Utusan Malaysia today confirmed that it is a “lies-paper” and not a newspaper when it plumbed a new depth of dishonest and unethical journalism by front-paging the lie that DAP would contest 90 parliamentary seats to dominate Pakatan Rakyat and appoint the Prime Minister in the 13th general election.
The Utusan report that DAP would be contesting 90 out of 222 (i.e. 40.5%) parliamentary seats in the next general election, with PAS and PKR contesting in 66 seats each, is the latest in an irresponsible, malicious and anti-national campaign by UMNO propagandists and spinmasters to stoke racial suspicion and distrust that the Malays will lose political power if UMNO is defeated and the Barisan Nasional replaced by Pakatan Rakyat in the 13th general election.
Last week, I had debunked former Prime Minister Tun Dr. Mahathir Mohamad’s scare tactics when he warned that the Chinese voters are the kingmakers for the 13th general election on the ground that the Malays are divided among three “small” parties and that the Chinese voters will decide who forms the government after the general election.
I had pointed out that “the harsh reality is that the electoral arithmetic does not allow the Chinese voters to be the ‘kingmakers’”.
There are only 34 parliamentary seats out of 222 where the Chinese comprise a majority of voters. Even if Pakatan Rakyat (PR) wins all of the Chinese votes in these seats, it will only yield 15% of total parliamentary seats.
There are another 55 parliamentary seats where Chinese voters constitute between 30% to 50% of the voters. Even if PR is able to win 80% of Chinese votes in these seats, it would still need between 35% to 40% of support from the other communities in order to win these seats.
In total, this means that there are only 89 parliamentary seats where the Chinese comprise more than 30% of total voters.
Even if PR is to win all these seats (which needs significant support from the other communities in the majority of cases), this would only constitute 40% of total parliamentary seats which is not enough to comprise a majority of parliamentary seats.
Now the UMNO propagandists and spinmaters have come out with a new twist in their campaign of scaremongering to stoke racial suspicion and distrust – that the DAP will be contesting the most number of parliamentary seats, i.e. 90 seats while leaving PAS and PKR with 66 seats each.
This is utterly wild and baseless. Final seat allocations between Pakatan Rakyat parties have still to be fully completed but the DAP is not contemplating contesting in more than 60 parliamentary seats or less than 28 per cent of the total 222 parliamentary seats.
Although the lie that DAP will contest 90 parliamentary seats has been demolished, the edifice of lies to frighten Malay voters, that the DAP will be the dominant party as compared to PAS and PKR even to the extent of deciding who is the Prime Minister, will be reconstructed by the UMNO propagandists and spinmasters using other lies and falsehoods.
Malaysians regardless of race, religion or region are facing the greatest test in the nation’s history whether they could discern the lies and falsehoods passing off as truths and facts appearing in the “lies-papers” like Utusan Malaysia – which is also a critical test whether the Malaysian nation and Malaysian democracy have matured after more than half a century of nationhood.
The true fact of the matter is that it is only with the support of the majority of the Malay and non-Malay voters that Pakatan Rakyat can win in the next general election and replace UMNO/Barisan Nasional as the next federal government of Malaysia.
But what struck me most from the latest lie of the UMNO propagandists and spinmasters is their growing conviction and desperation that the Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Najib Razak and UMNO/Barisan Nasional could be defeated in the ballot box in the 13th general election.
This is also what is causing Najib to keep postponing the date for the 13th general election.
They are not completely wrong as the signs are for all who have eyes to see that there are increasing indications that Malaysians, regardless of race, religion, class, region, age or gender, are prepared for change in Putrajaya in the next general election despite all the politics of lies, fear, money and corruption of UMNO/BN in the less than 10 months left for the 12th Parliament and the Najib government, when Parliament will be automatically dissolved on April 28 next year to give way for the holding of the 13th general election.
#1 by Bigjoe on Monday, 9 July 2012 - 5:30 pm
Mahathir respond to the return of Mahathirism is by far more interesting – HE clearly knows him and his wholesale philosophy is A liability to UMNO/BN. He clearly knows that if the opposition manage to convince that he and his ideas are coming back into power, it will cost UMNO/BN even in the villages..
This is an opportunity for Anwar and PR to get out in the heartland and convince them that Mahathir and Mahathirism is now really the one in charge in this country..
#2 by yhsiew on Monday, 9 July 2012 - 5:43 pm
///Datuk Seri Najib Razak and UMNO/Barisan Nasional could be defeated in the ballot box in the 13th general election.///
Such possibility cannot be ruled out because of the multitude that turned out for the Bersih 3.0 rally.
#3 by dagen wanna "ABU" on Monday, 9 July 2012 - 5:59 pm
Bodoh punya utusan.
#4 by monsterball on Monday, 9 July 2012 - 6:14 pm
The fact that Lim Guan Eng sued them twice and won …..has exposed what they are….yet Chua Soi Lek said LGE like to sue and shut mouths…..hahahahahaha.
CSL must utter things to please Najib.
#5 by boh-liao on Monday, 9 July 2012 - 6:16 pm
U no C meh, d way 2 win GE13 4 UmnoB/BN is not 2 tell rakyat what it has done 4 rakyat in d last 50 years, but instead 2 smear PR, tell more n more blatant lies abt PR n party leaders
Rather than selling positive things abt what it had done (most likely nothing positive 2 shout abt), UmnoB/BN used lies 2 talk negative abt PR
Of cos, all msm under UmnoB/BN help 2 spread d lies; lies n MORE lies
#6 by sheriff singh on Monday, 9 July 2012 - 9:07 pm
You can sue them for libel but they do not care. They have very deep pockets.
Why do they continue to spew out outrageous ‘lies’ and other falsehoods?
It is because there are still many pak chiks, makciks, hard-cores and other gullible people out there who still believe their stories, get incensed, outraged and want to vote UMNO / BN. At the end of the day, it is still worth it for them.
Does PR have a counter-move that is effective and can neutralise them?
#7 by on cheng on Monday, 9 July 2012 - 9:34 pm
least betul paper in Malaysia, mostly lies !!
#8 by jus legitimum on Monday, 9 July 2012 - 11:54 pm
After the Bersih 3.0,the two debates,the revelaton of scandals like RM250 million NFC ,PKFZ ,threats and intimidation,gangsterism on Ambiga and opposition leaders like LGE,DSAI and the non stop lies fabricated by Utusan and other MSM,the tsunami in the coming GE will be much more powerful than the one in 2008.Let us usher in a bright new era after GE 13.Before that there must be a thorough electoral reform and the EC must fulfill the 8 demands set by BERSIH.
#9 by undertaker888 on Tuesday, 10 July 2012 - 8:05 am
Well just tell utusan toilet it is the truth. Yes DAP will appoint a prime minister. It will be either Anwar, Nik Aziz or any eligible Malays. Just like DAP did in Perak MB post.
Well make time to watch Namewee f@&& utusan video, relax and have a nice day.
#10 by k1980 on Tuesday, 10 July 2012 - 8:26 am
Malaysia Goes After a Whistle-blower
Written by John Berthelsen
MONDAY, 09 JULY 2012
Bourdon and Gabriel say they’ve got the goods
Companies commission investigators show up at NGO’s door
Suaram, the Kuala Lumpur-based human rights NGO at the center of attempts to break open a corruption case over Malaysia’s 2002 purchase of French submarines, has been given seven days by officials of the Companies Commission to hand over an array of documents covering its expenditures from 2008 to 2011.
Cynthia Gabriel, director for the organization, told Asia Sentinel that Suaram would comply although the NGO is taking advice from lawyers on strategy.
The authorities sought to raid Suaram last week but were turned back, once because their warrant wasn’t signed and a second time because they arrived at the Suaram headquarters after everybody had gone home.
The visits followed several days of stories in ruling party-controlled newspapers demanding to know why Suaram was registered as a company rather than an NGO, and what it had done with earnings it posted since 2009 although that seemed to be a deflection against damning documents.that showed that top government officials had been complicit in bribe charges for two decades.
The visits by the Companies Commission investigators were characterized as “harassment, pure and simple, as a way to distract the public from the ongoing Scorpene probe in France,” Gabriel said. “Further to this, we have nothing to hide. We audit our accounts yearly.”
The visits – the first in Suaram’s 23 years of existence – appear to be a fishing expedition to try to find out where the NGO gets enough money to hire French lawyers to pursue a government scandal, and more particularly whether any of the money is coming from the Pakatan Rakyat coalition headed by Opposition Leader Anwar Ibrahim.
The Commission’s other priorities?
In the meantime, the Companies Commission investigators have been so busy seeking to investigate Suaram that they have neglected to investigate two other companies – Perimekar Sdn Bhd, which somehow became important enough to win a €114.96 million commission on the sale of the submarines despite the fact that it did no business the year before it won the commission, and Terasasi Hong Kong Ltd, which received another €36 million from the French defense contractor despite the fact it only existed as a name on a wall in a Hong Kong accounting office.
Both companies were headed by Abdul Razak Baginda, then the head of a think tank called Malaysia Strategic Research, which was closely connected to the United Malays National Organization. Razak Baginda was one of then-Defense Minister Najib Tun Razak’s best friends.
Two years ago, Suaram hired a team of Paris-based lawyers headed by William Bourdon to investigate the French defense giant DCN and its subsidiaries on suspicion it was involved a web of corruption. The story has been told in voluminous detail in 133 documents submitted to a French prosecuting court. The documents describe a long tangle of blackmail, bribery, influence peddling, misuse of corporate assets and concealment, among other allegations. The documents, written in French, were described in a story published in Asia Sentinel on June 25 and uploaded onto the Internet here.
Increasing fire from government blogs, papers
Suaram has come under increasing fire since Bourdon and his colleague, Joseph Breham, began to publicize a series of allegations related to the documents in May. Pro-government bloggers have repeatedly accused Suaram of being in Anwar’s employ, have questioned the veracity of the documents and whether they existed and whether French authorities in fact are even going to move the case forward.
Questioned by the opposition in Parliament, Defense Minister Ahmad Zahid Hamidi took the floor briefly almost at midnight on June 26 to say Suaram was wrong to say there was a trial taking place in France’s Tribunal de Grande Instance over the sale of the subs, although neither Suaram nor Asia Sentinel had said a trial was taking place. There is an investigation taking place, however, and it was those investigators who confiscated hundreds, perhaps thousands of documents from DCN and its subsidiaries in raids on April 7, 2010 to present to the investigating magistrate.
Ahmad Zahid also said that the Defense Ministry had no information on allegations confidential documents of the procurement of the submarines were sold to Thint Asia (Thales International) by Terarasi (Hong Kong) allegedly for €36 million although Asia Sentinel was able to obtain the information from the documents, which are on line, and from the Hong Kong Registry of Companies.
“The ministry also does not have any information on the alleged payment from Thales International Asia to Terasasi (Hong Kong),” he said.
As Asia Sentinel reported, at least one secret diplomatic cable shows that some of the misdeeds appear to have taken place with the knowledge of top French and Malaysian government officials including then-foreign Minister Alain Juppe and with the consent of former Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad. The documents were presented to the French Prosecuting Magistrate at the Court de Grand Instance de Paris in May and June of 2011.
Harassment: Not a new tactic
It is not the first time the Malaysian government has sent investigators after those calling attention to massive corruption on the part of the government and its cronies. For example, when Ramli Yusuff, the director of Malaysia’s Commercial Crime Investigation Department, sought to bring Tajudin Ramli, a crony of former Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, to justice for looting Malaysian Airline System (MAS) of tens of millions of dollars, it was Ramli who was pursued by the Malaysian Anti-Crime Commission rather than Tajudin despite abundantly clear evidence of the charges. Ramli and his lawyer came under fire that nearly ruined their careers and almost put them in jail.
Likewise, Lim Guan Eng, now the chief minister of the state of Penang, was arrested in 1994 after pointing out that the former chief minister of Malacca, Rahim Thamby Chik, had been absolved of charges of statutory rape after having had sex with an underaged girl and in fact had had the girl arrested after her parents complained. Lim was ultimately sentenced to 18 months imprisonment for sedition for bringing up the charges, was disallowed from standing for election to public office for five years and he was made ineligible to contest the 2004 Malaysian general election.
#11 by sotong on Tuesday, 10 July 2012 - 9:03 am
Desperate…every vote is important.
If they can fool one voter, it helps.
#12 by Bigjoe on Tuesday, 10 July 2012 - 10:35 am
Honestly, The Star is no better.
#13 by Kampong Orang on Thursday, 12 July 2012 - 2:34 pm
Be sure not to buy this newspaper and no even go to their Web site to read.