Day: August 20, 2009

DAP condemns the arson attack on a Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) vehicle today.

As reported by Malaysiakini, four Molotov cocktails were thrown at the Klang MACC office at around midnight, destroying a four-wheel drive vehicle belonging to Selangor MACC.

MACC officers only realized the damage to the vehicle, a Nissan X-Trail, when they reported to work this morning.

There must be a full and thorough investigation to bring to book the culprits from whatever quarter responsible for the arson as no rational Malaysian regardless of race, religion or political affiliation wants to see any degeneration of Malaysia into growing lawlessness. Continue reading “DAP condemns arson attack on MACC vehicle and advises Nazri against making baseless insinuations of DAP involvement”

By Hussein Hamid

I am a nice person. I normally mind my own business and it does take quite a lot to rattle me or to get me up tight over anything. I prefer to walk away from any confrontational situation because life is to short to get aggravated over things that do not concern my family or me. Unfortunately this Azmi Anshar, one of those reporter ‘who is almost a writer’ working with NSTP has managed to upset me again. The first time was a couple of weeks ago when I ‘ter’ – that’s Bahasa for accidentally – when I terbaca what he wrote about TBH and MACC. I read only the first paragraph of what he wrote because even that much made me wonder what sort of a pretentious prick would write like that. In the first paragraph I had to reach for the dictionary four times! He has done it again today.

Again I am not going to read more then the first paragraph – that I have done and now I will say my piece. This was his headline:

DAILY DISPATCHES: Pakatan politicians want MACC to operate without element of surprise
2009/08/19
Azmi Anshar
Continue reading “Azmi Anshar…syok sendiri”

By Martin Jalleh

You will be remembered as the bespectacled ever-smiling woman in a blazing yellow dress, whose fire within burned brightest in the dark night of a brutal dictatorship that made your nation bleed to near despair – it was (in your very own words) “a country that has lost its faith in its future”.

You captured their imagination by your conviction and reignited their courage after being crushed and cowed by a cruel dictatorship fro 20 years. It was a nation that was crudely known as having “60 million cowards and one son-of-a-bitch”.

You inspired your “people without a soul” (Jose Rizal) with your selfless and single-minded spirit and stirred in their hearts a simple message of hope that resulted in a synergy called “People Power” that would eventually spread to other nations and served as a model of non-violence.
Continue reading “When Courage’s Other Name Was “Cory””

The 52nd National Day is just ten days away but never before in the nation’s 52-year history have preparations for National Day celebrations been marred and threatened by so many black clouds – the A (H1N1) pandemic which has claimed 67 lives and the almost daily barrage attacking Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak’s 1Malaysia concept in the exploitation of the race and religious cards by Umno leaders.

What is quite incredible is that the person leading the campaign of race and religion representing an open repudiation of Najib’s 1Malaysia concept is none other than the Deputy Prime Minister and Umno Deputy President, Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin, as illustrated by his utterances in the Permatang Pasir by-election campaign.

Let Muhyiddin answer whether he is for or against Najib’s 1Malaysia concept and if he supports the 1Malaysia concept, why is this not the primary theme of Umno/Barisan Nasional in the Permatang Pasir by-election instead of a campaign line which is the very opposite repudiating everything that 1Malaysia stands for?
Continue reading “Is Muhyiddin for or against Najib’s 1Malaysia concept and why 1Malaysia concept is not the primary theme of Umno/BN in Permatang Pasir by-election?”

By Tunku Abdul Aziz

When Merdeka was granted half a century ago, we inherited a number of items of unfinished business, the most critical of which was the urgent necessity to create a united Malayan nation and, soon afterwards, a Malaysian nation.

The late Tom Harrison, the famous curator of the Sarawak Museum, described Malaysia as “a tangle of peoples” in an article published in the Malaysian Outlook, a small journal I edited in Australia in 1963, in a fit of patriotism. “Konfrontasi” was in full swing then, and, given the dangerously unpredictable and volatile behaviour of Bung Karno of Indonesia, our future as a nation was by no means assured.

Harrison was not thinking so much about the Malays, Chinese and Indians of the Malay peninsula, but rather the often forgotten peoples making up the many different tribal and ethnic groups with their many different customs, religious beliefs and languages inhabiting Sabah and Sarawak. Almost overnight, they found themselves the citizens of a new and, to them, somewhat vague political creation called Malaysia. The Kadazan Dusuns, Bajaus, Punans, Penans, Kayans, Muruts and various others, I fear, still remain very much outside our consciousness, even after more than four decades of Malaysia. Need I say more about this serious lapse of memory? What national unity are we talking about without them?
Continue reading “Some unfinished business: Untangling the peoples of Malaysia”