Day: June 1, 2012

As Home Minister, Datuk Seri Hishammuddin Hussin should give personal attention to escalating cases of political thuggery and violence in the country like the vicious attacks on DAP Selangor State Committee member V. Ganapathirao and his brother Papparaidu in Klang on Wednesday night instead of propaganda concerns like the official video compilation on Bersih 3.0.

Yesterday, Hishammuddin said that a video compilation, containing footage of what transpired during the Bersih 3.0 rally last April 28, would be ready within two days and would be uploaded on the ministry’s website once it was ready.

He said it would contain “the good, bad and ugly” visuals received from many parties throughout the rally.

Would the official video compilation on the Home Ministry website contain all the available “ugly” videos of all the cases of brutality and violence which happened on Bersih 3.0, regardless of whether the victims were police personnel, media representatives or peaceful protestors or would it only be a very selective compilation as the latest in the official campaign of vilification and demonization of Bersih 3.0?

Malaysians are very wary of this official campaign of demonization of Bersih 3.0, both over government television channels and the Internet in the past month, completely ignoring the fact that Bersih 3.0 was a great historic awakening of a quarter of a million Malaysians, regardless of race, religion, class, region, age or gender, gathering peacefully for a common national cause but which was marred by incidents of brutality and violence involving a small number of police personnel and peaceful protestors. Continue reading “Hishammuddin should give personal attention to escalating cases of political thuggery and violence like the vicious attacks on Ganapathirao and Papparaidu instead of propaganda concerns like official video compilation on Bersih 3.0”

Yesterday, public confidence in the professionalism, independence, impartiality and integrity of the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) reached a new low 41 months after it was elevated from its former form as Anti-Corruption Agency (ACA) with greatly expanded powers, budget and staffing.

Members of Parliament and Malaysians were promised when the MACC Bill was debated in Parliament in December 2008 that the MACC was going to become another ICAC (Hong Kong’s Independent Commission Against Corruption) respected world-wide for its uncompromising and no-nonsense commitment against corruption without fear or favour for position, status or influence.

Instead, MACC continues to be a standing joke as it has not been able to
to shake off its early image as a tool of the Barisan Nasional to hound and persecute Pakatan Rakyat leaders and establish its reputation as a fearless, uncompromising and dedicated graft-fighter, whether against ikan bilis or ikan yu.

MACC harvested many media headlines yesterday, including:

“MACC clears Shahrizat of NFC contract, loan award”;

“Anti-graft panel wants Azmin probe re-opened”; and

“Probes against Taib, Musa yet to be resolved”. Continue reading “MACC must break its silence on the corruption-cum-treason case of selling Navy secrets to foreigners in connection with the purchase of the Scorpene submarines”

– Ong Kian Ming
The Malaysian Insider
Jun 01, 2012

JUNE 1 — What happens in the unlikely event that Pakatan Rakyat (PR) wins and maintains control of the federal government after the 13th general election? This is a question which few people have tried to address systematically. In this article, I want to highlight what I think will be the five main challenges facing a PR federal government as a way to contextualise the policy options which such a government will have to address.

I have summarised these five main challenges into five “P”s: (i) Dealing with the “Past” (ii) Distributing “Power” between the federal and state governments (iii) Coming up with a new set of “Plans” in the economic, political and social arenas (iv) Focusing on a smaller number of “Priorities” which can be delivered within 100 days and one year and finally (v) Finding a set of “Procedures” to deal with disagreements within the PR coalition.

(i) Past

Having been in power for 55 years, there are bound to be a whole list of “legacy” issues which a new government has to figure out how to deal with. It would not be practical for a new federal government to conduct a massive witch hunt to weed out all those who have paid bribes to the previous government to obtain contracts, to find evidence to convict all BN politicians who have received bribes or have amassed wealth beyond their means or to sack all civil servants who have been complicit in corrupt dealings involving the previous government. But at the same time, it makes sense for a PR government to outline a clear set of rules with regard to how it will, for example, deal with dubious contracts which the government has signed with private companies. This is important because there is a great temptation for PR to blame the previous BN government for many of the problems that it will face when it is governing. Instead of blaming BN in an ad-hoc manner throughout its first term in government, it would be better for PR to outline a place to clear out the skeletons in the cupboard early in its tenure in power. Continue reading “Main challenges for a PR government”