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A referendum will show that overwhelming majority will vote for a new IGP

When Tan Sri Musa Hassan’s extension of service for another year as Inspector-General of Police was announced on Sept. 3 last year, former Selangor Police Chief Datuk Yahaya Udin was quoted by the media as saying that the one-year extension should be sufficient for Musa to complete his “unfinished work”.

Now, it would appear that Musa has still got “unfinished work” and he is angling for another extension of service.

Let me reiterate what I had said last August, when opposing any extension of service for Musa as the No. 1 Policeman in the country.

I had said that I have no doubt that if the issue of whether the country needs a new IGP is put to a referendum in the country or the police force, the result will be an overwhelming “yes” for a new IGP.

Let me reiterate that I have no personal axe to grind against Musa and am purely taking a stand in the national interests, to roll back the tide of crime in the past six years as well as to inject the Malaysian police force with the adrenaline, dynamism and a reinvigorated sense of purpose that only a new police chief could evoke in another attempt to scale the goal to become an efficient, incorruptible, professional world-class police force respected internationally for its competence, ability and success to fulfil the three core police functions to keep crime low, eradicate corruption and protect human rights. Continue reading “A referendum will show that overwhelming majority will vote for a new IGP”

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Stop the violent trend!

By Thomas Lee

The live M-16 bullet that was sent together with a threatening note to DAP national publicity chief Tony Pua yesterday (Wednesday 11 August 2010) is not simply a cowardly intimidation against the Petaling Jaya Utara MP, but a dastardly dangerous threat to the whole peace-loving citizenry of the country.

The bullet and the note were mailed to Tony’s service centre in Damansara Utama in Petaling on the afternoon of Wednesday 11 August 2010.

The note said: “Tony Pua Kiam Wee. You are so brave? What do you want now? You better watch out. We know about your family, your house, your office, your car.”

One of the MP’s assistants has lodged a report at the Damansara police station. Tony also gave a statement to the police on the matter.

Tony told a press conference later that the threat was possibly related to his suggestion to the Selangor state government to do away with bumiputera discounts for luxury homes costing over RM500,000 each and for upmarket commercial property in the state, to improve competitiveness and restore investor confidence.
Continue reading “Stop the violent trend!”

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Senior Citizen’s Outrage: Open Letter To Sharizat

By Orang Lama Malaysian
Open letter to Sharizat
Sent: Tue, 3 August, 2010 12:55:42

Many senior citizens are outraged by your uncalled for comments about the RM100 given to them by the Penang state government in appreciation of their contributions to the development of Penang.

Your comments indicate how uncultured you are, totally unbefitting of a cabinet minister. You said you are ashamed and offered your sympathies to Penang’s senior citizens because they are worth — according to your absurd calculation — less than RM10 a month in the eyes of the state government.

Can I ask you how much a senior citizen was worth when the BN ruled Penang? Absolutely nothing, Yes Nothing at all.

You went on to say that you thank God that there is a federal government and a Barisan Nasional government to take care of the people’s welfare without which the poor in Penang will be starving. Yes, the BN government looked after the people of Penang so well that on 8 March 2008, they kicked the BN of Penang!
Continue reading “Senior Citizen’s Outrage: Open Letter To Sharizat”

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Najib should give his personal attention to stamp out the unhealthy and disturbing trend towards very ugly, intolerant and vicious politicking illustrated by M16 bullet threat to Tony Pua

The Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Najib Razak should give his personal attention to stamp out the unhealthy and disturbing trend towards very ugly, intolerant and vicious politicking illustrated by the M16 bullet threat to DAP National Publicity Secretary and MP for Petaling Jaya Utara Tony Pua yesterday.

Pua received a live 5.56mm bullet used in M-16s with a threatening note posted from Tangkak, Johor mailed to his service centre in Damansara Utama yesterday.

The note threatened: “Tony Pua Kiam Wee. You are so brave? What do you want now? You better watch out.

“We know about your family, your house, your office, your car.”

Pua believes that the threat was probably related to his recent proposal to the Selangor government to slash Bumiputera discounts for luxury homes and commercial property in the state to improve competitiveness and restore investor confidence while retaining the seven per cent discounts enjoyed by Malays and other Bumiputeras for homes below RM500,000.
Continue reading “Najib should give his personal attention to stamp out the unhealthy and disturbing trend towards very ugly, intolerant and vicious politicking illustrated by M16 bullet threat to Tony Pua”

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Escaping the middle-income trap

by Michael Schuman | Time
August 10, 2010

I returned a few days ago from Kuala Lumpur, the capital of Malaysia, where the talk of the town – well, at least among economists — is the “middle-income trap.” What’s that, you ask? A developing nation gets “trapped” when it reaches a certain, relatively comfortable level of income but can’t seem to take that next big jump into the true big leagues of the world economy, with per capita wealth to match. Every go-go economy in Asia has confronted this “trap,” or is dealing with it now. Breaking out of it, however, is extremely difficult. The reason is that escaping the “trap” requires an entire overhaul of the economic growth model most often used by emerging economies.

Malaysia’s caught in the “trap” right now, and getting out if is going to be tough. Simply put, Malaysia needs to change what it has been doing economically for the past 40 years. How Malaysia got itself into the “trap,” and how it could escape from it, can provide us with some valuable lessons on development and, more specifically, how developing nations can graduate into becoming fully advanced economies.
Continue reading “Escaping the middle-income trap”

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Race card won’t add Umno’s Malay votes, analysts say

By Adib Zalkapli | The Malaysian Insider

KUALA LUMPUR, Aug 12 — The attacks against Penang Chief Minister Lim Guan Eng’s administration for allegedly discriminating against Malay traders would not work in favour of Umno to harvest more Malay votes, said analysts.

The Umno-owned Utusan Malaysia last week rapped the Penang government with banner headlines “Malays still oppressed”, highlighting claims that the state was preventing Malay traders from setting up Ramadan stalls.

It continued the diatribe yesterday, calling on Malay rights groups in the state to hold weekly demonstrations at the state secretariat, emulating the practice of federal opposition leaders in Kuala Lumpur.

UKM’s Professor Agus Yusoff, however, warned that the party should focus on winning the support of the non-Malays that it lost in Election 2008.
Continue reading “Race card won’t add Umno’s Malay votes, analysts say”

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Malaysia in the Era of Globalization #27

By M. Bakri Musa

Chapter 4: Modern Model States

Don’t Cry For Argentina

Argentina, like the rest of Latin America, conjures a certain indelible image. The phrase Banana Republic is both evocative and descriptive: a country dependent on a single commodity. It is banana for Honduras, sugar for Cuba, tin for Bolivia, and meat for Argentina. It also refers to military dictators in their crisp uniforms seizing power every now and then. Indeed such khaki attires are now chic, a trademark of the Banana Republic brand. Alas, these caricatures are all close to the truth.

There have been many ready explanations for Latin America’s social and political instabilities. These range from cultural, racial, religious, and even geographical. The famous Latin temper seems a reasonable enough explanation. Then there is the entrenched role of the Catholic Church. The cultural explanation, once favored, is now being resurrected. After all it was the “laid back” Southern Europeans rather than the presumably more “cultured” Anglo Saxons who colonized Latin America.
Continue reading “Malaysia in the Era of Globalization #27”

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Bumbling in desperation – and where’s the dignity?

By Mariam Mokhtar
Wednesday, 11 August 2010 14:05

OPINION Teoh Beng Hock’s death was an undignified one. He was found dead on the rooftop of a building adjacent to the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) offices after an overnight interrogation to answer corruption allegations involving his boss.

Teoh’s family maintain that he was murdered, but the MACC contend that he took his own life.

Even after burial, Teoh Beng Hock had an undignified eternal rest. His body was exhumed for a second examination by a team of pathologists.

Disagreements about how he died plagued the inquest. The expert Thai pathologist Dr Pornthip Rojanasunand, who appeared for Teoh’s family, was positive there was an 80% chance of homicide. Pathologists acting on behalf of the government claim that his injuries were consistent with a fall from a great height.
Continue reading “Bumbling in desperation – and where’s the dignity?”

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Was Teoh Beng Hock “forced to commit suicide” when he plunged to his death from 14th floor of MACC headquarters in Shah Alam on July 16 last year?

The Attorney-General Tan Sri Gani Patail should be censured for the travesty of justice in exposing details of “new evidence” not yet tendered in the Teoh Beng Hock inquest.

This is in addition to the gross irregularity and impropriety of the Attorney-General in suppressing the “new evidence”, which should have been introduced at the beginning of the inquest as it would affect the whole course and direction of the inquest through cross-examination of witnesses.

Because of deliberate “leaks” in the media, the country is awash with talk that there is a “suicide note” left by Teoh Beng Hock, which has been countered and challenged by Teoh’s family counsel Gobind Singh Deo.
Continue reading “Was Teoh Beng Hock “forced to commit suicide” when he plunged to his death from 14th floor of MACC headquarters in Shah Alam on July 16 last year?”

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Rebuttal to Josh Treviño on Anwar Ibrahim’s Trial

by Azeem Ibrahim
Research Fellow, Harvard Kennedy School’s International Security Program
August 10, 2010

In Malaysia, opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim has been put on trial for sodomy. In the main, the Western political establishment is skeptical about the trial, believing it to be a politically motivated attempt to remove the popular opposition leader from the political scene before he can take power. As is the Malaysian public. Only 11 percent believe the charge, and 88 percent think it’s a political conspiracy.

Public Relations professional Joshua Treviño has been on “attack-Anwar” mode lately, authoring several pieces in recent months critiquing Anwar and questioning his credibility in the West. In his most recent piece, Treviño doesn’t come right out and say that the trial is genuine, but he does try to give a few reasons as to why we should question the conventional wisdom that the trial is merely a political maneuver to get rid of Anwar. Those reasons fall short. Let us look at them one by one.

In the article Treviño argues that Anwar’s relative popularity in the West is based on the mistaken impression that he shares many of the West’s political values.

But Anwar is popular in the West because he has consistently called for democracy, good governance, accountability, and dialogue of civilizations. Compare this to the current Prime Minister, or any of his predecessors, who have said relatively little about such things in Malaysia and done even less to reform a system saddled with endemic corruption. Continue reading “Rebuttal to Josh Treviño on Anwar Ibrahim’s Trial”

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Enough is enough of Little Napoleons

By Thomas Lee

It surely comes as a big surprise that less than two weeks after the cabinet lifted the iniquitous illegal curb on non-Muslim religious clubs and societies that a Little Napoleon school head should unilaterally reject the application to set up a Chinese society in his school.

The Sin Chew Daily reported that parents of a school in Petaling Jaya are upset that its school head has rejected the application to set up a Chinese society in school.

A parent was quoted by the Sin Chew Daily that he had been fighting for the establishment of a Chinese society in his son’s school since February this year, but the school head did not give his approval even though there are Chinese language teachers willing to supervise the proposed society.

The Education Ministry has on 4 August 2010 revoked a decade-old directive compelling those who want to form non-Muslim clubs or societies in schools to first obtain its permission.

The federal government decision to revoke the directive came about following the public disclosure of several sham treatments of non-Muslim religious clubs and societies in several schools.
Continue reading “Enough is enough of Little Napoleons”

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Why Be Afraid of PAS?

by Kee Thuan Chye

SHOULD non-Muslim Malaysians be afraid of PAS?

That is a question that will be extremely pertinent when the next general election comes around. With a large percentage of the non-Muslim population being currently disillusioned with Barisan Nasional (BN), how would they vote if they were faced at the next general election with choosing between a candidate from BN and one from PAS?

The people who are most suspicious of and averse towards PAS are the Christians. Not all are like that, however; for instance, I know Christians who voted for PAS in the 2008 general election, including a pastor in Kedah. A Catholic friend in Penang says she and her church members fully support PAS. And many among the flock of the Church of the Divine Mercy in Shah Alam, who gave PAS MP Khalid Samad a standing ovation when he visited it in 2008, must have voted for him.

But on the other hand, I have also come across Christians who are educated, middle-class and very sensible, but who are so scared of PAS that their fear seems irrational.
Continue reading “Why Be Afraid of PAS?”

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Spies, secrets and smart-phones

by P.C. | The Economist

SOME sort of a deal seems to have been thrashed out over the weekend, according to reports from Saudi Arabia, under which its spooks will be able to snoop to their heart’s content on messages sent over BlackBerrys within the kingdom. All last week, as it negotiated with the Saudi, United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Indian authorities over their demands for monitoring, the smart-phones’ Canadian maker, Research In Motion (RIM), was dodging journalists’ demands for proper explanations about what exactly is negotiable about the phones’ security. The Economist asked five times in four days for an interview, and got nowhere. Other news organisations had a similar experience.

The best we could get from the company was a series of tight-lipped statements, of which the least cryptic was this one: Continue reading “Spies, secrets and smart-phones”

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Chinese-Malaysian a ‘living treasure’ in NZ

Introducing cells to suicide
by Jane Tolerton | NZ Listener

A breakthrough strawberry-birthmark treatment discovered by a New Zealand surgeon and his team points the way to treatments for other tumours.

Swee Tan is a master of the rhetorical question. Outlining how his research into strawberry birthmarks could lead to a new way of treating cancer, he asks: “Would that be a good thing?” Suggest he could be making big money in cosmetic surgery overseas, and he asks, ‘Would I be a happy man?”

Hutt Hospital’s director of surgery should be happy enough – because what began as his research into disfiguring strawberry birthmarks has just won his four-strong research team a major international science prize. The implications for cancer treatment and regenerative medicine are so valuable that news of the award has been under wraps for a couple of months while the intellectual property involved has been registered internationally.
Continue reading “Chinese-Malaysian a ‘living treasure’ in NZ”

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Has Hishammuddin changed his mind about having a new IGP when Musa Hassan’s twice-extended contract expires next month?

Home Minister Datuk Seri Hishammuddin Hussein said the government will announce the status of Tan Sri Musa Hassan’s contract as Inspector-General of Police (IGP) at an appropriate time.

He said:

“This is not the right time to talk about it.

“When the time comes, we will make the appropriate announcement.”

This has caught the whole country and entire police force by surprise, as it is in complete variance with the stand taken by Hishammuddin in Parliament five months ago on March 15, when had told the press that Musa would be replaced as IGP.

He said: Continue reading “Has Hishammuddin changed his mind about having a new IGP when Musa Hassan’s twice-extended contract expires next month?”

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Ten questions about ‘Teoh’s note’

The Malaysian Insider

KUALA LUMPUR, Aug 10 — Questions are now popping up over a “note” found last year in Teoh Beng Hock’s sling bag ‘that may throw some light regarding his death’ after the Attorney-General’s Chambers denied suppressing evidence in his death inquiry.

The AG’s Chambers issued a statement last night about the discovery of the note by Investigating Officer ASP Ahmad Nazri Zainal last October 7, more than two months after Teoh’s death.

Question 1 — Why did the investigating officer take two months to say he found the note in Teoh’s sling bag a day after the political secretary to Selangor executive councilor, Ean Yong Hian Wah, was found dead on July 16 last year.

Question 2 — Why do the police look like they are lackadaisical in investigating this death? Did they need a psychiatrist to tell them to look for a suicide note?
Continue reading “Ten questions about ‘Teoh’s note’”

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Denying Anwar Natural Justice

By Dr Chen Man Hin

IT IS NATURAL JUSTICE FOR ANWAR IBRAHIM TO HAVE ACCESS TO ALL EVIDENCE IN SODOMY 2 TRIAL

Denial of clinical evidence from Anwar Ibrahim to defend himself to face a charge of sodomy is a denial of natural justice for Anwar. Before this, he was also denied of evidence several times on previous occasions in the course of the trial.

In any trial, any one charged with a crime, surely has a right to ask his accuser (the prosecution) to produce the evidence. To deny the accused of the so called charge is surely a denial of natural justice for the accused.

This is substantiated by a clause in the INTERNATIONAL COVENANT IN CIVIL AND POLITICAL RIGHTS passed by the United Nations, ‘which guarantees the accused the right to have adequate time and facilities to the preparation of defence. Article 14 (3) (6) of the Covenant guarantees that legal representation of the defendant should have access to all relevant material and evidence.’
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The Distracting Bilateral Issue of Maids

By M. Bakri Musa

It is telling of the state of development for both Indonesia and Malaysia that when their two leaders met recently, the key topic was Indonesian maids. Malaysia wishes to import more while Indonesia wants better working conditions for its workers in Malaysia.

I would have expected the two to discuss such consequential issues as jointly developing the region as a tourism destination to rival the Caribbean, harnessing the power of satellite and wireless communication to leapfrog the development of both countries, or perhaps conducting joint maritime research for both ecological and economic purposes. Alas, none of that!

It is reflective of the abysmal state of human development in Indonesia that maids are its major “export.” Likewise, it reflects the perverted status symbol of Malaysians that they consider having a maid as a necessity for a “luxurious” lifestyle.
Continue reading “The Distracting Bilateral Issue of Maids”

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The speech that wasn’t delivered

Aliran
Friday, 06 August 2010 21:05

(P Ramakrishnan was supposed to deliver this address at an anti-ISA vigil in Penang on 1 August 2010, but before he could speak, four activists were arrested and police dispersed the crowd.)

50 years of ISA – Enough is enough!

This is our 53rd year of independence. But for 50 years, that independence has been marred and rendered meaningless by the continued existence of the ISA. It has been used and abused to silence critics and put away dissidents. It is an instrument that threatens our freedom and our civil liberties. It creates a climate of fear.
Continue reading “The speech that wasn’t delivered”

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Are you at home, minister?

By Kee Thuan Chye

COMMENT Home Minister Hishammuddin Hussein said this at the press conference in 2009 in which he defended the cow-head protesters: “In this day and age, protests should be accepted in this world, as people want their voices to be heard. If we don’t give them room to voice their opinions, they have no choice but to protest.” He should of course be held accountable for this statement.

Why then did the police clamp down so hard on the people taking part in the anti-ISA candlelight vigil on Aug 1? Why did Hishammuddin not come out to advise the police that this voicing of the people’s opinions was acceptable and room should be given for it?

Why was he so understanding towards the cow-head protestors – who were potentially more threatening to national security because they displayed violence against a sacred icon of the Hindus – and so intolerant of the people participating in a peaceful demonstration, some of whom were reportedly singing the national anthem when the police moved in on them?
Continue reading “Are you at home, minister?”