Modi , Rajapaksa and Presiden PAS Datuk Seri Abdul Hadi Awang are clearly around for some time to come. Both are clearly hoping to expand their constituencies and speak to larger audiences. Both are ambitious men and believe they can cut a deal with posterity.
Unfortunately, history has this terribly bad habit of coming in the way. Narendra Modi may well become the emperor of Hindustan, but his legacy will be forever tainted if he doesn’t make amends for the riots of 2002. Gujarat’s silence today can also be interpreted as the peace of the grave.
Except that democracy in fact offers outlets for expressing precisely such contempt towards itself or against those whom anyone believes to be using democratic power to serve special interests. But it’s often a long and winding road to get to your goal.This PAS behavior was most uncalled and distasteful. Grass root supporters of PAS grow up!Why do the PAS Unit Amal members behave like that puzzle me and what do they learn in school.Their behaviour is no better than those from UMNO who throw red paint,stones and bricks at opposition buses,revving their motor-cycles,setting up tents and loud-speakers across the road to disrupt the opposition ceremah,instead of holding a public debate etc.shows that Malaysians have a long way to go to become a developed country.PAS Yusni is a spoiler and should withdraw as Sg.Acheh candidate, to allow Chegubard a straight fight with UMNO.Use your head PAS
What worries, is that the number of such people that I seem to be bumping into – as I pass through life – seems to be increasing exponentially. I meet such people at work, in my professional circles, in the housing society, when I am on holiday and even at parent-teacher meetings. What such people fail to realize that this rarely helps accomplish anything other than create a fragile equilibrium that is disturbed by the slightest tremor.we have to state clearly our message to PAS. We only support PR to change government and not particularly that we accepted your philosophy. Please do not act like you are taiko now. We can vote you out anytime now. You have already get your lion share in most of the states. Please don’t be so greedy! Please withdraw your candidacy in Kota Damansara and NOT to bully the small party. After all, what is the different between you and UMNO?
Is the predictability of their behavior, and their desperate need to be heard a sign of their competitiveness, their intelligence or their mediocrity? Aren’t the brilliant supposed to be somewhat unpredictable and eccentric? Is this a reflection of some childhood insecurity – as my psychiatrist friends would say – when their parents never allowed them to get a word in edgeways? Or is this a veiled arrogance that makes them believe the world must sit and learn at their feet even when they know precious little about the subject at hand? Whatever the case may be, there is no denying that very few things infuriate a thinking person more than coming across or having to co-exist with such an individual in his / her immediate vicinity – a fact that is fast becoming the case in most walks of life.
PAS start to ‘big head’ already. They wanted to be Taiko in PR. They thought they are able to vow Chinese vote. Sorry, if they started act like UMNO, Chinese will throw you right away. Most of the Chinese only support bi-partisan. They just need a first round of knockout to BN. Voting PAS does not mean for agreeing their philosophy.
In other words, it is quite possible to get along while disagreeing vigorously in a democracy. You don’t have resorted to physically assault Badrul Hisham to win state seat. to get PAS Unit Amal members had formed a human wall in an attempt to stop PKR’s Sungai Acheh candidate Badrul Hisham Shaharin from handing in his nomination form last Saturday, according to election watchdog Pemantau.
“When this tactic did not work, (they) resorted to physically assaulting him,” claimed committee member Maria Chin Abdullah (left) at a press conference today.
She said the incident was a breach of Badrul Hisham’s right to participate in politics, as well as an issue of personal safety.
Badrul Hisham, better known as Chegubard, was in a three-corner fight with PAS candidate Yusni Mat Piah and the Umno incumbent Mahmud Zakaria for the state seat.your goal.
A similar incident happened in Semenyih, where the PSM team was blocked also by unit amal. But they managed to push through like rempuh polis masa protest.
Except that democracy in fact offers outlets for expressing precisely such contempt towards itself or against those whom anyone believes to be using democratic power to serve special interests. But it’s often a long and winding road to get to your goal.
That it’s complicated and often confusing is undeniable. Look at the functioning of democracy in the US. Normal democratic practice here has been knocked out of shape by lobbies and special interest groups. The gun manufacturers’ lobby manipulated the senate to defeat a Bill on Wednesday that would have ensured background checks on buyers of guns so that some control would be there to prevent felons and mentally unstable persons from acquiring firearms. Around 90% of Americans supported the move. And the Senate voted 54 to 46 in favour. But, under the peculiar rules that govern the US Senate, the Bill was defeated.
The terrorists, foreign or domestic, who brought mayhem at the finish line of the Boston Marathon on Monday, probably had contempt for such institutions. We have some inkling now of who did it. What we can say definitively is that terrorists have at least three features in common however disparate their ideologies or causes are.
One, they believe their cause is the one that must trump all other considerations; two, they believe in inflicting violent harm on ordinary folk, preferably when people are least expecting it; and, three, they think democracy is either useless or a sham.
Evolutionary logic suggests human beings are genetically inclined to get along in certain conditions and come to blows in others. Both conflict and cooperation have ebbed and flowed through history. Be that as it may, in recent centuries humankind has created a number of institutions and arrangements designed to help restrain violence and promote patient cooperation. Democracy, with its checks and balances, rights and freedoms, is one institution. Organised sport in various forms is another.
From Narendra Modi to Mahinda Rajapaksa, the politics of South Asia is entering a new phase, with both leaders openly dismissing the need to treat all their citizens with the same sense of justice and compassion that they have afforded others.
In Modi’s case, the overwhelming majority with which Gujarat brought back its chief minister in December 2012 is reminiscent of the decisive manner with which Rajapaksa sought to consolidate his own electoral victory in January 2010, when he became president of Sri Lanka for the second time. He had won 57 per cent of all votes cast, while his chief opponent, Sri Lanka’s former army chief Gen Sarath Fonseka, took as much as 40 per cent and carried both Tamil-dominated North and East provinces.
Rajapaksa and Fonseka had been comradesin-arms since Rajapaksa’s first election in 2005 right up to the end of the war against the LTTE in May 2009. The falling out was sealed with a Fonseka interview to a Sri Lankan newspaper, the ‘Sunday Leader’ , in which he stated that surrendering LTTE fighters were killed on the orders of Rajapaksa’s brother and Sri Lankan defence secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa.
Soon after elections in January 2010, Fonseka was court-martialled and arrested. He is still serving out his sentence in jail.
As for Modi, the BJP seems to be slowly reaching out to Gujarat’s Muslims, fielding Muslim candidates in Muslim-dominated areas in February’s civic elections (24 Muslim candidates won Salaya municipality’s 27 seats), a vast improvement over the December state elections in which there was no Muslim candidate and the Bharatiya Janata Party won a whopping 115 seats out of 182.
The fact remains that both Modi and Rajapaksa remain unrepentant, both insisting that their electoral majorities have apparently given them the absolute right to deal with their subjects in the manner they deem fit. There is no space here for disagreement or dissent. Ten years after the Gujarat riots, Modi would much rather talk to the European Union — or to Japan or China — about progress and economic development in Gujarat, while justice and reconciliation efforts towards his own Muslim compatriots remain minimal. It took the Supreme Court recently to tell the Ahmedabad municipality that it must start a school in Juhapura, the city’s largest Muslim ghetto; Modi had been contesting the use of Central government funds for such a school because he believed that it didn’t pass his litmus test of a “secular” education.
Like Modi, Rajapaksa believes that the recommendations of the Lessons Learnt & Reconciliation Commission (LLRC), a commission set up to investigate the breakdown of relations between Colombo and the LTTE, can only be implemented in the way of his choosing. The LLRC rejected several charges against the Sri Lankan military of deliberately targeting Tamil civilians during the last weeks of the 2009 war, but accepted that massive human rights abuses against the Tamil community had taken place.
As for the cause of the 26-year-long civil conflict, the LLRC said, Sinhalese politicians had failed to offer an acceptable solution to its Tamils, while Tamil politicians had fanned Tamil separatism. The State must reach out and reconcile its minority population, and vice-versa , it added.
It doesn’t seem as if Rajapaksa is listening. As the US-sponsored vote against Sri Lanka comes up at the Human Rights Council in Geneva next week, the Sri Lankan president has dug in, dismissing all international criticism . In the name of battling terrorism, Rajapaksa’s refusal to reach out to his own Tamil politicians and discuss equal rights for all Sri Lanka’s citizens, irrespective of ethnicity and religion — such as full police and land powers for the Tamil-dominated North & East provinces, as is the case with Sri Lanka’s other provinces — is met with stony silence.
Modi and Rajapaksa are clearly around for some time to come. Both are clearly hoping to expand their constituencies and speak to larger audiences. Both are ambitious men and believe they can cut a deal with posterity.
Unfortunately, history has this terribly bad habit of coming in the way. Narendra Modi may well become the emperor of Hindustan, but his legacy will be forever tainted if he doesn’t make amends for the riots of 2002. Gujarat’s silence today can also be interpreted as the peace of the grave.
The leaders of PKR and PAS yesterday agreed to allow PKR to stand in Sungai Acheh in a deal to solve overlapping claims to seven seats across the country.
Yusni announced this afternoon that he has withdrawn from the contest, although his name will remain on the ballot paper.
Targets of violence and intimidation
Maria also claimed Pemantau’s observers were also targets of violence and intimidation on nomination day.
In Kapar, one Pemantau volunteer was hit by a water bottle thrown at him by BN supporters.
Another volunteer there had to leave the vicinity of the nomination centre under police escort, after the supporters purportedly threatened them by saying that their safety could not be guaranteed.
In Lembah Pantai, BN supporters were said to have accused Pemantau volunteers of forging ‘Pemerhati’ identification tags of election observers accredited by the Election Commission, although they were wearing Pemantau’s own yellow identification tags at the time.
In both nomination centres, BN supporters had reportedly made Pemantau observers to remove their Bersih T-shirts.
Meanwhile in Marang, Pemantau volunteers have recovered pamphlets purportedly distributed at the Umno Marang building prior to the nomination period.
The phamplets accuse Pemantau of plotting to disrupt the election and show the resulting chaos to the world via social media.
“We stress that Pemerhati and Pemantau are different entities, with different roles to play.
“Pemantau is cognisant of its complementary role as non-accredited observers and does not seek to supplant Pemerhati,” she said.
The group also made issue of the use of barbed wire in Gelang Patah and Kuala Selangor, pointing out that the Human Rights Commission (Suhakam) had also questioned the suitability of using barbed wire in areas where large crowds are expected.
“In peacetime, this is excessive,” she said.
