Archive for July 18th, 2017

Mahathir effect threatens Umno vote bank

Shannon Teoh
Straits Times Singapore
JULY 18, 2017

Umno ratcheted up the racial rhetoric last weekend, highlighting concerns within the ruling party that its grip on the crucial Malay vote bank could slip after Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad formally took charge of the opposition last Friday.

The former prime minister led the dominant Malay party for 22 years before retiring in 2003 and, despite misgivings from civil society, the opposition Pakatan Harapan (PH) alliance aims to use the 92-year-old’s influence to break Umno’s stranglehold on the Malay community that makes up the majority in more than half of the parliamentary districts.

With a general election due in a year’s time, politicians and analysts expect to see increased pandering to Malay-Muslim insecurities in the coming months. Read the rest of this entry »

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Will Parliament be dissolved after Najib presents his 2018 budget of goodies on Oct. 27?

Sitting on stage with Tun Dr. Mahathir Mohamad at the Pakatan Harapan Ceramah “Sayangi Malaysia, Hapus Kleptokrasi” at IDCC in Shah Alam last night, I told the former Prime Minister that the current Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Najib Razak may be taking a leaf from his premiership in 1999 and dissolve Parliament after he had presented his 2018 budget of goodies on Oct. 27, 2017 for the holding of the 14th General Election – which was what Mahathir did for the 10th General Election after presenting the 2000 budget on Oct. 28, 1999, dissolving Parliament in the midst of parliamentary debate on the new budget on 10th November with Nomination on 20th Nov and Polling on 29th Nov. 1999.

The speech by the Deputy Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Ahmad Zahid Hamidi at the UMNO Hari Raya open house that the next general election would not take place in the next three months dovetailed into the possibility that the 14th General Election could be held after the presentation of the 2018 Budget in Parliament on Oct. 27. Read the rest of this entry »

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1MDB scandal and Malaysia as global kleptocracy are potent signs that something is very wrong and even rotten in Malaysia and that the nation has lost its moral moorings of its founding years of Merdeka and Malaysia

Yesterday was the eighth anniversary of the murder of an idealistic young Malaysian, Teoh Beng Hock in Shah Alam, who died because of a baseless allegation of corruption involving RM2,400 for 1,500 Malaysian flags used in the Merdeka celebrations in 2008, where the institutions of state were misused by the powers-that-be to persecute political opponents.

If a RM2,400 case could cost a life to be lost, how many lives should be lost over the 1MDB financial scandal?

The 1MDB scandal, which catapulted Malaysia into stratospheric infamy as a global kleptocracy, is one of astronomical proportion and could involve RM50 to RM55 billion – which means that some 100 million people (more than three times the population of Malaysia) would have to die if a person’s life could be lost over a RM2,400 allegation.

This highlights the monstrosity of the 1MDB scandal!

Recently, there were glowing reports about the benevolence of one 1MDB mastermind, Penang billionaire Jho Low, who donated hundreds of millions of ringgit to charitable foundations.

This was also about the time when the Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Najib Razak declared that “Not everything about the 1MDB is bad or negative” and lamented that many Malaysians were unaware that 1MDB had contributed a lot of good in many ways, like spending RM57 million since 2011 to finance 5,700 Malaysians to perform the haj. Read the rest of this entry »

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