Archive for category UMNO
Malaysia’s Eventual Fall From Grace
Posted by Kit in General, Najib Razak, UMNO on Thursday, 22 October 2015
STRATFOR Global Intelligence
Analysis
OCTOBER 22, 2015
Forecast
- In the near-term, Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak will survive efforts to oust him over mounting corruption allegations.
- Whether or not Najib holds onto power longer, the years leading up to the next general elections will be turbulent ones.
- Political stability, crucial to Malaysia’s economic rise, will be challenged by demographic changes that stress the country’s delicate ethnic balance.
Analysis
A deepening political crisis in Malaysia is highlighting the country’s longstanding ethnic divides and its uncertain road ahead. Since early this year, Prime Minister Najib Razak has been caught in a scandal surrounding the heavily indebted 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB) sovereign wealth fund. Among other points of controversy, Najib is struggling to explain the source of nearly $700 million deposited in his personal account.
Read the rest of this entry »
The final countdown, earthquakes and iPhone
Posted by Kit in Najib Razak, Pakatan Harapan, PAS, UMNO on Tuesday, 20 October 2015
Liew Chin Tong
Malaysiakini
19 Oct 2015
MP SPEAKS Much as it sounds like cliché, our time is indeed both the best of times and the worst of times. In such a confusing time, clarity is in short supply.
Three things may help us to describe the state of affairs in Malaysian politics better: that the final countdown is imminent; that there were major political earthquakes, tectonic shifts and realignments in 2015; and that the voting public is waiting for something transformative, a bit like the iPhone when it was first created.
The final countdown
The joint press conference by former rivals Dr Mahathir Mohamad and Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah surprised some of us. Many of us were even amazed with the unprecedented statement by Majlis Raja-Raja Melayu (the Rulers Council) on 1MDB and the falling ringgit, as the council usually restricts its pronouncements to matters relating to Islam and national unity.
Since the Asian Financial Crisis in 1997 and the sacking of Anwar Ibrahim from the government in 1998, Malaysia has been a nation impatiently waiting for change. But change has been meagre, if any.
And we are now entering another crisis – a ‘perfect storm’ crisis that engulfs the nation on multiple fronts – politics, economics, finances, ethnic relations and so on. Read the rest of this entry »
Political myths in Malaysia that must be debunked if Malaysia is to move forward to fulfill our destiny to be a world model of an united, harmonious, moderate and successful plural society
Posted by Kit in DAP, Pakatan Harapan, PAS, UMNO on Saturday, 17 October 2015
There are several political myths in Malaysia that must be debunked if Malaysia is to move forward to fulfill our destiny to be a world model of an united, harmonious, moderate and successful plural society instead of becoming basket-case of a failed, or even worse, rogue state.
Some of these political myths are:
1. Umno is Malay and Malay is UMNO.
Nothing can be further from the truth as right from the first general election in 1959, UMNO was not the only political party representing the Malays in the country.
Arising from this myth, other myths have been born – the myth that Malay rights and interests are under threat because UMNO is fighting a battle of political survival and that Malay rights and interests will be the first casualty if UMNO is ousted from Putrajaya in the next general election.
Whether Najib is ousted as Prime Minister or UMNO replaced as the leading political party in the government coalition, Malay political power is not threatened as a new Prime Minister will be a Malay and new coalition will be Malay-dominated reflecting Malaysia’s demography. Read the rest of this entry »
With Hishammuddin clarification, the UMNO “Magnificent 7” who are currently under investigation for disciplinary action cannot be related to any “no confidence” motion against Najib in the forthcoming meeting of Parliament
Posted by Kit in Hishammuddin, Najib Razak, Parliament, UMNO on Wednesday, 7 October 2015
UMNO Vice President and Defence Minister Datuk Seri Hishammuddin Hussein said yesterday that former Prime Minister, Tun Dr. Mahathir Mohamad had not betrayed UMNO by calling on the Datuk Seri Najib Razak to step down as Prime Minister and the voters of Pekan to vote out Najib in Pekan.
Hishammuddin said: “In terms of the party, it is not a betrayal. (But) it should not go on and should not be entertained as it could break the party apart.”
Hishammuddin said such attacks could damage the party but so far, no damage has been done.
With Hishammuddin clarification, UMNO/BN MPs do not have to feel as if they are traitors to the nation or party if they are inclined to the position that Najib should not continue as Prime Ministere and want to discuss with the Opposition the proposal of no confidence motion against Najib as PM. Read the rest of this entry »
Young Chinese in Malaysia ‘delusional’ to think Malay domination can change, says top Singapore diplomat
Posted by Kit in Malaysian Dream, Najib Razak, PAS, UMNO on Tuesday, 6 October 2015
Malay Mail Online
October 6, 2015
KUALA LUMPUR, Oct 6 — Malaysia’s ethnic Chinese youth are “delusional” if they believe that Malay dominance in politics can be replaced by a change in the system, Singapore’s ambassador-at-large Bilahari Kausikan has said.
Instead, the top Singaporean diplomat said this dominance will be defended by any means, including a possible political alliance between Malay nationalist ruling party Umno and opposition Islamist party PAS. Read the rest of this entry »
Can an UMNO/BN leader declare that Najib should step down as Prime Minister without being disciplined or sacked for breach of party discipline?
Posted by Kit in Najib Razak, Parliament, UMNO on Monday, 5 October 2015
Two former top Barisan Nasional leaders have openly called for Datuk Seri Najib Razak to step down as Prime Minister – Tun Mahathir, former longest-serving Prime Minister and UMNO President for 22 years and Tun Dr. Ling Liong Sik, MCA’s former longest-serving President for 17 years.
Although the incumbent MCA Ministers, Wee Ka Siong and Ong Ka Chuan have in double-quick time dissociated the MCA leadership from Ling’s stand, there is no doubt that Mahathir and Ling’s call on Najib to step down as Prime Minister has struck a great resonance among the ordinary UMNO and MCA membership.
This support for the call on Najib to step down as Prime Minister will increase when Najib continues to be incapable of coming clean on the two mega scandals of the RM50 billion 1MDB and RM2.6 billion “donation” in Najib’s personal banking accounts – compounded by Najib being the first Prime Minister or President not only in Asia but the world to be probed as a kleptocrat by the US Department of Justice (DOJ) under its Kleptocracy Asset Recovery Initiative 2010.
It is a matter of grave national concern that two weeks after the New York Times first reported about the Najib probe by US DOJ under the Kleptocracy Asset Recovery Initiative, neither the Prime Minister nor the Malaysian government could categorically come out with a denial. Read the rest of this entry »
Has Najib lost confidence in Saifuddin as CEO of Global Movement of Moderates and looking for a new candidate?
Posted by Kit in Malaysian Dream, Najib Razak, UMNO on Monday, 5 October 2015
The mounting pressure for action to be taken against Datuk Saifuddin Abdullah, including open calls for his expulsion from UMNO, raises the question whether the Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Najib Razak has lost confidence in Saifuddin as CEO of Global Movement of Moderates and is looking for a replacement for Saifuddin.
This is one of the items Najib should clarify today on his return from Expo Milano 2015.
At the beginning of his fourth speech to the United Nations General Assembly on Thursday, Najib recounted how five years ago he had stood before the same assembly and called for a Global Movement – of Moderates of all religions and all countries – to marginalize extremists, reclaim the centre, and shape the agenda towards peace and pragmatism.
He said Malaysia had followed up his call with both practical action and by building intellectual capacity.
What has Malaysia to show in terms of the “practical action” and the building of “intellectual capacity” for a home-grown Movement of Moderates? Read the rest of this entry »
Malaysia and the Race Card
Posted by Kit in Najib Razak, UMNO on Friday, 2 October 2015
Wall Street Journal
29th Sept 2015
Minorities become scapegoats as Najib tries to keep power.
Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak’s fight for political survival has divided the ruling United Malay National Organization and hurt the nation’s economy. Now it is sparking racial discord. Malaysia’s history of ethnic strife, including the 1969 riots in which hundreds of Chinese were killed, makes this development especially troubling.
At the end of August, a series of rallies by the reform movement Bersih demanded that Mr. Najib resign because of corruption allegations that he denies. The main Malay opposition party PAS didn’t take part as it did in past Bersih rallies, so the crowd of at least 50,000 was mostly made up of Chinese and Indian minorities.
That gave Mr. Najib’s supporters a pretext to claim that the main ethnic Chinese opposition party, the Democratic Action Party, is part of a conspiracy to bring down the Prime Minister and take away the affirmative-action privileges reserved for the Malay majority. On Sept. 16 the most radical hotheads, known as red shirts, tried to rally in Kuala Lumpur’s Chinatown, scene of the worst violence in 1969. Read the rest of this entry »
A Fractured Nation: Malaysia At The Crossroads
Posted by Kit in Bersih, Malays, nation building, UMNO on Sunday, 27 September 2015
Channel News Asia
Malaysia Day was an occasion to strengthen unity of all Malaysians. To the ultranationalists however it was a chance to sow discord and disunity. But why did the protests take on a racial overtone?
Political ‘earthquakes’ that realigned Malaysian politics (Part 1)
— Liew Chin Tong
Malay Mail Online
September 25, 2015
SEPTEMBER 25 — In the wake of an earthquake, tectonic plates will shift and realign. It takes time before gradually stabilising. In the process of seismic shifting, instead of hoping for a more stable surface, it would be better to reflect on the possible changes after the earthquake.
The spectrum of Malaysian politics experienced three great political earthquakes that caused shifting and realignment. After each shaking, the scenario that emerged was a previously unthinkable one. Once the tectonic plates shift, the outcome is a change that will never be the same again.
The first pre-Merdeka pan-Malayan General Election in July 1955 saw the success of the Alliance, using the UMNO-MCA-MIC formula. Read the rest of this entry »
Playing with fire
Posted by Kit in Najib Razak, UMNO on Friday, 25 September 2015
Economist
Sep 26th 2015 | KUALA LUMPUR
Race in Malaysia
A floundering government risks igniting ethnic tensions
THE close-packed shops on Petaling Street, a dim warren in a Chinese quarter of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia’s capital, often throng with bargain-hunting tourists. This month its mostly ethnic-Chinese stallholders faced crowds of a different kind. Riot police prevented a mob of redshirted protesters—ethnic Malays with a host of grudges—from marching down the street. They eventually dispersed loiterers with water cannon. One protester was filmed calling a journalist a “Chinese pig”. Some are threatening to return.
The unsettling scuffle took place on the fringes of a big pro-government rally held in the capital on September 16th. Some 40,000 ethnic Malays gathered at a park in support of the United Malays National Organisation (UMNO), the party that has led Malaysia’s ruling coalitions for nearly 60 years. The day’s events were only the latest evidence of rising tensions between the country’s Malay Muslim majority and its ethnic Chinese and Indian minorities, who make up about one-third of its citizens. Battling allegations of corruption, UMNO seems careless of the risks. Read the rest of this entry »
The Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde of Umno
Posted by Kit in Najib Razak, UMNO on Wednesday, 23 September 2015
— Koon Yew Yin
Malay Mail Online
September 23, 2015
SEPTEMBER 23 — Malaysian readers of Robert Louis Stevenson’s famous book which has been made into film on several occasions will recognise the split personality of good and bad, if not evil, in the country’s dominant party Umno since its early days.
This split personality has emerged more strongly especially since the Tunku was stabbed in the back and taken down in what amounted to a coup d’etat in 1969 by his own party colleagues led by Tun Razak, the father of the current prime minister.
Since then, although the party has had its share of good leaders such as Tun Hussein Onn and has played a positive role in some areas of nation building, it has been the major obstacle to building a robust and resilient nation based on the rule of law and ensuring equal rights, justice and freedom to all citizens.
This is because it has made Malay dominance or “ketuanan Melayu” its main party platform and ideology, while giving lip service to the constitutional provisions providing for racial, religious and cultural equality. Read the rest of this entry »
Ali Rustam and the prolonged May 13 trauma
Posted by Kit in Bersih, Malaysian Dream, Najib Razak, UMNO on Monday, 21 September 2015
Aidila Razak
Malaysiakini
21st Sept 2015
COMMENT National Silat Federation (Pesaka) chief Mohd Ali Rustam seems to be suffering from prolonged trauma.
The symptoms were striking in his interview with Mingguan Malaysia yesterday on the achievements of Himpunan Rakyat Bersatu on Sept 16.
Asked what the rally, meant to ‘reclaim Malay dignity’ had achieved, Ali turned Dr Who to travel close to five decades into time to the race riots of 1969.
“They (Bersih 4 organisers and participants) try to show that Kuala Lumpur belongs to Bersih and the DAP gang, and Malays should balik kampung (go back to the villages). But now the villagers are coming to Kuala Lumpur.
“They think we have lost our self-worth and that Kuala Lumpur does not belong to various races. They think Malays don’t belong to Kuala Lumpur, and it is only for DAP and Bersih.
“They try to show they are brave and that Malays are not. They held rallies four times, and yet no Malays were brave enough to fight back,” he said.
Note the mention of taunts of ‘balik kampung’. Read the rest of this entry »
Umno’s red terror gambit
Posted by Kit in Bersih, Najib Razak, UMNO on Monday, 21 September 2015
by Dennis Ignatius
Malaysiakini
21st Sept 2015
COMMENT When illiberal regimes lose their legitimacy, when they run out of excuses, when they feel their power slipping away, they almost always resort to scaremongering and scapegoating.
Suddenly, imaginary threats are everywhere. Everyone who does not toe the line becomes an enemy, an agent of dark unseen forces, part of some sinister conspiracy. All criticism, all dissent becomes seditious, unpatriotic, anti-national, a threat to national unity.
The ensuing tensions then provide the context and justification for further repression and for increased curtailment of fundamental liberties. What’s left of democratic space slowly vanishes.
Is the same thing now happening in Malaysia? Read the rest of this entry »
Of Umno Malays and Cina DAP
– Anas Zubedy
The Malaysian Insider
20 September 2015
Ten things to ponder about the terms Umno Malays and Cina DAP.
1. Both terms, Umno Malays and Cina DAP, when used in a malicious way are racist remarks.
2. I know many from both Umno and DAP sides who are not racist and are multi-racial in their outlook.
3. Just because we put Umno in front of the word Malays and DAP before the word Cina, it does not mean we are not being racist when we make nasty racial remarks about them.
4. Many closet racists are those who pretend to only target Umno Malays or Cina DAP when they want to make racist remarks. Read the rest of this entry »
Do Umno Malays know the meaning of dignity?
Posted by Kit in Bersih, Malays, Mariam Mokhtar, Najib Razak, UMNO on Sunday, 20 September 2015
Mariam Mokhtar | September 20, 2015
Free Malaysia Today
They need to exorcise the demons inside them and to wean themselves from the entitlement culture.
COMMENT
It looks like the red shirted Umno-Baru Malays are condemning themselves to a life sentence of self-denial. They assume that everyone else in Malaysia owes them a living. It is time they came to terms with the real world. They need to exorcise their inner demons, and they need to wean themselves from the entitlement culture, which they expect will nurse them from cradle to grave.
Malays throughout Malaysia were ashamed to be associated with these bigots, who claim that they held the Red Shirts Rally to uphold Malay dignity. Their protest had nothing to do with Malay dignity. The rally was held primarily to distract us from the 1MDB scandal.
What kind of dignity can we associate with insolence and the hurling of insults at other communities? What dignity is there in transporting the elderly from the villages to boost attendance at the Kuala Lumpur rally? Taxpayers’ money was probably used to facilitate the transportation and to provide meals and pocket money. Read the rest of this entry »
Three things we learned from: #Merah169
Posted by Kit in Bersih, Najib Razak, UMNO on Saturday, 19 September 2015
by Zurairi AR
Malay Mail Online
September 17, 2015
KUALA LUMPUR, Sept 17 ― Thousands of Malays painted the city red yesterday, purportedly to show solidarity with Malay government leaders who are allegedly under siege from the ethnic Chinese community.
The event was originally planned as at least three separate rallies held by different organisers: martial arts group Pesaka who hosted the official gathering, a coalition of 250 Malay groups, and Felda settlers.
As the day went on, however, it was clear that there was only one event in town, the pro-Malay rally informally dubbed #Merah169, held as a reaction towards the electoral reform rally Bersih 4 that was attended by tens of thousands last month and deemed to be Chinese-driven.
Here are three things we learned about the event: Read the rest of this entry »
There is no such thing as Islamic racism
Zan Azlee
The Malaysian Insider
18 September 2015
What version of Islam is Tan Sri Annuar Musa referring to when he said that racism is based on Islam? I want to know because if Islam really calls for racism, then I’ve been a bad Muslim!
The Umno Supreme Council member said this in his speech when he attended the ‘red shirt’ rally (aka Himpunan Rakyat Bersatu) on Malaysia Day.
In his speech, he also said that Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak and Deputy Prime Minister Datuk Seri Ahmad Zahid Hamidi were very touched by the show of support by the rally goers. Read the rest of this entry »
So, what was the ‘red shirt’ rally really all about
Posted by Kit in Bersih, Corruption, Najib Razak, UMNO on Thursday, 17 September 2015
BY SHERIDAN MAHAVERA
The Malaysian Insider
17 September 2015
Despite the belligerent rhetoric, yesterday’s “red shirt” rally in Kuala Lumpur was more about supporting embattled Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak rather than protecting Umno, much less about defending the rights and dignity of Malays.
A few things which happened prior to the rally indicated this. The night before the rally, Umno’s deputy president Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin urged Malays not to attend the rally.
At the same time influential Umno strongman Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamed disparaged it. A report by The Malaysian Insider also quoted several Umno grassroots leaders who said they were against it.
Both Muhyiddin and Dr Mahathir are Umno leaders who have clashed with Najib and are figureheads for party members disenchanted with the Umno president. Read the rest of this entry »
Death knell for Barisan Nasional?
Posted by Kit in Najib Razak, Sabah, Sarawak, UMNO on Tuesday, 15 September 2015
Is the Barisan Nasional Supreme Council last night the death knell for Barisan Nasional?
After the Barisan Nasional Supreme Council meeting, the Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak announced that Barisan Nasional component parties have “agreed to disagree” on the September 16 Red-Shirts “Kebangkitan Maruah Melayu” rally in Kuala Lumpur after Umno’s BN partners voiced their objection to it at the meeting.
He said: “There are many who have voiced their concern over the rally, and as BN chairman I respect their opinions.
“The component parties had voiced out many opinions and we had decided to agree to disagree on it.”
Najib cannot be more wrong. As BN Chairman, he should not just respect the opinions of the leaders of the other political parties in Barisan Nasional, he must comply with their views unless there is a consensus decision by all the BN coalition parties supporting a Red-Shirts “Kebangkitan Maruah Melayu” rally in KL tomorrow.
What has happened to the much-vaunted consensus principle of Barisan Nasional which had been hailed as the key to BN’s success? Read the rest of this entry »
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