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Tiong Lai – do not be like ‘Nero playing fiddle while Rome burns” only interested in playing MCA politics despite mounting deaths from dengue and H1N1 epidemics

Health Minister Datuk Seri Liow Tiong Lai should not be like “Nero playing fiddle while Rome burns” only interested in playing MCA politics despite mounting deaths from dengue and H1N1 epidemics.

The influenza A (H1N1) has claimed a fourth casualty in Malaysia – 20-year-old woman who died of “severe community acquired pneumonia” at 9.40 am on Tuesday at the Malacca Hospital, after suffering from the flu for 11 days.

On the dengue front, two more deaths have occurred this year, a 77-year-old man from Sipitang, Sabah and a 45-year-old female teacher from Ampang, Selangor who died last week.

Since January this year, there have been 26,446 cases and 64 fatalities Liow seems to have forgotten what he started six months ago, when he declared an all-out war against dengue, which recorded the highest number of 49,335 dengue cases and 112 lives last year – 50 per cent of whom were preventable deaths.

Now, Malaysia is heading towards an even higher incidence of dengue cases and fatalities than last year. Continue reading “Tiong Lai – do not be like ‘Nero playing fiddle while Rome burns” only interested in playing MCA politics despite mounting deaths from dengue and H1N1 epidemics”

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Was Teoh Beng Hock pulled up by his jackets and trousers/belt and pushed out of 14th floor MACC hqrs?

Before last Wednesday’s Cabinet meeting, the family and the Malaysian public were assured by the four MCA Ministers and the Minister each from Gerakan, MIC and SUPP that they would support in Cabinet the establishment of a Royal Commission of Inquiry into the causes and circumstances of Teoh Beng Hock’s mysterious death at Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) headquarters in Shah Alam.

In the event, these seven Cabinet Ministers from MCA, Gerakan, MIC and SUPP disappointed the Teoh family and justice-loving Malaysians by agreeing to the most unsatisfactory formula of dividing the inquiry into two parts – an inquest into Teoh’s death and a Royal Commission of Inqury into MACC’s interrogation techniques.

This created an nation-wide uproar which even ordinary MCA, Gerakan, MIC and SUPP ground leaders and members fully participated, for they just cannot understand why their party leaders in the Cabinet could be so insensitive to what basic justice and fair play demand – a Royal Commission of Inquiry into the causes and circumstances of Teoh’s death.
Continue reading “Was Teoh Beng Hock pulled up by his jackets and trousers/belt and pushed out of 14th floor MACC hqrs?”

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Could the PKFZ project become a RM12.5 billion “mother of all scandals” if the three Transport Ministers and four PKA Chairmen – all from MCA – had not been equally incompetent and negligent as the PKA managers from day one?

The Public Accounts Committee (PAC) Chairman blamed the RM12.5 billion Port Klang Free Zone (PKFZ) scandal on “a group of incompetent people” from day one. (NST)

The ad hoc committee on corporate governance probing the PKFZ fiasco, headed by Transparency International chairman Datuk Paul Low Seng Kuan, denounced the PKA Board members for “gross negligence” in failing to discharge their fiduciary duties diligently, resulting in the RM12.5 billion PKFZ scandal.

Both Azmi and Low are only half right. Could the PKFZ project become a RM12.5 billion “mother of all scandals” if the three Transport Ministers (Ling Liong Sik, Chan Kong Choy, Ong Tee Keat) and four PKA Chairmen (Ting Chew Peh, Yap Pian Hon, Chor Chee Heung and Lee Hwa Beng) – all from MCA – had not been equally incompetent and negligent as the PKA managers “from day one”?
Continue reading “Could the PKFZ project become a RM12.5 billion “mother of all scandals” if the three Transport Ministers and four PKA Chairmen – all from MCA – had not been equally incompetent and negligent as the PKA managers from day one?”

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Politics, Power and the Violence of History

By Farish A Noor

The guillotine, it ought to be remembered, was originally conceived of as a safe, clean, efficient and ironically ‘humane’ method of murdering people when it was first introduced. Dubbed the ‘revolutionary razor’ when it was first used to execute the enemies of the state at the outset of the French revolution, it was seen as an improvement and advancement from the age of neo-feudal rule where the despotism of the King of France was manifest in the macabre and gruesome spectacles of public violence that were enacted in the kingdom against those who were seen as the enemies of the regime.

In time however it is clear that even this mode of public execution has been inscribed with negativity and regarded as a brutal way for the state to express its power in the public domain. Robbespiere, Danton, Saint-Just were all victims of the same mode of state violence that they had originally supported and promoted, and it is ironic that Robbespiere and his contemporaries met their end at the same guillotine that they had used to execute their enemies earlier.

The tale of the guillotine is an apt reminder of the historical impasse that Muslim societies are in today, and how the dream of political Islam is now Continue reading “Politics, Power and the Violence of History”