Day: May 23, 2010

(Adopted by DAP Sarawak State Committee on 23rd May 2010 In Sibu, Sarawak)

The Sibu Miracle on 16th May 2010 is the beginning of the awakening of Sarawak. From now on, no one will take us – the people of Sarawak – for granted. One small step in winning Sibu is one big step to winning power in Petrajaya, and a giant step forward to winning power in Putrajaya.Sarawak is rich. It has the largest land mass in Malaysia and an abundance of resources such as timber, land, palm oil, gold, oil and gas.

But the people of Sarawak are among the poorest in Malaysia because of low pay, poor employment opportunities and a business environment which is monopolised by a selected few.

It is the only state in Malaysia where one family – that of the Chief Minister’s – practically has complete power over the state’s entire economic and political activities.

It’s time that we say ENOUGH IS ENOUGH. Let’s chart a new future for Sarawak and Malaysia.

GOOD GOVERNANCE = NO MORE TAIB Continue reading “Sarawak for Change – The Sibu Declaration”

By Pushparani Thilaganathan | FMT

COMMENT Plaza Inn, atop a coffeeshop in Sibu, is flanked by a ‘skyscraper’ and a string of nightclubs on the other end. Evenings are short and the streets are mostly deserted by 9pm.

Life is a straight road. Dawn breaks around 6am, shop shutters rise and the first whiff of brewing coffee reaches up to the hotel room if the windows are open.

If it rains, like it did most nights and some mornings, the mesh of scents is refreshing! Here, where churches are rampant, work is god and toil is truth.

There is no room for perceptions. Only impressions.
Continue reading “Reading between the lines in Sibu”

For the past week, Sibu was on the lips of every Malaysian, igniting excitement and rekindling new hopes among Sarawakians and Malaysians that Sarawak and Malaysia are capable of far-reaching political changes in the near future.

The hard-fought DAP and Pakatan Rakyat victory in Sibu, where we turned around the 40%-60% odds on Nomination Day in the eight-day campaign to achieve a miraculous victory, has given to Sarawakians and Malaysians a glimpse of the possibility of New Politics and the replacement of the Barisan Nasional governments in Petrajaya and Putrajaya with  Pakatan Rakyat governments in the next 12 to 24 months.

The seismic Sibu by-election victory, akin to a Sibu Miracle, has brought with it great challenges and responsibilities to the Sarawak DAP state leadership.
Forget about “rest” until the two great battles of the next Sarawak state general elections and the 13th General Elections are over.
Continue reading “DAP Sibu MP Wong Ho Leng will lead DAP policy debate on 10th Malaysia Plan in June Parliament to spell out the triple implications of the Sibu Miracle”

By Shannon Teoh | The Malaysian Insider
May 23, 2010

LONDON, May 23 — Fugitive blogger Raja Petra Kamarudin has thrown down the gauntlet to Malaysian authorities, challenging them to bring standing charges against him to the courts in the United Kingdom.

Swaggering into a packed hall in the UK capital yesterday and flanked by two burly men in dark glasses, the controversial Malaysia Today writer insisted that he would fight charges of criminal defamation and sedition as well as the appeal against his Internal Security Act (ISA) detention, given a level playing field.

“I will take on the government and I will fight them but I will do what Sun Tzu said, ‘Fight him in your territory.’

“So my territory is here in the UK,” he declared to applause from a largely partisan crowd of over 300, who had their bags searched before entering the hall at the BPP Law School.

Many had to stand for the two-hour talk by the blogger, who repeated what he had written over the years, in his first formal appearance after over a year in self-imposed exile.
Continue reading “RPK dares Malaysia to fight him in UK”

By G Vinod | FMT

MIRI: The Borneo Resources Institute Malaysia today said the residents of longhouses near the proposed Baram dam in Sarawak do not want to see another repeat of the Bakun resettlement fiasco.

Its executive director Mark Bujang said that the people in the affected area want the project to be scrapped altogether.

Bujang said this was clearly expressed by the locals during a two-day seminar organised by the Baram Residents Action Council at Telang Usan Hotel here.

“The residents have voiced concerns of their fate once the dam is built.

“They are wondering what will happen to their land once its waters inundate their villages… how are they going to be resettled and how much it will cost them,” he said.
Continue reading “Baram residents fear a repeat of Bakun fiasco”