunku Abdul Aziz on Sunday, 10 October 2010
Perak DAP leaders must try, if they possibly can, to subordinate their personal ambitions and put the interests of the party above all else. The unseemly internal squabbling over local leadership is already causing considerable damage to the reputation of the DAP which has earned for itself, over the years in the face of great odds, enormous goodwill and credibility. Do you think it fair to put all the hard work and personal sacrifices of thousands of party members at risk to satisfy your craving for personal glory and power?
What has happened to the declaration of high-minded devotion to duty in the public interest? DAP does not exist in isolation. It is a vital part of the nation’s social, political and economic mosaic in a vibrant tangle of races, cultures and religions. We have as a party derived legitimacy from our consistency of purpose for the greatest good of the people of Malaysia. It is the height of lunacy to jeopardise what we have achieved so far and the party’s future prospects by greed-driven, irresponsible, behaviour.
Read the rest of this entry »
Anwar waves his magic and and thrills European audiences
Posted by Kit in Anwar Ibrahim, Islam, Pakatan Rakyat, Tunku Abdul Aziz on Tuesday, 5 October 2010
by Tunku Aziz
My Sinchew
4.10.10
I have had to come all the way to Brussels and Berlin to discover a side of Anwar Ibrahim that I was wrong about.
Reading the Barisan Nasional-owned newspapers that consistently portrayed him as a “traitor to Malaysia” who exaggerated the situation obtaining in the country given half a chance, I have, I must admit, tended to view him as a self-serving political demagogue who could not care less about the fate of his country as long as he achieved his ambition of becoming prime minister.
Anwar spoke last Monday evening (28 September 2010), on “Liberal Values in the Muslim World – Why Islam and Democracy are Destined to Coincide” to a packed hall of some of Europe’s powerful decision makers. These were men and women with wide international experience and could not be easily hoodwinked even if he had tried.
It was vintage Anwar, perfect smooth as silk delivery of a complex, serious subject to a critical audience. He knew his stuff. His was more than a speech; it was an intellectual journey mapped out by someone who knew the area traversed like the back of his hand. Read the rest of this entry »
Protecting the vulnerable
Posted by Kit in Human Rights, Labour, Tunku Abdul Aziz on Sunday, 26 September 2010
by Tunku Abdul Aziz
My Sinchew
25th Sept 2010
The Government of Indonesia is absolutely right to ban their nationals from coming to work as domestic servants in Malaysia until our own government is prepared to guarantee the safety and well being of these women. This is the least the Government of Indonesia can do to protect their people from being routinely and savagely abused by Malaysian employers. The excesses that are reported in the pages of our newspapers are a shameful reminder of our ambivalent attitude to human cruelty and suffering.
Maid abuse is not a Malaysian invention; it has, however, become an ugly hallmark of our domestic employment culture. There have been far too many reported cases of inhuman physical treatment of foreign maids to ignore. The number of unreported cases of criminal abuse is staggeringly high. What sort of society have we allowed ourselves to be turned into? We shower our animals with love and affection, and yet we cannot bring ourselves to treat those who live, while in our service, under our protection, with a little kindness and dignity. We are dealing with human beings who work under conditions of slavery, out of dire necessity, not of choice. With its own abysmal human rights credentials, we cannot expect our government to be too concerned over such trivialities as foreign worker protection and their rights in a supposedly civilised country. If we do not give a damn about how our own citizens are abused by abusive laws, I should perhaps lower my expectations as far as our vulnerable foreign guest workers are concerned. Read the rest of this entry »
MUSA: Last Sermon on Bukit Aman
Posted by Kit in Police, Tunku Abdul Aziz on Saturday, 18 September 2010
by Tunku Abdul Aziz
15 September 2010
I squirmed. All of a sudden a wave of nausea of tsunami proportions swept over me as I munched my buttered toast while reading a news report in the NST (Sept. 9) that IGP Musa Hassan’s parting wish was that Ismail Omar, his deceptively docile successor, would “emulate him in bringing about changes to the force and lifting its integrity.”
My breakfast to which I had looked forward with great anticipation came to an abrupt end; it became quite unpalatable and totally indigestible. A more insincere and hypocritical load of rubbish would be difficult to imagine, especially coming as it did from the man who confessed, so I was reminded, at the Anwar Ibrahim show trial some years ago that he would not hesitate to tell a lie if ordered to do so by his superiors. We deserved, I suppose, to have Musa set loose amongst us, the unsuspecting long suffering public, as the country’s Inspector-General of Police because we have done nothing, or very little, to stop the general rot in our country.
For Musa, his promotion to the post of IGP was a well-deserved reward for his “turning” operations and for being economical with the truth. Musa was denounced as an unreliable witness in a Sabah law court, a euphemism, if there ever was one, for a hostile witness. In truth, we must not be too hard on the poor man because it is quite possible that “truth” was not in the lexicon of ethics as far as he was concerned. Read the rest of this entry »
INDONESIA: We Are NOT, I Repeat, Your Whipping Boy
Posted by Kit in Foreign, Tunku Abdul Aziz on Monday, 13 September 2010
If media reports on the meeting in Kota Kinabalu between our Foreign Minister Datuk Seri Anifah and his Indonesian counterpart Dr. Marty Natalegawa are accurate, then I am afraid we ended, as usual when dealing with international issues, drawing the “short straw.” The Malaysian Foreign Minister in his anxiety to show his newly minted diplomatic template, designed on the trot, totally missed the point about the need to drive home to the Indons, in the strongest possible terms, the increasing difficulty of our trying to contain and control the anger of our people.
How much longer can we be expected to continue to stand by and watch the flag we ran up, so proudly for the first time 53 years ago, trampled and desecrated by one ugly and uncivilised mob after another? The official Indonesian response borders on the moronic arrogance of a people sustained by delusions of moral and cultural superiority. I am always amused listening to countries such as Indonesia parading their democratic credentials, including the freedom to participate in aggressively violent demonstrations, and looking down on us for our poor democracy record by comparison. My one liner rejoinder which puts the cat among the pigeons, as I am wont to do in such a situation, and which always works is, “What use is your democracy on an empty stomach?”
Read the rest of this entry »
Seeing the back of Musa: An answer to a prayer
Posted by Kit in Police, Tunku Abdul Aziz on Sunday, 5 September 2010
I hardly ever receive presents because, I suppose, I rarely ever give any. I do not even bother to celebrate my own birthday; it comes and goes completely unnoticed. When on the odd occasion I do receive a present for delivering an anti-corruption and ethical governance speech, I treasure it even though it is just another Royal Selangor pewter plate, to clutter my already-cluttered sitting room, collecting dust, to the annoyance of my long-suffering wife.
The present I am now writing about is infinitely more precious, a bountiful God’s munificent blessings in answer to a nation’s desperate prayer. The prayer, in short, beseeches God the Almighty to give Hishammuddin Hussein, our often “not all there” Minister of Home Affairs, the courage and wisdom to put Musa Hassan out to pasture, not so much as a normal and inevitable consequence of the ravages of time, but, in this case, his unethical baggage had grown too large for the nation to ignore. That must surely weigh heavily against his fitness for continued employment.
In an ethically more demanding society, which ours, I fear, is not, he would never have been allowed to darken the portal of Bukit Aman, let alone occupy the office of the Inspector-General of Police, a position of trust. Musa should never have been appointed the nation’s top dog in the first place, especially after his remarkable stellar performance in the infamous earlier Anwar Ibrahim trial, appearing complete with his pathetic stock in trade or prop in the shape of a decidedly grubby mattress, for the entire world to see.
Read the rest of this entry »
Some Mothers Do ‘Ave ‘Em
Posted by Kit in Teoh Beng Hock, Tunku Abdul Aziz on Saturday, 4 September 2010
What a charade. And what tragic depths of professional incompetence the recent resumption of the coroner’s inquiry into the death of Teoh Beng Hock had demonstrated for the world to see. There is a lot to laugh at in Najib’s 1Malaysia, but sadly for all the wrong reasons.
As an observer, sometimes jaundiced, of the Malaysian scene, I thought I had seen it all, but I was totally unprepared for the complete and utter mayhem of the senses that developed when Abdul Razak Musa of the MACC’s in house legal talent began his cross examination of Dr Pornthip Rojanasunand, the famous Thai pathologist. His attempt to trivialise and discredit her academic credentials was pathetic, to say the least. It backfired disastrously on him.
It showed the true measure of this sad figure of fun and ridicule who claimed to possess 24 years experience as a lawyer under the belt. I have never been impressed with experience, however long, for its own sake, not unless there is clear evidence of a string of successes to back up the claim.
Abdul Razak Musa has proved my point that years spent wallowing in the mediocrity of a professionally undemanding environment counts for naught.
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Turning MACC into a law unto itself
Posted by Kit in Corruption, Tunku Abdul Aziz on Saturday, 3 July 2010
By Tunku Abdul Aziz
A certain member of Parliament heading an MACC committee has suggested that MACC should not only be given more money, as if the tens of millions of ringgit of government funds already dished out are still insufficient, but also the power to prosecute cases investigated by that organisation itself. A monstrous idea even if the MACC had a reputation for the highest professional integrity which, of course, it hasn’t. The fact of the matter is that this much touted independent corruption fighting outfit modelled on the Hong Kong ICAC continues to be regarded with a degree of disdain.
The MAC does not enjoy the cachet and the public trust and confidence of the Malaysian public. Only corrupt politicians and public servants have complete trust in the MACC, but, sadly, for all the wrong reasons. Someone somewhere has to have his head examined for even thinking of making the MACC a law unto itself. Has the YB concerned not heard of the need for a system of checks and balances or the vital necessity of avoiding a conflict of interest situation in the conduct of public affairs as a means of reducing corruption? The whole harebrained suggestion is akin to allowing the Attorney-General to double as a judge in a case he has decided as AG to prosecute! He may well relish the idea, but will justice be served in the process? Or perhaps we don’t care.
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