Day: November 7, 2007

On Monday, in the winding-up on the Information Ministry during the 2008 Budget policy debate, Information Minister, Datuk Zainuddin Maidin saw red at being called “monkey” in this blog.

At first he accused me for calling him a “monkey” — but when confronted, he backed down and admitted that it was a comment left on my blog. But he said I must bear responsibility as moderator of the blog.

I said I regretted that such a term was used but it was definitely not used by me. I did a search of the reference which he had objected to and found it was a post by ENDANGERED HORNBILL on 28th October 2007 in the thread “Zam – Info Minister under coconut shell or bidding to be Mat Rempit “Godfather”?”, viz:

“ZAM is behaving like a BN monkey that’s gone bananas over NUTs.”

ZAM has legitimate grievance at being called “monkey” but it is no justification for him to become the Cabinet’s premier anti-blogger, and this was why I told him in Parliament why he should not behave like a “frog under the coconut shell” in expressing satisfaction at Malaysia’s 32-spot plunge in the Freedom Without Borders (RSF) 2007 press freedom index, from No. 92 last year to 124, which is the nation-worst ranking in the RSF annual worldwide press freedom ranking since it was started in 2002. Continue reading “Zam sees red in being called “monkey” in this blog”

Letter
by Richard Teo

I wish to refer to the Malaysiakini article ‘Air Asia: Its like going to the Moon.’

Yes, Tony Fernandez and Air Asia has every right to be in a jubilant mood after having obtained the rights to fly the Kuala lumpur to Singapore route. After all its a gold mine route previously the monopoly of our MAS airline.

But why the sudden change of mind to give this lucrative route to Air Asia when the logical decision would be to allow the status quo to remain and let MAS reap the profits while it is on its path to recovery?

The answer can be found by referring to the ECM-Libra and the Avenue merger. Prior to the merger, Kallimullah and Khairy Jamalluddin (son-in Law of P.M) bought a block of shares in ECM-Libra and lo and behold one month later ECM-LIibra sealed the deal with the cash-rich Avenue merger. Of course someone at the Ministry of Finance had to approve the deal and guess
who? Continue reading “ECM-Libra/Avenue merger and approval of Air Asia Singapore route”