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Independent inquiry – whether Najib negligent in not phasing out Nuri helicopters earlier

Independent inquiry - whether Najib negligent in not phasing out Nuri helicopters earlier

Deputy Prime Minister and Defence Minister, Datuk Seri Najib Razak, announced yesterday that the Cabinet had decided that the Nuri helicopters be phased out within three years and that an international tender for new helicopters would be called in the next few months.

The Nuri helicopters would still be used pending the arrival of new helicopters.

He said: “They are the only aircraft available to carry out operations. We can’t stop using them.”

The air force has more than 20 Nuri helicopters aged between 30 and 40 years.

“We pray that such accidents will not happen again,” Najib said, adding that no one could guarantee such incidents would not recur.

Such an explanation is neither satisfactory nor acceptable to the public or the bereaved families of casualties of Nuri helicopter crashes, who must bear a life-long doubt whether their loved ones would still be alive if the authorities concerned had fully discharged their duties to ensure that the Nuri helicopters were fully safe and air-worthy.

When eleven RMAF lives were lost in two RMAF Nuri helicopter crashes in Sabah in March 1997, DAP had called for the most thorough inquiry into the airworthiness of all Nuri helicopters. Continue reading “Independent inquiry – whether Najib negligent in not phasing out Nuri helicopters earlier”

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Great letdown – Cabinet failure to reaffirm Malaysia is a secular and not Islamic state

Cabinet failure to reaffirm Malaysia is a secular and not Islamic state

I was waiting for the Cabinet to issue a policy statement after its meeting yesterday to clarify and correct the pronouncement by the Deputy Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Najib Razak on Tuesday that Malaysia is not a secular state but an Islamic state driven by the fundamentals of Islam.

But there had been total silence from the Cabinet after its weekly Wednesday meeting yesterday.

The Cabinet failure to reaffirm that Malaysia is a secular and not an Islamic State is a great letdown bringing to the very fore the question whether the upcoming 50th Merdeka anniversary celebrations is to commemorate 50 years of a secular Malaysian nation or the beginning of a Malaysian Islamic State!

Some MCA leaders have made noises in the media that Najib’s declaration that Malaysia is an Islamic state and not a secular state flies in the face of “numerous documents, including the Reid Report, the Cobbold Commision and a 1988 Supreme Court decision” but why was there not a single one of the four MCA Ministers, as well as the Gerakan, MIC, SUPP, PBS and other non-Muslim Barisan Nasional (BN) Ministers who dared to raise this important subject to ask for a public Cabinet reaffirmation that Malaysia had always been conceived to be a secular and not an Islamic State?

Is this to be another MCA “sandiwara” — using low-level officials to question Najib’s statement that Malaysia is an Islamic and not a secular state while top MCA leaders assured the UMNO leadership of their support in Cabinet and the Barisan Nasional Supreme Council?

This was what happened when former Prime Minister, Tun Dr. Mahathir Mdohamad made the unilateral, arbitrary and unconstitutional declaration that Malaysia was an Islamic State at the Gerakan national delegates conference on Sept. 29, 2001 — the “929 declaration”. Continue reading “Great letdown – Cabinet failure to reaffirm Malaysia is a secular and not Islamic state”