Day: December 3, 2008

Malaysians are shocked that the Inspector-General of Police, Tan Sri Musa Hassan is deadly serious with his ridiculous ploy to explain away the worsening crime index with a statistical sleight-of-hand by claiming that it is purely a problem of misperception by Malaysians, tourists and investors.

What is outrageous is that the Cabinet and the National Economic Council could be browbeaten so easily by the IGP on Tuesday to accept such a ridiculous ploy, to the extent that this has been adopted as the official policy position as to be publicly enunciated by the Deputy Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Najib Razak two days ago.

Musa has claimed that figures show that Malaysia is a relatively safe country with 772 crimes for every 100,000 residents in the country. This ratio compares favourably with Hong Kong where there are 1,166 cases for every 100,000 residents; Japan 1,569 cases and Australia 4,470 cases.

Taken as a whole, the statistics showed that only Singapore with 704 cases per 100,000 residents had a safer environment.

It is a reflection of the intellectual inadequacy and poverty of the Cabinet Ministers and National Economic Council members that they could be so easily bamboozled by the IGP with suspect statistics and data.

The statistics given by the IGP to show that Malaysia is safer than Japan and Hong Kong are most misleading and unacceptable, as different definitions are used as to render a proper comparison quite useless.
Continue reading “IGP’s statistical sleight-of-hand to explain away worsening crime index”

I will move a motion under Standing Order 43 to challenge and review the ruling of Deputy Speaker Datuk Ronald Kiandee condoning the gross breach of parliamentary privilege by former Minister and Barisan Nasional MP for Rompin Datuk Jamaluddin Jarjis in trying to sabotage my speech during the 2009 Budget debate on the Ministry of Unity, Culture, Arts and Heritage on Monday in misleading the House by falsely claiming that I had said “the Malays treated the Chinese like slaves” when referring to “ketuanan Melayu”.

Jamaluddin was being most mischievous, irresponsible and racist when he deliberately repeated at least ten times in various variation of the false accusation that I had said the Malays regard the Chinese as slaves to try to paint me as racist and anti-Malay – when he was the one who was demonstrating his worst communal colours.

He even challenged me to apologise and withdraw the allegation when this is verified in a check with the Hansard the next day.

A check with the Hansard has proven that Jamaluddin was telling a big lie, which he compounded by repeating it ten times in the House on Monday, and it is now clearly confirmed that I had never said that the Malays treated the Chinese as slaves.

This is a gross breach of parliamentary privilege, compounded by his deliberate repetition of the lie ten times, hoping to turn a lie into a truth by sheer repetition!
Continue reading “No to “ketuanan rakyat Malaysia” – BN abandoning Bangsa Malaysia?”

I was stunned when I stood up late last night to debate the 2009 Budgetary estimates for the Defence Ministry to be told by the Deputy Speaker Ronald Kiandee, that MPs are limited to five minutes each!

The Defence Ministry has a budget of RM13 billion for next year and is one of the six big-spending Ministries marred by mega scandals of multi-billion ringgit defence procurements.

Speaking in protest under the five-minute limit, I touched on two issues.

One is on the RM1.6 billion Eurocopter helicopter scandal – expressing concern that unless the Public Accounts Committee report on its inquiry into the Eurocopter deal is tabled in Parliament by today, Parliament would be denied of an opportunity to have a debate in the current meeting on the PAC findings and recommendations, making the PAC report quite academic and even useless.

I stressed that the PAC report should be made public in advance of any parliamentary debate so that aviation experts and even aircraft manufacturers could review the evaluation process followed in the Eurocopter deal as so far no independent experts apart from the RMAF/Mindef had been invited to provide expert opinion on the various aspects of the decision-making process. Continue reading “5-minute debate for RM13 billion Defence Ministry budget 2009”