Day: November 10, 2012

Umno secretary-general Tengku Adnan Mansor cannot be more wrong in claiming that Umno’s biggest problem in the 13th General Election is the perception that it is a corrupt party.

The real problem is the corruption in the Umno leadership, which must bear the full responsibility for Malaysia’s worst ranking in the past 17 years of Transparency International (TI) Corruption Perception Index (CPI) and losing out to more and more countries not only in the region, the Asia-Pacific but even to Islamic countries in the Organisation of Islamic Conference (OIC) in the fight against corruption.

When the TI CPI was first introduced in 1995, Malaysia was ranked No. 23. I can still remember the condemnation by the then Prime Minister Dr. Mahathir Mohamad who accused it as part of the Western “white men” conspiracy to demonise Asian countries as the global anti-corruption NGO was headquartered in Berlin.

What is most ironic is that in the months before he stepped down as Prime Minister in October 2003, he was singing a different tune, according legitimacy by giving his bessings to the annual TI CPI when he urged the country to aim to be among the top countries among the least corrupt nations in the annual TI CPI.

When Mahathir stepped down as Prime Minister, Malaysia’s ranking in 2003 had dropped from 23rd in 1995 to 37th position!
Continue reading “Umno leaders cannot be more wrong as Umno’s biggest problem in 13GE is not the perception but the fact of their corruption”

By Martin Jalleh

By Clive Kessler | November 09, 2012
The Malaysian Insider

NOV 9 — The challenge facing Umno/BN after the 2008 elections, I have suggested, was not to embrace ever more closely Ketuanan Melayu and to capitulate to its vociferous partisans. Instead, it was to make itself the champion of everything that Ketuanan Melayu was not.

The outcome of the 2008 elections had displayed for all to see the exhaustion, even collapse — after its long and strangely prolonged afterlife — of Malaysia’s second post-independence political “dispensation”, the “regime framework” that had been designed for the initially intended NEP era from 1970 to 1990.

The outcome made explicit and evident, above all, the repudiation by many non-Malays (and Malays too!) of the Ketuanan Melayu zealots’ definition of the Malaysian nation. That was a view which, with at least tacit Umno complicity, had been stridently promoted over the preceding years: a limitlessly expansionist view of the constitutional entrenchment of perpetual, and perpetually undiscussable, Malay political ascendancy.

The election results made it clear, above all to the Umno and its leaders, that a very large part of the nation’s non-Malay citizenry were no longer prepared to accept, and now unambiguously wished to repudiate, the “blood-and-soil” Malay nationalists’ insistence — contrary to the terms and spirit of the Merdeka agreements of 1957 — that all non-Malays were, and had from the very outset and perpetuity had been, incorporated into the nation as categorically subordinate.
Continue reading “Why I have nothing much to say at the moment (Part 2)”

By Lucius Goon | November 09, 2012
The Malaysian Insider

NOV 9 — What have Malaysians done to deserve discredited politicians like Shahrizat Jalil, Chua Soi Lek, Nazri Aziz, Mahathir Mohamad, Ibrahim Ali, Musa Aman, who still tell us anything or advise us on anything.

I mean, what moral standing, or for that matter any standing, does:

A) someone who shamelessly defends a family venture gone awry and then attempts to airbrush history;

B) someone who was a serial adulterer until being caught out.

C) someone whose defence of his son included industrial language and convoluted but ultimately unconvincing explanation of the political donation to Sabah Umno.
Continue reading “Why listen to discredited politicians?”

By Clive Kessler | November 07, 2012
UPDATED @ 07:04:27 AM 08-11-2012
The Malaysian Insider

People are kind.

They have been writing to ask how I am.

I have not said or written anything serious for weeks.

And they are beginning to wonder.

The “Phoney War” Interlude

“What is the problem?” they ask.

The problem, I reply, is not me. It’s the situation.

The situation?
Continue reading “Why I have nothing much to say at the moment (Part 1)”