Archive for September, 2013

Ex-top cop Yuen Yuet Leng confirmed that the May 13, 1969 “urination” incident at the Selangor MB’s residence was totally fictional as he never heard of it although he was based in KL during the riots

I thank former top police officer, Tan Sri Yuen Yuet Leng for his two postings on my blog statement yesterday: “Yuen Yuet Leng is wrong – as the 1969 general election result was a greater blow to the MCP although it was a set back for the Alliance”

I had expressed my disagreement with a Sun report on Monday headlined “’Communists helped opposition win seats’ in 1969” quoting Yuen as saying that “the communists had helped opposition parties, including the DAP, to win a substantial number of seats in the 1969 election”.

I had said that Yuen’s claim that the communists helped the opposition to win seats in the 1969 general election was news to me, as it run counter to what happened in the run-up to the 1969 general election and studies whether books or articles by scholars of the 1969 general election.

This was because the communists had called for a boycott of the 1969 general election and the Opposition parties which had participated in the 1969 general election were attacked and condemned as “stooges” and “puppets” of the Alliance for going against their call to “shatter the parliamentary path” and to opt for the “mass struggle”.

But the communists failed in their campaign calling on the voters to boycott the 1969 general election, as the voter turnout reached some 72% – though less than the 79% voter turnout in the 1964 and 73% in the 1959 General Election, it was still higher than the 70% voter turnout in the 1986 and 71% voter turnout in the 1999 General Election. Read the rest of this entry »

13 Comments

Using Dr Mahathir’s logic

– The Malaysian Insider
September 11, 2013

Raise your hand if you expected Dr Mahathir Mohamad to have a conscience attack and blame himself and the Barisan Nasional (BN) government for Project IC – that not-so-secret initiative to hand identity cards to thousands of illegal immigrants in Sabah.

Well, if you didn’t raise your hand, you are in good company because the former prime minister does not do well before a Royal Commission of Inquiry.

He had an acute case of amnesia when he appeared before the commission looking into the V. K. Lingam video clip in 2007 and there was every chance that he was going to hit the didn’t-do-it can’t remember-it mode today.

Why? Because the former prime minister does not lose sleep just because millions think he is being charitable with the truth. In his own perverse way, he must always come out on top. Read the rest of this entry »

10 Comments

When is it patriotic to like crap?

Erna Mahyuni
The Malay Mail Online
September 11, 2013

SEPT 11 — You would think I set fire to the flag and declared my allegiance to North Korea, judging from the vitriol I got for my “Tanda Putera” review.

Someone even said that I shouldn’t have been so hard on the film since it was “a local film.”

So if it is a local film, I shouldn’t expect it to have a coherent script?

So if it is a local film, I shouldn’t hope the actors are more than decorative furnishings that speak?

So if it is a local film, I should fully expect it to be bad and be pleasantly surprised if it does not suck

If a film is about any of our historical leaders, painting them in a beatific light then I have to like it before even watching it? Read the rest of this entry »

8 Comments

Look, who’s unhappy with our education system!

— Ravinder Singh
The Malay Mail Online
September 11, 2013

SEPT 11 — Well, well, thank you Education Minister II Datuk Seri Idris Jusoh for confirming what many Malaysians have long known.

He has spilled the beans, not realising that when you point a finger at someone, you have three pointing back at yourself.

Please tell us dear minister, how many children of how many elites in the country are attending Sekolah Rendah/Menengah Kebangsaan in Malaysia?

Do us a favour please. Besides having leaders of the country declare their assets, get them to also declare the schools their children are attending.

When the rakyat could see that the children of the leaders are also attending the local schools, you will not need any other promotional campaigns to tell Malaysians that our local schools are “setanding” (i.e. of equal standing) with schools in advanced countries such as Germany and the US. Read the rest of this entry »

6 Comments

Yuen Yuet Leng is wrong – as the 1969 general election result was a greater blow to the MCP although it was a set back for the Alliance

In a news report headlined “’Communists helped opposition win seats’ in 1969”, former Special Branch deputy director Tan Sri Yuen Yet Leng was quoted as saying that “the communists had helped opposition parties, including the DAP, to win a substantial number of seats in the 1969 election”.

The Sun report states:

‘Communists helped opposition win seats’ 1969
Posted on 9 September 2013 – 09:38pm

Vathani Panirchellvum
[email protected]

KUALA LUMPUR (Sept 9, 2013): A retired senior police officer today hinted that the communists had helped opposition parties, including the DAP, to win a substantial number of seats in the 1969 general election.

Former special branch deputy director Tan Sri Yuen Yuet Leng said the communists infiltrated the Opposition prior to the election, which led to them making inroads into areas held by the alliance government.

“The communist had infiltrated many legal organisations, including political parties, and that is what led to the Opposition winning (in the 1969 general election),” he said at Telekom Malaysia’s “Cerita Tanah Airku” (Story of my Homeland) event in conjunction with Malaysia Day.

The Opposition in 1969 comprised the DAP, the People’s Progressive Party, Gerakan and PAS.

However, he said that the Opposition electoral victories did not lead to the race riots on May 13 that year.
Read the rest of this entry »

6 Comments

Counter fundamentalism with “critical Islam”

– Nazry Bahrawi and Mohamed Imran Mohamed Taib
The Malaysian Insider

September 11, 2013

When the World Trade Center twin towers came crashing down 12 years ago, it was not just non-Muslims who were shocked – many Muslims were equally horrified. Consequently, it led to deeper introspection. For many Muslims, it was a turning point.

Just over three decades ago, prominent Arab intellectual Sadik Al Azm wrote a devastating critique of the Arab world’s political stagnation after the Arab defeat at the hands of Israel in the 1967 war. The loss gave impetus to the rise of Islamic fundamentalism worldwide. The solution to Muslims’ social, economic and political humiliation, it was believed, lay in returning to “Islam” as a complete ideology. Islam-ism would rival all other isms, from secularism to capitalism to communism.

At the heart of Islamism is an orientation that upholds the supremacy of “Islam” versus everything else deemed “unIslamic”. Syed Qutb, in his famous treatise Ma’lim fi al-tariq (Milestones), pretty much sums up the tension between what he deemed an “Islamic society” versus the “jahili (paganistic) society”.

Over nearly three decades, certain frustrated Muslim youths became attracted to this orientation known as Islamic fundamentalism. It was also a period of struggle for many Islamic movements to establish “daulah islamiyah” or the notion of an “Islamic state”.

This project failed, and its proponents continue to be frustrated by authoritarian secular regimes and their own intellectual deficiency in defining and operationalising the notion of an “Islamic state”. French sociologist Olivier Roy, in his insightful 1996 book, termed it “the failure of political Islam”.

Since the 1990s, the world has seen an increase in violent acts committed by Islamist movements which draw upon such frustrations. This culminated in the attack on New York’s twin towers.

If the 1967 defeat of the Arabs had propelled the rise of Islamic fundamentalism, 9/11 has paved the way for rethinking and critical reflection.

Could Islam accommodate the separation of religion and state, thus admitting that secularism is not anathema to Muslim political thought? Could Muslims be at home with modern values without positing these as an antithetical to the Islamic notion of what is “traditional” and “authentic”?

Was the dichotomy between “Islam” and “the West” tenable or even intelligible? These were some of the issues that posed a new challenge to Islamic fundamentalism. Critical Muslim scholars such as Mohammed Arkoun (Algerian), Nasr Abu Zayd (Egyptian), Abdullahi An-Na’im (Sudanese), Nurcholish Madjid (Indonesian) and Abdolkarim Soroush (Iranian) continue to push the boundary of Muslim sociopolitical thought — and ultimately challenge the dominance of fundamentalist conceptions of Islam. Read the rest of this entry »

4 Comments

Home Ministry, police turn a whodunit into a who’ll buy it?

by Elizabeth Zachariah
The Malaysian Insider
September 11, 2013

Wanted: A detective who can solve this mystery.

The whodunit: The Home Ministry says it wants to know who in the ministry had released to the media the names of 30 gang leaders – a name list which includes an MIC politician who has since threatened to sue the government.

Deputy Home Minister Datuk Wan Junaidi Tuanku Jaafar told The Malaysian Insider that ministry officials were perplexed about who released the names.

“We don’t know who did it but we want to know as well,” he said, adding that he did not know if the list was real or not.

The players: Bernama, the state-owned, pro-government news agency which took a rare stab at investigative journalism and reported the names on Friday, citing the Home Ministry as its source.

Another player, the police. They report to the Home Ministry but say they did not give these names to the ministry… to which they report, by the way.

“I don’t know who is the source at the Home Ministry but the input did not come from the police. We have our own list and some gangs listed by the ministry were already under our watch,” Federal Police secret societies, gaming and anti-vice (D7) principal assistant director Datuk Abdul Jalil Hassan told The Malaysian Insider in Kuala Lumpur yesterday. Read the rest of this entry »

4 Comments

“I was apolitical before… May 5, 2013, changed it all”

BY DINA ZAMAN | September 10, 2013
The Malaysian Insider

Mazlyn Mustapha is a doctor. She enters the cafe we are in, in a crisp-like manner. Dressed in a blouse, long skirt, tudung and sporting sunglasses. Her hands are clasped tightly as she begins talking. She may cut a diminutive figure, but her speech is clear and measured, and she has very firm ideas.

She is from Petaling Jaya, and leads “a normal life. Nothing unusual.”

Her late father wanted one of his children to be a doctor, and when she received a scholarship to study medicine in Ireland, she did what he had planned for her. She did very well academically.

In short, she was the quintenssential school girl who excelled, and was expected to come back with a degree, marry, and practise, all of which she did.

A stranger in her own country

When she and her husband came back to Malaysia, they lived in Kelantan for awhile.
Read the rest of this entry »

10 Comments

When was RoS DG co-opted into the Umno/BN Demolish/Destroy DAP (DDD) campaign and if not, why the modus operandi of RoS DG acting on the Umno/BN DDD script in the past few months?

When was the Registrar of Societies (RoS) Director-General (DG) Datuk Abdul Rahman Othman co-opted into the UMNO/BN Demolish/Destroy DAP (DDD) conspiracy and campaign, and if not, why the modus operandi of RoS DG acting on the Umno/BN DDD script in the past few months?

Initially, in the early phase of the UMNO/BN “Demolish/Destroy DAP” campaign, the RoS Director-General was fairly independent, impartial and professional, as evidenced from Abdul Rahman’s statement in January that DAP CEC re-elections “would only occur if there was concrete evidence there were discrepancies in the CEC election process”.

But in the past few months, the RoS DG succumbed to the pressures of the Umno/BN DDD conspiracy to undermine, destabilise and destroy the DAP as evident from the fact that the RoS DG was unable to state in writing the “concrete evidence” of the “discrepancies in the CEC election process” as to justify his directive for a CEC re-election to be held.

A study of the UMNO/BN DDD conspiracy and campaign in the past few months will show a pattern of the Umno/BN DDD battalions setting the stage to attack the DAP leadership, and which are subsequently followed up and acted upon by the UMNO/BN leadership, including the Prime Minister or Cabinet Ministers, and the RoS DG, justifying the inference that the RoS DG had been co-opted into the UMNO/BN DDD conspiracy and campaign. Read the rest of this entry »

3 Comments

The best (acting) prime minister

Mariam Mokhtar
Malaysiakini
Sep 9, 2013

No one will dispute the filial piety and devotion shown by Tawfik, the eldest son of Dr Ismail Abdul Rahman, who was once called “The man who saved Malaysia.” Dr Ismail died in office, in his capacity as acting prime minister, effectively the best prime minister we have had.

tun dr ismail abdul rahmanDr Ismail was remembered for his non-ethnic approach to issues and his concern about racial polarisation. He had a strong work ethic, was a strict but fair man who adhered strictly to rules. He despised incompetence and lateness. He was feared and respected. He refused to grant favours even to relatives and close friends. He was highly principled and enjoyed debating.

He avoided conflict of interest and the British High Commissioner said in despatches, “Ismail was a man of formidable reputation for integrity and talent in all communities.”

Tawfik has sullied his father’s memory by aligning himself with the present, undistinguished Umno Baru politicians by suggesting that the controversial film, Tanda Putera be made into a mini-series. Read the rest of this entry »

9 Comments

Is the dissemination of racist lies, poison and incitement, regardless of the harm to Malaysian nation-building, the surest way to high votes and influence in the upcoming UMNO party elections?

There has recently been an unprecedented outpouring of racist lies, poison and incitement in Umno media and social media, whether facebook, twitter or blog, raising the question:

Is the dissemination of racist lines, poison and incitement, regardless of the harm to Malaysian nation-building, the surest way to high votes and influence in the upcoming UMNO party elections?

Two days ago, the UMNO official newspaper, Utusan Malaysia carried a report quoting a former Umno deputy minister, Dr. Mohd Fuad Zarkashi making the accusation that the DAP’s criticism of the film “Tanda Putera” “samata-mata ingin menyembunyi kebiadapan Penasihat DAP, Lim Kit Siang yang bertindak kencing di depan rumah Menteri Besar Selangor ketika peristiwa 13 Mei 1969”. (Utusan Malaysia 7.9.13 p.13)

How can the former Umno deputy minister say, and Utusan Malaysia publish, such dastardly falsehood, when this is a most irresponsible and downright lie?

I was never in Kuala Lumpur at any time during the May 13, 1969 racial riots, and the director of Tanda Putera, Datin Paduka Shuhaimi Baba had claimed that the fabricated urination incident in her film was her “creative licence” in her fictitious account of the May 13, 1969 racial riots!

This is not an isolated instance, as there had been a recent spate of malicious lies and falsehoods in UMNO media and social media, like the blog post of former Information Minister Zainuddin Maidin last Tuesday (3rd September 2013), accusing me of having “sowed the seeds of death” in causing the May 13, 1969 riots.
Read the rest of this entry »

9 Comments

Tanda Putera, a replacement for Bukit Kepong

— Ravinder Singh
The Malay Mail Online
September 9, 2013

SEPT 9 — “Tanda Putera” was not a natural birth. In contrast, I believe, “Bukit Kepong” was.

“Bukit Kepong” was a film made in 1981 and based on an incident in Bukit Kepong in 1950. It portrayed a historical fact and was not produced with any ulterior motive.

However, certain vested interests saw how it could be put to political use. It became the prime weapon in the election campaigns of the ruling coalition. For the next several elections it became “mandatory” viewing by the electorate starting a few weeks before each election, and almost to the eve of the election.

The TV screening of the film was calculated to “motivate” the voters into supporting the ruling coalition to ensure a “peaceful” future. If not, another Bukit Kepong could happen again.

Impulses reaching the brain through the sense of sight are very powerful. They account for about 80 per cent of all that the mind absorbs. So, screening of the film at the critical hour before the elections was a calculated strategy to condition the minds of the viewers to believe something and react accordingly at the ballot box. It was mind-conditioning.

Having been used for campaigning purposes at a few elections, it had become stale. This is when someone got a brainwave to produce a designer movie to replace Bukit Kepong. This brainwave, I believe, did not originate in Shuhaimi Baba’s mind. It had to be the mind of a master strategist, as far as election campaigning goes, that came up with it. Read the rest of this entry »

5 Comments

In search of lost truth

Aerie Rahman
The Malay Mail Online
September 6, 2013

SEPT 6 — The polemical Tanda Putera was screened a few days ago to mixed reviews. I dislike reading reviews before experiencing the said movie/book/concert myself as it conditions my mind to see things according to the reviewer.

However, since Tanda Putera didn’t make it to any cinemas in London and probably won’t ever, I read and listened to reviews to get a glimpse of all the fuss.

What piques my interest about this film is the brouhaha surrounding it. Some people are angered at the RM4.5 million grant it received. Some are angered at how it masquerades itself as a historical film when some parts are purely fictional. Some are just angry.

At the heart of the controversy there is actually a contest: a contestation of the truth as to what really occurred on that fateful day of May 13, 1969, the contextual considerations that triggered the violence and the subsequent events that unfolded after that day.

Most people are unsure and uncertain about this black spot in our history. Materials on this topic are insufficient.

Since the truth is unclear, people start to formulate their own versions of the truth. I can’t blame them; the truth is after all elusive and relative. The truth is liable to be subjected to various interpretations and manipulations to suit the ears of the hearer and wishes of the maker.

Films such as Tanda Putera are controversial because it is perceived as being intellectually dishonest by telling only one side of the story. The huge subsidy demonstrates the government’s power in the production of a certain historical narrative. Read the rest of this entry »

7 Comments

Setpol Encik Lim Kit Siang dan UITM

– Sakmongkol
The Malaysian Insider
September 08, 2013

Apa sudah jadi kepada pemimpin Umno? Respons mereka terhadap isu-isu yang dibangkitkan sejak akhir-akhir ini dibuat dalam keadaan hysteria.

Dua minggu lalu, bila Anwar Ibrahim mencadangkan perbincangan meja bulat, cadangan tersebut dibaca sebagai cadangan menubuhkan kerajaan perpaduan.

Anwar Ibrahim mengajak pemimpin Umno yang bengap untuk berbincang mengenai polarisasi kaum, mengenai rasuah, mengenai pengurusan ekonomi negara, mengenai jinayah dalam negara dan perkara2 umpanya.

Perkara yang mudah ini pun pemimpin Umno tidak faham sebab diserang penyakit sawan babi dan hysteria.

Pemimpin-pemimpin PAS pun saya harap fahamlah dahulu cadangan Anwar itu. Ini bukan kerajaan perpaduan.

Bukan untuk bergabung dengan Umno. Tak ada orang hendak bergabung dengan Umno. Umno parti fiudal, rasuah dan rasis dan zalim kepada orang Melayu.

Kita bukan ingin bergabung, kita hendak lawan Umno sampai Umno kalah. Kita hendak memerdekakan orang Melayu dari perhambaan Umno yang feudal ini. Read the rest of this entry »

3 Comments

“Useless” research — the seed of great breakthroughs

– K Ranga Krishnan
The Malaysian Insider
September 06, 2013

A few weeks ago, as I was preparing to welcome our new batch of students to Duke-NUS Graduate Medical School, I came across a wonderful and thought-provoking paper by Abraham Flexner — the educator whose report a century ago revolutionised medical education worldwide — titled The Usefulness of Useless Research.

I was struck by the clarity of the paper’s exposition on how research driven by curiosity leads to unexpected advances.

Flexner wrote this article in 1939 to address the growing discussion on why research has to be useful, a discourse that is happening to this day.

He recounts an illustrative interview that he had with George Eastman of Eastman Kodak fame. Flexner asked him who he thought was the most useful worker in science. Eastman said Guglielmo Marconi, the man credited with using wireless waves to produce the radio.

Flexner then pointed out to Eastman that the real credit belonged to James Clerk Maxwell, who predicted and developed the underlying principles of electromagnetism, and others like Heinrich Rudolf Hertz, who detected and demonstrated these electromagnetic waves.

Neither of these men had any thought about how their work would be useful. Read the rest of this entry »

4 Comments

A DAP man tells how Malaysia’s future “is tied to the BN”

by Sheridan Mahavera
The Malaysian Insider
September 07, 2013

By his own admission, Anthony Loke Siew Fook “ditakdirkan” to join the DAP.

“I started being interested in current affairs since I was in primary school,” says the 36-year-old Seremban native who went to St Paul’s primary and secondary schools.

His father was a DAP member, his nanny’s husband was a member, while his other family members and neighbours were all supporters. A teenage Loke also looked on DAP veteran Lim Kit Siang as a hero.

This was more than two decades ago, when opposition parties and their members were considered eccentric.

“Next to my father’s old shop in Temiang was a newspaper vendor. I remember squatting there everyday to read Utusan Malaysia, Berita Harian and (the now defunct) Watan.

“That was at a time Utusan was critical and balanced,” laughs Loke, saying his favourite sections were politics and sports.

“I always read the politics section first”. Read the rest of this entry »

2 Comments

Is helping fellow Malaysians racist, Kit Siang’s aide asks Noh Omar

by Elizabeth Zachariah
The Malaysian Insider
September 07, 2013

Dyana Sofya Mohd Daud, one of DAP’s young and upcoming leaders, has challenged former Cabinet minister Datuk Seri Noh Omar to point out how helping Malaysians get a tertiary education could make her racist.

The Umno Selangor state liaison chief and other politicians had criticised the political secretary to DAP adviser Lim Kit Siang after she proposed that an institution like Universiti Teknologi Mara (UiTM) be set up for non-Malays.

“First of all, I did not say that we should open UiTM to the non-Bumis. In the interview I mentioned that we should have something like UiTM for the non-Bumis,” she told The Malaysian Insider late last night in Kuala Lumpur.

In an earlier interview with the Malaysiakini news portal, Dyana said a higher learning education institution like UiTM should be set up for non-Malays. She said she felt sorry for her non-Malay friends who were denied the right to pursue their education at higher learning institutions. Read the rest of this entry »

12 Comments

Anwar Ibrahim & reformasi: From the eyes of an ordinary citizen

– Anas Alam Faizli
The Malaysian Insider
September 06, 2013

“No one truly knows a nation until one has been inside its jails. A nation should not be judged by how it treats its highest citizens but its lowest ones.” (Nelson Mandela)

Growing up, I remember sifting through my father’s collection of old newspaper clips. One reported that a certain persona by the name of Anwar Ibrahim was about to join Umno. That paper clip was from 1982.

Many in Anwar’s circles and followers at the time viewed him as their next hope for a leader that could strongly challenge the government. Needless to say that move to join Umno was not welcomed by many; my mum, a member of JIM included. In 1996, while tabling the budget in Parliament -an annual event where I await with bated breath for him to introduce a new vocabulary – a practice he was famous for – Anwar was surprisingly spotting noticeable breakouts.

Mum responded “Baru nak matang lah tu…(he is probably just about to mature…).” The consternation she felt then remained.

The financial crisis a year later shook most of the tender South East Asian economies, while Anwar was at the pinnacle of his political career. I did not really understand my parent’s remark then about how Anwar would soon “get it”. I soon did.

I watched 2nd September 1998 unravel on television while I was on campus down south. I will never forget that moment; sitting down dumbfounded trying to gather my thoughts.

From then onwards, keeping track of Anwar’s ceramahs around the country, news and developments, became daily affairs. Anwar’s famous: “Ini adalah konspirasi dan fitnah jahat untuk membunuh karier politik saya”– echoed in mind every day. Read the rest of this entry »

5 Comments

Let’s ban the purple dinosaur

A tongue-in-cheek piece
by Sheela R

It takes so little to offend these days. Be it a movie, a book, an artwork or even a rock concert, it has become almost fashionable to denounce slightest aberration to our perceived high moral standards.

I for one, am deeply offended by the sight of a particular purple dinosaur, making its appearance on pre-schoolers’ television programmes. Let me elucidate with well-thought-out points, one by one.

It is purple in colour. It is a well-known fact from Stephen Spielberg’s movies that dinosaurs are brown and perhaps yellow, but definitely not purple. (Well he is as good an authority as any other and, being Malaysian, you will surely excuse me for the shoddy and completely unsubstantiated research.) We are misleading pre-schoolers with this erroneous fact and worse, there lies a danger that they may grow up wanting to dress as gender-neutral purple dinosaurs. Do I detect a certain derision in you? Well I am merely following the example set by our well-meaning officials, who choose to ban performing artists on account of their dressing, for fear of corrupting our Malaysian youth with their sartorial tastes. Read the rest of this entry »

12 Comments

Institutionalised racism?

KJ John
Malaysiakini
Sep 3, 2013

I also have a dream. Martin Luther King Jr had the original dream for the US of A from 50 years ago, which we all remembered recently together with CNN; it was the same year we also became Malaysia.

As we move into the second half century, after 50 years of nationhood; my dream is that we may yet become 1Bangsa of Malaysians.

In other words, I have a dream of One Nation, One People; a nation-state made of one single class and category of Malaysian citizens; wherein the sun shines equally on every Malaysian without ethnicity, religious or cultural considerations; including all who are citizens, even if by the backdoor as we already heard from the royal commission of inquiry (RCI) in Sabah.

But, who or what is our greatest current stumbling block. I agree totally with Brother Haris Ibrahim about his premise and thesis: that it is Umno’s agenda to realise a Ketuanan Melayu nation-state which remains the most important and detrimental factor in realising our one Bangsa of Malaysians dream. Why do I say also this?

Let me simply review how this misdirected but strategic intent was “evolved into what is now called the Biro Tatanegara or National Civics Bureau (BTN) by all promoters of that skewed agenda.” Some fringe groups supported by a former president of Umno today already sing the same tune today, every day.

Where did BTN and Ketuanan Melayu agenda start? Read the rest of this entry »

7 Comments