Archive for category nation building
Najib and Hishammuddin would fail as 1Malaysia leaders if they take the easy way out to court popularity in the “Allah” controversy
Posted by Kit in Najib Razak, nation building, Religion on Thursday, 7 January 2010
The Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Najib Razak and the Home Minister, Datuk Seri Hishammuddin Hussein would fail as 1Malaysia leaders if they take the easy way out to court popularity in the “Allah” controversy and fail to effectively represent all ethnic and religious groups in the country.
Hishammuddin said yesterday that the government does not prohibit the people from expressing their views over the use of the word “Allah” by the Catholic weekly magazine Herald, but on the condition that their actions do not undermine national security.
Najib today defended Hishammuddin’s stand on plans by several organizations to stage a demonstration on Friday tomorrow to protest the use the word “Allah” by other religions.
Would Najib and Hishammuddin be so benign and tolerant if demonstrations are organized to support the Kuala Lumpur High Court’s Dec. 31 judgment that the Herald may use the term “Allah”?
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Mahathir the Maverick at it again
Posted by Kit in Mahathir, nation building, NEP on Friday, 1 January 2010
by A
Subject: Re: BERNAMA – Forget The Origin Country, We Are Malaysians – Mahathir
On my way to London yesterday, I finished 3/4 of the book on the Maverick, my conclusion long before reading this book was; all of us , Malaysians ( my ancestors came from China to Malaysia more than 150 yrs ago) have been divided ( or screwed) by all these greedy and heartless politicians, whether they are from UMNO, MCA, Gerakan or MIC, and they are all the same. The wealth in the country should be shared by all of us, but UMNO started NEP, AP, MARA, etc etc to split us in the name of wealth distribution. But after 40 years since May 13 1969, what have we achieved? The govt still think that all the targets set under NEP have not been achieved? How could these be possible if 30pc of PLC shares must be allocated to bumiputras, Non-bumis not allowed to get APs, open new petrol stations, scholarships, all govt contracts must have Bumis equity, certain sectors of the businesses were not opened to non- bumis until the recent years but still tightly controlled, and Bumi controlled companies so as GLCs don’t have to hire non-bumis. So how could the nation be united, progress or the lastest favour of the day, 1Malaysia be successful if meritrocracy is not relevant in practice? And each day we become more suspicious of each other’s co-existance. Read the rest of this entry »
Thanks, Tee, for drawing votes for Pakatan
Posted by Kit in nation building on Monday, 28 December 2009
By Thomas Lee
I wish to thank Utusan Malaysia columnist Dr Ridhuan Tee Abdullah for being so clever to suggest that Malay-Muslims have more rights because they form the majority in Malaysia. His articulate political reconnaissance will surely contribute a much bigger swing of votes to the Pakatan Rakyat (PR) at the next general election.
Tee has proposed in his article a formula based on the racial and religious breakdown of the 27 million population of the nation, to apportion the share of what is due to each community in terms of rights, festivities and celebrations.
His so-called formula is based on the statistical breakdown of races and religions in the Year 2000 census, where the percentages of Malaysians by religions were 60% Islam, 22% Buddhist-Taoism-Confucius, 9% Christian, 6% Hindu, 3% other races and religions.
Read the rest of this entry »
Why not a single Minister from MCA, Gerakan, MIC, SUPP, Sabah and Sarawak dare to be as outspoken as Nazri to speak out against racism as well as BTN and Utusan Malaysia’s racist outpourings which subverts the very basis of a multi-racial Malaysian nation?
Posted by Kit in MCA, nation building, UMNO on Thursday, 17 December 2009
Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department, Datuk Seri Nazri Aziz is proving to be a political leader of surprises, not only with his bold and courageous denunciation of Biro Tata Negara (BTN) divisive, racist and seditious indoctrination course but in speaking out forthrightly against Utusan Malaysia’s unadulterated racism.
Condemning Utusan Malaysia for its “outdated” racist propaganda, Nazri said the Umno-owned newspaper must accept that Malaysia is a multi-racial country.
It is a tragic and terrible commentary on the success of the nation-building process that 52 years after nationhood, a national daily which is owned by UMNO, the party in power in the past five decades, has refused to accept that Malaysia is a multi-racial country and continue to call Chinese as immigrants and Indians with derogatory terms like “keling”.
With such racist mindset and mentality in the corridors of power, Najib’s 1Malaysia concept and policy has no meaning whatsoever, and it is no wonder that the public preview of the 1Malaysia programme for the seven National Key Results Area (NKRA) initiatives today has to be put off.
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Utusan Malaysia: Messenger of hate and spite on religion and race
Posted by Kit in Letters, Media, nation building on Thursday, 17 December 2009
by Dr Lim Teck Ghee
Sitting today in a small group international meeting on the subject of the linkages between religion and development being held in Phnom Penh, I am engaged in deep discussion on how to build inter-faith synergies that can effectively address the many pressing challenges of the region.
The group of 15 participants from different faiths and religions (I am possibly the sole atheist participant) includes three Muslim activist colleagues. They are the country director of Muslim Aid from Bangladesh; a Muhammadiyah senior lecturer from the State Institute for Islamic Studies in Walinsongo Semarang, Indonesia; and the executive director of a Muslim-based organization Ummah Fi Salam based in Mindanao that has been working on an interfaith programme called ‘Building Darusalam’ or ‘peace communities’.
Present also is a Muslim senior lecturer from the National University of Singapore who is actively involved with giving voice to professional Muslim women in Singapore.
Read the rest of this entry »
BTN and the price of indoctrination
Posted by Kit in Azly Rahman, nation building on Thursday, 17 December 2009
By Azly Rahman
What price indoctrination? Herein lies the question on the RM550 million spent over 10 years on a civic-consciousness programme that turned out to be a project of instilling fear into the Malays – fear of their own shadow and fear of other races.
The Biro Tatanegara (BTN) courses use Russian-styled pseudo-scientific pop psychology, drawn from the work of Bulgarian mind-bending experts in ‘suggestopedia’ developed by Lozanov and Barzakov with creative visualisation para-psychological techniques, into which the mind is emptied before propaganda is funnelled.
When the mind is half-asleep, subconscious wide awake, the body is relaxed, the room darkened, the voice of the propagandist-facilitator reigns supreme, suggesting anything to ensure that the doped, docile, and domesticated mind enters a game of master-slave narrative.
Read the rest of this entry »
Malaysia current ills and future solution?
Posted by Kit in Education, Letters, nation building on Wednesday, 16 December 2009
By Michael Yeo
There are reports of mass migration of Malaysian to overseas, and the Malaysian per capita income is decreasing. The country economy lacks foreign investments due to incorrect policies taken in 1989. The Asian Tigers – Thailand, China, Taiwan, S Korea, Japan, and Vietnam is all vying for foreign investments and aggressively pursuing value-added export market. With the potential oil production in Cambodia from 2011 (estimated), Malaysia will be relegated to the bottom in the ladder. Globalisation does not discriminate against any nation, but they will shy away from countries where her Governments have acted against the flow of capital. The oil asset is fast dwindling in Malaysia.
Malaysia is going backward; this is not a surprised as bad policies in educations, corruptions, cronyism, political systems that give rise to self imposed racism are all present in this dysfunctional state. Let me elaborate:
Present political divides
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Najib should come out with clear-cut statement that 1Malaysia does not mean “Ketuanan Melayu” or “Malay supremacy” and declare that all Malaysians whether Malay, Chinese, Indian, Orang Asli, Kadazan or Iban are all co-owners of Malaysia
Posted by Kit in Najib Razak, nation building on Sunday, 13 December 2009
The Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Najib Razak has directed all his ministers to end the polemics on the divisive, racist and seditious Biro Tata Negara (BTN) courses.
He said he himself would evaluate BTN’s training modules and arrive at a decision on them later.
Shouldn’t the decision on the divisive, racist and seditious BTN indoctrination course be the collective decision of the Barisan Nasional leadership rather than the decision of one man, even if he is the Prime Minister?
This demonstrates an exacerbation of an already very unhealthy, undemocratic and dangerous concentration of power in the hands of the Prime Minister at the expense of the collective decision of the Cabinet and the Barisan Nasional parties.
Even putting aside for the moment the issue of the divisive, racist and seditious BTN indoctrination course which engenders racial hatred and illwill totally inimical to the nation-building objective to foster national unity and Malaysian consciousness, the issue of what Najib’s 1Malaysia really means cannot be evaded any longer.
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BTN must leave all campuses beginning with UiTM and MRSM
Posted by Kit in Azly Rahman, nation building on Sunday, 13 December 2009
By Azly Rahman
Mara means “to advance (forward)”. It is the opposite of “retreat” and the declaration of defeat. It does not mean Undur.
Universiti Teknologi MARA (UiTM) must live up to its name. So must its younger brother Maktab Rendah Sains MARA. It is in the interest of the public to suggest good ideas for reform – and to advance.
In my lifetime I have been affiliated with both organisations. I taught in the former institution and I was schooled in the latter. Whether a product of historical accident or not, I am proud of my experiences in both. Maybe, there is a reason for things to happen. I came from a poor family and was given the chance to have an education I wish many more Malaysians had, my parents included.
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Malaysia an ‘oil cursed’ country
Posted by Kit in Economics, nation building, Razaleigh Hamzah on Saturday, 12 December 2009
by Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah
Dec 12, 09
(Speech by former finance minister and Umno vice-president Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah at the one-day Young Corporate Malaysians Summit this morning)
In a speech I made in April this year, I spoke of where we stand in our developmental path and what I felt we must do to move forward.
I need to revisit that argument in order to develop it further.
We are stagnating. The signs of a low-growth economy are all around us. Wages are stagnant and the cost of living is rising.
We have not made much progress in becoming a knowledge and services based economy.
According to the World Bank, Malaysia’s share of GDP contributed by services was 46.2 percent in 1987. Ten years later, that share had grown by a mere 0.2 percent.
Between 1994 and 2007, real wages grew by 2.6 percent in the domestic sector and by 2.8 percent in the export sector, which is to say, they were flat over that 13-year period.
Meanwhile, our talent scenario is an example of perverse selection at its most ruinous. We are failing to retain our own young talent, people like yourselves, let alone attract international talent to relocate here, while we have had a massive influx of unskilled foreign labour. They now make up 30 to 40 percent of our workforce.
Alone in East Asia, the number of expatriate professionals here has decreased. Alone in East Asia, private sector wage increases follow government sector increases, instead of the other way around. We are losing doctors and scientists and have become Southeast Asia’s haven for low-cost labour.
I said that we are in a middle-income trap, stuck in the pattern of easy growth from low-value-added manufacturing and component assembly and unable to make the leap to a knowledge-intensive economy. Read the rest of this entry »
The most important of Najib’s seven KPIs, 1Malaysia, a dismal failure in the larger laboratory of Malaysia in past seven months
Posted by Kit in Najib Razak, nation building on Saturday, 12 December 2009
Tomorrow, the Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak’s seven-month-old Cabinet will gather for a third round to finalise programmes under the Key Performance Index (KPI) and National Key Results Areas (NKRAs) which are to be made public on Thursday and Friday.
In the past two months, seven laboratories had been set up to test out ideas and strategies in the six priority areas outlined in the NKRA – reducing crime, fighting corruption, widening access to affordable and quality education, raising the living standard of the poor, improving infrastructure in the rural areas and public transportation with the seventh the 1Malaysia lab focussed on ways to foster unity among the various races.
It is most tragic and the irony of ironies that in the seven months that Najib was proclaiming the 1Malaysia slogan and concept, national unity was the constant target of a most systematic and unscrupulous attacks, with one extremist, provocative and seditious statement and action followed by another, seriously aggravating racial and religious polarisation in plural Malaysia.
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Muhyiddin is chief Cabinet hawk siding with Mahathir against Nazri – ball in Najib’s court facing critical test for his 1Malaysia concept which is virtually in tatters
Posted by Kit in Mahathir, Muhyiddin Yassin, Najib Razak, nation building on Wednesday, 9 December 2009
The Deputy Prime Minister, Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin has come out as the chief hawk in Cabinet to side with former Prime Minister Tun Dr. Mahathir Mohamad against the Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department, Datuk Seri Nazri Aziz in the row over the divisive, racist and seditious Biro Tata Negara (BTN) indoctrination course and Umno as a racist party.
The ball is now in Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Najib Razak’s court with Najib’s 1Malaysia concept facing a critical test.
Nazri is right in describing Mahathir as a racist in defending the divisive, racist and seditious BTN course and Mahathir is right in his response that Umno is a racist party.
The question is why Umno should continue to impose its racist ideology on the government and country and to turn BTN into an instrument to purvey its racist philosophy and pernicious doctrine, totally subversive of the Vision 2020 concept of Bangsa Malaysia as well as Najib’s 1Malaysia.
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(Update) Why no other Cabinet Minister, whether Umno, MCA, Gerakan, MIC or from Sabah and Sarawak, speaking out publicly to endorse Nazri’s denunciation of Mahathir as a racist for defending racist BTN course
Posted by Kit in nation building on Tuesday, 8 December 2009
Why is there no other Cabinet Minister, whether Umno, MCA, Gerakan, MIC or from Sabah and Sarawak, speaking out publicly to endorse Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department, Datuk Seri Nazri Aziz’s denunciation of former Prime Minister Tun Mahathir as a racist for defending the racist Biro Tata Negara (BTN) course?
It has been said that “When the going gets tough, the tough get going”. Are there any “tough” Ministers in Umno, MCA, Gerakan, MIC, Sabah and Sarawak to endorse a revamp of the divisive, racist and seditious BTN indoctrination course which had done the nation-building process a great national disservice since Mahathir’s premiership to divide the diverse races in the country by promoting racial hatred and ill will among Malaysians?
Mahathir had said that there is no need to revamp the BTN course “as in the current form, they were fine for instilling the patriotic spirit among Malaysians”, claiming that “the BTN curriculum had helped foster unity as the courses conducted by the agency were attended by Malaysians of all races”.
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BTN – why is Muhyiddin backing Ahmad Maslan and not Nazri?
Posted by Kit in Muhyiddin Yassin, nation building, UMNO on Sunday, 6 December 2009
When asked about the Biro Tata Negara (BTN) controversy after the National Land Council meeting in Putrajaya on Friday, Deputy Prime Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin said the Deputy Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department, Datuk Ahmad Maslan, who is directly responsible for Biro Tata Negara (BTN), had already given the necessary explanation.
Asked whether the BTN course would be revamped, Muhyiddin said this was not a new course, that it had been decided on by the Cabinet a long time back and that he did not need to explain further. (Sin Chew 5.12.09)
Muhyiddin was being most irresponsible for evading the issue, especially as the Deputy Prime Minister had led the UMNO hawks including the Home Minister, Datuk Seri Hishammuddin Hussein, the Agriculture Minister Datuk Nor Omar, the Women Minister Datuk Shahrizat Jalil in Cabinet in defending the divisive, racist and seditious BTN indoctrination courses.
Muhyiddin cannot be unaware of the public spat between Ahmad Maslan and the Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department, Datuk Seri Nazri Aziz, over the disagreement over the Minister’s statement that the Cabinet had decided to “revamp” the BTN course Read the rest of this entry »
Replace the BTN, which spent RM550 million in past ten years to incite racial hatred and animosity to create more racists than Malaysian nationalists, with an independent non-partisan institution answerable only to Parliament
Posted by Kit in nation building on Friday, 4 December 2009
Biro Tata Negara (BTN) spent RM550 million in the past ten years from 2000 to 2009 to incite racial hatred and animosity to create more racists than Malaysian nationalists and was a major push factor for the brain drain driving Malaysia’s best and brightest from Malaysian shores in the past decade.
The annual budget for the BTN in the past ten years, totalling RM548 million, is as follows:
| Year | Expenditure (RM) |
|---|---|
| 2000 | 28,928,500 |
| 2001 | 27,172,300 |
| 2002 | 34,199,700 |
| 2003 | 35,620,163 |
| 2004 | 86,165,889 |
| 2005 | 68,160,330 |
| 2006 | 43,097,076 |
| 2007 | 74,339,400 |
| 2008 | 76,348,700 |
| 2009 | 74,023,100 |
An alternative to BTN: cross-cultural understanding
Posted by Kit in Azly Rahman, nation building on Thursday, 3 December 2009
By Azly Rahman
BTN is tsunamied. It’s demise might be inevitable. The writings are on the wall — and in cyberspace.
Malaysians wish to see the closing down of the operations of Biro Tata Negara – for good. I think it has done more harm than good. It is based on a flawed understanding of Malaysian history and promotes a communalistic and combative rather than cosmopolitan and collaborative Malaysia.
The danger is in hegemony; the fish does not know it is in the water and keeps on swimming round and round in the fish bowl.
Let us consider an alternative to teaching Malaysians how to become and behave like Malaysians. The root of this change must come from our reconceptualization of language and culture. Through education for critical consciousness, we can all begin the dismantling process of dismantling race-based institutions such as BTN.
Read the rest of this entry »
BTN’s racist, anti-national and seditious indoctrination courses should not be glossed over or minimized as it makes a total mockery of 1Malaysia slogan and concept
Posted by Kit in nation building on Wednesday, 2 December 2009
The Deputy Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department, Datuk Ahmad Maslan, who is directly responsible for Biro Tata Negara (BTN), is trying to gloss over and minimize the condemnation of the BTN courses as racist, anti-national and seditious indoctrination programmes detrimental to Malaysian nation-building and national unity.
Adding insult to injury, Ahmad claimed that BTN courses were based on facts, asking:
“If we say that two-thirds of the population consist of bumiputeras and one-third non-bumiputeras, is that considered racist?
“If we say 66 percent is bumiputera and 24 percent consists other races, is that racist? That is just stating the facts.”
Ahmad, who is also Umno information chief, cannot be so obtuse as not to know that nobody objects to such factual information.
Read the rest of this entry »
Some 630 Malaysians leave the country every day
Posted by Kit in Najib Razak, nation building, Parliament on Tuesday, 1 December 2009
A total of 304,358 Malaysians left the country between March last year and August this year for better education, career and business prospects, Deputy Foreign Minister A Kohilan Pillay told Parliament yesterday. This is a big leap from 139,696 Malaysians who migrated to other countries in 2007.
This works out to some 630 Malaysians leaving the country every day.
Can Malaysia afford such a continuing brain drain?
This is a big vote of no confidence not only in the Abdullah premiership but also in the present Najib administration. Read the rest of this entry »
Why not invite me to head an investigation whether BTN’s course had poisoned the minds of a generation of leaders, civil servants and university students with its racist indoctrination programme?
Posted by Kit in Muhyiddin Yassin, nation building on Tuesday, 1 December 2009
In continuing to justify the Biro Tata Negara (BTN) course as inculcating nationalism and unity among the people, the Deputy Prime Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin challenged me to join the Biro Tata Negara (BTN) course to see for myself if it promoted racial hatred as alleged.
Undoubtedly, in such a case, the BTN lecturers will act as model Malaysians with exemplary conduct and attitude.
Let me ask Muhyiddin – why not invite me to head an investigation whether the BTN course had poisoned the minds of a generation of leaders, civil servants and university students with its divisive, racist and seditious indoctrination programmes?
No one will have any objection to national civics courses which promotes national unity and inter-racial understanding but it is unpatriotic, anti-national and criminal to say the least to have a government programme which incites racial ill-will and hatred as this is not nation-building but destroying the very fabric of a united, progressive and successful Malaysian nation.
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BTN should not only be revamped – heads must roll for the poisoning of a whole generation of Malaysian leaders, civil servants, university students
Posted by Kit in nation building on Monday, 30 November 2009
Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department, Datuk Seri Nazri Aziz told reporters in Parliament this morning that the Cabinet has agreed to revamp the Biro Tata Negara (BTN) following national furore against the BTN’s divisive, racist and seditious course which pump communal poison, incite racial hatred and illwill which are no different from Nazi indoctrination camps.
Nazri is reported to have:
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agreed that the divisive, racist and seditious BTN course is not in line with Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak’s 1Malaysia concept;
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that “the recent Cabinet meeting saw it necessary to do away with the BTN co-curriculum which government leaders, including the prime minister, saw was racially divisive and destructive”; and
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the Chief Secretary to the Government has been instructed to oversee BTN’s revamp.
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