Archive for March 28th, 2009

7.4.09 – Balik Mengundi!

Spread the word – Let’s Change For Malaysia!

This video is to remind Malaysians of the sense of hope and liberation felt by all Malaysians, regardless of race or religion, at the heart-thumping general election results of March 8, 2008 – uniting all Malaysians in an uplifting feeling that there is still a future for the country as change is possible.

With the three important by-elections of Bukit Gantang, Bukit Selambau and Batang Ai in eleven days’ time on April 7, 2009, let us reinforce the paradigm shift in Malaysian politics achieved last year after half-a-century of electoral politics to endorse the advent of two-coalition politics where Malaysians will always have a meaningful choice at the ballot box in the march towards freedom, democracy, justice, accountability, integrity and good governance.

Every vote counts in the three by-elections on April 7.

People’s power in Bukit Gantang, Bukit Selambau and Batang Ai to end political hegemony in the country!

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New “MAHATHIR” prophecy on the next line of Malaysian Prime Ministers?

Making the rounds of the grapevine of Umno delegates and observers at the current Umno General Assembly is talk of a new political prophecy to replace the “RAHMAN” political prophecy on the first six Prime Ministers of the country – the “MAHATHIR” prophecy on the next line of Malaysian Prime Ministers.

Umno delegates and observers expect the RAHMAN prophecy to be fulfilled completely when Abdullah Ahmad Badawi relinquishes the premiership and Najib Razak is sworn in as the new Prime Minister.

But for the first time in Malaysian history, the popularity of the incoming Prime Minister is so dismal that even those who had earlier demanded the early departure of Abdullah from Putrajaya because of his failure to deliver on his host of reform pledges will find it a relief if Abdullah remains to block Najib’s ascension.

I do not see this scenario being played out but it is a most significant political phenomenon that many Malaysians, transcending the political divide, are wondering whether there is any way to stop Najib from becoming Prime Minister until he comes clean on the many serious swirling allegations haunting and hounding him affecting his suitability, integrity and legitimacy as Prime Minister and the honour of the highest political office in the land and that of the nation. Read the rest of this entry »

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Politics in an Age of Unreason

By Farish A. Noor

So now the bomohs (witch doctors) rule the roost it would seem. The news that a magic charm or spell was found hidden surreptitiously under the desk of none other than the Prime Minister of Malaysia does not bode well for the future of this country of ours. It may make the headlines under the ‘Strange but True’ column of foreign papers, but this historian has grown somewhat jaded by now by such ridiculousness dressed in the garment of wonderment and fantasy. No, this was no laughing matter (and if we did laugh, it was a pitiable laugh at best).

One recalls the blanket order issued by some political parties last year just before the general elections of March 2008, to the effect that politicians should refrain from calling upon the services of such practitioners of the ‘black arts’. That political parties have to issue such warnings in the first place speaks volumes about the state of Malaysian politics today, a primordial politics that is being enacted in an age of unreason.

As a scholar in Britain in the 1990s I remember reading a report about a Latin American country that had fallen into an economic tailspin of unprecedented proportions. As inflation rose to the level of more than a thousand percent, the hapless citizens of that unfortunate country wondered aloud about how their country’s economy could have fallen apart in so short a space of time. Read the rest of this entry »

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