Month: August 2009

By Hussein Hamid

Me thinks something is stirring in the Pakatan Rakyat and UMNO camps. The winds of change seems to blow ever so slowly. Diversions are being thrown around here and there by Pakatan Rakyat. The issue of selling beers in Selangor seem to take a life of its own unencumbered by thoughts of Pakatan unity. There is the ‘life and death struggle’ of Pakatan Rakyat in Selangor and the internal ‘bickering’ between PAS and DAP. For Barisan they want Selangor back and the word is out that they are confident enough to look at holding elections in Perak…it all points to the classic diversionary tactics of ‘creating a crisis’ – but by whom? Barisan or Pakatan?

What is self-evident now is that there is a growing momentum towards creating a Malaysia the people are unfamiliar with. The dismantling of the great racial divide, the real possibility of Pakatan Rakyat emerging as the next Government after the General Elections (at worse an effective opposition) and the potential demise of UMNO and the Barisan Coalition it leads as the Party in power.

Concurrently as part and parcel of this progression there is an increasing demand by the people for transparency and openness in Government – akin to Putri Gunung Ledang agreeing to marry the Sultan if given:
Continue reading “The art of Managing a Crisis…do we want one?”

ASEAN and individual ASEAN governments must make clear their condemnation of another 18-month house arrest of Burmese democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi by the Myanmese military junta as an unacceptable violation of ASEAN Charter on Human Rights.

ASEAN Foreign Ministers at their meeting in Phuket last month had endorsed the Terms of Reference (TOR) of the ASEAN Commission on Human Rights, which is to be launched at the ASEAN Summit in October but the latest egregious violation of human rights by the Myanmar military junta raises the question whether such an ASEAN Human Rights Commission would represent a step forward in the promotion and protection of human rights or just a figleaf to give legitimacy to continuing gross human rights violations in the region.

The continued house arrest of Suu Kyi represents at least four things:

• Firstly, the mortal fear the Myanmar military junta has for the 64-year-old Nobel Peace Laureate who had spent 14 of the past 20 years in incarceration and recognition her unsurpassed power to evoke the hopes of the people of Burma for democracy, justice and national reconciliation. This is the reason for the term of 18 months of additional house arrest, barring her from campaigning in next year’s national elections although the Myanmar military junta had already in a sham referendum written a new constitution to exclude her from being a candidate.

Continue reading “ASEAN must condemn ASSK’s 18-month house arrest as an unacceptable violation of ASEAN Charter on human rights”

(This is one response to an earlier post expressing concern about what is happening to the Selangor Pakatan Rakyat government which I think is important enough to share in the public domain to elicit a wider discussion. – Kit)

There is certainly the “need to be worried” matter in Selangor. One quote going around from some prominent businessmen is that ” It took BN 50 yrs to become so arrogant, but it took PR only 1(one) year to be just as arrogant”. Nowhere is that business sentiment more acutely felt than amongst some housing developers.

The aetiology is of course multifactorial. Many unscrupulous and other less-than-straight developers had ridden on the past (less transparent) govt to execute projects that left much bitter aftertaste/heartaches amongst unconsulted residents in a forced topdown approach. Unfortunately in yesteryears (and even recently) REHDA had not come down hard on these recalitrants, thus much of society had tarred all and sundry developers in the same manner. Continue reading “What is wrong with Selangor Pakatan Rakyat government?”

By Hussein Hamid

Why is it that I, as a Malay, show much disrespect to Najib? Why are there so many Hang Jebats as oppose to Hang Tuahs in this time of ours – ready to do verbal battle with our leaders? Menderhaka they say. Sometimes after I have written my piece I read them and I am appalled at the venom of what I write. While we are Hang Jebats we do what we do because of what Hang Tuah had said “Takkan Melayu Hilang di Dunia”. If we do not care for our survival as a viable partner to the other races in our country then who will?

We want to tell the Malays and the people of our country that there is an alternative to the excesses of the past fifty years when UMNO were in power and got totally carried away. You not only systematically steal from our national treasuries but also take from other Malays what as taken years to acquire. How else do you explain the use of the EPF and Petronas funds to bail out your failures?

If you ask how can DAP, Keadilan and PAS work together towards a common goal when their fundamental beliefs are so divisive? I say this….how about principled politics?
Continue reading “Principled Politics”

At 5.10 pm, on my blog this morning re: “Large-scale H1N1 awareness campaign welcome but why so belated – after 33 deaths and some 2,000 cases?” , I received this heart-rending post from a mother, Karen Lee from Kota Kemuning, worried about her five-year-old son in the A (H1N1) flu killer pandemic, which has claimed 38 lives since the first death was reported 26 days ago on July 16 and recorded 2,253 cases since the first H1N1 case less than three months ago on May 15, 2009..

Karen wants to ask the Health Minister Datuk Seri Liow Tiong Lai four questions about the A (H1N1) flu pandemic and quite desperate for getting an immediate reply as her son’s life is “at stake”.

These four questions are: Continue reading “Liow Tiong Lai, Where are You? Karen Lee looking for you”

YB Datuk Seri Azmi Khalid,
Chairman,
Public Accounts Committee,
Chairman
11th August 2009

YB Datuk Seri,

I take the liberty through this Open Letter to ask you to avoid conflict-of-interest as former Cabinet Minister in 2007 to disqualify yourself from conducting the Public Accounts Committee inquiry into the RM12.5 billion Port Klang Free Zone (PKFZ) scandal.

I had earlier written to you in a letter dated 17th June 2009 asking you to step down as Chairman of the PAC inquiry into the PKFZ scandal as you were a Cabinet Minister from 2004 to 2008, a period when the previous Cabinet had made various decisions concerning PKFZ, including giving retrospective approval for the four Letters of Support unlawfully issued by the two previous Transport Ministers, Tun Dr. Ling Liong Sik and Tan Sri Chan Kong Choy to guarantee the RM4 billion bonds issued by the PKFZ turnkey developer, Kuala Dimensi Sdn. Bhd (KDSB) as well as the RM4.6 billion Cabinet decision to bail out PKFZ.
Continue reading “Open Letter to PAC Chairman Azmi Khalid that he should avoid conflict-of-interest as former Cabinet Minister in 2007 and disqualify himself from conducting the PAC inquiry into the RM12.5 billion PKFZ scandal”

By Hussein Hamid
steadyaku47

The past:

Big win gives Malaysia’s Abdullah mandate

The 2004 elections won by Barisaan’s Nasional was the biggest for any Political Party in Malaysian history. With a parliamentary majority of over two thirds, the multi ethnic Barisan Nasional coalition that UMNO heads can pass law uncontested. This success was matched in polls for the state assemblies with Barisan winning 12 of the 13 states.

This puts to rest the challenge of PAS in the Malay heartland states in the North and seemed to wipe out Keadilan.

Wan Azizah Wan Ismail, faced a recount in her seat, which was once occupied by her husband Anwar Ibrahim who is now serving a 15-year jail term for sodomy and abuse of power, and the party looked unlikely to win any other seats.

Current realities: Continue reading “As I see it”

In just four months of the Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak unveiling his new and gleaming “1Malaysia” motto, the UMNO-owned Utusan Malaysia is already assuming the mantle of the “Undertaker” to bury Najib’s “1Malaysia” slogan with its recent series of unabashedly divisive and remorselessly seditious incitement of racial hatred and disharmony in plural Malaysia.

When Najib could fail the first test to stand up by his “1Malaysia” concept in just 130 days as Prime Minister, not from challenges from outside but threats from within, what credibility can the Prime Minister command to continue to advocate the concept of “1Malaysia”?

Is Najib going to order a halt to the millions or even tens of millions of ringgit which had been spent or budgeted for a massive nation-wide promotion of the “1Malaysia” concept when it is so publicly repudiated, almost on a daily basis, by Umno leaders and Umno institutions like Utusan Malaysia?

Yesterday, Najib called on the police to take action against those who incite racial and religious tensions.
Continue reading “After being so badly savaged, can Najib’s 1Malaysia be salvaged?”

The Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Najib Razak yesterday announced that the government will launch a large-scale public awareness campaign on influenza A(H1N1) beginning this week to educate the public on the pandemic in view of the worsening scenario in the country.

This is a welcome though belated initiative and the questions uppermost in everyone’s mind is why this decision was taken so late, after 33 deaths and some 2,000 cases.

Furthermore, why must it take the Prime Minister to intervene personally before such a decision is taken? What then is the use of having a Health Minister?

Would more lives had been saved if the large-scale public awareness campaign had been launched when the first death from the A (H1N1) flu had occurred 25 days ago on July 16?

It is not only the Health Minister who had failed to provide the proper leadership in the campaign against A (H1N1) flu, even the Deputy Prime Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin who headed the inter-ministerial committee on A (H1N1) was guilty of a most flippant and irresponsible attitude with his shocking remark: “Even if I am health minister, I cannot guarantee your safety.”
Continue reading “Large-scale H1N1 awareness campaign welcome but why so belated – after 33 deaths and some 2,000 cases?”

What has the Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Najib Razak joined in the Umno-inspired hysteria and gunning for DAPSY chief and MP for Rasah Loke Siew Fook for insulting the Perak royalty and Islam when these allegations are completely groundless?

This morning, Najib directed the relevant authorities to investigate Loke.

In directing the relevant authorities to investigate Loke without any background or preliminary check as to whether the DAPSY chief had make such grave allegations on his blog, and talking about offences under the Sedition Act, Najib is acting most irresponsibly as Prime Minister as he was in fact helping to fan the Umno-inspired hysteria that there is a systematic attack on Islam and the royalty.
Continue reading “Why has Najib condoned the Umno-inspired hysteria and gunning for Loke Siew Fook for insulting the Perak royalty and Islam when these allegations are completely groundless?”

Why is the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) wasting time trying to find out whether all the 42 MACC advisory panel members share adverse opinions about the MACC following the mysterious death of DAP political aide Teoh Beng Hock when it should be giving top priority to end gross abuses and malpractices to restore public confidence in it as Malaysia’s version of Hong Kong-style Independent Commission against Corruption (ICAC)?

It is reported by Malaysiakini today that emails had been sent out recently by the secretariat to 33 members of the MACC Advisory Panel following six “offending” media statements made by panel members Ramon Navaratnam and Robert Phang.

The MACC wanted the views of the other panel members as it felt that the views of the two “were not supportive of the establishment of the anti-corruption body and wanted to know the views of other panel members on the issue”.

MACC is now run by narrow-minded and bigoted people who equate criticisms of MACC failings as being anti-MACC.

Malaysiakini reported that not everyone has responded so far, and of the handful who did, not even one panel member has been critical of Navaratnam or Phang.

Panel members Simon Sipaun and Yong Poh Kon were mentioned in the Malaysiakini report as members who were “equally critical” in their response to the MACC.
Continue reading “Why is MACC wasting time trying to find out whether all 42 advisory panel members share adverse opinions about MACC when it should be giving top priority to end gross abuses and malpractices to restore public confidence?”

The Selangor Pakatan Rakyat government is facing a life-and-death threat with a high-powered Umno-BN conspiracy to topple it at all costs and restore Umno-BN rule in Selangor as in Perak six months ago.

This is not an ordinary challenge but a no-holds-barred onslaught and take-no-prisoners assault mobilising all available means and resources, including the most unethical and illegal, whether at state or national level, whether government or outside like the mass media, to destroy the Selangor Pakatan Rakyat government and cause the break-up of Pakatan Rakyat.

DAP and Pakatan Rakyat leaders in Selangor and in the country should be fully aware of this latest life-and-death threat to the 17-month-old Selangor Pakatan Rakyat government as testified by two pronouncements by the two top Umno leaders today.
Continue reading “Selangor Pakatan Rakyat government facing a life-and-death threat with a high-powered Umno-BN conspiracy to topple it at all costs and restore Umno-BN rule in Selangor as in Perak six months ago”

By M. Bakri Musa

With Ramadan soon upon us, Muslims everywhere are caught up in a heightened sense of spirituality. That is the good news.

Take last Thursday evening, for example. The San Jose, California, masjid was inundated with believers staying late into the night. It was the 15th of Shaaban, an especially blessed time in the Muslim calendar. Shaaban is the month before Ramadan, and serves as a ‘warm-up’ to it. As my Imam Ilyas noted wryly in his Friday khutba, what struck him was that many that evening had never before set foot on the premises. That is the bad news.

Malays too are struck by this wave of religious fervor with the impending arrival of Ramadan. Thus the recent local governmental agency raid on a 7-Eleven store in Selangor, stripping the store of its beer inventory. Never mind that the store had been selling that beverage for decades without any harassment from the authorities.
Continue reading “Fraudulent Defenders of Our Faith”

Umno-owned Utusan Malaysia’s immunity to flout the law by continuously inciting racial hatred and religious discord is a disgrace to Malaysian journalism and a public slap-in-the-face for Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak’s 1Malaysia concept.

Just five days ago, Utusan Malaysia carried an editorial “Tidak sedarkah Melayu sedang di hina?” and an article “Melayu jangan jadi bacul” spouting unabashed rank racism, incitement and sedition totally subversive of Najib’s 1Malaysia slogan.

Today, Utusan Mingguan tried to create an explosive tinderbox by making baseless but incendiary allegations in a multi-religious Malaysia that DAP is anti-Islam in its Sunday editorial “DAP anti-Islam?”
Continue reading “Umno-owned Utusan Malaysia’s immunity to flout the law by continuously inciting racial hatred and religious discord a public slap-in-the-face for Najib’s 1Malaysia concept”

by Tengku Razaleigh

(Speech at Kelab Umno Australia Seminar “Racial Integration and its Challenges” in Melbourne on Sunday 9th August 2009)

RACE: TIME FOR A NEW BEGINNING

Distance, home and reflection

1) The opportunity to study abroad is gift. I remember my days as a student in Belfast so long ago. Now as then, overseas study gives us the chance to be educated at some of the finest, best established institutions of higher learning anywhere, and to be exposed to the best that has been thought and done, and to measure ourselves against the highest standards. It is an opportunity to see the world.

2) Travel and living abroad takes us far away from home, but in doing so it also brings us closer to ourselves, and closer to home. Have you experienced this? Have you felt time and distance making you more conscious of how unique and precious the places, relationships, colours, smells and yes, tastes, of home are? Distance can help us see things more clearly. Home is such an immediate, dense and total experience that we often need to go away to see its contours. Home is such an emotional experience that we often understand it better in the coolness of distance. We sometimes need the elevation of distance to see the map of our own country.

3) I want to use this privileged distance that we now share, here in Melbourne, to speak frankly with you today about a matter that is usually so tightly wound up, so emotional, that at a national level we have not been able to have a rational discussion about it.

4) I want to invite you to look across this distance at the map of the life in common that we call our country. I want to look across the distance of fifty two years of independence, across changes over my own lifetime, to understand where we have come from as a nation and where we are going. My topic is race and racial consciousness in Malaysian life, and especially in our politics. Continue reading “RACE: TIME FOR A NEW BEGINNING”

When Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak announced his Cabinet four months ago on April 10, 2009, he built on his motto of “1Malaysia. People First. Performance Now” a week earlier to be “a government with new approaches for new times – a government that places a priority on performance, because the people must come first”.

Najib declared: “The era where the government knows best is over. We can only achieve our ambition for Malaysia if the government and the people, in a unified effort, work together for success and progress”.

We are only in the First 128 Days of Najib’s premiership, but his injunctions and exhortations of “1Malaysia. People First. Performance Now” and that “The era where the government knows best is over” had been completely ignored or forgotten by his Cabinet and bureaucracy.

Otherwise, the parents of SMK Seri Hartamas students in Kuala Lumpur would not have been locked out of the school yesterday when the school’s Parent-Teacher Association wanted to hold a properly-convened extraordinary general meeting to retain the PPSMI policy on the teaching of of science and mathematics in English in their school in 2012. Continue reading “Muhyiddin – honour Najib’s pledge that “The era where the government knows best is over” and allow parents the choice to retain the policy of teaching Science and Mathematics in English for their children”

By Hussein Hamid
steadyaku47

In the beginning UMNO and MCA had a tacit understanding that the Malays will have control of Political Power while the Chinese – the Economy. This arrangement brought with it all the intrigues and excesses that springs up when the Malays were in control of licenses and contracts that the Chinese business needed to do businesses and in return the Chinese made contributions during elections (that is how they became known as buy elections !!) up front services fees, kick backs and went into joint ventures with Bumiputra Companies and gave ‘directorship’ to Malays in Chinese owned companies.

Politics. Patronage and Profit.

This is the thing I cannot understand. Mahathir was not able to see where this lethal combination of Politics, Patronage and Profit will lead to? He is suppose to be quite smart. Was he under the mistaken belief that he would be able to ‘manage’ the situation to his personal advantage? Which in hindsight he did because to stay in office for 22 years Continue reading “Oh No !! What Have I Got Myself Into?”

Deputy Prime Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yasin should stop the gimmick of playing “bad cop” to Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak’s “good cop”, making the most outrageous statements which are a total mockery of the “1Malaysia. People First. Performance Now” slogan.

Muhyiddin is already notorious for his comment on the A (N1H1) pandemic, which has rapidly raised the death toll to 17 fatalities after the first death two weeks ago with the total cumulative cases mounting to 1,525.

Malaysians will long remember his “Even if I am health minister, I cannot guarantee your safety” remark just as they will not easily forget Muhyiddin’s open admission after being appointed Education Minister that he did not know that English was not a compulsory pass subject for Sijil Pelajaran Malaysia (SPM) although he had been Cabinet Minister for 14 years and Johore Mentri Besar for nine years!

Muhyiddin’s latest outrageous statement is the one from Perth that the death threat made against the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) chief is politically-motivated and an attempt to bring down the institution and cause the people to lose confidence in it. Continue reading “Muhyiddin should stop gimmick of playing “bad cop” to Najib’s “good cop” making the most outrageous statements”

The 10,000-strong Malaysian police force, the Home Minister Datuk Seri Hishammuddin Hussein and the Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Najib Razak will not be able to hold their heads high in international community if Tan Sri Musa Hassan is renewed as Inspector-General of Police next month when under his three-year leadership as the country No. 1 Cop, only 1% of the people feel safe while 97% feel unsafe from the high crime rate.

This result of the latest opinion poll of public feedback about the crime situation in the country could be dismissed as anti-police propaganda if it had been conducted under the auspices of opposition political parties or NGOs concerned about crime.

But this is not an option open to the Prime Minister, Home Minister and the Malaysian police force for this is the result of a poll conducted itself by the Home Ministry official website, http://www.ikdn.gov.my/.

Malaysia will become the laughing stock of the world, particularly the international policing community, if an IGP whose three years’ police leadership resulted in only 1% of respondents who felt safe while 97% felt unsafe because of the high crime rate in an official Home Ministry website could be rewarded with another extension of his renewal as IGP! Continue reading “Police, Home Minister and Prime Minister will not be able to hold their heads high in international community if Musa Hassan is renewed as IGP when under his three-year leadership, only 1% of the people feel safe”

by Curtin University of Technoloy Sarawak student

I am currently student of Curtin University of Technology Sarawak Campus.

Over the past 2 days, the haze is getting worse and worse.

Time now is 4.19 am. Our students here cannot sleep at all due to the thick haze. We event cannot look out, which make our eyes in pain.

We dont have any channel to complain regarding this issue. Even we call the Fire Department, they say they are trying their best. Continue reading “Terrible haze in Miri”