Someone should ask in Parliament the total travelling costs taxpayers have to foot for Rosmah and her star-studded entourage that includes a galore of wives of ministers and PM special advisers and members of parliament.The costs should run easily over a million, as apart from the government jet, bills covering air tickets, luxury hotels and limousines and other expenses would be substantial. Looking at Rosmah’s itinerary, none justifies her grand tour on such exorbitant public expenses.Hence, the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) must respond to the huge public outcry of abuses of authority and public funds with a swift investigation and an official statement.When the response to questions in Parliament is so convoluted, it is only natural to assume that Najib has been caught with its pants down and it is wriggling around to escape the sticky situation Rosmah has put it in.Perhaps the larger problem is that we have run out of belief in the bigger ideas and have grown weary of articulated ideals. The old labels have become shiny with overuse, and do not fit the feelings that the world of today generates in us. The concepts we have grown up in defending and believing in do not seem to have reciprocated that investment, and show a stubborn tendency to go their own way. The old classifications of left and right, liberal and conservative, secular and fundamentalist, media and business seem too rigid and self-absorbed to offer answers today. Even the ideal of democracy seems to have overpromised and under-delivered and more worryingly, seems bereft of ideas on how to find new answers from within its aging self. The leaders do not have access to a new language and the followers cannot rise above the vocabulary provided by television shows, film dialogues and advertisements.
Of course, this strange inarticulateness is not restricted to the Parliament or media alone. Even those protesting show a similar lack of coherence. The anger of the middle class shows a similar characteristic; what we see is a nameless anger that has been seeking an address of some kind. The fact that Anna Hazare has emerged as a leader of this group is remarkable for on the face of it, no one represents the urban middle class less than this rustic, largely unknown and somewhat quaint figure from rural Maharashtra. His team of assorted activists that has been leading the anti-corruption movement shows a similar preference for inchoate wordiness. Everyone involved has something say on pretty much everything, and no one is a camera or microphone-shy. The problems that the movement has faced have much to do with the Government’s determined and often unprincipled attack on key individuals Pengerang MP Azalina Othman too has been guilty of an incoherent verbosity that has clouded the issue on more than one occasion. And yet, beneath all the confusion, lies a single-minded focus on a specific instrument, a beacon of simplistic clarity that shines in a sea of noise that has allowed the movement to retain its relevance. The faith reposed in a single mechanism likeRosmahis indicative of the exhaustion with abstract ideals and with not opposing words that seem to perpetually cancel each other out.
why should Shahidan Kassim get to decide the correct measure of the correct recompense neither one of you has offered any rationale about why your office does not already have a committee that examines PM’s wife Rosmah Mansor’s Qatar itinerary shows nothing that is considered Malaysia’s official business. Why did we pay for her trip and that of the other ministers’ wives, too?MPs tried their best to cover up. Initially the trip was justified with lots of lies. Finally the details of Rosmah’s junket to Qatar have been exposed for what it was – a complete waste of taxpayers’ money.
Can an election ever throw up the right candidate? Or to put it more moderately, is an election the mechanism best suited to throw up representatives that will strive to work for their constituents and attempt to better their life? Are there in-built into the electoral process, a set of imperatives that help pre-determine one kind of outcome, irrespective of the quality of the candidates? why only those that already have the ability or are able to generate it, are found suitable to be offered as candidates. The political system wards off change at the point of entry itself, by making the entry level conditions unsuitable for anyone but those that toe the existing line and play by the rules already laid down
Increasingly, it would seem that what it takes to win an election is not only very different from what it takes to govern, but might well be at odds with the idea of providing governance. The privileging of representativenes in our democracy, with an emphasis on
The middle class Malays distrust of UMNO politicians is in part a sense of frustration with the electoral process. Part of the reason why visible outrage does not automatically translate into higher voting percentages is because the idea is laced with a sense of presumptive futility. It is also the reason why movements like the one led by ibrahim Ali get traction; the apolitical nature of the struggle is found valuable. The disenchantment with the movement is in part due to its involvement in electoral politics; the paradox being that the impetus for change cannot succeed unless it becomes a variable in the elections but the very act of getting involved with anything to do with elections is seen as an act of contamination.
Electoral reforms will help. But too much has to change before reforms by themselves can be effective. As a structure, elections cannot create intent; that must exist in the system. Without intent, the structure merely re-inforces and perhaps amplifies all that is already wrong. Even when elections are not rigged, in some ways they always are. If not by design, then by definition.It is difficult to have faith in Parliament when it seems to have such little faith in itself. Over the years a pattern has become clear- whenever there is a significant disagreement between the benches, the preferred mode of communication is noise and the argument of choice is disruption of proceedings of the House. Now the fact that the Opposition is meant to resist the party in power and challenge it fiercely on issues of policy is not an occasional accident; it is the whole point of the adversarial system. The parliamentary process is designed for frequent and strong disagreement; the Opposition as the name suggests is meant to oppose. That this opposition takes the form of walk-outs, boycotts, noisy disruptions and the occasional physical brawls, not as an exception but as the rule speaks volumes about the nature of Parliamentary discourse on view today.
_300_203_100.jpg)
Your statement – that you “need time prioritize it,” – does not even make sense – for prioritizing it would mean acting without lapse in time – self contradictory statements such as this have the media, and the ever watchful readership waiting in abeyance while you prioritize, or rather think about acting correctly!The cabinet is at fault for allowing the use of the private jet, operated with the taxpayers’ money. The cabinet must explain its decision.
A severe, trite, authentic case made by a journalist not just from your fraternity a journalist would not shy away from taking an unambiguous stance – fearlessly and without partisan, political, filial, official or corporate indoctrination that has air-conditioned our conscience along with our offices It is not the role of the media to attract investments, says veteran journalist A Kadir Jasin.After all, he added, the media does not have access to executive jets to play that role, unlike the prime minister’s wife, Rosmah Mansor. ’Najib and his cabinate has been caught with its pants down and it is wriggling around to escape the sticky situation Rosmah has put it in.’
As if the complete apathy towards what constitutes a ‘correct’ moral system, a ‘correct’ humane system, the ‘correct’ legal system, the ‘correct’ professional system and ah – the very vertebrae that ought to sustain it all– the ‘correct’ journalistic system – were not enough, the leitmotif that a journalist of Shoma’s stature is hankering after – ‘give me time to act correctly’ is painful, hypocritical and …incorrect.If you are, as you say, ‘driven by what Rosmah wants’ then how can you follow it up with a statement such as, “(he) stepped down. It was something she had not asked for. It was much more than what she wanted.” How sardonically heroic for Najb to give her so much more – a self-contrived temporary vacation to get away from the eye of the storm – for what he ‘in his correct senses’ deems as ‘drunken banter’ and a ‘lapse of judgment The tactic is not restricted to any specific party, but can be seen across state legislatures throughout the country. It is as if we have reached the limits of debate and exhausted the power of language and communicate our positions through negative means only. By not working, not allowing others to work, not talking to each other, not allowing others to speak and so on. Usually a tantrum is a child’s way of levelling the power inequality that exists between the adult world and the child. A tantrum intensifies the pitch of protest to an unsustainably high level and forces the more powerful adult to bend to the demands of the toddler in order to buy the resumption of ordinariness in life. It is understandable when the weak, powerless and exploited use negative means of protest; for elected representatives to communicate through a succession of legislative tantrums is bizarre. In their case, they have the constitutional right to express themselves and indeed, the power to articulate their feelings by way of voting. When they feel that a vote is not an adequate vehicle for their sentiment, then why should the ordinary citizen feel satisfied with it?
IN 2009, AN UNELECTED AND SCANDAL RIDDEN SUCCESSOR TOOK BADAWI’S PLACE WITH A NEW SLOGAN 1MALAYSIA AND A CATCHY PR (PUBLIC RELATIONS) GIMMICK “PEOPLE FIRST, PERFOMANCE NOW“. NAJIB TUN RAZAK AS THE 6TH PRIME MINISTER WITH HIS EBULLIENT AND BUMBLING WIFE, ROSMAH MANSOR (AH, THAT SELF PROCLAIMED FIRST LADY!) BY HIS SIDE AS ONE OF HIS LOYAL AND TRUSTED ADVISORS, MOVED AGGRESSIVELY TO HYPE UP HIS IMAGE. THERE WAS INITIAL FAVORABLE PUBLIC RESPONSE TO HIS 1MALAYSIA IDEA, BUT THIS HAS BEGUN TO FIZZLE OUT AS THE SCANDALS REFUSED TO GO AWAY. AN ANGRY MAHATHIR RETURNED AS A CARD CARRYING MEMBER OF UMNO AND WE CAN EXPECT HIM TO INFLICT FURTHER DAMAGE TO OUR NATIONAL PSYCHE, AND TO ATTACK AND EMBARRASS NAJIB readmore BUMBLING WIFE, ROSMAH MANSOR and the price for Raj
