The Baker Institute suggested that Malaysia’s anti-corruption agenda may be better served if BN could focus on reaping the results of a successful economy

Change or be changed, US think-tank advises BN

“Change is not easy in old hierarchical institutions like BN, and it has relied on corruption to raise funds and satisfy supporters for several generations.The ruling Barisan Nasional (BN) must change the way it does business or risk attack from a stronger opposition with the backing of fed-up Malaysians who have become more politically aware and adept at using social media, a US policy think-tank has said in an opinion piece published in the Houston Chronicle, the superpower’s sixth-largest newspaper.

In an analysis of the May 5 polls on Southeast Asia’s third-largest economy, the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy at Rice University in its Baker Institute Blog column said that the direction of Malaysia’s anti-graft agenda will be determined by how the ruling coalition responds to its newly felt electoral vulnerability. Another crony appointment to a GLC! No wonder Sime Darby is not a very healthy coporation as compared to past years, when it was the public’s favourite! The rot started with MM when established cronyism in an expansive way!

“Will it understand that pandering to special interests, money politics and crony capitalism are no longer a viable strategy? “Change is not easy in old hierarchical institutions like BN, and it has relied on corruption to raise funds and satisfy supporters for several generations.

“But if BN returns to business as usual, it will risk attack from an opposition that appears resurgent, backed by a more mobilized and fed up public,” said the institute, which ranks 13th among university-affiliated think-tanks worldwide, according to a 2012 study by the University of Pennsylvania’s Think Tanks and Civil Societies Programme.

 Is this the beginning of the end for Najib? Former PM Dr Mahathir Mohamad already started the ball rolling when he said Najib will probably stay on as there are no suitable candidates who can replace him.

Knowing how cunning Dr M is, I am sure he did not mean what he said. Now Zam and former finance minister Daim Zainuddin, both close associates of Dr M, are criticising Najib, calling him a clown. Where is the respect for our PM?

If I can remember correctly, a young student was threatened with the Sedition Act for stepping on the PM’s poster. It looks like there is a big battle ahead for Najib.

The think-tank noted that Malaysia has so far managed to dodge the harmful effects of corruption on the investment climate to remain one of Asia’s most vibrant economies.

But it said that Malaysians had shown they were more politically aware, judging from the increased social media coverage of the polls, and were no longer willing to tolerate corruption.

The results of the recently-concluded general election saw the BN retain power by a simple majority although it lost the popular vote to a resurgent opposition.

BN won 133 seats in the 222-member Parliament against the opposition Pakatan Rakyat’s 89 seats, drawing a weaker score than in Election 2008 and which the think-tank noted has put the 13-party ruling coalition in a precarious position unless it moves to reform the way it has conducted business by tackling corruption seriously.

The Baker Institute suggested that Malaysia’s anti-corruption agenda may be better served if BN could focus on reaping the results of a successful economy.

“To motivate itself to implement a major change towards clean behaviour, BN should focus on reaping the rewards of a successful economy.

“In order to facilitate long-term inclusive growth, the government should promote policies that will be applied fairly and transparently to all,” it said in its analysis headlined “Malaysia: Looking forward” carried yesterday.

The think-tank noted that Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak has made the first step by pulling back some affirmative action policies favouring Bumiputeras who form over half the population and which other analysts believe to be at the root of Malaysian corruption.

“Removing race-based policies is the first step in bringing the country together. However, it is unlikely that Najib will completely abolish these policies, as he still needs to appeal to his Malay supporters, which make up the base of BN,” the Rice University said.

It added that the PM needs to follow through on his electoral promises by detailing the steps for his administration to move forward and to enforce them, suggesting the government install “a more transparent, meritocratic system for selecting project managers… to avoid appointment based on family or political ties.”

It also suggested that the government consider dismantle the current practice of political party ownership of selective media enterprises as a move in the direction of greater transparency, noting the imbalance in news coverage as parties attempt to exert their influence.

The Baker Institute also suggested that public institutions, namely the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission and Public Complaints Bureau, also need to buck up reform, highlighting that “proper treatment of high profile cases could maximize the impact anti-corruption organizations have on the government.”

“While it remains to be seen whether the government will respond as hoped, its people are pushing for radical change.

“Malaysia needs leaders who are willing to take drastic measures to tackle corruption,” it said.

“Will it understand that pandering to special interests, money politics and crony capitalism are no longer a viable strategy?  why are bribes bad? If bribes are bad, why is it perfectly legit to have brokers and middlemen? If you hire a broker to find a flat, why is it wrong to hire a broker There’s something seriously wrong with such an order itself. You cannot impose patriotism on people. It must come from within. There was a time when our hearts swelled with pride every time we saw the wave  of our flagor heard the national anthem play. That pride has gone out of our lives today. What remains is but a gaping void and a shining rage. We are angry with everything around us. But, above all, we are angry with ourselves. How could we have allowed the rot to set in so deep? Why were we blind for so long? Why did we not protest before protest itself became an ineffective tool?

We have suddenly woken up to the nightmare of an incessantly we grew up in an era of certainties. We knew what was right, what was wrong. So even when we did wrong, often in defiance of authority, we believed we were in the right. There was no ambivalence, no doubt in our mind as to good and bad, moral and immoral. There was clarity about most things that mattered. This defined us as a generation. We knew what we stood for.

That certainty has chipped away over the years. We live today in an Age of Moral Ambivalence. There is a charming ambiguity over most things, and it’s this ambiguity that best reflects our moral dilemma. We are all  civil society activists standing in the battlefield, a bit unsure, a bit confused, desperately seeking that certitude which eludes us. Faith cannot provide it as easily as it once did. Tradition lies tattered before the onslaught of modernity. The moral compass that once showed us the way is now defunct. Before us, lies the wilderness. Where our heroes are no longer heroes and villainy is infinitely more seductive. In such times, how easy can it be to know what’s right, what’s wrong?

This ambiguity has seeped into our public life. Do we hang a man when he is sentenced to death? We are at odds with the world if we do. State killing is abolished almost everywhere.  If we choose instead to accept the  Najib-Rosmah’s way that an eye for an eye make we Malaysian blind,

Yes, something has gone wrong with Malaysia and the rot begins with you and me.

If we are to fight the rot, we must stand up, each one of us, and try to reclaim our Malaysia. We must reclaim our Malaysian from the politicians. We must reclaim our Malaysia from those Najib’s crony businessmen who have brought it shame and disrepute. And yes, we must also reclaim our Malaysia from the media. We must reclaim it from the prophets of doom who constantly declaim that our dreams are dead. We must rediscover hope. We must find our dreams again. We must look in every nook and cranny where beauty, talent, faith and hope lie. We must reclaim our imagination. We must challenge ourselves to rise above the faithlessness around us and seek that courage which we have ignored while drooling over instant success.

Life is not Maggie noodles. There are no quick fixes to the problems around us. But there are ways to rise above them and, hopefully, beat them. Those ways do not lie in blind outrage. They lie in our capacity to rise above our disappointments, our rage and seek real solutions. How do we do it? It’s easy. The first step is: Do not keep quiet. Do not tolerate injustice. Do not look away when you see people doing wrong. Seek the courage within yourself to stand up to it. That’s the first step towards feeling proud as Malaysian. Be unafraid.

The next important step derives from this. Reclaim your freedoms. Over recent years, we have steadily lost them. To a Government trying to nervously cover its tracks after every scam. To the new home minister  terrorising us. To crackpots and vandals. To moral brigades who want to dictate to us what we can say, read, watch, listen to, wear, eat and drink. To  has lost its moral compass. To pressure groups that want to keep us in the 18th century by proudly endorsing caste crimes and honour killings. To a media that often loses its courage and caves in. It’s time we stood up and reclaimed our freedoms. For only a free nation is a strong one.Remember, every time someone is arrested for a cartoon or a tweet or a Facebook post, a book or a song or a blog or a painting, every time a scene is cut out from a film because it can hurt someone’s feelings, a part of us dies. For India is the sum total of all that we believe in, however conflicting our views may be.

A tense climate

The central message of this article is that despite whether we believe in what Adli and others preach, any government would behave similarly.

Although I do not follow the Pakatan gospel, I believe that space should be allotted for dissent, but not abused when it is allotted rather generously in contrast to other countries, or used to spread unverified claims and unsubstantiated allegations.

While these arrests may do well to conjure nostalgia of days past when Malaysian leaders used the ISA to roundup and stifle dissidents, the current scenario is far less authoritarian by contrast.

Adli was released on bail in less than a week, while Tian Chua, Tamrin Ghafar and Haris Ibrahim were released in less than 48 hours. These arrests, intended to squash the momentum to rally on Putrajaya, probably did the opposite – they turned Adam Adli into a household name for many.

If members of the Opposition want to help dismantle draconian legislation, they should cease from endlessly provoking the state into acting with a heavy-hand.

The general election results prove that the two-coalition system is firmly entrenched, and the hostility between political actors that by necessity must work together is deeply troubling.

Members of Pakatan who endorsed the usurpation of Putrajaya only advertise their contentious motives and political immaturity. For those who choose not parrot the Pakatan mantras, it is because the Opposition relies on inflated claims of the Barisan Nasional engineering ‘massive fraud’, and it has not produced definitive evidence that has convinced the greater population.

The hostility between the two coalitions is not conducive to stability, or the more just democratic order that both parties aspire to. This tense climate has divided the country, and created a situation where supporters of either side dismiss the claims of the other instinctively.

Such a climate stifles the ability of individuals to objectively form their own conclusions.

It is important that PM Najib Tun Razak repeals and replaces the Sedition Act with the National Harmony Act as he promised to do. In doing that, the opposition must close the book on its ‘massive fraud’ road show and begin co-operating with the federal government on issues of concern.

For now, members of the Opposition are more focused on coaxing the government into abandoning its ‘soft’ approach rather than focusing on issues of governance.it is about time that somebody wrote a treatise on ‘The Paranoid Style in Malay Ethnosurvivalist Politics’.

After years of squandering public money on trying to buy popularity for himself, and paying allegedly adoring crowds to wave ‘I love PM’ placards at his every orchestrated appearance, Najib Abdul Razak finds himself not so much a prime minister, as a fit subject for a political post-mortem.

He’s clearly mentally, morally and reputationally dead, but still kept – at least apparently – alive by the BN support system of electoral manipulators, professional liars and scurrilous spin doctors.

Najib’s losing of the popular vote despite ‘owning’ the overwhelming support of the police, judiciary, civil services, the Election Commission (EC) and the nation’s entire array of print and air media, was an absolute death-blow to him and his entire illegitimate, corrupt and criminal regime.

And about time too, as BN has for decades clung to power by killing democracy, justice, civil liberties and human rights, and thus metaphorically ruling over Malaysians’ dead bodies.

Literally, too, over the dead bodies of the hundreds who have died at the hands and in the custody of BN’s perennial partners-in-crime, the Police and the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC).

The latest of these custodial killings, that of N Dharmendran  a ‘suspect’ who was clearly the victim of beatings and other tortures – including, bizarrely, the stapling of his ears – came less than a fortnight after BN’s near-fatal performance in the general election.

Yet Najib and his regime have been so busy scrambling to reincarnate themselves that they have treated this crime with their customary deathly silence.

Voting in cold blood?

A response that always leaves me wondering what motivates millions of Malaysians – albeit a minority as of this recent and comprehensively rigged election – to actually go out and vote in cold blood for murderers and accessories to murder.

Surely every Malaysian citizen knows by now that there have been countless killings by BN’s forces of so-called ‘law and order’ and that most have gone outrageously uninvestigated or utterly unreported.

Or that in other cases have involved clear perversions of justice, as in such high-profile homicides as that of Mongolian translator Altantuya Shaariibuu, who was involved in the Scorpene submarines deal while Najib was defence minister, and of Teoh Beng Hock who notoriously ‘fell’ from a high window at MACC headquarters.

And who can forget the atrocious case of A Kugananthan, pictures of whose mutilated corpse on the Internet shocked the nation if not the world, but resulted in the charging of just one police suspect – and an Indian at that – with “causing hurt”?

Certainly, the MIC and other misleaders of the Indian Malaysian community don’t appear to care too much about what a toll the BN regime has been taking of their fellows.

So it was heartening to see recently that DAP’s Ipoh Barat MP M Kulasegaran has condemned Hindraf chairperson and now Deputy Minister in the new BN cabinet, P Waythamoorthy, for his “deafening silence” over this latest death in police custody.

Calling Waythamoorthy (right) “bad-intentioned” for dropping demands for cessation of custodial deaths from its demands in making his pre-election pact with BN, Kulasegaran flayed him for selling out the interests of the Indian community “in return for the material rewards of ministerial office”.

But of course this criticism applies to BN ministers and members of all races – they’re in it for the power to steal from Malaysians of any or all races, and those who don’t like it can go drop dead.

Or, as newly-minted Home Minister Ahmad Zahid Hamidi alternatively put it in an article he wrote for the gutter BN daily Utusan Malaysia in criticism of the public rallies protesting fraudulent conduct of the recent general election: If they don’t like it, they can “migrate elsewhere”.

This, quickly seconded by Selangor BN Deputy Chief Noh Omar’s message to malcontents that they should “go live in the forest”, was the first shot in a campaign – the duo have since been joined by UMNO Information chief Ahmad Maslan, UMNO Youth chief and new Youth and Sports Minister Khairy Jamaluddin, along with PM Najib himself – to deny any impropriety in the conduct of the general election.

The ‘con’ in ‘constitution’

The agreed story goes, apparently, that the polls was conducted according to the provisions of the constitution. Najib – who has proven himself such a persistent, indeed pathological liar that he might as well have put the “con” in “constitution” – declared that “the claim that we stole victory from the Opposition is a falsehood because we did not cheat in the recent GE13″.

According to Bernama, the news agency that plays the dummy to him and other BN ventriloquists, Najib said that “the supremacy and loftiness of the constitution is the main pillar of the nation, but the people have avenues to voice their opinions in line with parliamentary democracy”.

What Najib and his collaborators in this evidently well-rehearsed fairytale ‘forgot’ to mention, of course, was that during all the years in which BN enjoyed the two-thirds parliamentary majority required for any amendment of the constitution, the regime then turned its dead hand to robbing this formerly supreme and lofty document of most of its democratic provisions.

For example, there is their move to pass the Printing Presses and Publications Act 1984 for the specific purpose of denying the people their constitutional right to free news media. In addition, BN’s retaining of the Internal Security Act (ISA) – and more recently replaced with the Peaceful Assembly Act 2012 (PAA) – to override the constitutional right of peaceful assembly.

As for constitutional provisions designed to ensure free and fair elections – like the specification that no electorate should contain 20 percent more or less voters than any other, or that the EC be independent – they seem to have been simply ignored by BN in its obscene enthusiasm for gerrymandering, roll-stacking and other such undemocratic stunts.

Stunts like the latest one of declaring peaceful public rallies and candlelight vigils illegal, and charging speakers at these events such as student activist Adam Adli Abdul Halim, Anything But UMNO (ABU) chief Haris Ibrahim (left) and other opposition figures with sedition while giving free rein to purveyors of poisonous BN propaganda.

In short, far from convincing anybody but themselves and their craven cronies that democracy is alive and well in Malaysia, and that the 13th general was a model example of the Westminster system in action, all Najib and his accomplices have achieved thus far is to demonstrate that their credibility, like their reputation, is dead.

And that for the next five years, or however long it takes for the people to wrest power back from this gang of cheating crooks, the premiership of Najib – or any other stooge that the lying, dying BN manages to find to replace him – will be nothing but one endless post-mortem.

Leadership qualities were apparent in Muhyiddin since the beginnings of his career. The Johor born graduated from Universiti Malaya in Kuala Lumpur before joining the Johor state public service as Assistant Secretary of Training and Scholarship. In 1986, he became Menteri Besar of Johor, and in his ten years made significant improvements to the state. The father of four, however, encountered a bumpier road within UMNO, where he contested and lost several positions including the Supreme Council seat and the position of Vice-President.

But where he failed, Muhyiddin tried and tried again, and he eventually ascended the UMNO ladder steadily from vice president to Deputy President in 2009 when Najib replaced Badawi. His diligence in attaining his goals despite the less than perfect success rate perhaps reveals a stronger character and a fighting spirit very obviously lacking in our current Prime Minister.

Muhyiddin Yassin is an unfortunate victim of this quagmire. By default,  must resolve to to stand up and be counted  transform UMNO into the modern, merit-based, non-dynastic party its founding fathers intended it to be. with  Muhyiddin Yassin  as a capable leader to take over, Umno will be the first choice  of the Malay  again

Najib the dynast he is – with all the baggage that comes with it, he must value  democracy above family. If he doesn’t, we will know where he stands. Dynasty stunts a political party. Dynastic Najib like are bereft of genuinely talented leaders. Once the patriarch is gone, the rest atrophy. Merit rises and then bumps its head up against a mezzanine ceiling. Everyone rises to the level of the family heir’s incompetence.As Prof Ashutosh Varshney of Columbia University wrote in an article earlier this week, dynasty is inherently undemocratic and antithetical to good governance. He held – again rightly – Najib responsible for the anti-democratic example he set with  his policies.

UMNO   members, including several political heavyweights, had watched in silence as  the ‘oust Najib’ camp has already acquired a majority, and the momentum seems to be firmly on its side. With the fence-sitters having now become crucial, both sides are furiously working the phones. The situation is fluid, and is further complicated by the fact that different office-bearers of the same association are often speaking in divergent voices.That the attitude of the anti-Najib group was hardening became apparent That leaves  fence-sitters, who may find it difficult to stand up for Najib  they find a majority ranged against Najib would lose by a three-fourths majority and be forced out of office. UMNO would be better off cutting its political umbilical cord with Najib. A political party cannot be subservient, even marginally, to a socio-cultural organisation.If the PM does not have absolute power – and the absolute accountability that goes with it – we open ourselves to misgovernance. It’s no coincidence have witnessed more corruption scandals than during any other similar period of government in the past. When the head of the government has to shut his eyes to financial malignancy at the adharmic behest of his party or coalition, corruption is the intended consequence.

Our politics is a victim of patronage, feudalism and corruption. The opacity of political party balance sheets, the presence of criminals in parliament, and the lack of accountability in family-run political parties vested interests, Najib want to keep Malay politics as unaccountable and corrupt as family-run politics, will oppose such reform while paying lip service to it. The toothless cabinet presented by earlier this week is an example of how those in power will try to continue pulling the wool over Malays’ eyes.For those who have cared to notice UMNO member  are the most- effective political weapon of influencing, changing,in the end it is strong UMNO members opinion that can compel change and cleanse UMNO politics. Najib  and  his cabinet are locked in a self-fullfilling embrace. UMNO members need to break the nexus and the time to do that is now.In GE13, Pakatan got 89 seats, nearly missing on a dozen other Parliamentary seats and Pakatan got the popular votes exceeding 51 percent.Najib must take the blame for GE13 fiasco When Badawi fared badly in GE12, Umno members current Premier Najib Razak  pushed for the ouster of Badawi.Now the same thing has come around,and because Mukhriz Mahathir is  in line to take up the deputy prime minister’s post, Mahathir prefers to back  Muhyiddin Yassin.  Najib must pay the same price Pak Lah paid and Najib must suffer the same fate as what he did to Pak Lah. This has now came to haunt him.The time pressure is piling up on Najib and it is better for Najib to announce a dateline for him to step down graciously.

Further discord between Najib and Muhyiddin includes Muhyiddin’s decision to discontinue the teaching of Science and Mathematics in English, which Kita President and former UMNO law minister Zaid Ibrahim alleged as against Najib’s ideals. Moreover, according to some news reports, Muhyiddin also openly refuted Najib’s plan to set up a Parliamentary Select Committee on polls reforms, following Bersih 2.0.

Evidently, Najib’s weak handling of his deputy has served to further tarnish his leadership in the eyes of many, and now, as many news outlets have highlighted, he could be getting a taste of his own medicine, as analysts reportedly predict the termination of his leadership by 2012.

However, as Muhyiddin aligns himself with papers such as Utusan and makes abundantly clear that he is “Malay First”, his extremist image at the forefront of UMNO may cost the party the loss of support from even more non-Malays, which clearly after Bersih 2.0 is already wafer thin.

With Muhyiddin as acting leader, the party’s future would be uncertain at best, especially during a time of the people’s political awakening for their right to a non-apartheid establishment. As a country demanding fair and equal non-racial politics, Muhyiddin’s leadership in UMNO would either destroy the hopes and future of the party, or very likely, country.

Despite these concerns, realistically, with no other frontrunner for the party’s leadership position and alleged support from former Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, Deputy Muhyddin Yassin could well wrench both title and power from our current premier without so much as a “Tak boleh-lah!”.

In a democracy, voters elect a political party to govern in the expectation that its legislative leader – the party president– will set final policy. for and what they’ve got don’t add up. That flies in the face of fundamental democratic principles. It doesn’t happen in any mature democracy worldwide. It didn’t happen in Malaysia either  bad habit of a virus of dynastic politics Others outsource the job to family members:

Election is a phenomenon in this nation that is taken with a different fervour in every part. The gifts of freedom of speech are cherished so well and humorously, mostly by the common man, who despite his limited exposure to formal education, has tons of common sense. The Hindi belt has particularly championed its vocabulary and attitude to discuss a general election at every street corner, paan shop, government office, not to forget, the bar association. Quite practical souls, they understand at least some bits of their empowerment by the Constitution. Since not much has changed over a lifetime, there is an unmistakable sense of pragmatism. That good and evil shall exist together, and that exercising their franchise is actually an art in balancing the scales of destiny as set by the Lord above. Therefore, there is no question of winners or losers. Candidates, (and now comes the hybrid vocabulary) are discussed as, “Capabull (capable), “Passibull” (possible), and most importantly, “Suitabull” (suitable). Experienced as they are in their changeless environments, it is “Suitabull” that should be the winning quality of the candidate. Graft, criminal records, attempted and missed attempts at murders, are to be set aside.  politics indeed has fallen prey to “suitability”, and other convenient terms as “compulsions of coalition”, “anti-incumbancy factor” more often than they have stood by principles. Once you have the chair, everything else can be bought, borrowed and adjusted. There were people who were pushed up the ladder to be sort of stand-by PMs, till larger political equations unfolded. Not that these people were not leaders in their own rights,

Abdul Kadir also said that BN’s war room should acknowledge that it had lost out to Najib’s predecessor Tun Abdullah Ahmad Badawi and his advisers, referring to the former BN chief who had retained power in 2008 despite his coalition losing its customary two-thirds parliamentary majority for the first time in history.

“Whatever it is, Abdullah can now hold his head up high because the accusation that his performance in PRU 2008 was hambar is no longer accurate because Mohd Najib’s achievement was even worse despite support by Dr Mahathir and Daim. Looking at Mohd Najib’s achievement, I myself feel that (I had) over-criticised Abdullah after GE 2008.

“Like it or not, Mohd Najib and his staff that run the ‘Bilik Perang’ (War Room) BN should sincerely, openly and transparently admit that their boasts had memakan diri (failed) and they lost to Abdullah and his Fourth Floor Boys.”

The Malaysian Insider previously reported that sources within BN had questioned the strategies used by the BN war room, but BN secretary-general Datuk Seri Tengku Adnan Tengku Mansor reportedly denied on May 15 that the war room had failed to achieve its targets, pointing out that BN had won the mandate to form the federal government.

On Monday, Abdul Kadir’s blog carried a transcript of Daim’s interview with local daily China Press, where the former Finance Minister blamed Najib’s advisers for BN’s failure to regain a two-thirds parliamentary majority, claiming that they had used the wrong strategy to drive BN’s election campaign.

In the same blog post today, Abdul Kadir noted that Najib  no has backing from the influential Dr Mahathir and may experience less opposition from those trying to take Najib down.

“In the political arena, Mohd Najib Abdul Razak’s position will continue to be disputed. Just maybe not as outspoken as what happened to Tun Abdullah Ahmad Badawi after PRU 2008 because  many harsh comments have been directed at Daim since his interview criticising Najib .

Observers have said BN’s performance will likely affect 59-year-old Najib’s bid to stay on as UMNO president, with Deputy Prime Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin, 66, seen as a possible contender for the post.

Despite the BN’s poorer overall electoral results, Najib’s leadership had ensured UMNO succeeded in netting a significant nine more seats in Election 2013, giving the Malay party a total of 88 in the Dewan Rakyat compared to 79 in Election 2008.

He said many harsh comments have been directed at Daim since his interview criticising Najib and his men was published.Dr Mahathir has said BN has no choice but to throw its weight behind Najib, who will likely survive his second term as prime minister due to a lack of an alternative, international business newswire Bloomberg reported on May 25.

How about imposing some simple & strict & practical measures to combat rampant corruption in . Anybody out there want to take the lead?  some basic guideline to safeguard journalism from “prostitution” among young journalist. Forget the dinosaurs corrupted & buttering journalist. Dzulkarnian Taib you want to take the lead here?

Is it appropriate for journalists to take expensive gifts from the government? The question is being debated in the community after Akhilesh Yadav government distributed tablets to a section of mediapersons. The reason of government’s generosity is not clear. Perhaps it wants to keep scribes in a good humour at a time when the government is being attacked from all quarters for law and order collapse and governance failure in the state. But the big question being debated is that what made journalists accept the gift?

Why impose strict conditions on malaysiakini? What about Utusan, BH, China Press etc etc. Why these papers don’t need conditions? You sound so childish like you don’t know the meaning of Journalism. I suggest that you read and of course try to understand the ethic and standard of journalism before you start talking. Obviously you failed to understand the basic concept of Journalism and is an embarrassment to Journalists in particular and journalism in general. Worst of all you call yourself the President of Young Journalist Club??

Normally, schemes are open to all journalists but this time the Najib has restricted it to select beneficiaries. Those left out from the ‘elite club’ are offended as they feel it ‘amounted’ to lowering of their status. Among those who have taken the gift include first timers as well as the ones who never lose an opportunity to avail benefits. While some felt guilty, they still took the tablet, a few were seen flaunting, others kept it at home. Those who have refused to take the gift cited ethical reasons. While some said that it is against professional code of their organisation, others find fault in the ‘clandestine’ selection and distribution process and say that the scheme should have been for all. A few rejected because it was against their principles.

 Najib has been diagnosed with “cognitive and behavioral abnormities” resulting in “abrasive behavior

“It is quite normal to suffer from such  problems when he know that he will be losing his UMNO president post

Such is Malay’s fate – to be “ruled” by either totally corrupt or totally arrogant “senior” bureaucrats who are never accountable for anything they do in their life and are ruining tTanah Melayu through their TOTAL ARROGANCE.showed the world just what can be done when Malaysia’s daunting civil service takes control – and the result wasn’t pretty. Corruption, waste, inefficiency, obfuscation and a cancerous lack of accountability in officialdom – and all of it on an Olympian scale. ...Some economists have calculated that Malaysia’s bureaucratic inefficiency costs the country 1 to 2 points in annual growth.

Why waste money promoting Najib not UMNO “UMNO needs to kick Najibwho will destroy it to protect their own narrow interests by crony baitin, insufferable attitude of PM-Malaysiaa’s Arrogant Servants

If UMNO goes on along this line and if the government machinery, including the police, continue to selectively prosecute only those opposed to them, they can expect a severe backlash from the electorate five or less years down the line.

We  came face-to-face with insufferable arrogance. The kind that makes you wonder what props it up; the kind that is almost impossible to believe unless you face it yourself.

Before I tell you what happened, let me ask a simple question: “How many of you have tried to meet our PM or first lady Rosmah ?  How many of you have tried to do it without pulling some strings?”

Considering that the majority of voters were against BN and by implication UMNO, the stance towards needless toughness and the callous appeal to base racial hatred will only alienate the BN from the public who have clearly indicated they want change for the better and which have by and large rejected race itself as an issue.

Umno remains the party of the people’s choice based on the results of the recent 13th general election, Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak said.

He said this was evident with Umno winning 88 of the parliamentary seats in the election, from 79 in the 2008 general election.

“If compared with the opposition, they have 89 seats, meaning Umno alone can equalise the seats won by the opposition allies comprising DAP, PKR and PAS,” he told reporters after chairing the Umno Supreme Council meeting here Friday.

Najib, who is Umno president, said the party’s performance was also gauged by its ability to wrest back Kedah and Perak, as well as the increase in votes obtained.

“According to our study, there is about 30 per cent increase in votes for Umno from the 12th general election,” he added.

As such, he said, Umno would continue to strengthen its machinery through various improvements.

“The Umno supreme council has received suggestions from the management committee chaired by deputy president Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin on the need for us to review the party’s administration at the headquarters.

“This will involve research and training, the social media, information, etc,” he added.

Najib said restructuring was necessary to ensure efforts, message and all directives by the supreme council could be implemented smoothly.

“Restructuring will be carried in tandem with the need to get professionals to work full time and be dedicated to the tasks given,” he added.

It reflects a belligerent, biased, boorish and childish response to election results by influential quarters, including ministers, a former prominent judge, Utusan Malaysia editors and others who have successfully drowned out a few reasonable voices within UMNO and hijacked the so-called reconciliation process post-elections.

Persisting with these actions has not only put paid to the reconciliation process but unnecessarily raised tensions among all people. This may have been the intention of those who raised these issues in such a manner in the hope of keeping themselves and their ilk in power by perpetuating fear.

But in the end, those who play with fire are likely to burn themselves. Malaysians are already aware that the race card is repeatedly played to trump all manner of ills facing Malaysia, and especially UMNO and BN patronage, corruption and cronyism which lead to a plethora of social ills.

What makes this system so formidable is the complete lack of accountability. It is virtually impossible to fire a “Class I Gazetted Officer”. Even the most egregious misdemeanors usually end with a “suspension” that is quietly revoked once the wrong has faded from public memory.

Not only are there no consequences, there is no “incentive” to do good either. Whether you are one of the best or humdrum run-of-the-mill, promotions for the first several years in these services are lock-step with the entire “batch” – regardless of ability, performance or indeed non-performance. Unsurprisingly this system manages to corrode even the best and the brightest over the course of their careers.

“Omission” is not a sin. So the default is “no action”. There is no penalty for indecisiveness and no reward for taking a decision. The result: A system that moves at glacial speed completely oblivious, impervous to the sweeping changes happening around it. Of all the reasons why the “steel frame” needs to be dismantled, one sums it all. The frame is rusted. It no longer supports but obstructs. It is not a support but a barrier.

I realise I am probably lumping a lot of fair, upright, decisive and conscientious officers in this sweeping generalisation. But if they are true to themselves, they will, I suspect, agree with me that the rot within is deep and is beyond the point where it can be stemmed.

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Zam’s attacks beginning of the end for Najib?  this infighting in Umno will see them split sooner rather than later. There’s no hope for Umno in its present state. Once it splits, there’s a possibility of reform. From day one, we knew that Umno will be going for his head post-GE13; but the fact that old … Read more

MUKHRIZ MAHATHIR’S PROXY TAN SRI ZAINUDDIN MAIDIN SAID UMNO LEADERSHIP SEEN IN A STATE OF PANIC MEGLOMANIC NAJIB SHOULD RESIGN

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MUHYIDDIN YASSIN- MUKHRIZ MAHATHIR NEW CURRENCIES OF POWER NAJIB IS ON THE WAYOUT

There is a sense of horror that pervades the news in recent months.  It seems as is a basic form of humanity has been lost as one horrific instance of barbarism follows another.  It is as if routine exploitation and violence is no longer enough; we are seeing a new brutalities of a kind that … Read more

For the media is increasingly filled with the same kind of tactics that politicians have forever been accused of: hyper aggressive, unbothered about the law, abusive in language, attacking each other without any proof, etc etc. The truth is that even more than politicians, it is the media now that should be accused of adopting such tactics. what about journalists who are permanent fixures on TV? Isn’t it almost predictable what they will say, knowing their political orientation, no matter what the subject of discussion? what about TV channels that intentionally wrongly identify panelists so that more credibility can be attributed to their statements?now suspect most people who come on TV come with an agenda; only it is not identified. I say this is done intentionally because I have pointed out this glitch to some of these anchors, and while all of them have acknowledged the mistake, they have kept making it for longer. Aren’t all of these people who appear under a false identity goons? I find it strange that a TV channel should pretend to be such a torch bearer of morality as to call politicians goons, but ignore the fact that it and its compatriots are nothing but the same. It is because of such TV channels that the entire TV news category has become a blot on journalism itself. No one takes TV news seriously. That is why no one watches them.This is not to say that there are not a lot of goons in the political class.

All I am saying is that our TV anchors should be the last ones to call politicians goons. They have a lot of soul searching to do themselves.

The real truth is that anyone who has power becomes a goon in India. The political class obviously is the biggest abuser of power. But the media is not far behind. It realizes it has enormous power. TV news channels love to flash their power. In fact, a TV channel once ran a proud promo “We got this CM sacked”. Now you decide, who is the bigger goon – the politician or the tv channel anchor?

We don’t need outside enemies like DAP and PAS . We are our own worst enemy the single biggest  threat  Malays faces lies not outside, within Najib. This has tragically been highlighted by the G13  perpetrated DAP and PAS

“Caesar’s wife must not only has to be pure, she must also be seen to be pure”.
That was what Fourth Prime Minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad said recently when asked about how and who should be in Prime Minister Dato’ Srì Mohd. Najib Tun Razak’s first own mandate Cabinet.
That is a very sound advice, considering PM Najib’s immediate exercise to pick his own lieutenants in the team which has the daunting task to deliver his various ‘Transformation Plan’ programs, promises made and on going policies such as ‘Vision 2020′.
The team must be personalities who can strategically think, plan, delibrate, collectively decide, lead, articulate when it is cascaded downwards, dynamism to engage and work. Most of all, they must be persons who are neither tainted, perceived to be tainted nor have skeletons-in-their-closet.
PM Najib is expected to choose from the 133 BN MPs who won, to fill 30 or so Minister posts and probably another 42-45 Deputy Minister jobs. It is expected some new Senators would also be sworn in and existing ones included as well in this Cabinet.

There is a sense of horror that pervades the news in recent months.  It seems as is a basic form of humanity has been lost as one horrific instance of barbarism follows another.  It is as if routine exploitation and violence is no longer enough; we are seeing a new brutalities of a kind that are difficult to comprehend. What kind of a human being violates a child in such an inhuman way, and why are we seeing so many such incidents now?  It is true that the administrative machinery in Malaysia is increasingly being exposed as being grossly inefficient and lacking in will, but tempting as it is to put the blame exclusively at the doorstep of the administrative and the political establishment, the problem is a deeper one. A strong law enforcement apparatus will certainly help curtail crime, but the issue here is not about the volume of crime, but its nature. The answer to that lies outside in society, and in the many transformations it is undergoing.

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A pattern that unites a lot of the incidents we have seen is in a new desire and facility in using power. At one level, there is nothing new about this- politics in Malaysia has largely been about the distribution and use of power, often in its most naked sense. Incidents like the one where the police beat up the victim and her family in  with impunity in public or the recent one where the parents of the 14 year old who was raped and tortured  were  attempted to be bribed into silence and a protestor slapped for complaining about it are part of an existing pattern of behaviour. The powerless victim is above all defined by her absence of power rather than by the nature of the complaint or indeed any claim to humanity. Even a child’s torture strikes no emotional chord when viewed through the lens of power. What we see occasionally in media today, thanks to the ubiquity of the camera, is clearly the tip of  a very large iceberg- one can only imagine the treatment meted out to areas that are seen to be ‘disturbed’ and hence ignored by the mainstream with apparent

PM Najib must not make the mistake of bringing in ghastly personalities of the past, in the likes of Nazri Aziz and Johari Baharom. .
Pandering into popularity has been proven to be delusional and in PM Najib’s call for 13GE, disastrous.
It is very clear the methods and measurements of the feelings of the rakyat is grossly defective. More ghastly is that the so called ‘Advisors’ and ‘Think-Tank’ in the PWTC War-Room are delusional.
It is also obvious that the amount of sabotage within BN in the past month is enough to awaken PM Najib that from now on, he got to be tough on them. No more ‘Mr. Nice Guy’ or ‘Populist’.
Whatever shred of confidence PM Najib still enjoy from the rakyat shouldn’t be marred further. It is believed he was asked to restructure his own Internal Team and Advisors and adopt the past methods which have been proven.
PM Najib is neither a cat nor does he has nine lives. Three GEs ago, complacency and probably miscalculations got him scrapped through his Pekan Parliamentary seat with only a 241 majority. He cannot afford to push his luck too thin on the envelope of risk.

Vinod Rai, the CAG, retired recently. His fans often compare him with the great TN Seshan, the Chief Election Commissioner between 1991-96. I fail to understand why. Seshan was a dynamo who functioned within his Constitution defined mandate, bore no political preferences, and stayed focused on the issue (electoral reforms), never the personalities (the politicians) involved. He left India better. If anything, Vinod Rai is the exact opposite; one who breached the constitutional limit, played political favorites and focused on personalities (see his attack of Sibal yesterday), not issues. Rai was out and out, a political animal. Manmohan Singh may have failed to arouse the animal spirits of India’s business class, but it appears he certainly aroused Mr. Rai’s.

Seshan cleaned up elections. Rai messed up auditing. Seshan steered clear of politics. Rai basked in it. Seshan (ironically) united the politicians into attacking him; Rai divided them between the ruling dispensation and the opposition. Seshan didn’t go about checking with politicians if they were on the right path. Rai did exactly that (Murli Manohar Joshi). Seshan was intellectually honest. Rai intellectually bankrupt. Seshan was successful. Rai will go down as being a failure. Where’s the comparison?

Lets be honest. Rai basked in breaching constitutional propriety. He probably found accounting boring and decided to become the one-man PAC itself, combining the job of maker of the audit reports with that of the checker of the same. He did what no other auditor does – go to the shareholders (voters) directly – through much publicized press conferences, flashing copies of his report and even smiling for the cameras. He was intellectually dishonest because he intentionally failed to understand that making policy is not his domain; that the cheap spectrum policy had several downstream benefits; that the intention of every government policy is not to maximize revenues (a point the Supreme Court later re-affirmed); and that his “innocuous” naming of something as “notional loss” would be spun by his favorite political party into “mota maal”.

Vinod Rai was surely a smart man, who played his political cards right. He knew that he was above the reach of any politician; his impeachment nearly impossible because of the divided Houses. He used this to the hilt. He must have wrung his hands in joy as he saw the Executive go into policy paralysis; stopping any activity that it was contemplating, good or bad; even seeking his “pre-approval” for new policies, turning topsy turvy the basic principles of there being a distance between the executive and the auditor. Vinod Rai was smart. Rumor is that he has negotiated a cabinet posting with the BJP should the NDA return to power in 2014.

Vinod Rai was happy to ignore even basic accounting standards. He pretended not to understand that when a company invests in another company’s equity via the issuance of new shares, the capital infused goesinto the company, not into the original shareholders’ pockets. Issuing new equity is not the same as selling equity. Original promoters don’t make a profit. Unitech did not take home a single paisa from Telenor; all the money that Telenor invested went into the joint venture – and was used for rolling out the network, building the Uninor brand, running operations, funding the losses. As became clear later, the investment proved a bad one for Telenor; it lost everything that it had invested. Unitech also lost all its original investment. But what’s so surprising in this? Did Rai not know that a majority of investments go bad? Did he not see that Vodafone declared its maiden profit some 15 years after being in India, and even after it had got its spectrum cheap? Did he not see that because of the cheap spectrum, India’s mobile penetration climbed from 150 million to 900 million? Where was there anything illegal in this? Which joint venture doesn’t follow this exact same model?

If “notional loss” was his claim to fame, why did he not bring out a report on the loss caused by fuel, fertilizer and food subsidy? The notional loss due to fuel subsidy alone since 2004 would be more than Rs 10 lac crores. That would have made even bigger headlines. His party, the BJP, would have loved the fuel scam, because it had disbanded all administrative controls on petrol pricing. Maybe Rai didn’t do the fuel scam report because it would have ensnared the BJP in LPG and Kerosene subsidies. For the same reason maybe, he left fertilizer and food subsidy out as well. I still cannot understand how he projected telecom subsidy to be haraam, but fuel and fertilizer subsidy to be kosher.

Or take coal. Countless economists have argued that the calculations that Vinod Rai made were baloney. He applied CIL production costs to private companies (even though CIL mines are much cheaper to operate than the ones given to the private companies because of their better locations), refused to adjust for “time value of money” (something even a first year commerce student knows), and refused to take into account that power producers had in fact “reverse bid” for electricity keeping zero mine acquisition costs in mind. Given Rai’s rich academic background, it is difficult to believe that he didn’t understand all this. It had to be his political biases then. Why was he always focused on the period starting 2004 after the UPA took over? Probably because if he had gone into the NDA tenure, he would have found the same “scammy” things there as well. The coal allocation process has been going on since 1993, and the Kalyan Banerjee led Parliamentary committee stated that all governments since 1993 – including the NDA’s – were equally guilty. The same observation was made by the telecom JPC led by Chacko that a Rs 40000 crore loss took place during the NDA tenure. Rai was a smart man; he intentionally kept these periods out of his reviews.

Rai caused a lot of harm to India. It is because of his flawed reports that the telecom sector is in the doldrums. 3G has failed because operators bid too high. 2G is now starting to fail because Vinod Rai has made the government substitute cheap spectrum with expensive ones. Vinod Rai used the wrongly established 3G pricing to determine 2G pricing. Telcos have responded by culling low value subscribers – those on the bottommost rungs of our society. They may well get disempowered again, and they can owe that to Rai.

Rai will be missed only by the BJP supporters. He was the one who gave a depressed, diffident party (after the 2009 loss) a new charge. He is the one who put the government into a policy paralysis. He is the one who gave the BJP a baton to hit the squeaky clean PM with; the very man who cleaned up a flawed coal allocation system and replaced it with auctions. Without Rai, where would the BJP be today? So if anyone is going to miss Rai, it is the BJP. The rest of the country – especially those who care for audits and accounting – will say “good riddance”.

The real truth is that Rai’s legacy will be a political one; not an auditing one. He will be remembered not as one who fought the entire political class, but only one, the Congress. He wont be remembered as someone who cleaned up telecom; but as one who dealt it a fatal blow. Make no mistake, Rai will be remembered as the opposite of Seshan, not as Seshan….

The Voice of Student Dissent It’s not that we have no alternative. Whose fault? BN never promote leaders with good integrity. What BN has is adulterer, murderer, corrupter, racist and all type of sins you name them BN has them. BN killed all alternatives. Our Tun has in his 23 years created a batch of … Read more

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NAJIB PROTECT CRIMINAL LIKE AHMAD ZAHID HAMIDI MORE THAN HE PROTECT HIS CITIZENS?

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SIFU ANWAR SAID’THESE ARRESTS ARE A SIGNAL BY MY DISCIPLE HOME MINISTER AHMAD ZAHID HAMIDI TO RATTLE ME,

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The first task that Najib Abdul Razak faced upon being sworn in as prime minister on May 6, 2013 after leading the BN to victory in the 13th general election, was to form the cabinet.

Constitutionally, the prime minister does not have a free hand in his choice of cabinet ministers. Article 43(2)(b) of the federal constitution provides that cabinet members shall be “members of either House of Parliament”.

Traditionally, the cabinet is dominated by members elected by the people to serve in the Dewan Rakyat. However, prime ministers often do appoint a few cabinet members from the Senate (Dewan Negara)…

I am the idiot Khir Toyo says made scapegoat by Najib’s anti-graft fight

“I don’t care anymore if a decision was made to imprison me as a symbol to show that Datuk Seri Mohd Najib Tun Razak’s administration is transparent and wants to fight corruption,” Dr Khir wrote on his blog http://www.drkhir.com today.

Dr Khir also noted that he was charged with criminal breach of trust (CBT) under the Penal Code, and not with corruption under the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) Act 2009.

“Throughout the trial, the testimony of the PKNS officer clearly shows that I supported many proposals to develop PKNS land. Some of my support letters were approved and some were rejected by the technical committee,” said Dr Khir, referring to the Selangor State Development Corporation, of which he was the chairman then.

“That’s why I was charged with criminal breach of trust under the Penal Code, and not corruption under the SPRM Act. Yet, SPRM proudly announces that its successful prosecution against me is proof that the government is serious in fighting corruption,” he added, referring to the MACC.advice to youIf all fail, join a vote bank. Go, build a slum. Blow up bridges in  Najib’s cronies holding corporation

Former UEM and Renong Supremo Tan Sri Halim Saad revealed that he was denied the option to MBO and taking it private by then Economic Adviser to Government Tan Sri Nor Mohamed Yackop. Instead Nor Mohamed induced Halim to leave the board of both companies, sold his holdings of and eventually both company were acquired by Khazanah Holdings Bhd.

Nor Mohamed also was instrumental on Federal Government spending of big monies on consultancy advice from firms such as Bina Fikir, Ethos and foreign firms for policies, strategies, blue prints, ‘rebranding’, ‘Wide Asset Unbundling’ and even operational programs. Telekom Malaysia’s operational issues were brought to McKinsey to be resolved. The National Automotive Policy introduced almost saw the slow demise of national car project Proton.

Till present day, no one knows who acquired Gevi SpA the brand owner MV Agusta from Proton for Euro one only back in end 2005. Husqavarna was hived off to BMW in 2007 for a substantial sum of money.

Corporate scandals such as the selling out of Avenue Capital to ECM Libra in 2006 and Parkway were under the watch of Nor Mohamed. A lot of bonds were arranged and issued by GLCs such as Telekom Malaysia and TNB during Nor Mohamed’s ‘reign of terror’ as the Second Finance Minister. He had an almost free range of authority and power restructure and strengthen the ‘NMY Empire’ since the Prime Minister and First Finance Minister PM ‘Flip-Flop’ Abdullah was incompetent and completely oblivion of the whole workings.

CIMB as it is presently was restructured from Commerce Asset Holdings Bhd. during Nor Mohamed’s ‘reign of terror’. Later it became part of Khazanah. CIMB’s most notable corporate advisory was the merger of plantations based conglomerates  Sime Darby, Guthrie and Golden Hope arranged by Synergy Drive Sdn. Bhd., which was completed in late 2007.

Whether or not it was the right thing to do to deny Halim of the MBO of Renong and UEM based on his proposal can only be determined through time. What is important is that Nor Mohamed manipulated the circumstances to build the ‘NMY Empire’ via Khazanah and now Malaysians are paying for that. For all intent and purpose, Halim delivered. North South Highway, Bukit Jalil Stadium Complex, Putra LRT are projects that Halim initiated. What Nor Mohamed achieved from his corporate plays never did benefit Malaysians.

Maybe it was all the fault of the British director Danny Boyle who made the movie Slumdog Millionaire. Or maybe it was the fault of Vikas Swarup who wrote the novel Q&A on which the Hollywood film was based. Anyway, whoever’s fault it was, Slumdog got me into a pissing contest with Amitabh Bachchan, the point of which seemed to be to see who could piss the other guy off more.

I’d gone to see Slumdog, and while I didn’t feel that it deserved the Best Picture Oscar it was later going to get, I found it an enjoyable and upbeat film, made more so by the feistiness of the slum children characters. But there were a number of people who felt that Slumdog was yet another example of these wicked

Many couples go through a seven year itch; a “rough patch” in their marriage, caused by boredom, when some spouses desire the freedom of being single again.

In Malaysia, one can recognise the least productive and incapable BN politician by his “Five-Year Hitch”; the time frame needed to implement the tasks they promised to complete if they were to win GE-13.

Interestingly, these politicians have chosen an interval of five years, which is when the GE-14 would be called. The rakyat can see through the politicians’ tricks and yet, the Election Commission (EC) has denied claims that the electoral system would mean BN would rule in perpetuity.

These politicians have not shown evidence that they are capable of carrying out their tasks, but they are already canvassing for re-election in five years time, in GE-14.

Despite the promises they made when campaigning for GE-13, they have already come up with excuses. They have learnt from their mentor, the leader of Umno-Baru, Najib Tun Razak, that words speak louder than actions and the best phrase is “You help me, I help you.”

This year has yet to see the usual Malaysian election phenomenon, when turncoat politicians – “frogs” cross over to the ‘other’ side. They will probably make their moves soon.

Men who have lied to the rakyat, now have very senior roles in the Cabinet. Some of these men were not elected by the rakyat but secured a place in the Cabinet through deceit. Others who were once guilty of money politics, now draw a salary which is paid for by the taxpayer.

Both these sorts of men, have one thing in common; they are in charge of policies which will affect the rakyat.

The first to make his debut performance, barely two weeks after GE-13, was Hindraf’s P Waythamoorthy, a deputy minister in the Prime minister’s Department (PMD).

After his hunger strike, which he used to embarrass and weaken the opposition, Waythamoorthy announced that he would need five years to resolve the issue of stateless Indians. He made it clear that Hindraf had a mechanism to solve the problem and yet declined to give details. Does a plan even exist?

Is Waythamoorthy’s time to be spent resolving only the issue of the stateless Indian? In the five years that Waythamoorthy claims he will need to resolve the problem of the 300,000 stateless Indian, a few hundred thousand people from Bangladesh, the Philippines, Pakistan, Myanmar or Indonesia will have become fully fledged Malaysian citizens, without any problems.

Does Waythamoorthy realise that many Orang Asli, Penan and other indigenous peoples of Sabah and Sarawak are also stateless? These people cannot afford the long and expensive journey to town to register the births of their children. These people are also denied education, health and other benefits.

Illegitimate children of Muslim parents are also disenfranchised and might as well be considered stateless. They cannot attend school, or have a passport or enjoy the benefits all children should be entitled to.

Waythamoorthy should remove his blinkers and champion all needy people, regardless of their ethnic origin.

Patriotism and pride

The magic ‘five years’ of inactivity was mentioned again, the following week. This time, the International Trade and Industry (Miti) Minister Mustapa Mohamed announced that the government would reduce car prices by 20 – 30 per cent, in five years.

He said that the consequences of reducing excise duty and car prices would have a detrimental effect on jobs and that many businesses would have to shut. He warned Malaysians of the increased traffic on roads and the need to build more roads with tolls.

What he was trying to say was that Umno-Baru has no intention of helping the rakyat now or ever. What is more important is to continue propping up crony businesses and their lifestyles. The taxpayer’s money is used to bail-out and prop-up the failing Proton.

The hardest hit are the poor, who need a vehicle to move around. Cars are not cheap, petrol prices are rising and there is no efficient public transportation system. Most of the income of the poorer families is spent servicing debts.

The decline in probity of Najib’s Cabinet gained momentum when Paul Low, the minister in the PMD said that it was not necessary to form an Independent Police Complaints and Misconduct Commission (IPCMC). He claimed that the Enforcement Agency Integrity Commission (EAIC) could be used to lodge complaints against police.

He appears to have dismissed the views made the previous week by the former Chief Justice Abdul Hamid Mohamad, who had questioned the capability of EAIC to handle complaints related to enforcement officers and the misconduct of government agencies.

The decline of our political class started when Dr Mahathir Mohamad was accepted back into the Umno fold, in the 70s by Abdul Razak Hussein, the second prime minister.

Mahathir changed the face of Malaysian politics. Older Malaysians recall the time when Mahathir was the Education Minister. He exerted greater control over the universities, he promoted the Biro Tata Negara (BTN) or National Civics Training Bureau series of training modules to further divide the nation. He claimed they instilled patriotism and pride.

Forty years ago, Mahathir curbed political activity, in campuses. To this day, students may not be involved in politics. If they fail to toe the line, they will suffer severe recriminations and the denial of assistance in education. Today, student activist Adam Adli Abdul Halim is trying to reverse Mahathir’s evil legacy.

Stolen votes

Mahathir accelerated the moral decay of our political class and forced a drop in values in the rakyat. He is guilty of making Malaysians think that the only way to riches, is to get into politics, rather than to value hard work and be responsible.

The nation had a chance to restore its self-respect and reinstate the integrity of its government. They voted for the opposition coalition in GE-13, but their votes were stolen.

Mahathir created a class of politicians who lack integrity and breeding. They have no respect for public service and they do not know the meaning of honour.

Mahathir’s legacy lives on in Najib. If we want to restore our authority and make this nation great again, GE-14 is not the answer.

Umno-Baru is preparing to cheat again in GE-14, they will never relinquish power, willingly. The solution is to get rid of Umno-Baru now, while the rakyat still has the momentum for change.

Kadir also questioned Umno’s decision for a merger after Najib himself claimed that it had emerged as the strongest party after Election 2013.

“I don’t want to make the assumption that Najib has once more bowed down to demands from the Chinese, especially when he had blamed his own lacklustre performance in the May 5 polls on the Chinese tsunami,” Kadir added.

Barisan Nasional’s (BN) plan to reinvent itself as a single party without any component parties might receive resistance from Umno’s grassroots, former New Straits Times (NST) group editor-in-chief Datuk A. Kadir Jasin said today.

The political commentator claimed that only “dying” Chinese-majority BN parties such as the MCA, Gerakan and SUPP would be open to the idea, following Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib’s announcement yesterday that Umno will set up a special laboratory to study the proposal in detail.Can the PM please describe the qualities that will be brought to the table by each of the selected individuals in the cabinet and help push his vision of transformation of the government, governance, politics, education and economy? After holidaying in London for a few years, Waytha came back unhindered, staged a ‘wayang kulit’ show and …Read more

“Maybe Najib can ‘pujuk’ (cajole) Umno’s leadership to entertain this idea, but I don’t think Umno’s grassroots will accept it. Umno is a grassroots party,” wrote Kadir in his blog.To you all Indians out there who fought for Hindraf & Waytha …. please look at your Indian political history, especially its MIC leaders. Many of them free-ride the poor naive Indians to get what they want for themselves only. Fighting for your own race is not the way. Indians should learn how to work … Read more WHY NAJIB A MALAY MUSLIM LEADER WANT TO ACCOMMODATE A HINDRAF VOWED TO

, Najib said that Umno remains the party of the people’s choice after winning 88 parliamentary seats in the election, from 79 in the 2008 general election.

“If compared with the opposition, they have 89 seats, meaning Umno alone can equalise the seats won by the opposition allies comprising DAP, PKR and PAS,” he told reporters after chairing an Umno supreme council meeting.

Kadir stressed that strong Bumiputera-based parties in Sabah and Sarawak should not be abolished just to entertain the idea from Chinese-majority BN parties which have been rejected by the Chinese in the polls.

Abolishing Umno would also turn its members and supporters away towards PAS since Malays would always feel the need for a Malay-Muslim party, he said.

Gerakan acting president Datuk Chang Ko Youn had pleaded last week for Umno, the MCA and MIC to drop membership based on race and for BN to move on towards a single-party system.

Chang also said the party had discussed forming an alliance with the MCA and the People’s Progressive Party (PPP), but added that the issue was over BN’s membership and that a Gerakan-MCA-PPP union would happen only if the BN opens up direct membership.

This week, the MIC announced that it will discuss with political parties representing the Indian community or having many members from the community such as the PPP, the Indian Progressive Front Malaysia (IPF) and Makkal Sakthi on the possibility of merging all the parties concerned in the near future.The letter written byMuhyiddin  to Najib . What was there in the letter that will  take such a drastic step of not nominating Najib as the next UMNO PresidentDoes it mean that there is zero tolerance in the party for “viewpoint plurality” (rather than for corruption)? Can the party simply not discuss its internal problems, … Read more

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Every opinion poll on voter preferences at general elections points to the certain defeat of the UMNO  and a more than plausible victory of Pakatan alliance. That is hardly a surprise considering that on issues that matter most to the electorate — price rise of essential commodities, slowdown of the economy, corruption, weak governance and a deteriorating security environment both within the country and along its borders — the overall perception is that the  Najib has slipped badly.What is truly remarkable about the opinion polls however is the absence of any mention of an issue that continues to be a source of concern to the health of the republic: the plight of minorities. Hardly a day passes without an incident that shows how they are at the receiving end of forces inimical to them. So the subject won’t go away. And when it is debated, neither the self-styled proponents of secular virtue nor those who denounce it as the fountainhead of all that has gone wrong in the nation are likely to draw much comfort from its outcome. The reason is simply this: the minorities,What they seek is nothing more than a strict adherence to the spirit and fine print of our Constitution. Its framers, cutting across India`s perennial fault-lines, affirmed that political democracy — where every vote carries equal weight — would be incomplete without the social and economic empowerment of the most vulnerable sections of the citizenry.

Pakatan won all the battle that was to be won in this 13th general election but it lost the war.That notwithstanding Pakatan must continue to be the party for reform and change.Malaysians are angry and more so now with the manner in which the 13th general election has been conducted.

What Pakatan must not do is to talk about change and reform and avoid doing anything about it. Pakatan must become responsible, open and accountable in the states that they govern while taking upon itself the responsibility of being an effective Opposition in parliament.

The Member of Parliament for Pontian disagreed with  Najib’s t proposal that would ‘bury’ Umno, the only party championing the cause of the Malays all this while. he said “I personally do not agree that Umno be dissolved to create a single BN party without any components, and I’m certain that the 3.4 million Umno members too do not agree,”

Datuk Seri Najib Razak said today the Barisan Nasional (BN) government is aware of cracks in national unity and that some people feel marginalised and it is committed in addressing the challenges.A good move by the PM which will raise his public profile as a man of integrity. It will also indirectly serve to weaken the relative strength of the opposition in the eyes of the public. Now as to the opposition members please allow the PR to choose their own representatives. Don’t choose for them. This is an important principle

The prime minister said the situation occurred due to a national polemic based on beliefs, race, political ideologies, urban and rural demographic and class.

He and his colleagues in the government recognise they carry the trust and responsibility of all Malaysians, whether they support BN or not in the 13th general election (GE13) which saw BN return to form the federal government.

“Your Majesty’s government is the umbrella for all Malaysians,” he said in his congratulatory speech before Yang di-Pertuan Agong Tuanku Abdul Halim Mu’adzam Shah to mark his birthday and presentation of federal awards and medals at Istana Negara here.

The government, said the prime minister, will formulate a plan to strengthen national unity and repair national understanding and this requires the co-operation of all parties.

“It should be based on constructive dialogue at all levels and it should be the agenda of all parties to ensure its success.

“Certain parties are trying to dispute the results of GE13 which favoured BN by raising issues such as popular vote, use of indelible ink, claims of the presence of ‘phantom voters’ and the so-called power blackout during vote counting.”

Najib said it was very easy to deny and blame others but it will not solve any problems or unravel all the challenges facing Malaysia.

“The government urges all Malaysians to consider the togetherness factors that can unify us rather than seeing points that will trap us in nostalgia and past reality.”

The prime minister said the government was committed to creating  a better future for all Malaysians.

“We dream of a Malaysia where people of all races and beliefs can live in peace and harmony without any suspicion, a progressive and prosperous Malaysia which has enough for all.”

Najib said he and his colleagues in the government will continue to defend, protect and preserve the constitutional principles, the rule of law, celebrate diversity, practice inclusiveness and put people first in its administration.

UMNO must realise that Pakatan – and the people of Malaysia – is a side they cannot defeat nor unilaterally impose its will upon. They must understand that the sharing of power with Pakatan through some consensual process is preferable to the flux that our country is now in after this 13th general election.

Invariably it would require a compromise on all sides but the outlines of a settlement is already apparent. UMNO must share political power with an Opposition that holds the popular mandate from the electorates while Pakatan must accept that UMNO still holds a majority in Parliament.

This is the constrain imposed by the electorates upon them. It would take the wisdom of Solomon, the patience of Job and the sincerity of our beloved Tunku to make Malaysia the nation all good Malaysian aspire to!

And so I ask that we pause to think what we should do to support BN and Pakatan as they start the process of reconciliation as reconcile they must for we are now, to all intents and purposes, a two party nation.

We do not want BN trying to govern Malaysia without the consensus of over half its electorates who have put their trust in Pakatan.Nor do we want Pakatan to talk of being a responsible political coalition while it goes about inciting hundreds and thousands of Malaysians to take government from a duly elected government of Malaysia.

After being rejected by the majority of Malaysian voters in the 2013 election (51 percent chose Pakatan Rakyat), various BN leaders have begun to express arguments of a rational nature, which is rare.

Currently, a proposal has been mooted for BN political parties to open up their membership to all races.

There are two main arguments, the first is a suggestion that the political parties within BN open up membership to all races, and second is the suggestion that BN itself become a multiracial party.

Previously, MCA leaders voiced this suggestion, followed by Gerakan leaders and the latest proposal came from an influential Umno leader, Muhyiddin Yassin.

We congratulate them for this intention and awareness.

But before that, it is desirable for the elites in BN and Umno to review what they have been doing for over 50 years of ruling this country.

In the recent 2013 general election, Pakatan especially DAP had been pushed to a corner by the racial political games of Umno/BN’s political elites, who created negative perceptions towards Pakatan.

The racial blame game crafted by Umno/BN is designed to spread lies and to bring down DAP and Pakatan, so as to continue Umno/BN’s grip on hegemony and power. This has been Umno/BN’s political agenda for all these years.

Every policy whether economic, social or education, has been manipulated, twisted, and distorted into a racial issue. This ugly agenda of Umno/BN must be exposed so that the people are aware of what lies behind the facade of the “multiracial BN party” proposal.

In the economic aspect for example, Umno/BN has accused DAP of opposing policies involving the interests and rights of the Malays especially the New Economic Policy (NEP). Umno/BN created an impression that DAP wants to abolish Article 153 of the constitution.

In actual fact, DAP had never opposed this policy, there is no proof or formal statement issued by DAP on this issue. These accusations and allegations have been proven in court to be false.

DAP and PR have only questioned the biased implementation of the NEP which has resulted in stock monopolies and sky high profits for cronies, while millions of ordinary Malays continue to suffer in poverty.

On the issue of corruption, DAP questioned why business opportunities for Malays are being monopolised by elite groups who have political ties with Umno.

The issues raised by DAP involve matters of principle and integrity, not race.

DAP speaks out because we do not want the Malays to continue to fall victim to the greed of Umno/ BN elites.

DAP urges Umno-BN to explain the loss of RM52 billion worth of bumiputera shares.

DAP demands Umno-BN to take stern action against BN leaders who are involved in various scandals including PKFZ and NFC, who have violated the people’s trust.

We are fully confident that Malays would support this effort because our goal is to ensure that the Malays will benefit from the NEP. Isn’t that the goal of the NEP?

In the social policy aspect, we firmly urge that Malaysians of all races are entitled to receive fair and equal treatment, especially Malays as the majority and backbone of social development in Malaysia.

This principle is consistent with the federal constitution.

However, Umno/BN continues to spread negative perceptions to mislead people from understanding the principles of DAP.

They spread lies and label DAP as anti-Malay and anti-Islam based on flimsy and fabricated “evidence”.

It is no wonder why Najib’s racial integration continues to fail as the gap between races remains wide.

Especially when some Umno/ BN leaders continue to mock and insult the beliefs and customs of other races with no regard.

For example, Zulkifli Noordin, Ibrahim Ali and Perkasa continually and openly insult the Indians and Chinese.

In fact, there are those among Malay professionals who say that the Indians and Chinese are immigrants.

This political style is racial politics as bred by Umno’s elite.

However, today racial politics seems no longer popular among Malaysians.

This is proven when Pakatan managed to win the hearts and popular vote of Malaysians despite the racial accusations and manipulation hurled by Umno/ BN in the mass media.

Keep in mind that those who supported and voted for Pakatan are Malaysians, including the majority of Malays who voted for Pakatan.

This support does not come from the workers of Bangladesh, Philippines or Indonesia.

Malays are a community on par with other nations in this world, this fact is proven historically.

The Old Johor Sultanate, the historical Singapore and Malacca Empire have proven that Malays are able to have the knowledge, autonomy and freedom to compete with other great civilisations.

So why is it that this time, our politics seems make the Malays into small-minded people? Is it true that a Malay is afraid of his own shadow and continually dependent on the government?

Umno/BN must go back to the basic principles of democracy, a government of the people, by the people and for the people.

If Umno/BN truly want to change:

First of all they need to apologise in public to all political parties they have vilified, say sorry to all Malaysians for their acts of political racism.

Second, release all Pakatan leaders and activists persecuted under the Sedition Act and other oppressive laws.

Thirdly, Umno/ BN must take legal action against all those involved in racial politics, including Utusan Malaysia and anyone who incites hatred against other races.

If not, Umno/ BN’s noble intentions will only be a dark comedy in Malaysian politics of democracy. Awareness is the first step against racism.

Let us not forget, although the keys on the piano are black and white, it is the combination of the sounds that give it a thousand melodies. That’s the epitome of our diversity, we are all Malaysians.

To the elitist of Umno/BN, we say goodbye to their racial politics and welcome to the new political era.

While I recognise the disturbing depravity of humanity in this fallen world, it does not justify at all the inhumane treatment of our neighbour. This case takes some reckoning even against the dismal record of custodial death. That the 4 officers said to be responsible for this murder most foul are still breathing the air of freedom is surely intolerable in a nation where the Rukun Negara is averred to be in force. Where is there any semblance of the rule of law? Both the IGP and the Home Minister are surely accountable for this case and this state of affair. Have the PDRM now become the leading force for crime and the most stunning ones at that? No less by what they have NOT done which is crime prevention. If Malaysians are not safe in a police station, where else can they be guaranteed safety? How can it be that public institutions and officials placed with the people’s trust be the very ones who betray it? Where’s the IGP and Home Minister’s leadership in responding to this case?

Much of the responsibility for this shameful neglect must be placed at the doorstep of the Najib which has been in power at the Centre longer than any other political formation. However, PAS and its affiliates have sung another, ominous tune altogether. They challenge the very idea of special rights for minorities on the grounds that all citizens form a seamless continuum and must therefore subscribe to what they call ‘cultural nationalism’ — a barely disguised term to assert Islamic hegemony.Pray for justice won’t work in UMNO baru Malaysia. Remember Teoh Beng Hock, Kugan and Amiruddin and the list continue….Need to kick UMNO Baru out of Putrajaya.

The minorities are thus caught in a pincer movement. On the one hand, the secular parties have failed to deliver on their constitutional obligations to them. On the other, outfits belonging to the extended PAS have created an ambience that intimidates them. Meanwhile, under BARISAN, innocentvoters have been rounded up, interned and denied bail without due process, and often subjected to third degree methods.

Gov’t double standards in custodial deaths issue

We have hard core evil,cruel criminals in the police force, paid by taxpayer money. The IGP, if he does not take action, MAlaysians must demand that he be made an accesory to the cold blooded murderHow about the policeman who stepped on the neck of the mentally challenged Indian in Hulu Langa until he died struggling, dont know whether until his neck broke? Has that policeman been charged? Why no update on this. Can anyone update the rest of the Malaysiakini readers on this.

‘A handcuffed Dharmendran suffered 52 injuries’Death in custody victim N Dharmendran was defencelessly beaten to death while handcuffed, suggests the preliminary report of post-mortem examination revealed today

Perhaps the only silver lining on this dark cloud of Congress-style opportunism is that its rhetoric at least steers clear of demonising minorities, particularly Muslims, as the irksome ‘Other’. You can therefore challenge it to prove that it is able and willing to walk the constitutional talk as regards minority rights. That is not the case with the Sangh Parivar. Its anti-Muslim attitude was in full evidence during L K Advani’s rath yatra culminating in the destruction of the Babri masjid. The riots in Mumbai and elsewhere in the country that followed this desecration and the post-Godhra violence in Gujarat led to chilling consequences: they radicalised Muslim youth as never before.

Both sides of the so-called secular-communal divide now need to reaffirm their commitment to the imperatives spelt out in the Constitution: transparent, accountable and effective democratic governance, a level-playing field for disadvantaged groups, and respect for religious and cultural pluralism. This is what all patriotic Indians in their overwhelming numbers aspire to.

Every law can be strengthened, but that is not the urgent problem. The present law is good enough for the existing crooks. Why? To muffle the sound of skeletons rattling from cashstacked cupboards? Adulation and sensational levels of money are a heady cocktail, and if some young men get inebriated, it is only a temptation waiting to explode. But the dirt is controlled by older men wearing the heavy make-up of lies. When Delhi police broke the story, they sought to limit the scandal to three idiots For the people, sleaze has become a blur, with politicians visible in every crime, There is no ideology yet which cleanses the stables, and there will be none until the dregs of current thought have become irrelevant. Nevertheless, another 1990 moment has arrived. Things cannot continue with just a bit of tinkering along the way.Needs a radical and rational platform of ideas that recognizes how dysfunctional this system has become, and finds the courage to sweep below the carpet. The nerve points of the nation have shifted to the young. They do not want merely a different government; they want a new course that will take India out of this jungle of greed in which governance has become synonymous with greed, and the street a playground for lechery. If nothing is done, their patience will turn into rage.

Najib with his low level intelligence can ever become a P.M. He does not even know what he should and what he should not do in order to win over the rakyat’s votes. No one in his right mind would have fielded Zulklifli and Ibrahim. But he committyed political suicide by fielding this two  racialist Malays and expect Indians and Chinese to support him. Little does he knows that even the Malays abandoned him Ever since ideology committed suicide in the early 1990s, those in power have sought to fill the vacuum with ideas. Most ideas were perceptive and prescriptive; some were even brilliant. The flexibility was exhilarating after too many decades of doctrine born in an open mind but killed by a closed one.

Pragmatism became politically correct. But a serious problem was soon evident: it was difficult to make ideas work without a framework. The patterns of democracy encouraged spasmodic birth but hindered growth. Politics eroded the time necessary for nurture. A five-year term in office began with loads of self-congratulation. Then eager eggheads sat down to set policy into language that could buy advocacy from media and support from the legislature. But if the process entered the third, or worse fourth, it was overtaken by uncertainty, spluttered and shuffled before the withdrawal symptoms arrived.

How on earth does having condoms and sex vigour tablets indict someone of spot-fixing or endorse any such intent? If at all, it may only be indicative of sexual activity or the lack of it but nothing else. But, talk of depravity and ‘findings’ bordering on sex, make for popular reading and equally-ribald headlines even besmirch someone’s character but don’t quite attribute guilt or stand as evidence – direct or otherwise – in any court of law examining a case for spot-fixing. Still, the Delhi police chose to find and make public the same.

There’s a deafening silence on the Najib  issue. After wild conjectures by the media and experts alike, from police sources too, the talk has been reduced to a predictable hush. A host of new names sprung up and rosmah reduced to the past, castigated and labeled for life. Every few years, a similar drama unfolds, over and over once again. And, by the end of things, nobody’s any wiser. Not that anyone cares either.

After years of squandering public money on trying to buy popularity for himself, and paying allegedly adoring crowds to wave ‘I love PM’ placards at his every orchestrated appearance, Najib Abdul Razak finds himself not so much a prime minister, as a fit subject for a political post-mortem.Now, everyone loves a story. And, nothing sells better than a tale sprinkled with sex, intrigue, crime and…the underworld. So, the police chased his partner in crime to pin him down with the offence, across the streets of in Kuala Lumpur the night till his hotel room where they found…“condoms and sex vigour tablets” and a ‘personal diary where he swore to stay cool, and not get angry or have a confrontation.”

He’s clearly mentally, morally and reputationally dead, but still kept – at least apparently – alive by the BN support system of electoral manipulators, professional liars and scurrilous spin doctors.Neither are the ‘findings’ suggestive of the commission of a crime or punishable per se, yet manage to titillate all. Everyone loves to grab a peep at someone’s personal diary, however uncouth and rude it may be. And, everyone loves to share gory bits on another’s sexual life and preferences, which is why sex advice columns land up topping the list of publications’ most read.

Najib’s losing of the popular vote despite ‘owning’ the overwhelming support of the police, judiciary, civil services, the Election Commission (EC) and the nation’s entire array of print and air media, was an absolute death-blow to him and his entire illegitimate, corrupt and criminal regime.

Also, the examination of his personal diary would have been the obvious procedure to support the allegations of his involvement in spot-fixing. For the police to make public its findings through the media is only populist, opportunistic and makes for fancy reading but defeats the very purpose and intent of investigation. For one, it indicates the intent to befuddle and generate faux basis for allegation, however weak, on the part of the investigating authorities.

And about time too, as BN has for decades clung to power by killing democracy, justice, civil liberties and human rights, and thus metaphorically ruling over Malaysians’ dead bodies.

Literally, too, over the dead bodies of the hundreds who have died at the hands and in the custody of BN’s perennial partners-in-crime, the police and the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC).

The latest of these killings, that of N Dharmendran, a ‘suspect’ who was clearly the victim of beatings and other tortures – including, bizarrely, the stapling of his ears – came less than a fortnight after BN’s near-fatal performance in the general election.

Yet Najib and his regime have been so busy scrambling to reincarnate themselves that they have treated this crime with their customary deathly silence.

Also, the examination of his personal diary would have been the obvious procedure to support the allegations of his involvement in spot-fixing. For the police to make public its findings through the media is only populist, opportunistic and makes for fancy reading but defeats the very purpose and intent of investigation. For one, it indicates the intent to befuddle and generate faux basis for allegation, however weak, on the part of the investigating authorities.

Voting in cold blood?

Also, the examination of his personal diary would have been the obvious procedure to support the allegations of his involvement in G13. For the police to make public its findings through the media is only populist, opportunistic and makes for fancy reading but defeats the very purpose and intent of investigation. For one, it indicates the intent to befuddle and generate faux basis for allegation, however weak, on the part of the investigating authorities.

A response that always leaves me wondering what motivates millions of Malaysians – albeit a minority as of this recent and comprehensively rigged election – to actually go out and vote in cold blood for murderers and accessories to murder.

Surely every Malaysian citizen knows by now that there have been countless killings by BN’s forces of so-called ‘law and order’ and that most have gone outrageously uninvestigated or utterly unreported.

Or that in other cases have involved clear perversions of justice, as in such high-profile homicides as that of Mongolian translator Altantuya Shaariibuu, who was involved in the Scorpene submarines deal while Najib was defence minister, and of Teoh Beng Hock who notoriously ‘fell’ from a high window at MACC headquarters.

And who can forget the atrocious case of A Kugananthan, pictures of whose mutilated corpse on the Internet shocked the nation if not the world, but resulted in the charging of just one police suspect – and an Indian at that – with “causing hurt”?

Certainly, the MIC and other misleaders of the Indian Malaysian community don’t appear to care too much about what a toll the BN regime has been taking of their fellows.

So it was heartening to see recently that DAP’s Ipoh Barat MP M Kulasegaran has condemned Hindraf chairperson and now deputy minister in the new BN cabinet, P Waythamoorthy, for his “deafening silence” over this latest death in police custody.

Calling Waythamoorthy “bad-intentioned” for dropping demands for cessation of custodial deaths from its demands in making his pre-election pact with BN, Kulasegaran flayed him for selling out the interests of the Indian community “in return for the material rewards of ministerial office”.

But of course this criticism applies to BN ministers and members of all races – they’re in it for the power to steal from Malaysians of any or all races, and those who don’t like it can go drop dead.

Or, as newly-minted Home Minister Ahmad Zahid Hamidi alternatively put it in an article he wrote for the gutter BN daily Utusan Malaysia in criticism of the public rallies protesting fraudulent conduct of the recent general election: If they don’t like it, they can “migrate elsewhere”.

This, quickly seconded by Selangor BN deputy chief Noh Omar’s (right) message to malcontents that they should “go live in the forest”, was the first shot in a campaign – the duo have since been joined by Umno information chief Ahmad Maslan, Umno Youth chief and new Youth and Sports Minister Khairy Jamaluddin, along with PM Najib himself – to deny any impropriety in the conduct of the general election.

The ‘con’ in ‘constitution’

The agreed story goes, apparently, that the polls was conducted according to the provisions of the constitution. Najib – who has proven himself such a persistent, indeed pathological liar that he might as well have put the “con” in “constitution” – declared that “the claim that we stole victory from the opposition is a falsehood because we did not cheat in the recent GE13″.

According to Bernama, the news agency that plays the dummy to him and other BN ventriloquists, Najib said that “the supremacy and loftiness of the constitution is the main pillar of the nation, but the people have avenues to voice their opinions in line with parliamentary democracy”.

What Najib and his collaborators in this evidently well-rehearsed fairytale ‘forgot’ to mention, of course, was that during all the years in which BN enjoyed the two-thirds parliamentary majority required for any amendment of the constitution, the regime then turned its dead hand to robbing this formerly supreme and lofty document of most of its democratic provisions.

For example, there is their move to pass the Printing Presses and Publications Act 1984 for the specific purpose of denying the people their constitutional right to free news media. In addition, BN’s retaining of the Internal Security Act (ISA) – and more recently replaced with the Peaceful Assembly Act 2012 (PAA) – to override the constitutional right of peaceful assembly.

As for constitutional provisions designed to ensure free and fair elections – like the specification that no electorate should contain 20 percent more or less voters than any other, or that the EC be independent – they seem to have been simply ignored by BN in its obscene enthusiasm for gerrymandering, roll-stacking and other such undemocratic stunts.

Stunts like the latest one of declaring peaceful public rallies and candlelight vigils illegal, and charging speakers at these events such as student activist Adam Adli Abdul Halim, Anything But Umno (ABU) chief Haris Ibrahim and other opposition figures with sedition while giving free rein to purveyors of poisonous BN propaganda.

In short, far from convincing anybody but themselves and their craven cronies that democracy is alive and well in Malaysia, and that the 13th general was a model example of the Westminster system in action, all Najib and his accomplices have achieved thus far is to demonstrate that their credibility, like their reputation, is dead.

And that for the next five years, or however long it takes for the people to wrest power back from this gang of cheating crooks, the premiership of Najib – or any other stooge that the lying, dying BN manages to find to replace him – will be nothing but one endless post-mortem

Fielding Perkasa vice-president Zulkifli Noordin as the Shah Alam candidate in the May 5 general election was a poor strategy, said a BN panelist at a talk show last night.

.‘Blame’ is the name of the game…and it’s as old as the birds and the bees! That said, Sreesanth’s image has taken a bashing…and for all the wrong reasons. The police may not have procured clinching proof of his complicity in G13-fixing but did manage to make public details of his sexual behavior, preferred preference of contraception and a concurrent need for help in execution. Hit below the belt, right?

BN component party leaders started doing their wayang kulit oredy. Trying to potray that they r not keen n unhappy some sort with BN’s decisions n leadership, in case PR comes into power it will be easy for them to run n seeking for anwar’s hand to kiss. Podah MIC buggers  Haven’t one of them told us directly that they don’t need Chinese and Indian votes. They can win on their own. Then a few monkeys/apes from MCA/MIC/PPP couldn’t understand simple speech. But when the votes swing then they blame everyone except themselves. Go back to where you come from ..; go live in the jungle, malay backlash, etc…etc. They couldn’t see from other perspectives beside race … Najib still think this is the twentieth century

MIC leader’s comment is right . The PM made mighty blunder for fielding Perkasa Vice President in Shah Alam; and also to allow Perkasa President to contest in Pasir Mas. Both have been known for racist remarks, which is contrary to PM’s “1 Malaysia ” slogan. Probably he was urged by ex-PM to field the candidates! In other words his hands were forced upon by Tun M! In short he was not his own man; but a puppet.Tun Daim’s remarks of wrong strategy is correct .The PM is just like a headless chicken, not knowing where to turn.He used public funds to literally BUY votes!Those who received BONUSES must have laughed all the way to the bank; and gave him a tight slap for missing public funds for political purposes. Had this happened in India, not to mention America, he would be hauled up for using taxpayers’s money for his personal purposes! What was the EC doing for nopy t doing its job professionally? Where the EC, the MACC, the Police?Where was their impartiality? Ver sad.The 13 G.E did proved that indians votes was quite irrelevant. All along we tot indian votes was vital for both PKR and B.N But this was far from the truth. Indian votes in 2008 and 2013 was not really important. The 13 GE prove that. Indian votes are so dispersed that it has very little effect whereas the chinese votes are en bloc. How can indian votes be significant when they have Hindraf, MIC, PPP, Gerakan IPF and also DAP

Adam Adli. Tian Chua. Haris Ibrahim. Tamrin Ghafar. Safwan Anang. And now Hishammuddin Rais. One by one, these politicians and activists have been hauled up by the authorities in a crackdown reminiscent of 1988’s Operation Lalang.

The real question of course, is why. Now this may seem like an obvious answer to you; after all, they all probably have played a part in calling on people to go to street rallies, or have had a hand or two in organising them. The simple logic now is that the authorities are simply clamping down to ensure no more rallies will take place.

I must disagree. Let us take the rally reason at face value. Tamrin Ghafar, Hishammuddin Rais and Tian Chua have had very little to do with organising rallies. In terms of calling on people to rise and take to the streets to protest, they are only part of a growing chorus of NGO activists, politicians and ordinary citizens.

In any case, rallies have gone on for a very long time now, from BERSIH in 2007 all the way to the recent Suara Rakyat 505 Padang Amcorp rally. Barisan Nasional (BN) has managed to largely ignore them with the administration going on as normal, and have learnt valuable lessons that any crackdowns can only result in a terrible political backlash.

And if indeed there was to be a crackdown to prevent rallies, why the selective persecution? Why not hit out at the big players? Blogger Chegubard has made his stance and involvement in the Amcorp Mall rally very clear by his presence on the stage, yet has not been arrested.

Yet a crackdown still happened. And is still happening. Why? Has the government simply not learned? Have they grown a sudden fear to rallies?

I believe the situation needs a closer examination. Not all arrested so far called upon the rakyat to rise and take the fight to the streets. Not all were involved in organizing rallies. Yet the Home Ministry went right ahead knowing full well there would be a huge political backlash in arresting the above names. Again, the crucial question is why?

All those arrested thus far do, however, have something in common: they all spoke out against racism at a May 13 forum at the Selangor Chinese Assembly Hall. Adam Adli called the May 13 riots a result of sedition by UMNO members and said they were used as an excuse to hold on to power in the aftermath of the devastating 1969 election results. Tian Chua boldly stated that unity has never been a real problem in Malaysia, but disunity is actively caused by UMNO itself.

Again, he labeled May 13 as a means to hold onto power, calling it a “toyol” to scare people. Most revealing is Tamrin Ghafar’s speech, where he revealed in his capacity as an ex-UMNO insider that the May 13 riots were part of a coup d’état to overthrow Tunku Abdul Rahman. He even implicated Mahathir Mohammad as one of the key players. Similar exhortations to relook at history were made by Haris Ibrahim and Safwan Anang.

I believe it is not rallies UMNO fears but a growing trend of historical revisionism. Should the spectre of May 13 be torn apart as an UMNO-orchestrated plot, Barisan Nasional would lose its status as a bringer of “stability” and a preserver of “delicate race relations”.  Previously such thoughts were restricted to the minds of academics such as Kua Kia Soong, but recently such reflections upon history have gained traction in popular imagination.

As George Orwell once said: “He who controls the present, controls the past. And he who controls the past, controls the future.”

The real fear of UMNO is not rallies. They have dealt with them aplenty before, from 1988’s protests, 1998’s Reformasi to 2007’s BERSIH. The real fear of UMNO is the revision of the “gospel truth” they have taught people as the history of the nation. Once the May 13 spectre loses ground, what would happen to the older voters who previously may have feared a change in government based on concerns over racial clashes? What would it say about BN’s smear campaign on Lim Kit Siang, who was not even in the Peninsula at the time of the riots?

And what other hidden histories will be revealed? Perhaps the next issue to catch people’s attention will be the struggle of the left-wing parties under PUTERA-AMCJA against the British (see Fahmi Redza’s documentary Sepuluh Tahun Sebelum Merdeka), which would then portray UMNO not as independence fighters but as British sycophants and collaborators. With such a huge blow to BN’s prestige as the Fathers of Independence, what sort of impact might that have on Malaysians?

No doubt such thoughts are haunting the minds of the authorities. As another quote from George Orwell goes: “In times of universal deceit, the telling of the truth is a revolutionary act.”To put it simply, UMNO fears the truth.

Enough is clearly enough. The anger we saw spill out on the streets of  Malaysia was an organic act of intensely felt outrage. A spontaneous movement without any leaders or political affiliation, it is a sign that something has finally given way. The idea of living in constant fear, and having to make do with the platitudes of those in charge is no longer going to be met with stoic indifference. The reaction of the state reveals the poverty of its perspective. To lathicharge a largely non-violent protest several times and then to clamp down prohibitory orders to prevent the protests from taking place is an act of violent suppression, and comes from an ingrained instinct to convert the protest into the problem.

The broadsheet cited the examples of Umno-owned Utusan Malaysia and MCA-owned The Star newspaper.

“Star is in a dilemma of trying to be independent and yet pressured to boost BN’s image,” Shaharuddin Badaruddin, a political analyst at Universiti Teknologi Mara, was quoted as saying to the ST.

In India  Media seems to want a different set of rules for itself than for others. When the Nira Radia episode broke out, Barkha Dutt was squarely implicated, but she didn’t resign. In fact, hardly anyone in the media demanded her resignation. She organized a pathetic looking “courtroom drama” on-air with other journalists “grilling” her with their questions. How convenient. Likewise, when a Zee journalist was stung by Naveen Jindal, and it appeared that the media group had tried to extort Rs 100 crores from him, the Chairman/promoter of the channel was not asked to resign. Why? What happened to the propriety then?

Most of Malaysia’s mainstream newspapers appear to have taken a hit since the May 5 general election for perceived biased reporting, Singapore’s the Straits Times (ST) said today. media in Singpore loves to play god. To be the moral compass of the nation. If we find Lee Kuan Yew moral policing in Malaysia  to be unacceptable (public display of affection in with Rosmah and Najib,  we should find media’s moral politicing unacceptable too. Besides, its not just moral policing. Media also abuses its powers in other ways – by character assassination of whoever it wants to. It uses this power routinely with politicians when TV anchors become judges and pass verdicts. And now media has started using its power against private institutions as well.But we either believe in democracy or we don’t. If we do, then, we must say categorically, without qualification, that no restraint from the any democratic processes, other than by the ordinary law of the land, should be allowed… If you believe in democracy, you must believe in it unconditionally. If you believe that men should be free, then, they should have the right of free association, of free speech, of free publication. Then, no law should permit those democratic processes to be set at nought, and no excuse, whether of security, should allow a government to be deterred from doing what it knows to be right, and what it must know to be right..

• • But we either believe in democracy or we don’t. If we do, then, we must say categorically, without qualification, that no restraint from the any democratic processes, other than by the ordinary law of the land, should be allowed… If you believe in democracy, you must believe in it unconditionally. If you believe that men should be free, then, they should have the right of free association, of free speech, of free publication. Then, no law should permit those democratic processes to be set at nought, and no excuse, whether of security, should allow a government to be deterred from doing what it knows to be right, and what it must know to be right…Lee Kuan Yew, Legislative Assembly Debates, April 27, 1955

• If it is not totalitarian to arrest a man and detain him, when you cannot charge him with any offence against any written law – if that is not what we have always cried out against in Fascist states – then what is it?… If we are to survive as a free democracy, then we must be prepared, in principle, to concede to our enemies – even those who do not subscribe to our views – as much constitutional rights as you concede yourself.
  • Opposition leader Lee Kuan Yew, Legislative Assembly Debates, Sept 21, 1955

• Repression, Sir is a habit that grows. I am told it is like making love-it is always easier the second time! The first time there may be pangs of conscience, a sense of guilt. But once embarked on this course with constant repetition you get more and more brazen in the attack. All you have to do is to dissolve organizations and societies and banish and detain the key political workers in these societies. Then miraculously everything is tranquil on the surface. Then an intimidated press and the government-controlled radio together can regularly sing your praises, and slowly and steadily the people are made to forget the evil things that have already been done, or if these things are referred to again they’re conveniently distorted and distorted with impunity, because there will be no opposition to contradict.
  • Lee Kuan Yew as an opposition PAP member speaking to David Marshall, Singapore Legislative Assembly, Debates, 4 October, 1956

• If we say that we believe in democracy, if we say that the fabric of a democratic society is one which allows for the free play of idea…then, in the name of all the gods, give that free play a chance to work within the constitutional framework.
  • Opposition leader Lee Kuan Yew, Singapore Legislative Assembly, Oct 4, 1956

• Repression can only go up to a point. When it becomes too acute, the instruments of repression, namely the army and the police, have been proved time and time again in history to have turned their guns on their masters.
  • Opposition leader Lee Kuan Yew, Straits Times, May 5, 1959

The Star is the largest English-language daily in Malaysia, averaging audited sales of 290,000 copies daily between January and June last year.

Umno’s network of media outlets is wide, according to the Kuala Lumpur-based Centre for Independent Journalism.

Via proxies, Umno controls Media Prima, which publishes the New Straits Times, Berita Harian and Harian Metro. It also owns the Utusan Group, which publishes Utusan Malaysia and Kosmo!

The ST said Utusan Malaysia has been accused of biased reporting for years, and its circulation has fallen from 213,000 in 2006 to between 170,000 and 180,000 last year.

It has been overtaken by Harian Metro, now the largest Malay daily — its circulation rose from 210,000 in 2006 to 394,000 last year. Analysts told the ST that younger readers are drawn to its culture and lifestyle-based content.

Once the No. 1 English-language paper, the New Straits Times saw its circulation decline sharply from 1999 to the early 2000s, going from 180,000 to as low as 80,000.

The ST said readers shunned the paper for what was perceived as lopsided reporting on Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim’s sacking as deputy prime minister in 1998 and his subsequent corruption and sodomy trial.

“In the rural areas, the Malays hate slander. My research showed that only 18 per cent of readers will believe what was written on Anwar,” said Shaharuddin.

The ST said newspaper readership in Malaysia is also facing challenges as younger people increasingly get their news online.

Internet users among Malaysia’s 29 million population grew from 3.7 million in 2000 to 17.7 million in June last year, a 61 per cent penetration rate. Nearly two-thirds of Internet users are aged 21 to 40.

There were 13.6 million Facebook users in Malaysia as of December.

The top news website in Malaysia over the past month was the independent malaysiakini.com, according to alexa.com, a site that tracks Web traffic, said the ST.

“Urban readers are more connected and compare content with the alternative media. They see that the same event is given a different slant in the mainstream so people question this,” said Hah Foong Lian, a new media analyst with Monash University Malaysia and former reporter at The Star.

Three days after the general election, electoral watchdog Bersih and the opposition parties called on Malaysians to boycott the New Straits Times, The Star, Berita Harian and Utusan Malaysia for perceived unbalanced reporting.

Analysts said that although such a boycott would have little real effect in numbers, the mainstream media should be wary of Malaysia’s strong civil society eroding their credibility, the ST added.

“All mainstream papers reported in favour of their owners but after the election, The Star is the only newspaper that has become more balanced,” Kiranjit Kaur, a media researcher at Universiti Teknologi Mara, told the ST.

“It was very biased (during the campaign) but since the new Cabinet was formed without MCA, it may not feel it has to toe the party line too much these days.”

The dark night between the sunset of a government and the dawn of a new election is a good time for rumination. Ms Aruna Roy, confidant of Mrs Sonia Gandhi and leading light of the most powerful NGO in India, the National Advisory Council, was struck so hard by the thunderbolt of revelation that she resigned. She now knows who sabotaged Mrs Gandhi’s schemes to win an endearing place in the hearts of the poor: Dr Manmohan Singh.

More remarkably, Sharad Pawar’s NCP has suddenly discovered that finance minister P Chidambaram has been “squeezing the poor” and that “elements supporting laissez faire theory” have forgotten that 94% of India lives outside the formal economy, according to a resolution passed by its youth wing. [The elderly wing of NCP was busy with cricket.] At least two elders have spent the last five years in the Singh Cabinet, nodding their heads dutifully at every decision. Maybe their juniors were reading Karl Marx at the same time. You never know. They should have been reading recent history instead.

Congress policy has been obvious; pale capitalism in office, and thick socialism on election-eve. There is electoral mathematics in this: mobilise minorities on the basis of identity, and split the majority as far as you can on privilege-poverty lines. This is not an original concept, but when you do not have a new idea an old one is far better than nothing. It has worked before. However, will it work again?

An old doctrine about communication strategy suggests that it is easier to persuade those who know that they are being persuaded. This certainly works in romance. Wooing is wasted on those who are oblivious to its possibilities. But neither individual nor collective assurances of true love work without credibility. Voters will demand to know what you did with the last five years before they give you another five. Since the obvious answer, according to Aruna Roy and the NCP, is nothing much, the minimum necessity for any forward movement is the slow sacrifice of a scapegoat. Step forward, Dr Manmohan Singh. You have received more than you ever expected from the Congress. All Mrs Sonia Gandhi wants in return is the death of your reputation. It’s a fair swap, surely?

This also explains the slow ascent of A K Antony in Congress hierarchy. He can be sold as a 1970s khadi-socialist, because he has a properly humble demeanour, and makes vague noises against America if needed. He does not actually do much, which also fits the mould of Congress leftism.

There is no confusion in Congress about who is Number 2; that belongs to Rahul Gandhi as long as his mother is party president. But an epic power struggle continues for rung number 3. Chidambaram did all he could to ease into this slot; he even stood beside Rahul, Gandhi cap on head, to salute the national flag at AICC headquarters on independence day, an excellent photo opportunity that must have caused much heartburn among compatriots. But since it is impossible to sell Chidambaram as any kind of leftist, the chair beside Dr Singh now belongs to Antony. This is not shadow boxing; it is a battle for the real thing. Senior Congressmen are convinced that Rahul Gandhi is not ready to become prime minister in the immediate future, and wants his own version of Manmohan Singh. He would prefer power without the responsibility of office in order to do precisely what is happening now: take credit for what goes right, and shift the blame for that which goes wrong.

We are, therefore, expected to believe that Mrs Sonia Gandhi truly wanted to serve the poor but was powerless before an obstinate prime minister. On the other hand, we are also told that when Dr Singh, displaying a hint of muscle, seeks to retain two Cabinet ministers accused of finagling and corruption, Mrs Gandhi gets them sacked by raising an indignant eyebrow. This convenient image repositioning is nothing but a public-relations caricature of government. For nearly a decade Dr Singh and Mrs Gandhi have taken important decisions together, in consultation, for better or worse. Bouquet and blame must be shared equally.

The voter’s take-away from this controversy is uncomplicated. It adds the weight of an insider’s frustration to a growing conviction that this government has failed those who gave it a second term. Instead of food security, Indians got corruption and excuses. The government could have passed whatever legislation it wanted in its first year; why did it wait till its last year? It was ready to risk its survival for FDI, not for social welfare.

Mrs Gandhi is trying to save what she can of the Congress from the debris of disappointment, but turning Dr Singh into the sole villain of the next script is not going to help. A dark night is a long night. There is plenty of time for some more thought.

A prime minister who is directly or indirectly involved in murder, corruption and abuse of powwer is still standing and talking like nothing much happened. now the biggest electral fraud …. this government has no credibility, it should go. all thesehas deeply seated in rakyat minds. the ralkyat will not accept this government what ever you they do.( 51% dont support the government.)

You can always masturbate. Another woman is simply not an appropriate immediate response.

Relationships are such complex spaces. I wish it were as easy as the learning the alphabet, but perhaps we can alphabetise it to illustrate some essential ingredients to making a fabulous relationship.

the darkness is and has been there for 56 years. You are the biggest fool and the village clown for not recognising that we are all in darkness.

The public must by now be feeling so blasé from the endless rounds of the weird masquerading as the normal in the government of Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak that the latest argument that his administration is deeper into weirdo land recalls the humourist who thought he had hit bottom and then heard someone tapping from underneath.. a scandal-rocked country, besieged PM- Malaysiakini 2 June 2013 Having been in power for five years, now heading a minority government, what has the PM done to deal with rising prices, corruption, cronyism, gerrymandering, extremist racial and religious outbursts by parties and media allied to his party, custodial deaths, lies and half-truths, a belligerent Minister who asks you to leave the country? There has been rhetoric aplenty, overwhelming, deafening silence, which of course speaks louder than words, but no ACTION to speak of. Is not the answer to the scandal-rocked country and a beseiged PM staring him in the face, Is not the answer blowing in the wind, – the roaring wind of change? Sadly, caught in a trap, he does not understand where the wind is coming from and where it is heading. The answer, my friend, is blowing in the wind.

Nothing became  better than the manner in which Muhyiddin Yassin played out the waiting game.The Old Testament, which can be pessimistic about God’s mercy, notes that seven lean years are followed by seven fat ones. Nawaz Sharif doubled the Biblical average, and maintained his patience through the desert of exile, and the torture of standing by as the credibility of an usurper, Ex-PM  Abdullah and Najib, peeled off in heavy layers.Muhyiddin  did not panic, did not fuss and did not rush. When  Najib sought to make a meaningless point by completing   full term,Muhyiddin   kept his cool and waited.Sharif’s confidence should be familiar to any student of elections: once people have lost trust in a government, they do not change their minds. A shrinking government never forsakes the desperate hope that some last-minute miracle will reverse anti-incumbency . Najib believed till the last minute that he would manage to cobble together a new coalition for another term,in UMNO preserves the hope of continuing beyond the next election. God reserves miracles for saints, not politicians. PAS  Talibans will be kind towards Muhyiddin during  UMNO polls;

The tough test of character comes in a waiting room. We are all heroes in a drawing room, stoking plans toward fantasy as far as the tensile strength of imagination will permit. While waiting, the lacklustre kill time and die of boredom . The ambitious dread the possibility that time will kill them before desire becomes reality.

Do you think March 2008 could have happened had the Malays remained the Malays of 1957? More importantly, do you think 5th May 2013 could have happened had not the seed of change been planted in 1946, 1959, 1969, 1990, 1999, and finally in March 2008?

Some societies took thousands of years to change. Some took just a few hundred years. Nevertheless, whatever time it took, it still took time to see that change. And someone must always be the one to bell the cat.

We must also remember one thing. The non-Malays suddenly swung only in 2008. Before that the non-Malays were living in ignorance as well. The Malays have been swinging back and forth since before Merdeka. The Malays swung this way and then that way from time to time. However, each swing the Malays make, it is always larger than the last time.

You can see the Malay swing in 1946. Then they swung back and took another swing in 1959. Then they swung back and took another swing in 1969. Then they swung back and took another swing in 1990. Then there was another swing in 1999 after swinging back in 1995 (and then swung back in 2004). In 2008, we saw another swing and a slight swing back this time around in 2013. Will the Malay ‘pattern’ prove true and will we see yet a bigger and maybe a ‘terminal swing’ (for Barisan Nasional, that is) in the 2018 general election?

That is all up to you. If you know how to handle the Malays you are going to see that. But how do you handle the Malays? I think I have written about that so many times in the past I really do not need to repeat myself.

You will never read from anywhere that brand Abraham Lincoln, Nelson Mandela and Martin Luther King as racists.

Abraham Lincoln pawned his life to fight against the enslavement of the African Americans, Nelson Mandela traded decades of his freedom to free South Africa from the shackles of the Apartheid policy and Martin Luther King paid for his life for the equal rights of Americans. Their detractors could call them any vile names they wished but never as a racist.

Only in Malaysia, the very people who do not condone racism and voted against it are labeled as racists. Over the decades, Umnno, led by Dr. Mahathir and his armada of mass media had been accusing DAP with its vision of “Malaysian Malaysia” as a bigoted political party, hell-bent to destroy the Malay.

The rakyat particularly the IT savvy urban-dwellers who ironically voted for the multiracial parties from Pakatan Rakyat in GE13 were branded as racists because they rejected the race-based political system where every race fights endlessly to defend their respective rights.

To put things into perspective, could anyone imagine any American being branded as racist if they do not endorse Ku Klux Klan, a white supremacist organization?

For a record, DAP has a total of 2 Malay lawmakers representing the party, (Malay from MCA = 0, Malay from MIC = 0). The number of Indian and Sikh representatives from DAP amounts to 14 at state level and 6 at parliament level (MIC state assemblymen = 6, members of parliament = 4).

Talk about DAP being a Chinese chauvinist party, their Indian and Sikh representation is 2 times of MIC!

As for PAS, the party even has a Chinese Muslim state assemblyman in Kelantan and fielded a Chinese Christian in Ayer Hitam. Not to mention PKR is very evenly represented by all ethnics including the Kadazan-Dusun ethnic from Sabah.

So the question is, exactly how many non-Malays represented Umno and Malays represented MCA and MIC? Your calculation is as good as mine – NONE.

Now, where is the racism element in Pakatan Rakyat, specifically DAP?

What about BN endorsement of the far right groups such as Perkasa and Hindraf, both which were rejected by the rakyat? What about the racist remarks from an ex-judge and a pro-chancellor of a university? What about the call by various far right NGOs to boycott Chinese products? Najib do you have the courage to make a stand these nonsense?

Come post election, our very Prime Minister set the racial persecution ball rolling by coining the term of “Chinese Tsunami”. The accusation of Chinese voted along the racial line become more raucous by days with attacks spearheaded by none other than Utusan.

Excuse me, didn’t the Chinese voted overwhelmingly for Rafizi Ramli in Pandan against a MCA candidate? I am sure had Khalid Samad from PAS contested in the Chinese majority Seputeh constituent which was won by Teresa Kok with super majority in the last general election, he would have won handsomely too, even if he was up against the president of MCA!

The highlight of the Malaysian political black comedy must go to the recent fiasco resulted by remark from Azran Osman Rani, the CEO of AirAsiaX who stated that “I am Malaysian. I am anti-racism. I am disgusted by Utusan’s editorial stance” – a statement apparently defending the Chinese community from the continued racism attack in the media.

Now he is branded by his detractors from being arrogant, ungrateful, someone who has forgotten his root to a racist by some blogspot!

Only in Malaysia, you are racist if you are not racist.The biggest irony of our times is that people perceive all politicians as ‘thieves’ but at the same time they are also forced to elect them to Parliament again and again to rule the country.  And, these ‘thieves’ pick up people similar to them from all walks of life and every profession to build a nexus … Read more

THE ONLY MALAY LEADER MUHYIDDIN YASSIN WHO WILL HELP TO REDISCOVER THE HOPE OF MALAYS

 If you cannot Change so you must be changed

The letter written byMuhyiddin  to Najib . What was there in the letter that will  take such a drastic step of not nominating Najib as the next UMNO PresidentDoes it mean that there is zero tolerance in the party for “viewpoint plurality” (rather than for corruption)? Can the party simply not discuss its internal problems, and handle charges against its president leadership without exerting authoritarian measures? The answer is that the contents Muhyiddin ’s letter are indeed damning; and shows Najib and Rosmah in poor light. While the letter is damning enough, it also begs me to ask another question: Who is behind the leak of this internal letter? Is itFT MINISTERTENGKU ADNAN MANSOR TOLD NAJIB THAT WINNING THE UMNO POLLS AND FENDING OFF ANY CHALLENGE TO HIS POSITION ARE MORE IMPORTANT THAN REFORMS  Stone-age politics holds back 21st century Malaysia economy It is once again open season on PM Najib. He presides over the most corrupt BN government has seen, his inertia has infected policy with paralysis, he has no authority except to twitch as desired by puppeteer Tengku Adnan Mansor, he loves power too much to just …Read more

considering how much he benefits if  Adnan Mansor,  Hishamuddin are cut to size? There is more than a small reason to believe this theory.

“Since you talk so much about corruption, can I ask you  as to where did the money come from for toppling Adullah Ahmad Badawithat brought   you to power; Why were you silent when all this was happening without hindrance?”. Good questions indeed. Of course  Adnan Mansor  knew there was illegal money funding his party’s election in . What is Operation   Adnan Mansor? How did this operation enable you buy over a majority delegates fo rthis ? Did you buy out the delegates vote, and their leaders?

Is this the beginning of the end for Najib? Former PM Dr Mahathir Mohamad already started the ball rolling when he said Najib will probably stay on as there are no suitable candidates who can replace him.

Knowing how cunning Dr M is, I am sure he did not mean what he said. Now Zam and former finance minister Daim Zainuddin, both close associates of Dr M, are criticising Najib, calling him a clown. Where is the respect for our PM?

If I can remember correctly, a young student was threatened with the Sedition Act for stepping on the PM’s poster. It looks like there is a big battle ahead for Najib.

The think-tank noted that Malaysia has so far managed to dodge the harmful effects of corruption on the investment climate to remain one of Asia’s most vibrant economies.

But it said that Malaysians had shown they were more politically aware, judging from the increased social media coverage of the polls, and were no longer willing to tolerate corruption.

The results of the recently-concluded general election saw the BN retain power by a simple majority although it lost the popular vote to a resurgent opposition.

BN won 133 seats in the 222-member Parliament against the opposition Pakatan Rakyat’s 89 seats, drawing a weaker score than in Election 2008 and which the think-tank noted has put the 13-party ruling coalition in a precarious position unless it moves to reform the way it has conducted business by tackling corruption seriously.

The Baker Institute suggested that Malaysia’s anti-corruption agenda may be better served if BN could focus on reaping the results of a successful economy.

“To motivate itself to implement a major change towards clean behaviour, BN should focus on reaping the rewards of a successful economy.

“In order to facilitate long-term inclusive growth, the government should promote policies that will be applied fairly and transparently to all,” it said in its analysis headlined “Malaysia: Looking forward” carried yesterday.

The think-tank noted that Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak has made the first step by pulling back some affirmative action policies favouring Bumiputeras who form over half the population and which other analysts believe to be at the root of Malaysian corruption.

“Removing race-based policies is the first step in bringing the country together. However, it is unlikely that Najib will completely abolish these policies, as he still needs to appeal to his Malay supporters, which make up the base of BN,” the Rice University said.

It added that the PM needs to follow through on his electoral promises by detailing the steps for his administration to move forward and to enforce them, suggesting the government install “a more transparent, meritocratic system for selecting project managers… to avoid appointment based on family or political ties.”

It also suggested that the government consider dismantle the current practice of political party ownership of selective media enterprises as a move in the direction of greater transparency, noting the imbalance in news coverage as parties attempt to exert their influence.

The Baker Institute also suggested that public institutions, namely the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission and Public Complaints Bureau, also need to buck up reform, highlighting that “proper treatment of high profile cases could maximize the impact anti-corruption organizations have on the government.”

“While it remains to be seen whether the government will respond as hoped, its people are pushing for radical change.

“Malaysia needs leaders who are willing to take drastic measures to tackle corruption,” it said.

“Will it understand that pandering to special interests, money politics and crony capitalism are no longer a viable strategy?  why are bribes bad? If bribes are bad, why is it perfectly legit to have brokers and middlemen? If you hire a broker to find a flat, why is it wrong to hire a broker There’s something seriously wrong with such an order itself. You cannot impose patriotism on people. It must come from within. There was a time when our hearts swelled with pride every time we saw the wave  of our flagor heard the national anthem play. That pride has gone out of our lives today. What remains is but a gaping void and a shining rage. We are angry with everything around us. But, above all, we are angry with ourselves. How could we have allowed the rot to set in so deep? Why were we blind for so long? Why did we not protest before protest itself became an ineffective tool?

We have suddenly woken up to the nightmare of an incessantly we grew up in an era of certainties. We knew what was right, what was wrong. So even when we did wrong, often in defiance of authority, we believed we were in the right. There was no ambivalence, no doubt in our mind as to good and bad, moral and immoral. There was clarity about most things that mattered. This defined us as a generation. We knew what we stood for.

That certainty has chipped away over the years. We live today in an Age of Moral Ambivalence. There is a charming ambiguity over most things, and it’s this ambiguity that best reflects our moral dilemma. We are all  civil society activists standing in the battlefield, a bit unsure, a bit confused, desperately seeking that certitude which eludes us. Faith cannot provide it as easily as it once did. Tradition lies tattered before the onslaught of modernity. The moral compass that once showed us the way is now defunct. Before us, lies the wilderness. Where our heroes are no longer heroes and villainy is infinitely more seductive. In such times, how easy can it be to know what’s right, what’s wrong?

This ambiguity has seeped into our public life. Do we hang a man when he is sentenced to death? We are at odds with the world if we do. State killing is abolished almost everywhere.  If we choose instead to accept the  Najib-Rosmah’s way that an eye for an eye make we Malaysian blind,

Yes, something has gone wrong with Malaysia and the rot begins with you and me.

If we are to fight the rot, we must stand up, each one of us, and try to reclaim our Malaysia. We must reclaim our Malaysian from the politicians. We must reclaim our Malaysia from those Najib’s crony businessmen who have brought it shame and disrepute. And yes, we must also reclaim our Malaysia from the media. We must reclaim it from the prophets of doom who constantly declaim that our dreams are dead. We must rediscover hope. We must find our dreams again. We must look in every nook and cranny where beauty, talent, faith and hope lie. We must reclaim our imagination. We must challenge ourselves to rise above the faithlessness around us and seek that courage which we have ignored while drooling over instant success.

Life is not Maggie noodles. There are no quick fixes to the problems around us. But there are ways to rise above them and, hopefully, beat them. Those ways do not lie in blind outrage. They lie in our capacity to rise above our disappointments, our rage and seek real solutions. How do we do it? It’s easy. The first step is: Do not keep quiet. Do not tolerate injustice. Do not look away when you see people doing wrong. Seek the courage within yourself to stand up to it. That’s the first step towards feeling proud as Malaysian. Be unafraid.

The next important step derives from this. Reclaim your freedoms. Over recent years, we have steadily lost them. To a Government trying to nervously cover its tracks after every scam. To the new home minister  terrorising us. To crackpots and vandals. To moral brigades who want to dictate to us what we can say, read, watch, listen to, wear, eat and drink. To  has lost its moral compass. To pressure groups that want to keep us in the 18th century by proudly endorsing caste crimes and honour killings. To a media that often loses its courage and caves in. It’s time we stood up and reclaimed our freedoms. For only a free nation is a strong one.Remember, every time someone is arrested for a cartoon or a tweet or a Facebook post, a book or a song or a blog or a painting, every time a scene is cut out from a film because it can hurt someone’s feelings, a part of us dies. For India is the sum total of all that we believe in, however conflicting our views may be.

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When PM Najib Razak took his oath of office before the king, he swore to uphold and defend the constitution which is the supreme law of the land. If there was one area I thought our government really excelled in, it was red tape and bureaucracy. But now, horrors, it seems that even the bureaucratic officials of the Prime Minister’s Department have been derelict in their duties.

The BN government is totally unconstitutional, illegal and should resign immediately and call for fresh elections. They won’t do this, of course.

They have zero respect for the rakyat, for the constitution (which has been amended out of recognition over the 50 years they have dictated the country), for any kind of freedom of expression, or indeed anything that mature democracies hold dear. ”A government of laws, and not of men.” (John Adams, 1735-1826). Yahoo Answers explains this principle: Law professor Shad Faruqi cited the case of  sister-in-law fucking Abu Hassan Omar  who was appointed by then PM Mahathir Mohamad in 1997 as Selangor menteri besar without first being a member of the Selangor state legislative assembly.

He said the Permatang state seat was vacated to pave the way for a by-election for Abu Hassan. This is truly Umno Boleh.

Furthermore, this Abu Hassan case wasn’t challenged in court so its legality is not known.

“It means that laws are to be interpreted objectively, not reread by individuals and are to be applied to everyone without regard for their positions, reputations or personal relationships with others.

“A government of men, on the other hand, would be one that is subjective, depending on the relationship of those enforcing the laws and those against whom the laws might be enforced.”

They have so much corrupt baggage behind them that they cannot do anything but cling to power to save their sorry hides. What has the Agong to say about this? One of his servants by the name of Najib has presented him an illegal list of public servants called YBs to be confirmed and ratified.

Shouldn’t he sack such a servant for bringing disgrace to his name, the land and the people? One can expect the response from Najib and friends to be along the lines of “What does Tommy Thomas know? He is only a constitutional lawyer”.

Umno will then consult the latest beacon of jurisprudence, former Courts of Appeals judge Mohd Noor Abdullah, who will make his pronouncement on the ultimate interpretation of the constitution in respect of appointments:

“Whereas such decisions as may be made by any Malay-Muslim prime minister who is from Umno shall be valid and binding for any and all purposes of the constitution and shall be implemented and enforced without let or hindrance nor shall such decisions be challenged in court as wanting in legality.”

This explanation will then be supported by the other legal champion, Ridhuan Tee Abdullah. Then what to do, Tommy?

It is simply disgusting. Are the lives of Indians in this country so cheap and worthless that at least one Indian should die in a police lock-up every other day? And where is P Waythamoorthy, the so-called leader of Persatuan Hindraf Malaysia and ‘instant’ deputy minister?

What is wrong if the Indian community is of the opinion that Waythamoorthy had deliberately taken out the human rights demand from his so-called ‘deal’ with BN because he knew that he would not have the guts or conviction to take the BN government to task for custodial deaths?

If Waythamoorthy has any shame, he should quit his deputy minster’s post straight away and ask the Indian community to forgive him.

If one can violate the supreme law of the land, then I shudder to think with what ease they can do to other laws. What kind of AG and chief secretary of the government do we have? This is utterly disgraceful and incompetent

Datuk Seri Najib Razak was today challenged to temporarily remove from his Cabinet Datuk Seri Ahmad Zahid Hamidi – who has been sued for assault – to prove he is serious about government reform.

Opposition lawmaker Gobind Singh Deo (picture) told the prime minister that it is “improper” to put a man who has been ordered to answer a civil suit for assault in charge of the powerful home ministry where his actions and conduct could invite conflict, which would reflect on his Barisan Nasional (BN) government.

“[Leading] the Home Ministry now, which is responsible for the police would to my mind, put Zahid in a position of conflict.

“The Home Ministry is one of the most powerful ministries, with significant influence over various bodies including the police and prisons,” the Puchong MP said, adding in his statement that its minister must be seen as one who is “above and beyond these agencies as he needs to maintain independence”.

Gobind reminded Najib that the PM had promised to raise the quality of governance after winning reelection in the May 5 polls and must therefore show he is committed to carrying out his transformation.

“Will the Prime Minister remove him pending the outcome of the trial or will he resort to the same old indifferent attitude and silence proving yet again that he is incapable of the change he promises?” the DAP man asked.

Ahmad Zahid had been sued by businessman Amir Abdullah Bazli for allegedly punching him in the on January 16, 2006 at the Country Heights recreational club in Kajang, Selangor causing the latter to suffer a nasal bone fracture and a swollen left eye.

Then a deputy information minister, Ahmad Zahid had denied the allegation and applied to the Kuala Lumpur High Court for the case to be thrown out. The application was dismissed by the same court on April 21, 2010.

He later filed a countersuit against the 41-year-old, claiming to have suffered humiliation and emotional trauma as a result of the accusation.

But last year, a three-judge panel of the Court of Appeal unanimously ruled against Zahid’s bid to strike out the assault suit and ordered the minister to pay RM5,000 in costs. It also ordered Zahid to respond to the action.

Some words do not just describe an emotion, they become the emotion itself. What better language to describe love than French, what better way to describe indolence and indulgence than in Italian?

Sedition laws can be meaningless in a democracy, a governance based on the principle of free speech.

A democracy asks its citizens to speak their mind. Provided it does not cause riots or public harm.

Attorney-general Abdul Gani Patail, who has been playing deaf and dumb through all controversies and scandals incriminating BN all these years and successfully getting away from them all, should now stand up and clear the air over the apparent constitutional debacle that PM Najib Razak has plunged the country into.

If Gani continues to keep his infamous silence, he would be deemed to have breached his oath taken before the Agong to protect and defend the constitution.

Universiti Teknologi Mara (UiTM) law professor Shad Faruqi, who has earlier sanctioned these apparently dubious ministerial appointments as constitutional, should also join the discourse to defend his position.

But when citizens do that in India, they are warned and browbeaten into submission – even sent to jail.  India’s sedition law was written in 1860 to empower the British masters ruling India to punish “natives”.

Yes, when a writer or cartoonist says what pleases the ears of the powers that be, he is encouraged to write or draw more. However, when he comments in words or pictures something critical, heavens fall.

There is something exceedingly sensual in the sound of some exotic words that seep into the common lexicon. These words don’t just convey, but seem to add depth to an emotion. For instance, amour makes love more sensual, while La dolce vita makes a life of luxury sound even more indulgent.

Of course, you have to pronounce them correctly and emote, rather than say, the words. Interestingly, the foreign phrases that are adopted by the very flexible English language are those that most typify the language group they come from. So the French ‘loan words’ we know are those related to love, Italian words are the ones that refer to indolence and present enjoyment, while the German loan words define harsher reality.

These words have found their way into English through repeated or striking usage in art forms such as movies, poems, books and even fashion. Artists and fashion designers who are constantly on the watch for words and phrases to define their art, often resort to foreign, exotic phrases. These then seep into common usage. Some have become a respectable part of the English language and are used frequently, while some are mutilated through wrong usage — a very common example of which is haute couture.

Not for nothing are the French considered the best lovers, and their language the best to accompany lovemaking. Consider Mon amour (My love), Mon Cheri (my darling), Je t’aime (I love you) — all pronounced softly. A Frenchman could probably bring his lover to climax with words. French probably has given the largest number of ‘loan words’ to the English language; in fact, most of these are so intrinsic a part of the language that we no longer even notice these are actually French! Did you know, for instance, that ‘royal’, ‘colonel’, ‘detail’, ‘grotesque’ are all actually words of French origin? Many emotions are best described in French. Déjà vu(already seen) describes a feeling of having lived through a new situation previously. Déjà vecu describes a weird knowledge of what is going to happen next, while Déjà visite is an uncanny knowledge of a place one has never visited earlier.

What can the Italian language express best but the indolent, sensual sense of the ‘here and now’ and of taking life easy? The movie Eat, Pray, Lovepopularised a couple of beautiful Italian phrases. Consider Attraversiamo(Let’s cross over together, leave the past and pain behind) and another gorgeous phrase, Dolce far niente (the sweetness of doing nothing) Carpe diem in Italian means to seize the day, enjoy the present moment. Ah, the very sound of the words makes one feel so much better about life and living.

And then there are numerous ‘loan words’ from foreign languages that possibly have no equivalent in any other language, but can be instantly related to by people across the globe. Schadenfreude in German refers to getting pleasure out of the misfortune of others. In Russian, the wordPochemuchka means a person who asks too many questions. And this one in Finnish could be very useful — Pilkunnussija refers to a person who thinks it’s his duty to point out spelling and grammatical mistakes at the cost of popularity. Kaelling in Danish is an ugly woman who shouts obscenities at her children. Hikikomori is a Japanese term for reclusive adolescents who are socially awkward.     Shemomedjamo in Georgian means to keep eating even after you are full as the food is delicious. The Scottish tartle refers to hesitating when introducing someone as you have forgotten his name.Prozvonit is a Czech word for giving a blank call and letting the other person call back to save money.

Did we even think we needed words to describe these things? Indian languages also contribute words that have become part of general lexicon because of the emotion they express through the very sound or because they do not have an equivalent in another language. ‘Maharaja’, ‘bungalow’ and ‘thug’ are Indian loan words to the English language.

And then consider the phrases that may not have made it to the English dictionary, but are commonly used across the country, unifying the very different languages and cultures, because people can relate to the common emotion. One of the most satisfying phrases Punjabi has contributed isSannu ki! Pronounced in the right spirit, the sound itself conveys the meaning; it has the instant effect of lifting one above the present mess into a lofty detachment. Instant elevation.

The Bengali Eeeeesh popularised by Utpal Dutt in Golmaal and Aishwarya Rai Bachchan in Devdaas expresses a mild regret and self-reproach at a mistake, while the sensual nyaka, which all Bengalis insist cannot be translated, refers to the dainty put-on act of a maiden seeking to attract attention. Sachin Tendulkar’s Aaiila! is a Marathi expression that can convey both wonder and disappointment! The Hyderabadi kaiko (why?) and Hallo hallo (slowly, slowly) conveys the lethargic feeling of taking it easy, which we can all relate to.

Would you like to add emotive words and phrases from other languages that may not have equivalents elsewhere?

The strong support the activist-cartoonist has got, political parties standing for his right to expression and state government forced to review its decision–all these are things that would be unthinkable in the past.

100 years from now, history students cannot differentiate Imelda Marcos from this fat lady.

Are you the reincarnation of Mao Tsetung, Rosmah? Wouldn’t be surprised if YOU are the Chinese tsunami your chubby hubby referred to.

Fat, short and ugly piece of shit. Any tom, dick and harry will surely go for the Mongolian instead of her. Even the Mongolian ass is much better looking.

Rosmah Mansor is feeling the loneliness of her “top level” position – she only has her husband and Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak to complain to about allegations levelled at her in the social media. what real men want with the accompanying hems & haws?! Give me a break! Might as well I support the foaming in the mouth Cheeky fellow to regulate online portals like how Singapore did it. Come to think of it, perhaps Fat Mama’s complains to Jibby yielded some results i.e. REGULATING online portals starting with Mkini

What with the botox lady,… you are making your face look bigger than your hair. And I really like your kindergarden level of research. And “(However,) after five years, when the business is in trouble, they go to banks and ask for money”. Waahh so easy aah? I also want to ask the banks for money, can or not?Don’t poke your nose into Government affairs unless you are given a task to carry out . . . There’s going to be an International Conference on the Malaysia Agreement in Kota Kinabalu on Sept 13. Had the Malaysia Agreement been complied with, it would have been 50 years old this year. The Conference, sponsored by the Borneo Heritage Foundation, will be moderated by Tan Sri Simon Sipaun who has been preaching all his adult life that “life was better in Sabah before Malaysia”. He was even interrogated once on this after a police report was lodged against him. Tan Sri Simon was a former Sabah state secretary, vice chairman of the Malaysian Human Rights Commission and Advisor to the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission . . readmoreThe whizkid dealmaker Low Taek Jho (Jho Low),,too close to Rosmah Mansor

What young men want’

Rosmah’s Luxury Lifestyles Remembering  Rospussy juice

The dislocation produced by age becomes even stronger when rosmah look at those considerably older than ourselves. Were our grandparents ever really young? Of course, we have all seen their photographs, those sepia tinted assertions of their once-youth. But it seems as if the people in those photographs are other people, with an admittedly striking if faded resemblance to the real articles in front of us. Their youth seems to Rosmah like a land far, far away and stories about the times when they were young have a dreamy, fable like quality. One doesn’t quite locate those stories in the same terrain as one on which we lead our lives. Their youth seems like an aberration or at best, a vehicle for getting them to this point and making them what they are today. To use a common benchmark, who would argue with the claim that Najib and Rosmah were never young. Their youth is a manufactured back story, one that takes place quickly in the first ten minutes of a film, so that we can get on to the real story,.

They’re famed as much for their work and talent as they are for their dark traits, then be it theirwomanising behaviour or for being moody, aggresive and tempremental. Yet there’s something about such ‘bad boys’ that makes them insanely likeable to the opposite sex. Check this out. Be it Shane Warne or Salman Khan or Sanjay Dutt or Colin Farrell, they continue to enjoy an ever growing female fan following.

On the fact that there are more female than male undergraduates in local universities, Rosmah opined that this is because young men have other priorities.

“They want to earn money fast, they want to do business, they don’t want to enter university,” she said.

“(However,) after five years, when the business is in trouble, they go to banks and ask for money. When (the loan application is rejected and they are) forced to close the business, it is (seen as) the government’s fault.

“I don’t know what’s happening to you men. You’d better to think of your species very seriously.”

She urged the men present at the event – mainly comprising senior government officers – to encourage young men to complete their tertiary studies

“I want to touch on ICT use. You have to take it seriously. You should know what to (accept) and what not (to accept). You need to use rational and objective information.

She said information spread on online and in the social media are “sometimes lies”.

In a new study, researchers have investigated what factors influence dishonest behaviour.

Previous research has shown that a person’s first instinct is to serve his or her own self-interestand that people are more likely to lie when they can justify such lies to themselves.

With these findings in mind, psychological scientists Shaul Shalvi of the University of Amsterdam and Ori Eldar and Yoella Bereby-Meyer of Ben-Gurion University colleagues hypothesized that, when under time pressure, having to make a decision that could yield financial reward would make people more likely to lie.

They also hypothesized that, when people are not under time pressure, they are unlikely to lie if there is no opportunity to rationalize their behaviour.

“According to our theory, people first act upon their self-serving instincts, and only with time do they consider what socially acceptablebehaviour is,” Shalvi said.

“When people act quickly, they may attempt to do all they can to secure a profit—including bending ethical rules and lying. Having more time to deliberate leads people to restrict the amount of lying and refrain from cheating,” Shalvi said.

For the study, the researchers first tested participants’ tendency to lie when doing so could be easily justified – approximately 70 adult participants rolled a die three times such that the result was hidden from the experimenter’s view.

The participants were told to report the first roll, and they earned more money for a higher reported roll.

Seeing the outcomes of the second and third rolls provided the participants with the opportunity to justify reporting the highest number that they rolled, even if it was not the first – after all, they had rolled that number, just not the first time they rolled the die.

Some of the participants were under time pressure, and were instructed to report their answer within 20 seconds. The others were not under time pressure, and had an unlimited amount of time to provide a response.

The experimenters were not able to see the actual die rolls of the participants, to ensure all rolls were private. Instead, in order to determine whether or not the participants had lied about the numbers they rolled, Shalvi and colleagues compared their responses to those that would be expected from fair rolls.

They found that both groups of participants lied, but those who were given less time to report their numbers were more likely to lie than those who weren’t under a time constraint.

The second experiment followed a similar procedure, except that the participants were not given information that could help them justify their lies – instead of rolling their die three times, they only rolled it once and then reported the outcome.

In this experiment, the researchers found that participants who were under time pressure lied, while those without a time constraint did not.

Together, the two experiments suggest that, in general, people are more likely to lie when time is short. When time isn’t a concern, people may only lie when they have justifications for doing so.

“One implication of the current findings is that to increase the likelihood of honest behaviour in business or personal settings, it is important not push a person into a corner but rather to give him or her time,” Shalvi said.

“People usually know it is wrong to lie, they just need time to do the right thing,” Shalvi added.

The study has been published in Psychological Science.

“If anyone wants to commit a sin, (he or she) can read and believe (those allegations). But, before you believe, please do some investigation,” she said.

The young fear age and seek to distance themselves from it in a variety of ways. Our grandparents were thus never young for if they were, one day i too will become like them. When the young speak of the old, it is as if they talk of another species, creatures from another land. The illusion of permanence that youth nurtures so actively is encouraged in all forms of popular culture, and is sought to be perpetuated in a variety of ways, including the pharmaceutical and surgical. We deny age for as long as we can and once it cannot be pushed away any more, we work hard at de-fanging it by emphasising its toothlessness. The societal expectation from the old is that they become naturally sacrificing and behave as large cuddly toys that make few demands.

For those that lie suspended between youth and old age, there is a double sense of distance. The younger version seems to be, somewhat ironically, a dated version of oneself, while the older version to come, is as yet difficult to imagine, although one can begin to feel age creaking in one’s knees. It is one thing to become older, but does it necessarily involve having to become someone else?

According to a research study, 50 to 60 per cent of married men engage in extramarital sex at one time or the other. Here’s to find out whether your man is cheating on you.

More often than not, women have no clue what the men in their life are doing. Though you need some basic knowledge to protect yourself from getting hurt; you must find out whether your man is cheating on you first. Here are some ways

He has cheated before

If your man has cheated on you before; you need to undoubtedly watch out for his past behaviour. Often people still do not rectify their faults and do the same thing time and again.

He is a narcissist

Men with narcissistic personality feel that they are entitled to more things than other people. These people have a tendency to cheat because they feel that they don’t have to play by the rules in a relationship.

He has no sense of guilt

Men who don’t feel guilty or remorse for what they’ve done or about their ways is more likely to cheat. Maybe such men don’t have emotions that hold them back.

He’s an excellent liar

If he’s good at lying about other things in life, watch out. Those who constantly come up with something about their life that isn’t true, chances are that they would cheat.

He’s picked up from home/family

Just like how a child picks up most habits from home/parents, similarly people have a tendency to pick up such habits from their near and dear ones. If someone is constantly exposed to unfaithful people at home or within their friend circle, chances are that they would pick up this trait.

We give you a small ready reckoner on how men behave in relationships…

Guys tend to get serious with their relationship and become too possessive.

It’s not easy for a guy to let go of his girlfriend after they broke up especially when they’ve been together for 3 years or more.

A guy has to experience rejection, because if he’s too-good-never-been-busted, never been in love and hurt, he won’t be matured and grow up.

When an unlikable circumstance comes, guys blame themselves a lot more than girls do.

Guys have strong passion to change.

Guys are tigers in their peer groups but become tamed pussycats with their girlfriends.

When a guy pretends to be calm, check if he’s sweating. You’ll see that he is nervous.

When a guy asks you to leave him alone, he’s just saying, “Please come and listen to me”

When a guy loves you, bring out the best in him.

If a guy starts to talk seriously, listen.

If a guy has been kept shut or silent, say something. (He generally has a lot of frustration in mind then)

Guys believe that there’s no such thing as love at first sight, but court girls anyway and then realize at the end that he is wrong.

Guys like femininity not feebleness.

A guy may instantly know if the girl likes him but can never be sure unless the girl tells him. (So girls you should think of making the first move)

A guy would waste his time over video games and basketball, the way a girl would do over her romance novels and make-ups.

Guys love girls who can cook.

Guys like girls who are like their moms. No kidding!

A guy’s friend knows everything about him.

The first order of business after a split is by getting involved in some casual sex, according to experts.

However, casual sex to some is fine only if the two have truly, emotionally, moved on, the Huffington Post reported.

It could be good idea, as it helps you to forget that you have been sleeping with a jerk before.

As long as it is protected there is problem at all. It’s part of the moving on process.

Meanwhile, some believe it’s hard for people to disconnect feelings and sex could result in mixed feelings.

As an advice it would be better if you don’t try to fill the void you’re missing with some meaningless sex.

A lot of healing would have to take place first before you start dating. If not, it’s a disaster.

Here’s a peep into those hidden secrets … dig into them at your own risk!

- I might just hate it when you sleep in that office shirt, but when you are away, I love to snuggle up in your shirt because it smells of you.

- Though I insist on paying the bill or sharing it in our initial dates, I’ll find you cheap and so non-chivalrous in case you don’t insist on making the payment.

- Long before we explored each other’s bodies, I had been fantasizing about being with you. That inhibition was only to get assured that you are all mine.

- I do think about my ex-es and compare them to you. Mostly you win, but you are not all perfect.

- ‘I don’t care you call or not’ is pure pretence. In fact, I start waiting for your next call the moment one ends. Not just this, I eagerly want you to plan our next date even before the current one ends. I might not show it. So, don’t fret about looking desperate just call! The gap looks like a lifetime to me.

- During the initial days of our relationship, I used to save all our chat histories and your SMSes and read them again and again. Sometimes, made my friends read them, too.

- The day you shared your password with me, digging into your chat records and mails was the first thing I did.

- I would love to know what turns you on. Though, I know it’s going to be hilarious as I’ve seen your frequently-visited porn sites.

- You don’t have to be a ‘good boy’ with me all the time. I don’t mind talking a little dirty.

- You are my soul mate, but my ‘best friend’ is my confidante. From the size of your pay cheque, bank account to the size of your other assets…she knows it all. So, till you are telling her how much you love me all’s fine. Remember she’s my best friend and never yours.

- You rightly blame me for bombarding you with so many questions. But, that’s my way of testing you. I judge and analyse you on every word, expression, action, e-mail or SMS you write to me or someone else. So, when I ask “Do you fantasize about other women?,” the answer has to be “Why would I when I am with you?” So, better watch out!

- I love to make you a little jealous as it makes me feel wanted. So the next time you spot me flirting with your friend, know that I’m actually flirting with you through her.

- Every time I fight with you is because I feel ignored. Don’t get into your cocoon when I’m bad. Just give me what I’m fighting for – a little attention and I’ll be all yours.

- I love to get constant reminders of the much known fact that – you need me. So, what’s the harm in dropping liners saying ‘You complete me’ or ‘Don’t ever leave me alone’ … ?

- Last but not the least, irrespective of how independent and self-driven I am, how ever much I may say that I don’t need a man to be happy, but still I want you to take charge when we are in bed.

French lawyer William Bourdon, who represents Suaram in the Scorpene case, has indicated that he is willing to brief the Malaysian parliament on the matter.

   NAJIB’S ROMANTIC DREAM WITH MONGOLIAN GHOST ALTANTUYA SHAARIIBUU

Young Malaysian Journalists Club president Dzulkarnain Taib question Suaram interest in scorpene

AT IS HAPPENING? NO APPEAL FOR A MURDER CASE AND YET IN RAJA PETRA’S HABEAS CORPUS CASE, THE APPEAL IS MADE VERY QUICKLY. THE MALAYSIAN PUBLIC HAS THE RIGHT TO KNOW THE REASONS FOR THIS APPARENT DISCRIMINATION. MAYBE, RAZAK BAGINDA IS A CLOSE ASSOCIATE OF THE DEPUTY PRIME MINISTER, NAJIB TUN RAZAK, WHEREAS RAJA PETRA IS NAJIB’S STRONGEST CRITIC. IF NOT, WHAT ELSE?  PLEASE, DEPUTY PUBLIC PROSECUTOR TUN MAJID TUN HAMZAH, CAN YOU EXPLAIN? readmore INSP AZILAH HADRI, 30, AND KPL SIRUL AZHAR TOLD L

WWW.MALAYSIAKINI.COM NO APPEAL AGAINST ABDUL RAZAK’S ACQUITTAL

HAFIZ YATIM | NOVEMBER 14, 2008

THE CLOCK HAS RUN DOWN ON A POSSIBLE APPEAL AGAINST THE ACQUITTAL OF POLITICAL ANALYST ABDUL RAZAK BAGINDA, WHO HAD BEEN CHARGED WITH ABETTING IN THE MURDER OF MONGOLIAN NATIONAL ALTANTUYA SHAARIIBUU. THE PROSECUTION HAD 14 DAYS TO FILE AN APPEAL AFTER SHAH ALAM HIGH COURT JUDGE MOHD ZAKI MD YASIN DELIVERED HIS RULING ON OCTOBER 31. CHECKS WITH THE COURT REGISTRY AT 5PM TODAY SHOWED THAT NO APPEAL HAS BEEN FILED. DEPUTY PUBLIC PROSECUTOR TUN MAJID TUN HAMZAH(RIGHT) SAID THE COURT HAD MADE A FINDING OF FACT AND HE CONFIRMED THAT THE PROSECUTION WOULD NOT FILE AN APPEAL. “NO FURTHER COMMENTS AS THERE IS AN ON-GOING TRIAL,” HE SAID WHEN CONTACTED MOHD ZAKI IN HIS WRITTEN JUDGMENT HAD SAID: “ONCE THE ESSENTIAL ELEMENTS OF ABETMENT – BY INSTIGATION, BY CONSPIRACY AND BY AIDING – [...] ARE NOT PROVEN ON THE BASIS OF PRIMA FACIEEVIDENCE, ANY OTHER INFERENCES AND DOUBTS THAT MAY HAVE ARISEN MUST BE RESOLVED, AS IS TRITE, IN FAVOUR OF THE ACCUSED PERSON. “IT IS NOT FOR THE COURT TO CALL FOR THE DEFENCE MERELY TO CLEAR OR CLARIFY SUCH DOUBTS [...] I FIND THERE IS NO PRIMA FACIECASE FOR HIM (ABDUL RAZAK, LEFT) TO ANSWER HIS CHARGE…” HOWEVER, THE JUDGE ORDERED SPECIAL ACTION SQUAD POLICE OFFICERS AZILAH HADRI, 32, AND SIRUL AZHAR UMAR, 38, TO ENTER THEIR DEFENCE. THEY ARE JOINTLY ACCUSED OF MURDERING ALTANTUYA, 28, AT A LOCATION BETWEEN LOT 12843 AND LOT 16735 IN MUKIM BUKIT RAJA, SELANGOR BETWEEN 10AM ON OCT 19, 2006 AND 1AM THE FOLLOWING DAY. THEY HAVE ELECTED TO TESTIFY UNDER OATH WHEN THE HEARING RESUMES ON NOV 10. THEIR OTHER OPTIONS WERE EITHER TO GIVE A STATEMENT FROM THE DOCK OR TO REMAIN SILENT. READMORE HERE HTTP://THEMALAY-CHRONICLE.BLOGSPOT.COM/2012/01/HOW-NAJIB-IS-LOSING-STUPID-DEBATE.HTML

 KARPAL SINGH WHO IS COUNSEL FOR THE FAMILY OF MURDERED MONGOLIAN TRANSLATOR ALTANTUYA SHAARIIBUU SAID THE MONGOLIAN GOVERNMENT HAD AGREED TO POST A SECURITY DEPOSIT BOND OF RM60,000 FOR THE FAMILY TO ENABLE THE COURT OF APPEAL TO CONTINUE WITH THE COMPENSATION HEARING.

“THEY (MONGOLIAN GOVERNMENT) HAVE AGREED TO MAKE THE PAYMENT BEFORE JUNE 30. THE FAMILY’S CASE SEEKING COMPENSATION WILL CONTINUE NOW,” KARPAL TOLD FMT YESTERDAY.

HE SAID, HOWEVER, THAT THE COURT PROCESS COULD TAKE TIME. THE CASE IS CURRENTLY WITH THE COURT OF APPEAL AND WILL CONTINUE TO THE FEDERAL COURT.

FOLLOWING THE COURT’S ORDER FOR A SECURITY BOND, KARPAL HAD APPEALED TO ALL PAKATAN RAKYAT MPS AND STATE ASSEMBLYMEN TO CHIP IN AND HELP THE FAMILY WITH FUNDS.

“BUT NOW THAT THE MONGOLIAN GOVERNMENT HAS AGREED TO ASSIST ALTANTUYA’S FATHER SHAARIIBUU SETEV POST THE BOND, THERE WILL BE NO NEED TO COLLECT DONATIONS FROM THE MPS AND STATE REPS,” KARPAL SAID.

ON JUNE 4, 2007, ALTANTUYA’S FATHER, SETEV, MOTHER ALTANTSETSEG SANJAA AND HER TWO SONS MUNGUNSHAGAI AND ALTANSHAGAI MUNKHTULGA HAD SUMMONED THE MALAYSIAN GOVERNMENT, ABDUL RAZAK BAGINDA, AND THE TWO ACCUSED – CHIEF INSPECTOR AZILAH HADRI AND CORPORAL SIRUL AZHAR UMAR – TO SEEK RM100 MILLION IN COMPENSATION FOR HER DEATH.

THEY ALLEGED THAT AZILAH AND SIRUL, WHO WERE ATTACHED TO THE SPECIAL ACTIONUNIT , HAD SHOT ALTANTUYA AND DISPOSED OF HER CORPSE BY EXPLODING IT USING A C4 BOMB. BITS OF ALTANTUYA’S BODY WERE LATER FOUND IN THE FOREST AREA IN PUNCAK ALAM, SHAH ALAM, ON NOV 7, 2006.readmoreNAJIB WHY DID ALTANTUYA HAVE TO DIE? CORRUPT POLITICAL LEADERSHIP DOES NOT ATTRACTIVE MEN OF OUTSTANDING INTEGRITY;

The latest story progresses from ludicrous to absurd to appalling. The intelligence report – which the media in  with gusto – is ribtickling for the very claim that  has some secrets to keep on its   disputes. “reports soon pulled the curtains on such theatre of the absurd.

Sirul and former chief inspector Azilah Hadri were found guilty and sentenced to death by the Shah Alam High Court in 2009 for killing Altantuya, then 28, at Mukim Bukit Raja in Shah Alam between 10 pm on Oct 19, 2006 and 1am on Oct 20, 2006.

Former political analyst Abdul Razak Baginda, who was charged with abetting them, was acquitted by the high court on Oct 31, 2008 after the prosecution failed to establish a prima facie case against him.

Their appeal against their conviction and death sentence is scheduled to be heard by the Court of Appeal on June 10.

Sirul’s lawyer Kamarul Hisham Kamarudin said a copy of the notice of motion would be served to the prosecution.

This is appalling. newspapers are supposed to report truth. Why should a paper protect the interests of Najib-Rosmah such an attempt would compromise truth –A little positive parochialism is something celebrated by newspapers three mainstream  newspapers –Utusan ,The star and NST – were on the ‘beneficiary list’But that should never be at the risk of compromising facts to protect some  Nation’s interests.The latest story progresses from ludicrous to absurd to appalling. The intelligence report – which the media in  with gusto – is ribtickling for the very claim that  has some secrets to keep on its   disputes.  Najib and Rosmah  might have had with his ill-advisors in war room in? Well, those would have the  rolling on the floor laughing.why should a paper do “only those reports”.

He is seeking for the Court of Appeal to declare the trial a mistrial, his conviction be set aside and he be set free.

Sirul, 39, claimed the adverse publicity he received had caused a probability that the high court judge was biased, rendering his conviction unsafe.

Sirul claimed he was exposed to adverse publicity through three statutory declarations, two made by private investigator the late P.  Balasubramaniam and one by Raja Petra Kamarudin.

He said Balasubramaniam’s first statutory declaration, made after the prosecution closed its case on June 23, 2008, contained matters prejudicial to him as those matters were not disclosed in his (Balasubramaniam’s) testimony at the trial.

He said Balasubramaniam had, on July 4, 2008, made another statutory declaration stating that he was withdrawing his first statutory declaration.

Sirul said the declarations were extensively uploaded in various websites and had been the subject of various speculation, debate and extensive commentaries from the general public, legal practitioners and leaders which were interpreted as questioning the veracity and authenticity of the declarations.

He said the principal questions hovering in the minds of readers having access to the materials would be, “What prompted the appellants to kill the victim” and “Who gave instructions to have the killing carried out by the appellants”.

Sirul said Raja Petra had, on June 21, 2008, uploaded the latter’s statutory declaration on an Internet website stating that three other people were also present when the victim was killed, which was interpreted to mean that he (Sirul) was the killer.

He claimed Raja Petra had also uploaded a copy of a caution statement believed to be his (Sirul’s) stating that he (Sirul) had admitted to killing the Mongolian woman.

Enter the phase of absurdity. It emerges, through the systematic leaking of the magnum opus of strategic intelligence, that reporters of three mainstream  newspapers –utusan the star  nst – were on the ‘beneficiary list’ of the spy who “took care of their travel and children’s school admission.” Some of the other papers had a jamboree with this crucial information. As I know, these reporters – though I can’t vouch for anyone’s impeccable integrity – are like any other in Chennai, who respect facts. The attempt to drag journalists of such reputed newspapers into the spy story smacks of intelligent imagination, nothing more.

Former police Special Action Unit personnel Sirul Azhar Umar, who was convicted for Altantuya Shaariibuu’s murder, filed an application to the Court of Appeal here today seeking for his acquittal, claiming there was a mistrial by the Shah Alam High Court.

A notice of motion filed by legal firm The Chambers of Kamarul Hisham and Hasnal Rezua at the Court of Appeal registry here was in an attempt to include additional grounds of appeal.

In the application, former Corporal Sirul claimed that he was exposed to extensive “adverse publicity” during the trial which was misleading and prejudicial to him, thus denying him a fair trial.

.

 READMORE A BEGINNER’S GUIDE TO NOSTALGIA LIVE ALTANTUYA, IS NAJIB GUILTY ..

“Your beautiful face would not be seen,
This love would never take shape in my breast,
The rose would have no special place
If love and the lover did not exist.”

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Negri Sembilan Umno today passed a no contest resolution for the post of president and deputy president at the party’s elections later this year.

Its chairman, Datuk Seri Mohamad Hasan, said the resolution was necessary to strengthen Umno in preparation for the 14th general election (GE-14).

A prime minister who is directly or indirectly involved in murder, corruption and abuse of powwer is still standing and talking like nothing much happened. now the biggest electral fraud …. this government has no credibility, it should go. all thesehas deeply seated in rakyat minds. the ralkyat will not accept this government what ever you they do.( 51% dont support the government.)

You can always masturbate. Another woman is simply not an appropriate immediate response.

Relationships are such complex spaces. I wish it were as easy as the learning the alphabet, but perhaps we can alphabetise it to illustrate some essential ingredients to making a fabulous relationship.

“It is better that the two posts are not contested to avoid a split in Umno. We want Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak as president and Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin as deputy president as we need a strong team to face GE14,” he told reporters after chairing Negri Sembilan Umno and Barisan Nasional (BN) meeting here today.

Mohamad, who is also the mentri besar of Negri Sembilan said the resolution was among three resolutions passed at the meeting.

The other two were giving full support to Najib as prime minister, Umno president and BN chairman and rejecting a proposal to dissolve BN componernt parties and form a new party.

“We disagree with the proposal because we are not yet ready to dissolve Umno which fought for independence and developed the country.

“It’s alright for BN to have component parties. The most important thing is that the parties strive to improve and strengthen themselves.”

Mohamad also said Negri Sembilan BN will not file any petition in relation to GE-13. — Bernama

THE ONLY MALAY LEADER MUHYIDDIN YASSIN WHO WILL HELP TO REDISCOVER THE HOPE OF MALAYS

 If you cannot Change so you must be changed

The letter written byMuhyiddin  to Najib . What was there in the letter that will  take such a drastic step of not nominating Najib as the next UMNO PresidentDoes it mean that there is zero tolerance in the party for “viewpoint plurality” (rather than for corruption)? Can the party simply not discuss its internal problems, and handle charges against its president leadership without exerting authoritarian measures? The answer is that the contents Muhyiddin ’s letter are indeed damning; and shows Najib and Rosmah in poor light. While the letter is damning enough, it also begs me to ask another question: Who is behind the leak of this internal letter? Is itFT MINISTERTENGKU ADNAN MANSOR TOLD NAJIB THAT WINNING THE UMNO POLLS AND FENDING OFF ANY CHALLENGE TO HIS POSITION ARE MORE IMPORTANT THAN REFORMS  Stone-age politics holds back 21st century Malaysia economy It is once again open season on PM Najib. He presides over the most corrupt BN government has seen, his inertia has infected policy with paralysis, he has no authority except to twitch as desired by puppeteer Tengku Adnan Mansor, he loves power too much to just …Read more

considering how much he benefits if  Adnan Mansor,  Hishamuddin are cut to size? There is more than a small reason to believe this theory.

“Since you talk so much about corruption, can I ask you  as to where did the money come from for toppling Adullah Ahmad Badawithat brought   you to power; Why were you silent when all this was happening without hindrance?”. Good questions indeed. Of course  Adnan Mansor  knew there was illegal money funding his party’s election in . What is Operation   Adnan Mansor? How did this operation enable you buy over a majority delegates fo rthis ? Did you buy out the delegates vote, and their leaders?

Is this the beginning of the end for Najib? Former PM Dr Mahathir Mohamad already started the ball rolling when he said Najib will probably stay on as there are no suitable candidates who can replace him.

Knowing how cunning Dr M is, I am sure he did not mean what he said. Now Zam and former finance minister Daim Zainuddin, both close associates of Dr M, are criticising Najib, calling him a clown. Where is the respect for our PM?

If I can remember correctly, a young student was threatened with the Sedition Act for stepping on the PM’s poster. It looks like there is a big battle ahead for Najib.

The think-tank noted that Malaysia has so far managed to dodge the harmful effects of corruption on the investment climate to remain one of Asia’s most vibrant economies.

But it said that Malaysians had shown they were more politically aware, judging from the increased social media coverage of the polls, and were no longer willing to tolerate corruption.

The results of the recently-concluded general election saw the BN retain power by a simple majority although it lost the popular vote to a resurgent opposition.

BN won 133 seats in the 222-member Parliament against the opposition Pakatan Rakyat’s 89 seats, drawing a weaker score than in Election 2008 and which the think-tank noted has put the 13-party ruling coalition in a precarious position unless it moves to reform the way it has conducted business by tackling corruption seriously.

The Baker Institute suggested that Malaysia’s anti-corruption agenda may be better served if BN could focus on reaping the results of a successful economy.

“To motivate itself to implement a major change towards clean behaviour, BN should focus on reaping the rewards of a successful economy.

“In order to facilitate long-term inclusive growth, the government should promote policies that will be applied fairly and transparently to all,” it said in its analysis headlined “Malaysia: Looking forward” carried yesterday.

The think-tank noted that Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak has made the first step by pulling back some affirmative action policies favouring Bumiputeras who form over half the population and which other analysts believe to be at the root of Malaysian corruption.

“Removing race-based policies is the first step in bringing the country together. However, it is unlikely that Najib will completely abolish these policies, as he still needs to appeal to his Malay supporters, which make up the base of BN,” the Rice University said.

It added that the PM needs to follow through on his electoral promises by detailing the steps for his administration to move forward and to enforce them, suggesting the government install “a more transparent, meritocratic system for selecting project managers… to avoid appointment based on family or political ties.”

It also suggested that the government consider dismantle the current practice of political party ownership of selective media enterprises as a move in the direction of greater transparency, noting the imbalance in news coverage as parties attempt to exert their influence.

The Baker Institute also suggested that public institutions, namely the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission and Public Complaints Bureau, also need to buck up reform, highlighting that “proper treatment of high profile cases could maximize the impact anti-corruption organizations have on the government.”

“While it remains to be seen whether the government will respond as hoped, its people are pushing for radical change.

“Malaysia needs leaders who are willing to take drastic measures to tackle corruption,” it said.

“Will it understand that pandering to special interests, money politics and crony capitalism are no longer a viable strategy?  why are bribes bad? If bribes are bad, why is it perfectly legit to have brokers and middlemen? If you hire a broker to find a flat, why is it wrong to hire a broker There’s something seriously wrong with such an order itself. You cannot impose patriotism on people. It must come from within. There was a time when our hearts swelled with pride every time we saw the wave  of our flagor heard the national anthem play. That pride has gone out of our lives today. What remains is but a gaping void and a shining rage. We are angry with everything around us. But, above all, we are angry with ourselves. How could we have allowed the rot to set in so deep? Why were we blind for so long? Why did we not protest before protest itself became an ineffective tool?

We have suddenly woken up to the nightmare of an incessantly we grew up in an era of certainties. We knew what was right, what was wrong. So even when we did wrong, often in defiance of authority, we believed we were in the right. There was no ambivalence, no doubt in our mind as to good and bad, moral and immoral. There was clarity about most things that mattered. This defined us as a generation. We knew what we stood for.

That certainty has chipped away over the years. We live today in an Age of Moral Ambivalence. There is a charming ambiguity over most things, and it’s this ambiguity that best reflects our moral dilemma. We are all  civil society activists standing in the battlefield, a bit unsure, a bit confused, desperately seeking that certitude which eludes us. Faith cannot provide it as easily as it once did. Tradition lies tattered before the onslaught of modernity. The moral compass that once showed us the way is now defunct. Before us, lies the wilderness. Where our heroes are no longer heroes and villainy is infinitely more seductive. In such times, how easy can it be to know what’s right, what’s wrong?

This ambiguity has seeped into our public life. Do we hang a man when he is sentenced to death? We are at odds with the world if we do. State killing is abolished almost everywhere.  If we choose instead to accept the  Najib-Rosmah’s way that an eye for an eye make we Malaysian blind,

Yes, something has gone wrong with Malaysia and the rot begins with you and me.

If we are to fight the rot, we must stand up, each one of us, and try to reclaim our Malaysia. We must reclaim our Malaysian from the politicians. We must reclaim our Malaysia from those Najib’s crony businessmen who have brought it shame and disrepute. And yes, we must also reclaim our Malaysia from the media. We must reclaim it from the prophets of doom who constantly declaim that our dreams are dead. We must rediscover hope. We must find our dreams again. We must look in every nook and cranny where beauty, talent, faith and hope lie. We must reclaim our imagination. We must challenge ourselves to rise above the faithlessness around us and seek that courage which we have ignored while drooling over instant success.

Life is not Maggie noodles. There are no quick fixes to the problems around us. But there are ways to rise above them and, hopefully, beat them. Those ways do not lie in blind outrage. They lie in our capacity to rise above our disappointments, our rage and seek real solutions. How do we do it? It’s easy. The first step is: Do not keep quiet. Do not tolerate injustice. Do not look away when you see people doing wrong. Seek the courage within yourself to stand up to it. That’s the first step towards feeling proud as Malaysian. Be unafraid.

The next important step derives from this. Reclaim your freedoms. Over recent years, we have steadily lost them. To a Government trying to nervously cover its tracks after every scam. To the new home minister  terrorising us. To crackpots and vandals. To moral brigades who want to dictate to us what we can say, read, watch, listen to, wear, eat and drink. To  has lost its moral compass. To pressure groups that want to keep us in the 18th century by proudly endorsing caste crimes and honour killings. To a media that often loses its courage and caves in. It’s time we stood up and reclaimed our freedoms. For only a free nation is a strong one.Remember, every time someone is arrested for a cartoon or a tweet or a Facebook post, a book or a song or a blog or a painting, every time a scene is cut out from a film because it can hurt someone’s feelings, a part of us dies. For India is the sum total of all that we believe in, however conflicting our views may be.

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There is no harm in giving in to desire once in a while, but are you fooling yourself by demanding ‘wants’ as ‘needs’ you are entitled to? Realpolitik will push  one malaysia into a new social contract. This will not be achieved by moral lectures to politicians. Rather, a new equilibrium will evolve that enables business to be done honestly in many more areas, while devising alternative ways for politicians to still make big money. This equilibrium cannot be created by any one party or power centre. It will evolve government by government and state by state, just as the old contract did. It is neither a good omen nor a good start for Datuk Seri Najib Razak’s post-13 GE Cabinet. Already Najib’s new Cabinet labours under a cloud of legitimacy for the simple reason that Datuk Seri Najib Razak’s Prime Ministership is under a cloud of legitimacy

Federation of Banking Union Indonesia (FBI) fully support it’s Malaysian counterpart, National Union of Banking Employees (Nube) quest to bring Maybank Group Chief Executive Officer and President, Abdul Wahid Omar and his cohorts to court to face charges for sacking Nube’s Vice President and General Treasurer.

FB1 is fully aware of the violations perpetrated by Wahid and his cohorts in Malaysia, who is wellknown for ‘bullying’ the clerical and non-clerical staffs at Maybank by violating and denying their basic rights.

In fact, FBI observed the Nube picket against Wahid and Maybank in Malaysia last year for intimidating unionists from performing their tasks.

FBI views the whole Maybank “bullying” its workers and the unionist seriously.

“This type of bullying should not be condoned. Malaysian government has a moral responsibility to ensure Maybank comes clean and stop this union busting and undermining workers rights.”

Instead of promoting Wahid to a ministerial position in the Malaysian government, Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak should bring him to task and answer all the wrongdoings during his tenure at Maybank, so that it will be a lesson for all the Maybank executives in Indonesia.

Datuk Paul Low has been a respected civil society leader at the forefront of preaching transparency and accountability while he served as the President of Transparency International Malaysian Chapter (TI-Malaysia). His appointment to the Cabinet has hence raised expectations that Datuk Paul Low will continue his pursuit of reforming all necessary institutions to ensure that his causes while he was the TI Malaysia President will be realised the soonest possible.

It is hence heart-wrenching to see Datuk Paul Low repeatedly unwind the various positions after being appointed as a Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department, ostensibly to boost transparency and accountability in the BN administration.

He has given excuses why a Minister should not be required to make public declaration of assets on the basis that if a Minister’s son with RM20 million of assets may have his safety compromised. This was despite his earlier praise for the Penang and Selangor state governments for implementing public asset declarations for all its state executive councillors as a mark of transparency and accountability.There is no harm in giving in to desire once in a while, but are you fooling yourself by demanding ‘wants’ as ‘needs’ you are entitled to? Realpolitik will push  one malaysia into a new social contract. This will not be achieved by moral lectures to politicians. Rather, a new equilibrium will evolve that enables … Read more

He has deflected criticisms of the lack of transparency in Petronas as reflected in the Revenue Governance Index (RGI) where Malaysia scored a weak 46 out of 100 marks, ranking us below countries like Azerbaijan and Indonesia. Datuk Paul Low argued that Malaysia ranked poorly because of Petronas’ non-disclosure agreements with foreign countries. However, when it was pointed out to him that the RGI report pointed clearly to weaknesses in local disclosures, Datuk Paul Low gave a “no comment”.

While we must not abandon our quest for good governance, we must not overlook the fact that the business of government must begin as the election is over. GE-13 has given the Prime Minister and his UMNO-BN the mandate to govern. The voters have in their wisdom also given us a strong Opposition in Parliament. Both the Government and the Opposition must now do their respective duty which is to serve the rakyat. I wish to ask Mr, Netto, how he proposes to “Ubah”? What does he have in mind? More protests? More electioneering?

I would rather abide by His Majesty’s advice that we should accept the election results and move on. As regards to the political future of the Prime Minister, it is wise to leave that decision to the UMNO membership. At the same time, civil society must continue to demand for electoral reforms and  transparency and accountability.

Not only are we scandal-sodden, but we are also in state of protest fatigue. Time to go forward, accept the imperfections of the electoral process, seek judicial review, and speak up for reform. We all have a duty to make Malaysia great again. And we can through constructive engagement. Our Government must listen and act with courage and wisdom or it will face the consequences of total rejection 

– not only because Najib and Barisan Nasional got 47% popular vote as compared to Anwar Ibrahim and Pakatan Rakyat’s 51% popular vote, but also because the 13GE was the most unfair and dirtiest general elections in the nation’s history. If the 13th GE had been clean, free and fair, with a level playing field for both coalitions, Anwar and PR would not only have an increased popular vote over 60 per cent or even exceeding 65 per cent, but would also have won a majority of the 222 parliamentary seats in the country. Awareness and exposure have widened our horizons, which in turn have expanded our list of needs — and there is no going back. Living the life I do, I do not define my cellphone, laptop, a decent wardrobe, books and car as ‘wants’; they are very much needs as I cannot function without them. And an indulgence gives me the high that makes me feel better about life, so why not? Having established that, it is up to each individual to decide towards which end of the stick he likes to lean — between asceticism and overindulgence. I need a phone, sure, but do I really need a top-end contraption? The same goes for the car, the house and the wardrobe. Each of us needs to set our limitations at both ends as per our comfort and proceed within these set parameters, without guilt. Today’s self-assertive culture is all about stating clearly your desires and wants, and expecting to fulfill them. We have allowed ourselves to imagine we have a right to get whatever we want; this creates a sense of entitlement that makes us selfish and self-centred, blurring needs from wants. It is important to define the tipping point at which a want becomes a need and to understand well the reasons for allowing this walkover. We all wish to cater to our needs, but it is essential that we understand what they are and how important these are to us. Sadly, most of our needs are dictated by someone else. We wish to acquire that bigger mansion, that fancy car or those expensive trinkets all in an attempt to outdo others and prove we are no less than anybody else. What a waste! These are precisely the ‘wants’ that masquerade as ‘needs’. For a need to be genuine, it has to rise from within, be a growl within the system, something that is a must for inner happiness, our very growth, or maybe a one-off that fuels the rest of life! Need is not about others, it is about one’s own self. So whereas it is acceptable that many of yesterday’s ‘wants’ are today’s ‘needs’, one has to be cautious and alert enough to recognise the difference. What are the requirements to satisfy, to complete one’s own self?

The public must by now be feeling so blasé from the endless rounds of the weird masquerading as the normal in the government of Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak that the latest argument that his administration is deeper into weirdo land recalls the humourist who thought he had hit bottom and then heard someone tapping from underneath.

A scandal-sodden public can reasonably be expected to be groggy about the fact that the month and the year when a supposedly transformative PM compounded his cabinet of illicit personnel was exactly 25 years on from the trigger for all subsequent mutilations to what is regarded as the due process of constitutional governance.

This was the impeachment of then-Lord President Salleh Abas, an act of such monstrosity and cascading ill-effects that Abdullah Ahmad Badawi’s attempt, on his prime ministerial watch (2003-09), to mitigate its virulence by offering sops to the wounded and the maimed among the affected justices is rather like Japan’s effort to come to terms with the victims, comfort women and Death Railway inductees, of its imperial past – measly and inadequate.

“Our parents sowed dragon’s teeth, our children know and reap the armed men,” goes a saying of uncertain patrimony but singular pertinence to our current predicament.

A Prime Minister, whom we have good reason to believe is a suspected felon in the cover-up of a murder case no less, is heading a government placed in power on minority say-so, and is now in charge of a cabinet composed of some people who have about as much right to be there as some dubiously obtained MyKad holders had in being on GE13′s electoral register.

The question at this stage is: Can things get any worse and if they do, will we see the removal of the coalition that has been in charge of this country since independence in 1957? Things can and will get worse. This we can predict from what has already happened and will continue to happen.

Recalcitrant cops

You can’t come to acquiring the statistic of a 218th death in police custody of a suspect since a count of such mortalities was kept since 2000 without there being something pathological in sections of our Police force.

It is a pathology for which there was a remedy, commended by no less than a royal commission of inquiry into the management of the Police force, which suggested, after a 15-month study of the problem, the formation of an Independent Police Complaints and Misconduct Commission (IPCMC).

The proposal, unveiled in March 2005 in a raft of recommendations for the revamping of the management of the force, was stiff-armed by a cabal of senior police officers who threatened to throw their support to the opposition if the government of Abdullah Badawi implemented it.

Talk of sedition – a charge hurled against student, social and political activists with promiscuous ease these days – the action of that coterie of recalcitrant police officers savoured of sedition, because the recommendation emanated from a royal commission, empaneled on authority of the Agong and was aimed at securing improvements to a vital limb of our criminal justice that carries the royal title on its coat of arms.

Depend upon it that could get conceivably worse. You not only have not seen any determination on the part of the Inspector-General of Police and his boss, the Home Affairs Minister, to do anything about this long suppurating sore on our criminal justice system, you have seen the leader of hitherto the shrillest protestant against such perversities join the government after having stunningly agreed to drop, as a condition of his enlistment in the ruling power structure, a demand for a cessation to custodial deaths.

Not only do things stay incorrigible, the government succeeds in enticing veritable watchdogs of good governance to join them in seeing how things can be bettered, the latter agreeing to enlist from the motive that puts one in mind of Dr Samuel Johnson’s observation of a second marriage – “the triumph of hope over experience.”

But often enough, the new enlistees turn over to discover that it is more a situation where drift, inertia and cynicism work their way to keep things the way they are or worse than that. There is no substitute for “Ubah.

These are the additional needs of each individual over and above food, shelter, clothes and sex. We need to keep redefining and adding new ‘needs’ because life demands that we pull ourselves up from the level of bare essentials to a level where we can start thinking of individual development and progress — physical, mental and spiritual. True, no hungry, unsheltered, unclothed man has the bandwidth to think of these realms, but once basic needs are met, we owe it to ourselves and to life to acquire and use the tools that make life and the world a better place for us to live in. But beware of convincing yourself that every selfish want is a need you have to cater to! Do not fight the wants, just filter them before you let them enter the exclusive “Needs Club”!readmoreThe first task that Najib Abdul Razak faced upon being sworn in as prime minister on May 6, 2013 after leading the BN to victory in the 13th general election, was to form the cabinet. Constitutionally, the prime minister does not have a free hand in his choice of cabinet ministers. Article 43(2)(b) of the … Read more

Dr Mahathir Mohamad  is saying the truth about UMNO  Malay voters had no other choice.but UMNO not Najib

The real truth is that the UMNO is disintegrating. Even before it has got a decent whiff of power. A little hint of it, yes, but the stench of the internal feud is so strong that it is masking out that little hint. Clearly, the UMNO is on a downslide, just as the PAS is. The only question that remains to be answered – whose slide is steeper?! there is really no one who has any stature.is a permanent n Najib , and the only way he could become PM is as a compromise candidate. but MUHYUDDIN YASSIN will win hands down

Dr Mahathir said, the party now was different and many Malays were “disgusted with Umno” which had shown itself to be interested only in jockeying for high positions and to enrich their own pockets, and therefore rejected the party which they regarded as no longer representative of their well-being.

In a blog post headlined “Umno dahulu dan sekarang (Umno then and now)”, the former Umno president remarked that  UMNO’s narrow win in the 13th general election (GE13) could not be credited to increased Malay support but was due to the Malays’ fear of losing their rights and special position Najib failed as the president of UMNO

“As bad as Najib  is, he and Rosmah still don’t smells middle class Malay, is still not likely to protect the interests of the Malays. Therefore there’s no choice for Malays besides supporting Umno.

If Najib continued to turn a blind eye to such complaints from the grassroots and failed to reform itself, the party may be relegated to becoming little more than a “fairy tale” in the country’s history, Dr Mahathir said.

He also accused Najib money at  work of blocking the entry of  deputy president at the party’s elections later this year. more talented than Najib, fearing his positions would be taken away, which would cause him lose his PM job - MUHYUDDIN YASSIN- Najib feud is well known by now.That is the problem really. There is no third person who will support Najib. Not even those who are disgruntled with the Mahathir.

now Najib want  no contest resolution for the post of president and deputy president at the party’s elections  year.but when he form  his his cabinet he never consulted his deputy There is an all-out war within the UMNO on who the next PM should be.

He said  Umno leaders then had fought with their people in mind, not their own self-preservation or interests, and as such had earned the respect of the Malays, many of whom entered the party and took on an active role regardless of their level of education or social rank.

But, Dr Mahathir said, the party now was different and many Malays were “disgusted with Umno” which had shown itself to be interested only in jockeying for high positions and to enrich their own pockets, and therefore rejected the party which they regarded as no longer representative of their well-being.

in GE14, Umno cannot hope that this situation will remain. If Umno does not cleanse itself of corruption and self-interests, the Malays may look for another champion,” Dr Mahathir wrote in his chedet.cc blog.

The 87-year-old, who still wields considerable clout in the BN lynchpin, reminded its leadership that the party was founded in 1946 on protecting the Malay race, Islam as its religion and the country from colonisation by foreign powers.

These were the common causes that drew the Malays from separate states and the different Rulers then to fight together, he said and urged them to return to Umno’s roots.

Mahathir reaffirms our common knowledge. Malays are angry with Najib as Najib no longer fights for race, religion and country. Less talented people replaces existing leaders, resulting in a incompetent and corrupted party. Judging from their actions lately, UMNO has not started to reform. I am very interested to know what is the percentage of Malays that supports UMNO now. Does anyone have a good estimate? My wishful thinking – If the percentage is less than 50%, is there a chance that BN MP’s will crossover to PR?

DR M has started to give hints. Firstly give way to younger leaders, like Mukriz ! Secondly Najib is not fit to rule the country. Then he goes on to say how corrupted and self centred Najib is. Perhaps Najib is not towing the old man’s line anymore. However , Dr M is just not qualified to judge UMNO as he is the same man who laid the policies and still goes on practising what he tells UMNO not to do. UMNO baru won GE 13 because the Malays in the rural areas have no choice and kept ignorant Yes UMNO baru is not for the Malays but for UMNO puteras 7% discount for malays12% discount for UMNO members Dr Mahathir Mohamad cum kingmaker says all these to divert attention from the fact he caused all these in UMNO baru

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Could it possibly be true? Has Najib begun to believe what some admirers have started to suggest with incremental passion, that he is  Malaysia’s best-ever Prime Minister? The answer must be no. He is clearly not self-delusional.The anti- Muhyiddin capaign in our politics has a fertile past. The good that men do, as Shakespeare noted, is oft-interred in their bones; mistakes become an indelible national memory. No  one in UMNO is anti-Muhyiddin, but a very strong faction has believed that Najib was a flawed  who failed in two critical areas — the economy and racial policy .  Malaysia paid a heavy price, in this covert analysis, for his father’s tilt to the Left, and his heirs did nothing to correct that inheritanceMuhyiddin. of what might be called the non- Razak faction of UMNO.Mahathiur, with occasional help from right-wing parties, have sharply diluted the Razak a legacy,The subconscious is the voice of the silent man. - Muhyiddin is a silent man. Ideas, issues, the temptations of pride and pitfalls of vanity, nestle in that nether region of the mind because better sense suggests that it would be inflammatory and self-defeating to let them rise to the surface. Some thoughts are incompatible with open air. But they tend to curl insidiously through the backdoor of a casual remark, or side-alley of a comparison. The less-than-laudatory reference to There is neither irony nor consequence in the aftermath, since UMNO has long shifted out of its mildewed, timber-laden socialist mansion into a new, gleaming prefab condominium.Maybe Muhyiddin  knows his party better than the party knows him.

Why then did he suggest that his Cabinet was more coherent  had to fend off the ‘Young Turks‘but,Stone-age politics holds back 21st century Malaysia economy It is once again open season on PM Najib. He presides over the most corrupt BN government has seen, his inertia has infected policy with paralysis, he has no authority except to twitch as desired by puppeteer Tengku Adnan Mansor, he loves power too much to just …Read more noting pointedly that Nehru and Sardar Patel were exchanging letters by the day and Indira Gandhi had to fend off the ‘Young Turks’?

So who will win? There may not be a definitive answer to that question but there is no doubt about who will loose in contest for the post of president and deputy president at the party’s elections later this year. But when it comes to big decisions, there is opacity, deceit, subterfuge, arm-twisting and mutual back-scratching. Very rarely we see the ‘back-stabbing’ attempted by the Najib lobby, led by one of the most ambitious politicians around in Malaysia now.However unpalatable it may be, the fact remains that Najib did not face any stiff opposition, leave alone revolt in UMNO, 146,500 UMNO DELEGATES FROM 161 DIVISIONS NATIONWIDE continues to hold the remote control. The common UMNO members, however, has the power to throw out the powerful, every three years. What choice you have.Najib has shown everyone who questioned his authoritative ways, the middle finger
After a month long, or was it longer, relentless, almost breathless campaign against Najib and his corrupt ways, the media has been forced to look like idiots. So disdainfully has it brushed aside every clamour for cleansing its act that one wonders if they even care about UMNO

The anti-Muhyiddin campaign  in our politics has a fertile past. The good that men do, as Shakespeare noted, is oft-interred in their bones; mistakes become an indelible national memory. in our politics has a fertile past. The good that men do, as Shakespeare noted, is oft-interred in their bones; mistakes become an indelible national memory., in particular, went a little further by suggesting a study of the possibility that a single party BN would be the way to proceed in contrast to persisting with the presently multi-component structure that has been in power since 1974 and, before that, holding the reins of government since independence through its precursor, Alliance.

Presumably, Muhyiddin was reacting to the phenomena of Malay voters in urban and semi-rural seats marking the ballot for DAP and Chinese all over the country ticking the box for PAS.That’s the real tragedy for the Najib. A leader who is best bet electorally is unacceptable to most, including their biggest ally. And a leader who may eventually be not acceptable to most within the party is electorally a dud. This is not the constellation of stars the Najib boasted off a few years back; this is a black hole from which victory will find it difficult to emerge!On the other hand, could actually do a better job of uniting the party. Given his stature, Muhyiddin could be acceptable to all within the party. He will surely be acceptable to Tun Mahathir – remember it was Mahathir that Muhyiddin turned to when Najib snubbed him by refusing A cabinate postand with some sympathy for the , it is possible that the party could fall behind Najib . And that’s the tragedy. Muhyiddin may be able to unite the party, . Najib is well past his prime. depends on local chieftains to even win his own elections.

This factor was behind the Opposition Pakatan Rakyat’s gains in Selangor where BN had mounted an intense but ultimately fruitless campaign to recover the richest state in the country.

Possibly chastened by this phenomenon, Muhyiddin, hitherto assertive about the immutability of his Malay-ness and its lofty position in the UMNO-nurtured racial pecking order of the country, gave vent to an idea that many in UMNO would like to be amnesic about: his suggestion that BN could become a single party conglomerate was essentially a variation on a theme aired as early as 1951 by UMNO’s founder, Onn Jaafar.

Onn had to leave UMNO, chagrined by its resistance to an idea whose time had not then come but whose point could only be deferred, not interred. Six decades later, Muhyiddin, a scion of Johor UMNO where the party was birthed, has re-floated what a seer-like Onn had first proposed.

A stillborn idea

However, the reactions from within UMNO or from within its extra-territorial fold, PERKASA, to Muhyiddin’s idea confirmed what the British historian John Macauley, master of many intricate partisan maneuvers in his historical research, observed to be true about political parties.

Macauley said that it is in the nature of political parties to retain their original enmities far more firmly than their original principles. Talk of retention of original enmities, shortly after Muhyiddin spoke about a single BN party, PERKASA was on record as warning of grave consequences to those who “erase” UMNO.

The responses of other elements in the UMNO quarter were less dire though no less inhospitable.

UMNO Information Chief Ahmad Maslan said that conservative UMNO Malays would not countenance the idea of a unified BN party; Vice-President Ahmad Zahid Hamidi speculated that the idea arose from the desperation felt by BN component parties which had been annihilated at the recent polls; and UMNO eminence grise Dr Mahathir Mohamad observed that the idea’s time had not yet arrived.

In effect, the reactionaries were saying that what the average voter in the economically leading state of the country was signaling about his political preferences was not what the common UMNO member was inclined to go with.

Sure, less economically endowed Malays in the rural parts of the country had voted for UMNO, a decision prompted in part, in states like Kedah, by the incompetence of the former Menteri Besar from PAS, Azizan Abdul Razak, and abetted by the BRIM (1Malaysia cash handouts) payments they received that required of them a reciprocal obligation to vote the hand that fed them.

But this category of voter is not a demographic that is set to stay for long. If anything, it will recede as rural-to-urban migration accelerates, as people age, and as the threat of mounting insolvency incurred by profligate BN governance becomes palpable.

In short, UMNO and BN are riding a waning wave of voter preference but its leadership ranks are infested with people who cannot distinguish between their specific career interests and the long-term interests of the coalition of which their party is a dominant part.

Mired in fevered swamps

Too long in thrall to the dogmas of a race-centred worldview, large swatches of Umno and several components of the BN are mired in its fevered swamps, unable to disenthrall and thus renew their party.

Even the defeat at the polls to politicians like PERKASA firebrand Ibrahim Ali, who lost his Pasir Mas parliamentary seat in Kelantan, and to Zulkifli Noordin (right), the religious bigot and agitator, who was dumped with ease in the Shah Alam federal seat, is apparently not sufficient to convince Umno that the party, as presently constituted and led, is on sliding scale on the voter-preference graph.

Too long a stay in power – this more than a half-century UMNO-BN one aided by a rural voter-weightage that’s gone off the rails, and abetted by the machinations of an Election Commission that’s an adjunct of the government – leaves the anointed with the feeling that come what may, they are ordained to stay.

If it’s true that without vision, people perish, as the French philosopher Blaise Pascal held, then it must also be true that without reform and renewal, sclerotic political parties diminish and die. It’s just that some may mistake merely running on the spot as an adequate substitute for R & R.

PKR leader Badrul Hisham Shaharin or better known as Chegubard blamed quarters aligned to either Prime Minister Najib Razak or former premier Mahathir Mohamad for an ongoing crackdown against Opposition leaders, warning Home Minister Zahid Hamidi to watch his back as the infighting within the ruling Umno party intensified ahead of internal polls.

Chegubard, famous for his youth movement Solidariti Anak Muda Malaysia or SAMM, is the latest to be summoned by the police for allegedly being involved in organizing a Black 505 rally in Petaling Jaya earlier this month to protest the outcome of the controversial May 5 general election and to demand the resignations of the Election Commission chairman and deputy chairman.

Victims of Umno chess game

The 35-year-old Chegubard believes his arrest along with more than half a dozen others including PKR vice president Tian Chua and PKR communications director Nik Nazmi are part of a wider move to embarrass Zahid and weaken the latter’s chances in the coming Umno presidential race.

“This is part of a script. It is not just to punish those who are not pro-Barisan Nasional. I believe there is a bigger script to tarnish the credibility of the Home Minister Zahid Hamidi. So I would advise Zahid Hamidi be careful and not to fall into any traps including those that may be set by Najib and Mahathir,” Zahid told Malaysia Chronicle.

“I still believe what is happening is not due to Zahid’s instructions. Whatever the agencies, Khalid (Abu Bakar, the Inspector General of Police), the police and ministry officials are doing is under Najib’s influence or Mahathir’s . I see Zahid as being trapped in this matter. The Umno elections are too close and Zahid is moving to fast ahead, so he needs to be blocked. To me, at the end of the day, the people are being sacrificed in this chess game being played by the powers that be in the Umno-BN.”

With the latest GDP figures in, grim economic news is now official. GDP growth crashed to 5% in 2012-13, the lowest in the last decade. Moreover we have it on the authority of TCA Anant, the country’s chief statistician, that it’s too early to say whether growth rates have bottomed out. If one factors in population growth, Indians’ per capita income grew by about 3% last year. That means we are back to the ‘Hind’rate of growth of 3-4%.
Is there something ironic about the self-professedly secular UPA government leading us back to a ‘Hindu’ rate of growth? On the face of it, putting matters thus might seem facetious. After all, what’s been described as the Hindu rate of growth best captures the period of socialist stagnation that the country went through from the 1950s to the 1980s, before India’s economic policies came to be dyed a lighter shade of pink. Therefore, low rates of growth may have more to do with socialism than with any supposed fatalism or passivity induced by Hindu religious culture.

Secondly, it may be argued that secularism is a political and not an economic creed. A secular government will ensure that religious minorities are tolerated and everyone is treated equally irrespective of caste, creed or religious denomination, period. And we are assured that the UPA has been indefatigable at this. It doesn’t follow that a secular government will manage the economy well. Whether it generates growth and jobs, we are led to believe, is a set of questions that don’t really pertain to secular politics.

However, for those genuinely interested in the furtherance of secularism — and a vast, heterogeneous country like India stands or falls depending on whether it can be secular or not — the above is a set of assumptions worth challenging. Can any appeal to secularism succeed unless it also embraces a commitment to supply secular goods to the people — such things as electricity, good roads and telecommunications, education and health facilities, law and order, efficient public services untainted by corruption, jobs and opportunities?

Selling secularism is not only about upholding liberal political ideals; it also means providing the this-worldly things that people need in life, as opposed to the satisfactions of belonging to this or that tribe (or caste, or creed, or community). That’s a vital link the UPA is missing, which is why the brand of secular politics it’s championing won’t gain much traction before 2014.

There’s a corollary to this. In order to gain mass appeal secularism must attempt to float all boats, rather than place undue emphasis on identity politics or take away from one group to give to another. Secularism must promote a flat model in which it treats everyone as a citizen of the Indian republic with whom it has a direct relationship, breaking away from the hierarchical colonial model of the state mediating between communities and cultivating intermediary layers who claim to represent a particular group, community or collective.

There should be no place, in a secular imagination, for such entities as Hindu undivided families or khap panchayats. Neither should a secular government contemplate, as the UPA is doing now, setting up universities for minorities. A university is a secular good that should be open to everyone (provided they can qualify).

However, as excessive cut-off marks and the despair of many students who fail to get into colleges show, this is a secular good that the government has been unable to supply in sufficient quantity. The point of a secular politics is not to divide up a shrinking pie between various contending social groups. Someone is bound to lose, creating resentment which will shrink the secular constituency. The point of a full-blooded secularism must necessarily also be to grow the pie.

India’s youth bulge means that 10 million new jobs must be created to accommodate young people entering the workforce every year. If the economy is unable to create jobs at a rate that’s close to this one, it may not significantly matter whether the government of the day has secular intentions. The point is that there will be large numbers of disgruntled young men available to be pressed into service for radical causes, whether they be left-wing or right-wing, casteist, communalist, regionalist, secessionist or Maoist.

Political turbulence and violence are visible across large parts of India — whether in Telangana, Bengal, Kashmir or Maoist-controlled tracts in Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand. If one desires a glimpse of what could happen if such political violence gets worse, all one has to do is look at neighbouring Pakistan. What’s happening there is, of course, the very antithesis of secularism.

The growing appeal of Narendra Modi has a lot to do with disenchantment at the economic record of the UPA. That’s why there are many who are not exactly enamoured of Modi’s handling of the Gujarat riots but are nevertheless tilting towards him in today’s economic climate, while a secular politics that pays more attention to identity than economic issues is setting itself up to fail. It’s a choice between the ghetto and the ghetto.

Once image smeared, can never be cleared ever…

Is Najib afraid of losing  why talk about ‘no contest for the top two posts in Umno? must revert to the original objectives of helping the Malays and not it’s members only ….and give up corruption and racism like the UMNO of 1946

The dark night between the sunset of a government and the dawn of a UMNO election is a good time for rumination

Deputy President, Muhyiddin would be the one most disappointed with this outcome as he was aiming for the top post. The job was for his taking after the debacle in the recent general election when BN led by Najib Razak performed worse than 2008 GE.Having to endure all these bullshits, oppression, suppression, deprivation, degradation, insult, humiliation and indignation for decades is exasperating and insufferable. Born here as Malay is tantamount to punishment for life having to bear all the hullabaloos dish out by the bigot supremacist party. This bigot party by cheating, spinning, fraud and criminal means had entrenched itself in power and very difficult to win through honest and fair means. Perhaps praying can help as God only has the power to punish them and remove them from power who, you are spot on, ‘bulit up physically but emasculated morally’ . As we know corruption has permeated through the whole fabric of Malaysia. Be it in gov or private sector, many take bribes which is called ‘rezeki’ without shame and guilt.”Form and Intention” within UMNO but you kindly refrained from calling such form what it really is – double talk. This is a skill finely-honed by UMNO leaders and is very visible in the statements by Zahid, Hishamuddin, and especially Najib. Joining this coterie are hopefuls like the IGP and the EC chairman. Say one thing, mean another, and then cry “misquoted”. Adulation in UMNO is such a necessary ingredient that loyalty will soon be measured by who spoke up for or against a contest for the top two positions. Umno is not capable of change and reform precisely because of “indirection and projection.” Too much wayang kulit (form over substance) and blaming others for its failures or denying her failings. We have outside the looks of a modern, democratic and progressive country but underneath this thin veneer, the rot is all pervasive. Endemic corruption, institutionalized racism and discrimination, failing and crumbling democratic institutions, compromised judiciary, failing education system, falling international competitiveness couple with huge capital flight, high cost of living and widening income disparity are sure signs that something is rotten in Malaysia. Does Umno agree with that? No!They just paint us a rosy picture of the health and future of the country and blame others for their failings.

Are you pro-NAJIB, or anti-MUHYIDDIN? That seems to be the central question of contemporaryMalay politics. This question brooks no fence-sitters, no one who is undecided about both: either you’re for him or you’re against him.

Kedah Umno Liaison Committee chairman Datuk Ahmad Bashah Md Hanipah said the committee would be meeting on June 16 to decide on posts within the committee.

“Personally, I believe that the Umno president and deputy president should stay on. I don’t think there is a need to change things up due to the current political situation.

“It is for the good of the party that Datuk Seri Najib Razak and Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin continue holding their posts,” he said, commenting on speculation regarding Umno leadership.

He said this to reporters during a press conference about the upcoming National Intellectual Property Day 2013, here, today.

These are the battles that the country has to fight, and it needs to fight them with closed ranks. Can it do this under the leadership of an individual who himself has become the personification of a battleground?You cannot have as a Malay leader someone suspected of ethnic cleansing, a euphemism for mass murder along sectarian lines.

In this sense, Najib is the country’s most controversial and divisive politician. He is what might be called a ‘crossover’ politician,The real truth is that if we believe in “rule of law”, then our media and we ourselves have to understand whatit means. We cannot pre-judge people. We must learn to give them a clean chit if the courts clear their name. Media must learn to report fairly, without any masala thrown in. Media must also apologize if it slurs anyone’s reputation, even by mistake. As far as  Najib is concerned, he is a gonner….his reputation forever has been smeared Zahid.

The ‘no contest for the top two posts in Umno’ bandwagon has begun to roll, but in the end whether it succeeds in heading off a fight that may well have damaging consequences is dependent on what one man feels about the whole thing.

No prizes for guessing the identity of the man. In fact, he has already waded in with preliminary comments that suggest he will push for a contest, but more on that later.

The ‘no contest’ ball was set rolling by Puad Zakarshi, former deputy education minister and defeated Umno candidate for the Batu Pahat parliamentary seat.

There’s no point in going into the reasons Puad gave for his call because it was the usual boilerplate…

This perfectly illustrates the age-old principles of power-control. The ‘ketuanan’ ideology in reality is not about protecting a race, but about perpetuating a regime.As far as the media, and in turn the people of the country, are concerned, Najib is guilty. Or rather, “must be” guilty. This habit of deciding before hearing a person out, often captured under the colorful phrase “connecting the dots”, ensures that one charged of corruption never gets rid of the smear.

what the courts finally say. No evidence, no verdict, no pronouncement can now salvage his reputation. Collectively, through gross irresponsibility, and because of the extreme habit of sensationalism, the media has smeared a man’s reputation. If this same incident had happened in the US or UK, the media there would have cautioned readers that these were mere charges. And if the charges were eventually cleared, media would have given adequate coverage to that, as part of its responsibility. The public there is also far more mature. It would have given a clean chit to the accused.

The real truth is that if we believe in “rule of law”, then our media and we ourselves have to understand what it means. We cannot pre-judge people. We must learn to give them a clean chit if the courts clear their name. Media must learn to report fairly, without any masala thrown in. Media must also apologize if it slurs anyone’s reputation, even by mistake. As far as  Najib is concerned, he is a gonner….his reputation forever has been smeared Zahid.

History, especially the near-past, is replete with such examples. This also indicate an ascendency of the right-wing faction in Umno. Najibl’s political career may be returned back to him, but his spotless reputation never will be.
But what’s the point of all these facts? The media is unforgiving, given its “connecting the dots” attitude. The public has already made up its mind with a “must have done it” attitude.
The Home Ministry is currently the driver in asserting their ‘narrative’ on the national consciousness. Harakah is banned/harassed whilstUtusan Malaysia and other extreme-right papers are given free rein.
The May 13 movie ‘Tanda Putera’ is an attempt at stigmatising all national issues as racial us-against-them threats (never mind its relevancy, truthfulness or cogency).

Four more years under this home minister signal that the worst is yet to come.Enough is clearly enough. The anger we saw spill out on the streets of  Malaysia was an organic act of intensely felt outrage. A spontaneous movement without any leaders or political affiliation, it is a sign that something has finally given way. The idea of living in constant fear, and having to make do with … Read more

The home minister must make it a point that the government, during the first year of his tenure, should ratify and implement without delay the UN Convention Against Torture.

This would go a long way to improve his reputation which was tarnished with his initial remarks seen as sheer arrogance by many.

Some positive action is needed at the top before more stringent regulations are enforced to reduce, if not eliminate, custodial deaths irrespective of race.Zahid should immediately sack the chief police officer (CPO) in that state. I mean, in the entire 11 years under review, there has not been a single death in Perlis. The CPO must be sleeping on the job.

History will repeat itself. The BN shall face the same issues of GE13 in GE14. Security-wise, the people feel just as unsafe in their homes and on the street, as in jail.

The Election Commission (EC) is a stark example of collaboration with the executive when it should not. Both the above issues are staring right at the eyes of the people. It is not going to go away.

Yet, Umno is fighting the majority of people on both issues. Perhaps that is what you get when you have to scrape the bottom of the barrel for choice of ministers. We see Laurel and Hardy in the swapping of ministers between the home and defence ministries.

Is there anything positively new for the people come GE14? Besides new arrogance, and misreading the now well-informed rakyat with strengthened resolve on rule through division of race, religion and fear, nah!

Surprised? Ask Laurel or Hardy.

The sudden custodial death of N Dhamendran is another proof why voters deserted Umno-led BN in droves.

But other than responding to Commander S Thayaparan’s call to take part in a rally to show our displeasure, how can one read Home Minister Zahid Hamidi’s mind when he shows little remorse over the incident, and instead asks all parties to safeguard the morale of the police?

An American sociologist has the answer. According to Robert Merton, some social institutions are designed to be dysfunctional (Wallace and Wolf, 2006, pp. 45-57; Ritzer, 2008).

Consider for a moment who would benefit if there is a social group which is marginalised and disenfranchised?

Would not the lowly-paid (relatively) and lowly-educated police officers be able to seek some gratification when confronting the Indian suspects? What is more, would it not be able to promote a certain ethnic group as superior?

There is no harm in giving in to desire once in a while, but are you fooling yourself by demanding ‘wants’ as ‘needs’ you are entitled to?

Now, I am no novice, nor am I insensitive. But yes, I was unthinking in this instance. What I defined as a need for my home, was not even a want in a majority of homes, I realised. Without knowing, so many wants have merged into needs over the years that it is difficult to distinguish between the two. And yet one has to make an effort if one is to live life on real terms.

Ahmad Zahid, who is also the Home Minister, said this when commenting on the proposal by the Negeri Sembilan Umno yesterday that the two posts should not be contested in the coming party election.

This was to avoid factionalism in the party as well as to retain the Najib-Muhyiddin combination. readmoreA prime minister who is directly or indirectly involved in murder, corruption and abuse of powwer is still standing and talking like nothing much happened. now the biggest electral fraud …. this government has no credibility, it should go. all thesehas deeply seated in rakyat minds. the ralkyat will not accept this government what ever … Read more

Puteri Umno head Datuk Rosnah Abdul Rashid Shirlin also supported the view that the leadership of Najib and Muhyiddin should be retained.

She perceived the call to retain both incumbents in the coming party election as a positive move in achieving the mission for a transformation for the party.

Rosnah, who is also the Deputy Works Minister, said the move was not to deny the rights of members to vote or to deny democracy, but to evaluate that Umno under Najib’s leadership had shown excellent performance when it succeeded in increasing the seats won by Umno in the 13th general election (GE13) recently.Every opinion poll on voter preferences at general elections points to the certain defeat of the UMNO  and a more than plausible victory of Pakatan alliance. That is hardly a surprise considering that on issues that matter most to the electorate — price rise of essential commodities, slowdown of the economy, corruption, weak governance and a … Read more

“In addition, Umno had also undergone drastic transformation and had strengthened its general election machinery into the strongest in Umno’s history, and I believe this strength is also felt right down at the grassroots level.

“In addition, Umno under the leadership of Datuk Seri Najib Razak in the last four years has demonstrated that it has provided undivided service to the people, various transformations had been carried out including the move to recognise the voice of the young generation when both the Umno president and deputy president fielded young candidates in the GE13,” she said in a statement in Kota Kinabalu, today.

Rosnah said although Umno had never prevented anyone from offering themselves to contest for the posts, she felt that Najib was the best Umno president for the survival of Umno. The first task that Najib Abdul Razak faced upon being sworn in as prime minister on May 6, 2013 after leading the BN to victory in the 13th general election, was to form the cabinet. Constitutionally, the prime minister does not have a free hand in his choice of cabinet ministers. Article 43(2)(b) of the … Read more

Meanwhile, Cheras Umno division head Datuk Syed Ali Alhabshee also voiced his support for the call through his blog, Umno Bahagian Cheras here, today while reminding other Umno members from allowing political parasites from destroying Umno.

He also exposed the attempts by negative elements to destroy the good relationship between Najib and Muhyiddin who represented the best combination in achieving the national transformation mission.

Syed Ali, who is also secretary of the Federal Territory Umno Liaison Body, said Najib and Muhyiddin had a major agenda to strengthen the party’s internal leadership after the GE13.

He said the party needed a strong and responsible leadership line-up to continue the struggles for Umno’s survival in championing the cause of the people in the country.For the media is increasingly filled with the same kind of tactics that politicians have forever been accused of: hyper aggressive, unbothered about the law, abusive in language, attacking each other without any proof, etc etc. The truth is that even more than politicians, it is the media now that should be accused of adopting …Read more

Meanwhile, Syed Ali suggested that only the posts of Umno vice-presidents and Supreme Council (MT) members should be contested to give an opportunity to the grassroots to make a choice.

Umno Veterans also supported the no-contest call for the party’s two top posts besides suggesting that the posts of Umno vice-presidents should also not be contested in the party election at the end of the year.

Its secretary, Datuk Mustapha Yaakub said the Umno Veterans club did not want a contest for the three key posts in the Umno top leadership to cause a split in the Umno leadership.Leadership qualities were apparent in Muhyiddin since the beginnings of his career. The Johor born graduated from Universiti Malaya in Kuala Lumpur before joining the Johor state public service as Assistant Secretary of Training and Scholarship. In 1986, he became Menteri Besar of Johor, and in his ten years made significant improvements to the state. … Read more

“The present team (Umno president, deputy and vice presidents) should be given a new mandate in efforts to strengthen the Umno leadership,” he said in a statement, here today.

Mustapha said the proposal was to enable the Umno top leadership to concentrate on the restructuring of new areas which would involve the setting up of new divisions and new pro-tem division heads.

“The Election Commission (EC) will propose a redelineation of election boundaries and if approved by Parliament, Umno will restructure its divisions,” he said.

On May 23, the Election Commission announced that it would implement a redelineation of electoral boundaries which had been postponed for the past two years. Najib has been diagnosed with “cognitive and behavioral abnormities” resulting in “abrasive behavior “It is quite normal to suffer from such  problems when he know that he will be losing his UMNO president post Such is Malay’s fate – to be “ruled” by either totally corrupt or totally arrogant “senior” bureaucrats who …Read more

It is simplistic to say that food, shelter, clothes and sex take care of our bare needs, and dismiss the rest as wants and desires. Maybe so, if you wish to just exist. But life is to be lived, not suffered! And once the basic necessities are met, there is happiness in defining new needs and seeking to fulfill those.

Both needs and wants change not just as per economic status, but also from individual to individual. It isn’t fair to say everyone has the same needs. In fact, ‘wants’ are possibly more homogenous across bandwidths, while ‘needs’ vary wildly. A ragpicker may ‘want’/ desire the same Lamborghini or Merc that you have set your eyes on, but he may not define a latte at Café Coffee Day or a beer at TGI Friday’s as a ‘need’ to unwind before he heads home! He may physically desire the same female star as you, but he doesn’t define space and happiness as a ‘need’ in his marriage.

Awareness and exposure have widened our horizons, which in turn have expanded our list of needs — and there is no going back. Living the life I do, I do not define my cellphone, laptop, a decent wardrobe, books and car as ‘wants’; they are very much needs as I cannot function without them. And an indulgence gives me the high that makes me feel better about life, so why not? Having established that, it is up to each individual to decide towards which end of the stick he likes to lean — between asceticism and overindulgence. I need a phone, sure, but do I really need a top-end contraption? The same goes for the car, the house and the wardrobe. Each of us needs to set our limitations at both ends as per our comfort and proceed within these set parameters, without guilt.

Today’s self-assertive culture is all about stating clearly your desires and wants, and expecting to fulfill them. We have allowed ourselves to imagine we have a right to get whatever we want; this creates a sense of entitlement that makes us selfish and self-centred, blurring needs from wants. It is important to define the tipping point at which a want becomes a need and to understand well the reasons for allowing this walkover. We all wish to cater to our needs, but it is essential that we understand what they are and how important these are to us. Sadly, most of our needs are dictated by someone else. We wish to acquire that bigger mansion, that fancy car or those expensive trinkets all in an attempt to outdo others and prove we are no less than anybody else. What a waste! These are precisely the ‘wants’ that masquerade as ‘needs’.

For a need to be genuine, it has to rise from within, be a growl within the system, something that is a must for inner happiness, our very growth, or maybe a one-off that fuels the rest of life! Need is not about others, it is about one’s own self. So whereas it is acceptable that many of yesterday’s ‘wants’ are today’s ‘needs’, one has to be cautious and alert enough to recognise the difference. What are the requirements to satisfy, to complete one’s own self? These are the additional needs of each individual over and above food, shelter, clothes and sex.

We need to keep redefining and adding new ‘needs’ because life demands that we pull ourselves up from the level of bare essentials to a level where we can start thinking of individual development and progress — physical, mental and spiritual. True, no hungry, unsheltered, unclothed man has the bandwidth to think of these realms, but once basic needs are met, we owe it to ourselves and to life to acquire and use the tools that make life and the world a better place for us to live in.

But beware of convincing yourself that every selfish want is a need you have to cater to! Do not fight the wants, just filter them before you let them enter the exclusive “Needs Club”!

Why? Get soaked in the red coloured rains,

It’s no time to remain inside and get entangled in the mumbo jumbo of political technicalities. Come out and feel the pulse of the nation. The rain of change is flooding the masses and it is bad to take refuge under umbrellas.

For once, the political leaders should forget the colour they wear and lead the change, without any ideological inhibitions or proprietorial technicalities. No ideology or organisation can be bigger than the collective national good and peoples’ will. Nobody understands if some one preaches that Parliament is supreme.  Yes, but it is supreme because it reflects the peoples’ will. Everybody feels Parliament must represent peoples’ mood and wishes.

Umno’s grassroots should get to decide the fate of Datuk Seri Najib Razak as party president when internal polls are held at the year’s end, former New Straits Times (NST) group editor-in-chief Datuk A. Kadir Jasin said today.

The political commentator appeared to disagree with suggestions from state-level leaderships that the party’s top two posts not be contested, saying their views must take into account that it was likely Umno’s grassroots leaders and members who helped save Barisan Nasional (BN) from losing Election 2013.

Without their support, he said in a blog posting today, Umno may not have scored the 88 federal seats it won during the divisive polls ― a significant nine seats more than the 79 it won in Election 2008.

“It would only be reasonable to give them the right to decide if they want Najib’s presidency challenged because Umno would not have won those precious 88 seats if its members or supporters had not resolved to vote for BN on May 5.

Shell-shocked he looked. The European diplomat was trying to understand the deliberations with the help of his Malaysia friend and finding the programme perplexing, he asked me ‘he is the chief of UMNO’s principal party yet, why didn’t he utter a single word about Force (Hindraf) founder  brothers ? He could have attacked them and got headlines. In such a surcharged political atmosphere,

Politicians are supposed to speak politics. Attack the opponents and try anything to remain in news. But he did just the opposite.It was a dream show for any leader. Top stalwarts from various walks of life were on stage.Simply because patriotism is a hateful word in Utusan lexicon.Anyone who works against  Malays unity and integrity becomes a natural buddy of Najib  .Hence Perkasa must be an obvious target of the  Pakatan crowd.
Force (Hindraf) founder   brothers a cartel of secular shamanists, love to stand with murderer Jihadis, anti-democracy and constitution burner, but through a control over media and money, they try to portray a different ideological stream members as sinners and pariahs. Brilliant analysis opines about the Utusan’s conduct, “even in cases dealing with morality, plagiarism, paid news and harassment, the strictest decisions only amount to being censured … More than the fate of the cases filed before the Council, which often come to a tame end, the point to note is that several recent controversies involving members of the print media do not even come up before it. These include cases of election-time paid news, the controversies regarding the Lingamgate tapes where print journalists were involved, what a farce by the Malaysian govt .it can accept hindraf as a assitant minister and at the same breath deal with another hindraf with sedition. so much for the leadesr who are cow heads..this guy must arrested now ..Gerard Lourdesamy Good move by Uthayakumar. The Sedition Act is a farce. No other country in the Commonwealth still maintains such an undemocratic and odious piece of legislation that is an anathema to freedom of speech and freedom of the press. It was a law passed by the colonial power to suppress nationalist movements and later the communists. But the BN government wants to cling to this law to shield itself from any form of dissent or criticism. There are enough provisions in the Penal Code to deal with offenses related to public order, security and morality. But sedition is used to scare and silence critics of the establishment.

“They should also be given the space and opportunity to decide among themselves if they want Najib, whose achievements were lower, to be retained as president (and subsequently as prime minister) when they showed Tun Abdullah Ahmad Badawi the exit after a greater victory in 2008,” Kadir wrote.

BN survived Election 2013 with a weaker majority, scoring only 133 seats to Pakatan Rakyat’s (PR) 89 ― a notable seven-seat margin smaller than the previously worst performance in Election 2008.

The polls saw the emergence of a divided Malaysia, a trend that was fuelled further when top leaders in Umno characterised the election results as a Chinese-versus-Malay contest.

Najib, in his victory speech on May 6, described the vote trend as a “Chinese tsunami”, noting that an even greater percentage of the country’s second-largest ethnic group had fled to the opposition’s fold, leaving BN’s non-Malay parties with a greatly reduced parliamentary representation.

Only Umno showed improvement when it took 88 parliamentary seats at a time when their coalition partners were nearly wiped out from the august House.

Today, Kadir highlighted that Najib had led a presidential-style campaign all through the polls, attempting to use his popularity as a reformist to woo support for BN.

The clear “essence” of the BN campaign, he said, was Najib’s 1 Malaysia platform and the prime minister’s portrayal of himself and his team as all-inclusive, particularly when rallying the Chinese and Indian voters.

But when the poll results saw these communities flee BN’s side and Umno’s popularity soar, Kadir said questions arose over why the vote had gone the direction it did.

“The question is, did Umno perform better because its top leaders placed priority on the party and the Malays, or were the Malays themselves afraid their powers would weaken if the Chinese parties in BN chalked bigger victories?” he asked.

Kadir suggested that it was possible the Malays had seen how the prime minister appeared too willing to curry favour with the non-Malays, and felt worried that if the MCA, MIC or Gerakan won big, their power would be usurped.

“They would have read, seen and heard of how the prime minister unrelentingly went about improving Chinese and Tamil school education, gave additional allocations to these schools, and met with several radical Chinese and Indian groups like Dong Zong and Hindraf,” he said.

“But what frightened a majority of the Malays even more was the possibility of a PR victory and the emergence of the DAP as a dominant player in national politics.

“So, did Umno win bigger in the last general election because its president prioritised the Malays or because the Malays themselves felt they were no longer prioritised by the party leadership, and therefore they acted to ensure that Umno and the Malays are strengthened from bottom up,” Kadir asked.

If this were the case, Kadir said it would only be fair to allow the grassroots to decide on Najib’s fate when polls are called at the end of the year, instead of the party leadership arbitrarily deciding not to allow the party’s presidency to be challenged.

“Furthermore, Najib himself said after the May 13 Umno supreme council meeting that Umno practises democracy and its leaders are free to be challenged,” he pointed out.

Malay graduates have been discriminated against by firms owned by the local Chinese and foreigners, Utusan Malaysia reported today in an apparent continuation of the Umno-owned daily’s attack on the community following last month’s general election.

The report was featured on Utusan Malaysia’s front-page with the headlines “Diskriminasi syarikat Cina berdasarkan kajian universiti awam. Graduan Melayu disisih” (Discrimination of Chinese companies based on public university’s research. Malay graduates marginalised), but the Malay-language paper did not name the public university nor the researcher that it said had carried out the study.

Utusan Malaysia said the research showed that the race factor was more important than education qualification in the hiring process, pointing to the higher callback rate for Chinese versus Malay graduates.
But ostensibly a busy Najib has no time to devote on such issues for which he was appointed. Instead, he has given an impression of being  an applicant in a hurry to the media cell of a political party. It’s quite natural that like a mother comes to defend her errand son, a national leader of the UMNO has dutifully come to rescue  him.

UMNO is questioning  Najib on Hindu Rights Action Force (Hindraf) founder P Uthayakumar’s sin against the Malays

But then again the briefing paper “Institutional Racism and Religious freedom in Malaysia” prepared for US House Committee on Foreign Affairs, US State Department, also almost says the same things as what Uthaya wrote to Gordon Brown. Should we also then charge the writer of that brief for sedition? Dr.Benjamin Bowling, be warned!One brother is reported to be standing firm to fight for Indian rights while another is saying his ministership

“Out of over 3,000 resumes that were sent to the companies involved, the Malays only have a 4.2 per cent chance of being called to attend an interview.

“The Chinese have a 22.1 per cent chance even though they have the same qualification and graduated from the same universities as the Malays,” Utusan Malaysia quoted the research paper as saying, adding that the study involved firms from the accounting, finance and engineering industry.

Utusan Malaysia also said the research involved graduates from private and public institutions of higher learning in the country, with employers favouring those from Universiti Malaya (UM), Universiti Putra Malaysia (UPM), Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM) and Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM).

It quoted the research as saying that employers tended to favour graduates from private universities less, with only graduates from Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahman (UTAR) including those from the Malay community being the preferred choice in the accounting sector.

“Malay graduates who can write, speak and read in the Chinese language are also more likely to be called to attend interviews,” the paper said.

Utusan Malaysia also said the research was carried out over a period of six months, but did not state when it was conducted or when the survey results were released.

“It is time for the government through the Human Resources Ministry to draft the Equal Opportunity Act and set up a commission to monitor the implementation of this act so that there will be no discrimination in this country,” the paper again quoted the research as saying.

Awang Selamat ― the nom-de-plume representing Utusan Malaysia’s collective editorial voice ― also commented today on the research, repeating that the findings showed that racial discrimination towards Malay graduates exist in firms owned by non-Malays and foreigners.

“In a modern world which should be based on the capability of the work force, there is still racial discrimination in the job sector,” it said.

Awang said the study also show that a job applicant’s mastery of Mandarin was an advantage in non-Malay firms.

“Advertisements that lay down that requirement are actually easily seen in newspapers. This to Awang is clearly from the start a ‘rejection’ of candidates that have not mastered the Mandarin language, which is not the country’s national language,” it said.

It noted the Equal Opportunity Act proposal, but said that there was a need for the public to be voluntarily aware of the depths of the country’s racial discrimination problem if the nation wanted to leave the trap.

After the May 5 election results, which Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak attributed to a “Chinese tsunami”, Utusan Malaysia ran reports that appeared to blame the Chinese community for Barisan Nasional (BN)’s historic losses in Election 2013.

On May 7, Utusan Malaysia carried the incendiary headline “Apa lagi Cina mahu?” (What more do the Chinese want?) and w

Deadly clashes between Muslims and Buddhists in Myanmar have spread to Malaysia, which both employs a large Burmese workforce and is home to one of the biggest Rohingya Muslim population outside of the country.

According to media reports, four Myanmar nationals have already died while another eight were injured following reprisal attacks believed to be linked to the religious riots in the country.

“The religious sentiments (back home) have caught up with Myanmar workers here, leading to both Muslim and Buddhist groups launching heinous attacks on each other in areas with a large number of Myanmar nationals,” Kuala Lumpur deputy police chief Amar Singh Ishar Singh was quoted as saying by the Sun daily.

Buddhist mobs in Myanmar have targeted the country’s Muslim minority for violence in recent months, with the latest hotspot being northern city of Lashio, near the border with China.

Malaysia has an estimated 400,000 Myanmar workers, many of whom are restaurant and construction workers. It also houses around 23,000 Rohingyas, according to a UNHCR registry, but the number is believed to be closer to 50,000.

According to Amar, the police have formed a task force to deal with the issue and have so far arrested about 60 Myanmar workers, primarily in Sentul and Brickfields here, as a precaution.

“We have called up the leaders from both factions and had a meeting with them today and urged them to advise their people to end the violent clashes,” Amar said yesterday.

The four reported deaths were the result of four separate attacks in various parts of Kuala Lumpur, with the latest being the case of a Myanmar car wash employee who was set upon at his workplace by a group armed with parangs.

According to a report by Malay language daily Utusan Malaysia, police are probing the existence of an alleged radical Buddhist movement known as “969” that was purportedly formed to annihilate Rohingya Muslims here.

Some Rohingyas have reported receiving VCDs with scenes of murders perpetrated by the so-called “969” group, while Myanmar workers have also been spotted wearing T-shirts bearing the numbers in parts of the city.

Can we be adults, please?

Najib so engrossed in their selfish behaviour that he is  more worried about a possible threat to hisr future rather than threat to the ethos of the game. also tied up by the UMNO  constitution which gives great power and almost infalliable stature to the president.The divisions align to Najib allowed  him to take high moral ground. Perhaps, knowing in their heart of hearts that they themselves were not on clean footing! ‘Perhaps that is what you get when you have to scrape the bottom of the barrel for choice of ministers.Waytha’s appointment gives voiceless ‘chance to be heard’ don’t forget. There are no marginalised Indians. There are only lazy, selfish Indians. A budget and handout programmes will not alleviate this. A change of mindset is necessary among the Indians. You won’t be able to effect his change of mindset because you don’t even recognise this fact, as yet. You will realsie it soon enough. Mr wathya, The problem is not that there were no platforms for the voiceless. The problem is that Najib chooses to be deaf to their voices. If you can’t understand the fundamentals, how can you take appropriate actions to address the problem? By implying that there were no other platforms for the voiceless to air their grouses before and now, you are just admitting that the BN-Umno has never cared and all their component parties especially MIC, IPF, and PPP have never cared and have never voice out for the poor and marginalised. It is unwise to hit at your new found partners way below the belt. If you think you can do better, show us by your deeds and not just by your words.

That’s democracy. Unless a consensus emerges, with a great drive to change, nothing works even if it’s for the better. Call it a curse, or whatever. But we all are part of this bitter reality.That’s perhaps the human mind at work: selfish, cunning, power-hungry, waiting to find escape routes and excuses. Those traits have helped us a great deal ruling over all other animals on the planet. Those traits also have given us personal glories.

Sometimes alliance parties Kadir suggested that it was possible the Malays had seen how the prime minister appeared too willing to curry favour with the non-Malays, and felt worried that if the MCA, MIC or Gerakan won big, their power would be usurped.find it convenient to simulate conflict, but this is public posturing to satisfy populist opinion before an election. are the new templates of posture-politics.There are certain things which deserve to be regulated, but banning them outright leads to unintended effects. The repressed will return in ugly and distorted forms, posing problems for governance and leading to social, economic and cultural stagnation.Laws and government must, in general, neither infantilise us nor place us in the category of saints. They need to make some allowance for our being human. Else, they will be not just ineffective but even counterproductive.

Power is the glue of politics  Malay politics, reduced to minimalist, notional ideology, devoid of individual or party accountability, is peculiarly suited tocronies. If there is no accountability, Power is the glue of politics. That is why a government is expected to be in array and opposition generally in disarray. Ideology is a fickle custodian of unity in an age of convenience.Ideology is a fickle custodian of unity in an age of convenience. Its absence has eliminated the difference between  President Najib  and Deputy President, Muhyiddin

Najib’s cronies wanted to thank him for keeping . They knew they were voting for the NDA. Since then, however, there has been some slippage in minority support for Nitish. Nitish’s political gasp at the reappearance of the photo was an attempt to buy a few brownie points at easy rates, a familiar tactic of electoral politics. Similarly, the BJP’s gruff huff and puff was intended to energize its own core vote. Neither party will win in Bihar if they split their support, and their leaders have tasted the comforts of office.

Umno’s grassroots should get to decide the fate of Datuk Seri Najib Razak as party president when internal polls are held at the year’s end, former New Straits Times (NST) group editor-in-chief Datuk A. Kadir Jasin said today.However, when these traits are used in public life and in areas of social responsibility, they become ills. They don’t build fair, transparent and powerful society

The political commentator appeared to disagree with suggestions from state-level leaderships that the party’s top two posts not be contested, saying their views must take into account that it was likely Umno’s grassroots leaders and members who helped save Barisan Nasional (BN) from losing Election 2013.

Without their support, he said in a blog posting today, Umno may not have scored the 88 federal seats it won during the divisive polls ― a significant nine seats more than the 79 it won in Election 2008.

“It would only be reasonable to give them the right to decide if they want Najib’s presidency challenged because Umno would not have won those precious 88 seats if its members or supporters had not resolved to vote for BN on May 5.

Umno elections, to be conducted for the first time under a new format, begin at the protracted branch level next month (an estimated 18,000 branches), followed by voting in the crucial 193 divisions from September which would ultimately decide on the standings of the party’s main office-bearers, including the top five.

This will culminate in the main event, the general assembly, the date of which has yet to be fixed. But possibly in late October or November.

Statistically, Umno on the other hand recorded an improvement in the number of seats won, both at state and federal levels, hence the asssertion by some that Umno should remain steadfast and go for status quo.

This appears to be a hard bargain, firstly because while it has become quite common for the post of president or, to a lesser extent, deputy president, to be declared a no-contest zone by consensus, the fight for the three VP seats have over the years always been tough and trying, through a vote.

In the last round for instance, there were eight contenders but the ones who finally got elected were Hishammuddin Hussein, Ahmad Zahid Hamidi and Shafie Apdal.

It is hard not to see the same propensity for a keen contest again this time.

Wide race

“They should also be given the space and opportunity to decide among themselves if they want Najib, whose achievements were lower, to be retained as president (and subsequently as prime minister) when they showed Tun Abdullah Ahmad Badawi the exit after a greater victory in 2008,” Kadir wrote.

More so since the new election format has done away with the restrictive condition requiring a quota of nominations as a qualifying mark — 57 for president (meaning, a person could only contest if he got at least 57 nominations), 38 for deputy president, 19 for VP, 10 for supreme council and so on.

The revamp has opened up the arena wide and that anyone can now contest for Umno president provided he has been nominated and that he has been either a supreme council member or a divisional committee member for at least one term.

Veteran member Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah, for instance, can contest without having to wait, like the last time, for divisions to openly nominate him.

This, plus the enlarged voter base of 146,500 (instead of 2,500 delegates previously), makes for an interesting Umno elections this time. Added to that of course are the post-GE13 comments from significant figures which have a bearing on the Umno polls.

Compared to the aftermath of the 2008 GE, there is a lot less bashing this time against the powers behind Umno and Barisan Nasional (BN). But underneath the muffled sounds came a few significant ones from figures such as Daim Zainuddin who is said to share much sentiment with influential party elder Dr Mahathir Mohamad.

In a press interview recently, Daim made no bones about some of the things the top BN leadership should not have done in the run-up to GE13, like his admonition of the prime minister’s advisors. And this is seen by some as a signal for changes when the Umno elections come.

Some people say Daim was trying to be clever after the event. But significantly, as with comments from a few other veterans in their blog entries, many others agree with him.

The continuous attacks on strategies attributed to certain advisors engaged by the BN leadership provide strong ammo for a keen contest ahead.

The Umno elections in its new format will be just the right platform for action, they maintain.

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