Selamat Hari Deepavali kepada kaum India di Malaysia secara khusus dan semua warga Malaysia secara umum.

Deepavali membawa mesej kemenangan cahaya ke atas kegelapan serta kemenangan kebenaran, kebebasan, dan keadilan mengatasi korupsi, diskriminasi dan eksploitasi. Semua ini cukup relevan untuk kehidupan bernegara di Malaysia selepas pilihanraya umum ke-13.

Semoga mesej Deepavali merangsang dan menyatukan semua warga Malaysia bagi memastikan kemenangan cahaya ke atas kegelapan dalam semua sudut kehidupan bernegara dan semoga ia membolehkan kesederhanaan dan toleransi mengatasi sikap ekstrem dan tidak bertolak ansur dalam negara Malaysia yang berbilang kaum, berbilang agama dan berbilang budaya.

Rakyat Malaysia perlu sentiasa berusaha untuk mengukuhkan sikap sederhana dan toleransi dalam masyarakat majmuk serta tidak menyerah kalah kepada segelintir pihak yang bersikap ekstrem dan tidak bertolak ansur, terutama ketika pihak tersebut cuba untuk menampilkan diri sebagai suara baru dan pendukung kesederhanaan dalam negara ini.

Deepavali Message

Happy Deepavali to Malaysian Indians in particular and Malaysians in general.

The Deepavali message of light over darkness and the triumph of truth, freedom and justice over all forms of corruption, discrimination and exploitation have never been so relevant and pertinent in Malaysian national life than in post-13th general elections.

Let all Malaysians be inspired and united by the Deepavali message to ensure the triumph of light over darkness in all spheres of national life and the victory of moderation and tolerance over extremism and intolerance in multi-racial, multi-religious and multi-cultural Malaysia. Read the rest of this entry »

Turning 70 was a good excuse for my batch of classmates of Batu Pahat High School to go down the memory lane of our school days in the fifties.

Michael Ong reminded me, which I could not remember, that in Form V in 1959, I had given the first talk to the school debating and literary society. Topic? “Malayan Consciousness”.

Allan Goh, who has retired from the teaching profession in Penang, has composed an ode to the Class of 59:

Ode to the Class of 59

What really made my classmates tick?
Competitiveness, work, but no trick.
With shoulders firmly to the rack,
Oft leaving foot prints on time’s track.

It never was a one-horse race,
But a constant multiple brace:
Leadership, routinely ceded
To better friends who succeeded. Read the rest of this entry »

by Humayun Kabir | FMT

IPOH: DAP vice-chairman M Kulasegaran would have been one of the statistics of the brain drain from Malaysia if he had not read Lim Kit Siang’s book “Time Bombs in Malaysia”.

The book changed his destiny, he said in a tribute to Lim on the occasion of the opposition veteran’s 70th birthday.

Kulasegaran bought the book in 1978 – the year it first appeared – while he was en route to Subang airport for his flight to England for his law studies. He was then 21.

“On the long flight to London, I read the book and almost immediately began to rescind a prior decision I had made not to return to the country of my birth after my law studies for reason of its discriminatory policies,” he said in a statement released online yesterday.

He said it had kept alive his hope for political reform in Malaysia.
Read the rest of this entry »

Many have asked whether I have plans to retire after 45 years of politics.

With the DAP founding chairman Dr. Chen Man Hin a hale and hearty 86, keeping vigilant daily scrutiny of political developments; the declaration by DAP Chairman Karpal Singh, who is eight months my senior, of unremitting commitment in the cause of justice and freedom despite his physical problems; and the “good wishes” of the doyen of Barisan Nasional politicians, Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah, 74, that I “continue to tread the rough and tumble of the Malaysian political road with even greater tenacity and thrust in the years ahead until we can all together ensured that no one in the country is allowed to create a situation of disaster of the type we have just seen in Tunisia and Egypt”, the least I could do was to pledge, as I did at my 70th birthday dinner at Hotel Equatorial Penang, that I will continue to contribute to party, people and the nation so long as I can be of use and contribution.

Three years ago in Feb 2008, I made a birthday wish that the DAP can succeed in winning the Penang State Government in the 2008 general election, which I had not made public at the time. This had come true.

My 70th birthday wish is that Malaysia will become a normal democratic country with the two coalition system fully institutionalized where change of political power would be regarded as a normal process and not once invoking threats and intimidations of national calamity like riots and unrest. Read the rest of this entry »