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.
