Zahid should take leave as Home Minister until two cases causing major embarrassment to the BN government had been settled
Datuk Seri Dr. Ahmad Zahid Hamidi should go on leave as Home Minister until two cases causing major embarrassment to the Barisan Nasional government had been settled.
Firstly, the case where Zahid was accused of causing hurt to Amir Abdullah Bazli in January 2006.
I agree with the former Kuala Lumpur CID director Mat Zain Ismail who said in a recent Open Letter that the fact that the Appeal Court had in a civil action unanimously ordered Zahid to answer the charges by Amir Abdullah means that Amir’s accusation is solid, raising the question why the police had failed to take action against Zahid for his offence of hurting Amir.
Mat Zain had rightly said in his Open Letter:
“PDRM will not be able to convince the people that it is acting fairly and adhering to the law if it fails to haul Zahid to court, especially when its former chief (former IGP Tan Sri Rahim Noor) was charged for the same offence.
“In fact, PDRM will lose moral ground as it cannot justify taking action against any lawbreaker, if it cannot even take action against its own Minister who has been judged a criminal by the courts.”
GE13: What happened? And what now? (Part 1)
By Clive Kessler | JUNE 12, 2013
The Malaysian Insider
JUNE 12 ― In a brief commentary elsewhere (“Malaysia’s election result — no surprise to the knowledgeable,” Asian Currents, June 2013), I have noted one paradoxical but hugely important consequence of Malaysia’s recent national elections held on 5 May.
A paradox: anomalous domination
The remarkable, perhaps “counter-intuitive”, fact is that, while the election result itself ― namely, a fairly close but nonetheless comfortable victory of the Umno-centred Barisan Nasional side over the Pakatan Rakyat opposition ― came as no great surprise, that unremarkable result nonetheless had one quite surprising, even paradoxical, consequence.
From GE13 an electorally weakened Umno emerged politically even more dominant than it had been before. While still embattled in the broader political arena, Umno was delivered a dominant position within the parliament, ruling coalition and government.
By bestowing it with that now dominant parliamentary position, GE13 had delivered into Umno’s hands an ascendancy over the governing BN coalition, government policy, Parliament’s agenda and parliamentary process, and thereby over national political life ― over the nation’s affairs and direction ― of a quite unprecedented and perhaps irresistible kind.
Read the rest of this entry »
12 Questions about the biggest corporate catastrophe in nation’s 56-year history – the RM2.34 billion UEM-Renong deal in 1997 – which still cry out for answer after 16 years
Posted by Kit in Financial Scandals on Wednesday, 12 June 2013, 12:07 pm
The mega-billion-ringgit suit filed by Umno-created tycoon Tan Sri Halim Saad against the government three days before the 13GE Nomination Day on April 20, 2013 to demand full settlement of an over RM2 billion deal that forced him to relinquish his controlling stake in Renong Bhd more than a decade ago has re-opened questions about the nations’ biggest corporate catastrophe in the nation’s 56-year history.
This was the RM2.34 billion UEM-Renong deal in 1997 which precipitated the biggest crash in the Kuala Lumpur stockmarket in the 1997 financial crisis, causing the Kuala Lumpur Composite Index to fall by 19.58 per cent, from 667.29 to 536.62 points in three days, wiping out RM70 billion of the investors’ funds in the stock exchange.
In his mega-billion-ringgit suit, Halim, once the sole corporate nominee of the ruling Umno, was offered RM1.3 billion in cash and property as well as control of a private waste management company, roughly valued at RM2 billion, in exchange for his disposal of Renong in the 2001 agreement.
But Halim had since only received RM165 million despite giving up his business empire and will be demanding the remainder.
The Edge Malaysia reported that Halim attempted to pressure the government into full settlement, but in 2010, former Prime Minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad told him the agreement would not be honoured.
The Edge Malaysia article wrote: “Halim held numerous meetings with Dr Mahathir — even after the latter quit as premier in November 2003 — and Nor Mohamed to push for a full settlement but he was repeatedly fobbed off.
Read the rest of this entry »
What Malaysians want is not an empty “declaration of war against crime”, the most “political” IGP and most “political” Home Minister, but a new and serious culture of “zero tolerance to crime” at all levels of government
The Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak declared a war on crime three days ago, late by four years and a resounding vindication of the verdict of the 13GE on May 5 expressing grave voter dissatisfaction and displeasure at the failure of the four-year Najib premiership to deal with the problem of crime and the fear of crime.
It is no use the Barisan Nasional and police leadership claiming that the crime rate has been coming down under the Government Transformation Programme when over the past four years the spectre of the fear of crime have been hounding and haunting Malaysians.
There is no public confidence in the police statistics about crime reduction so long as Malaysians avoid lodging police reports even though they are victims of crime because of the hassle as well as the futility of lodging police reports.
As a result, contrary of police statistics, Malaysians are convinced that the crime rate and the fear of crime have been increasing by leaps and bounds in the past few years.
Najib’s declaration of war against crime suffered bodily blows by recent blatant and flagrant incidence of crime. Read the rest of this entry »
Mahathir and Utusan should stop Chinese bashing before Najib’s claim as Prime Minister of all Malaysians become totally discredited
Both before and after the 13th General Elections on May 5, both the former Prime Minister Tun Dr. Mahathir Mohamad and the Umno official mouthpiece Utusan Malaysia have proved to be the most racist and unMalaysian voices in the country, resorting to lies and falsehoods to pit the Malays against the Chinese.
In his latest blog, his accusation that the Chinese in Malaysia were out in the 13GE to oust the political power of the Malays and to dominate Malaysian politics must rate as one of his most irresponsible, reckless and baseless allegations in his long political career – which is only matched by another of his irresponsible and reckless allegation during the 13GE, that I contested in Gelang Patah constituency to create a “racial confrontation” and that I incited the Chinese to hate the Malays.
There is not an ounce of truth in these outrageous allegations by the former Prime Minister and he has not been able to offer any evidence to substantiate his reckless allegations.
For instance, has he been able to offer any evidence to substantiate his allegation that I had incited the Chinese in Gelang Patah to hate the Malays, when in fact, in all my speeches in Gelang Patah as well as elsewhere during the 13GE, I had stressed the importance of all Malaysians regardless of race religion or region to be united in pursuit of a common Malaysian Dream to build a just, free, democratic, clean, prosperous and competitive Malaysia.
I was at first apprehensive as to what divisive and destructive effects Mahathir’s lies and racist vituperation could have on the Malays in Gelang Patah in particular and in Malaysia in general. Read the rest of this entry »
A Living Nation
By Allan CF Goh
With its people truncated,
Like the dried fallen leaf,
Crushed and emasculated.
A people cannot thrive,
Under any tyranny,
Be it of racist strife,
Or undeserved agony.
A state cannot progress
If she rejects the truly best,
And goes on to transgress
Her people’s talented quest.
Read the rest of this entry »
Malaysia’s ‘Berlin Wall’
Posted by Kit in Elections, Mahathir, Mariam Mokhtar, Police on Tuesday, 11 June 2013, 8:00 am
by Mariam Mokhtar
Malaysiakini
Jun 10, 2013
Dataran Merdeka is symbolic. It is our metaphorical Berlin Wall and its significance cannot be exaggerated.
Umno Baru leaders and the police have refused to allow the use of Dataran Merdeka for the ‘Black 505’ rally in Kuala Lumpur on June 15.
Etched in the memories of older Malaysians is the lowering of the Union Jack and the raising of the Malayan flag at midnight, at the Selangor Club padang as Dataran Merdeka was then known. The younger generation would have learnt about its historical role.
When the 154.5km Berlin Wall – a concrete structure built by the East Germans to divide the east from the west – came down, the city of Berlin was reunited, communist rule in eastern Europe fell and the process of re-unification of East and West Germany started.
If the opposition coalition were to hold this rally at Dataran Merdeka, it would score a great moral victory, just as Bersih did. The violence during the Bersih 3.0 rally was perpetrated by the police. A weak regime is one which does not know how to use arguments and discussion as weapons, but resorts to violence.
If the place that is connected with Merdeka and the Tunku were to become the focal point for the ‘Black 505’ rally, attention would be focused on the reasons for the rally, and Umno-Baru would be forever linked with cheating in elections. Umno-Baru is desperate to deny the opposition the publicity. Read the rest of this entry »
Perceptions and cybertroopers
Posted by Kit in Corruption, Crime, Good Governance, IT on Tuesday, 11 June 2013, 5:53 am
— conspiracytheor1st
The Malaysian Insider
June 09, 2013
JUNE 9 — “Cybertroopers” is a term I suppose originated from Malaysia. I would rank it as the next best Malaysian invention after err… belacan (did belacan originate from Malaysia?). A short search of “cybertroopers” on Google would yield hundreds of results, all related to Malaysian politics. However, there is no one exact definition of the term from any dictionary or on Wikipedia. Back to the main topic, one might not notice that there is a very inconspicuous but interesting relationship between the term “cybertroopers” and “perception” in Malaysia, both of which have been aggressively propagated by the mainstream media of late.
In Malaysia, everything is due to the problem of perception. The crime rate of the country is low. If you think it is high, then it is the problem of your perception. The police are doing great — so well in fact that our ex-IGP’s KPI score in 2009 was 113.8 per cent, as announced by Koh Tsu Koon in Parliament. A lot of us were wondering how it was possible statistically. Did that mean that the police had solved more cases involving crime than actually existed? Or that they had caught more people compared to the number of times when the law was actually violated like cases of candle vigils (ahem…)? Then again, if you still are scratching your head over how the numbers add up, then it has to be the problem of your perception.
Here, we have the powers-that-be telling us that Malaysia is one of the best governed countries in the world with the best education system that even exceeds the high standards of the US and Germany; the best democratic system; and the cleanest electoral system! The government claimed that corruption in the country is a mere perception and the MACC claimed that their tarnished reputation of being inefficient and inaction against the big shots was also perception. Now, even the EC has jumped onto the perception bandwagon in the midst of the post-election furore. If you still don’t agree with them, heck, you know what again? It is your bloody perception! Read the rest of this entry »
Is there still hope for MCA?
Stanley Koh | June 10, 2013
Free Malaysia Today
The consensus seems to be that the rot has gone too deep to be removed, at least in the foreseeable future.
COMMENT
Is it at all possible to arrest the rot in MCA so that it can begin nursing itself back to health in order to regain its standing as a political organisation capable of representing the interests of Malaysian Chinese?
As things stand today, there is little reason to be optimistic.
Even as it licks the wounds from the worst electoral beating it has suffered in its 64-year history, MCA appears to be inviting embarrassing questions about the quality of its current leadership. Of course, pundits were already asking similar questions long before the recent general election, but developments after the polls have intensified doubts about the leadership’s political maturity and its courage to institute reforms.
Commenting on deputy president Liow Tiong Lai’s announcement last week that the party was preparing a blueprint for reforms, internal critics told FMT it could be an attempt to whitewash a reversal of the pledge to reject appointments at all levels of the BN government.
They said such a U-turn seemed more and more likely now, with its proponents arguing that the party must heed the public call for it to abandon such a politically unwise pledge. Read the rest of this entry »
Dr. Mahathir should look within himself and within his own party UMNO to discover who the real ‘racists’ are
In Dr. Mahathir’s chequered career as a politician, he has always looked for ‘bogeymen’ in order to divert attention from his own shortcomings and that of UMNO as well as the Barisan Nasional coalition. It seems that he has now come full circle by once again blaming the Chinese and also the DAP for increasing racial polarization in Malaysia and for being ‘chauvinists’.
One can only guess if Dr. Mahathir’s post-GE13 barrage against the Chinese and the DAP is driven by his own blind prejudices or by fears that his true legacy will be revealed for all to see if Pakatan wins power in Putrajaya or by growing senility or perhaps all of the above.
What we do know is that his accusations that DAP is a chauvinist party that plays on racial sentiment to draw Chinese support away from the BN is nothing but a pack of lies that is totally divorced from reality.
The fact that Dr. Mahathir can say that ‘When it (DAP) held elections to its Central Committee recently other than Karpal Singh all the members elected were Chinese’ shows his utter disregard for facts in his crazed attempts to ‘brand’ DAP as a ‘chauvinist’ party.[1] A simple ‘google check’ would have shown Dr. Mahathir that M.Kulasegaran (current MP for Ipoh Barat), Gobind Singh Deo (current MP for Puchong) and Zairil Khir Johari (current MP for Bukit Bendera) were all elected into the Central Committee. The records will also show that DAP has had Indian and Malay leaders elected into the Central Executive Committee (CEC) in every single party elections since the formation of the party in 1966.
If Dr. Mahathir had bothered to examine the current DAP leadership line-up on our website[2], he would see that we have Malay, Chinese, Indian, Iban and Kadazan members in our Central Executive Committee. Rather than pointing the finger at the DAP, Dr. Mahathir should ask himself how many non-Malay leaders have been elected or appointed into the UMNO Supreme Council to answer the question of who the real racists are. Read the rest of this entry »
Prize for “Political Gaffe of the Month” or “Putting one’s foot in the mouth” will be a toss-up among three competitors, Wan Ahmad, Muhyiddin and Mahathir
Posted by Kit in Elections, Mahathir, Muhyiddin Yassin, Pakatan Rakyat, Zahid on Monday, 10 June 2013, 12:16 pm
The prize for “Political Gaffe of the Month” or “Putting one’s foot in the mouth” will be a toss-up among three competitors this month – Datuk Wan Ahmad Wan Omar, Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin and Tun Mahathir, viz:
• Election Commission deputy chairman Datuk Wan Ahmad Wan Omar in asking why he and the Election Commission Chairman Tan Sri Abdul Aziz Mohd Yusof should resign when they have done their job of running an election, completely blissful of the national and international uproar over 13GE for failing to meet the most basic criteria of being a clean, free and fair elections as to cause for the first time in the nation’s 56-year history widespread doubt about the legitimacy of Datuk Seri Najib Razak as the Prime Minister.
• Deputy Prime Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin’s threat that the 47% BN minority government will penalize and discriminate against 51% majority of popular vote for supporting Pakatan Rakyat and Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim in contrast to the 47% popular vote for Barisan Nasional and Datuk Seri Najib Razak – starkly raising the question whether Najib and the BN Government are Prime Minister and Government for only 47% of Malaysians or for all Malaysians.
• Former Prime Minister Tun Dr. Mahathir Mohamad’s latest racist vituperation alleging that the 2013GE outcome is proof that the Chinese in Malaysia are out to oust the political power of the Malays and to dominate Malaysian politics highlighting the falsehoods and moral turpitude he is prepared to indulge in to perpetrate his racist objectives .
Muhyiddin’s should stop his “double-speak” as his open threat of 47% minority government penalizing 51% majority of voters is the latest subversion and not defence of national institutions of the country
Posted by Kit in Constitution, Elections, Muhyiddin Yassin, Najib Razak, Pakatan Rakyat, UMNO on Monday, 10 June 2013, 8:09 am
Deputy Prime Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin should stop his “double-speak” as his open threat on Saturday of 47% minority government penalizing 51% majority of voters is the latest subversion and not defence of national institutions in the country.
It is surprising that Muhyiddin could be guilty or such “double speak” uttering totally contradictory sentiments at the same function, i.e. the BN thanksgiving function in Kundang Ulu, Johor.
Although Muhyiddin claimed that Malaysian voters have conveyed a clear message in the 13GE that they want the government to be more stern and bold in defending the important institutions in the country, “enforcing the law, upholding the country’s Constitution, and fighting crime effectively as well as eradicating corruption”, Muhyiddin has completely nullified these high-sounding sentiments with his threat to discriminate and penalize 51% of the popular vote who supported Pakatan Rakyat and Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim in contrast to the 47% of the voters who supported Barisan Nasional and Datuk Seri Najib Razak.
Surely, Muhyiddin’s declaration that the BN administration will direct “greater assistance” towards the communities that backed it during the general election, implying a punitive policy of neglect and discrimination for the 51% majority of the popular vote, is the most powerful proof that Najib has a long way to go to prove that he is Prime Minister of all Malaysians and not just 47% of Malaysians!
Or do we have a situation where we have Najib who wants to be Prime Minister of all Malaysians but Muhyiddin only wants to the Deputy Prime Minister for 47% of Malaysians?
When Muhyddin talked about the people’s “clear message” in wanting the government to defend the important institutions in the country, he has missed the Elephant in the Room as it is UMNO/BN who must bear the full responsibility in the past three decades for undermining and subverting the key national institutions in the country. Read the rest of this entry »
Edward Snowden identified as source of NSA leaks
Posted by Kit in Good Governance, IT on Monday, 10 June 2013, 7:01 am
By Barton Gellman, Aaron Blake and Greg Miller
Washington Post
Monday, June 10
Edward Snowden, a 29-year-old former undercover CIA employee, unmasked himself Sunday as the principal source of recent Washington Post and Guardian disclosures about top-secret National Security Agency programs.
Snowden, who has contracted for the NSA and works for the consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton, denounced what he described as systematic surveillance of innocent citizens and said in an interview that “it’s important to send a message to government that people will not be intimidated.”
Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper Jr. said Saturday that the NSA had initiated a Justice Department investigation into who leaked the information — an investigation supported by intelligence officials in Congress.
Snowden, whose full name is Edward Joseph Snowden, said he understands the risks of disclosing the information but felt it was important to do.
“I’m not going to hide,” Snowden told The Post from Hong Kong, where he has been staying. The Guardian was the first to publicly identify Snowden, at his request. “Allowing the U.S. government to intimidate its people with threats of retaliation for revealing wrongdoing is contrary to the public interest.”
Asked whether he believed his disclosures would change anything, he said: “I think they already have. Everyone everywhere now understands how bad things have gotten — and they’re talking about it. They have the power to decide for themselves whether they are willing to sacrifice their privacy to the surveillance state.”
Snowden said nobody was aware of his actions, including those closest to him. He said there wasn’t a single event that spurred his decision to leak the information.
“It was more of a slow realization that presidents could openly lie to secure the office and then break public promises without consequence,” he said.
Snowden said President Obama hasn’t lived up to his pledges of transparency. He blamed a lack of accountability in the Bush administration for continued abuses. The White House did not respond to multiple e-mails seeking comment and spokesman Josh Earnest, who was traveling with the president, said the White House would have no comment Sunday.
“It set an example that when powerful figures are suspected of wrongdoing, releasing them from the accountability of law is ‘for our own good,’ ” Snowden said. “That’s corrosive to the basic fairness of society.” Read the rest of this entry »
Just 16.7% to win simple majority in Parliament
Andrew Sagayam
The Sun
9 June 2013
PETALING JAYA (June 9, 2013): Astonishing as it may seem, it is technically possible for a political party to win a simple majority in Parliament and form the government by garnering a mere 2.21 million votes (or 16.7%) of the total electorate.
Because of the imbalance of registered voters in the 222 parliamentary constituencies, there are currently only 4,408,975 voters or 33.22% of the total electorate of 13,268,110 in the 112 seats with smaller numbers of registered voters.
The 112 constituencies have a very much smaller number of registered voters, ranging from 15,791 (Putrajaya) to 56,280 (Kuantan), in contrast with the remaining 110 constituencies with more voters, some in excess of 100,000, with the highest being Kapar with 144,159 registered voters.
As such, a political party needs to just win by one vote in these 112 seats – a third of which are in Sabah and Sarawak – to obtain a simple majority and form the federal government.
Calculations by theSun show that if a party were to win 50.1% in each of these 112 seats, it would only need to get about 2,209,000 votes (or about 16.65% of the total electorate). Read the rest of this entry »
A ‘C.I.D’ Cabinet
Posted by Kit in Corruption, Elections, Law & Order, Muhyiddin Yassin on Sunday, 9 June 2013, 8:11 pm
— The Malaysian Insider
Jun 09, 2013
JUNE 9 — Compromised. Insulting. Dangerous.
These three words describe aptly members of the Malaysian Cabinet formed following GE13.
* Compromised
Tengku Adnan Mansor is the least qualified to speak about the rule of law and following the law. This politician was found guilty by the Royal Commission of Inquiry of subverting the course of justice by trying to fix the appointment of judges.
The RCI recommended action against Tengku Adnan and five others for offences under the Sedition Act, Official Secrets Acts, Penal Code and the Legal Profession Act. The government disregarded the findings of the RCI, allowing Tengku Adnan to continue his political career. So today, he is a minister, giving him the platform to preach and lecture Malaysians, as he did when he chastised the Opposition for continuing its mass rallies.
“I would like to advise that we live in a place with law and order…we do not follow the laws of the jungle, “ he said, explaining why the police refused to grant a permit for the Opposition rally in Padang Merbok.
Can someone found guilty of subverting the rule of law talk about law and order? Can a compromised individual take the moral high ground? Read the rest of this entry »
There should be total revamp of the election system and the Election Commission, whose three functions should be carried out by three separate bodies
The 13th General Election has highlighted that the country has a very ineffective and inefficient election system which is incapable of conducting a clean, free, fair or democratic elections in the country, resulting for the first time in the nation’s 56-year history in a Prime Minister and a government whose legitimacy is under widespread doubt.
The time has come for a total revamp of the election system and the Election Commission, whose three functions should be carried out by three separate bodies.
Under the Constitution, the Election Commission has three functions, viz:
(i) To conduct elections to Parliament and the State Assemblies;
(ii) To register voters and prepare and revise electoral rolls;
(iii) To delimit constituencies.
In other democratic countries, these three functions are carried out by separate bodies and this is something we can emulate if it will lead to a cleaner, more just and fairer electoral system. Read the rest of this entry »
Mahathir should be a model Malaysian and not be a stereotypical racist in the evening of his days
Former Prime Minister, Tun Dr. Mahathir Mohamad has shocked and outraged many Malaysians with his recent conduct where both during and after the 13GE, he had been one of the most extremist and racist voices in the country.
In the evening of his days, Mahathir should be a model Malaysian instead of being a stereotypical racist, seeking to pit the Malays against the Chinese.
Immediately after the May 5 general election results, the Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak talked about the need for a programme of “national reconciliation” but if there is an independent study and investigation into the speeches and statements made during and after the 13th General Elections, I have no doubt that it would be found that all the racist and chauvinist utterances, inciting racial conflict and hatred, emanate from the Umno/Barisan Nasional side whether from the UMNO/BN leaders or from their mouthpieces whether official or unofficial, like Mahathir himself.
If all the racist and chauvinistic appeals, trying to incite communal distrust and discord, whether during or after the 13GE, emanate from the UMNO/BN side, how can the UMNO/BN leaders have the temerity of trying to put the blame of worsening racial relations on Pakatan Rakyat?
In the 1999 general elections, it was the Chinese voters who saved Mahathir and UMNO from the Barisan Alternative comprising DAP, Parti Keadilan, Parti Rakyat Malaysia and PAS when Anwar was first sacked as Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister and jailed in Sungai Buloh prison. Read the rest of this entry »
DAP leaders and members to start preparing for the 14th General Elections with two-fold objective – to effect change both at the Federal and Sabah state government levels
Sabah did not achieve our Pakatan Rakyat objectives of winning at least one third of the 26 parliamentary seats in Sabah so that in the three “fixed deposit” states of Sabah, Sarawak and Johore, PR can win 33 parliamentary seats to help Pakatan Rakyat to provide the final cluster of parliamentary seats to win Putrajaya for Pakatan Rakyat.
In the event, the three “fixed deposit” states of Sabah, Sarawak and Johore won for Pakatan Rakyat a total of 14 Parliamentary seats (Sabah 3, Sarawak 6 and Johore 5), out of a total of 83 seats, i.e. 16.9% instead of the 33.3% targetted.
Although this target for the three “fixed deposit” states of Sabah, Sarawak and Johore to achieve a total of 33 parliamentary seats for Pakatan Rakyat had not been realised, one ineluctable fact to emerge from the 13GE is that none of the three states of Sabah, Sarawak and Johore can now be regarded as a “fixed deposit” state for Barisan Nasional and the contest and competition for the hearts and minds of the people of Sabah, Sarawak and Johore are now fully out in the open arena.
For Sabah, a lively and strong Opposition presence has now been restored to the Sabah State Assembly after an absence of two decades, with 11 State Assemblymen (DAP 4 and PKR 7) from Pakatan Rakyat and one from Star. Read the rest of this entry »
Mahathir trying to be King Canute a thousand years ago to stop the rise of the tide in the way he is trying to foment racial conflict and tensions when the tide is for the end of race politics
Posted by Kit in Mahathir, Malaysian Dream on Saturday, 8 June 2013, 2:27 pm
Former Prime Minister, Tun Dr. Mahathir Mohamad is trying to be King Canute a thousand years ago to stop the rise of the tide in the way he is trying to stem the new tide in Malaysian politics after the 13th General Elections – growing support from Malaysians regardless of race for an end to the politics of race, corruption and abuses of power and their replacement by the politics of the Malaysian Dream rising above race, corruption and cronyism.
It is most shocking and outrageous that after 22 years as Prime Minister and after fathering Vision 2020 and Bangsa Malaysia, Mahathir should return to his racist roots during and after the 13th General Elections to foment racial conflict and tensions.
His latest racist fulmination that the 13th General Election is proof that the Chinese in Malaysia are out to oust the political power of the Malays and to dominate Malaysian politics is totally outrageous, reckless and irresponsible, and most unbecoming and unworthy of a person who had been Prime Minister for 22 years – and worst of all, a person who fathered Vision 2020 and Bangsa Malaysia.
Mahathir was already at his racist worst during the 13th General Elections when he made the preposterous and baseless allegation that I was contesting in Gelang Patah to create a “racial confrontation” and that I was inciting the Chinese to hate the Malays. Read the rest of this entry »
Accepting criticism with an open mind
Posted by Kit in Pakatan Rakyat on Saturday, 8 June 2013, 5:58 am
— Douglas Teoh
The Malaysian Insider
June 07, 2013
JUNE 7 — I have little difficulty in confessing that I am a Pakatan Rakyat supporter.
After weighing the pros and cons of either coalition, the answer that emerges seems rather intuitive in nature. The current Barisan Nasional (BN) is corrupt, greedy and tyrannical — the worst kind of democratic government possible. Compare that to Pakatan — freedom fighters, typical wage-earning leaders, who also happen to be the electoral underdog.
In this battle, Pakatan occupies the moral high-ground, strengthening their discourse with populism and calls for social justice. Consequentially, any attack on Pakatan’s “character” by BN supporters seems ludicrous and invalid.
So what’s the issue here? Some might say that this is after all a classic good-versus-evil political narrative. Our sentiments (as with any good story) often lie with the struggling underdog who champions a good cause.
But there’s a catch. The trouble with this kind of dichotomous division of political parties is that we over-sympathise with and to some extent even victimise our party of choice. Read the rest of this entry »
