Day: November 22, 2012

Aspan Alias
21 November 2012

Najib masih menyanyikan lagu lama dengan dendangan yang lama. Najib seorang yang sangat terdesak dan kata-kata nya pun sangat tidak bernilai sebagai satu ucapan pemimpin yang setimpal sebagai kata-kata dan ucapan seorang pemimpin kepada rakyat yang sedang dalam pencarian ini. Najib terpaksa menggunakan ‘testimonial’ orang lain untuk mendapat kepujian dan pengiktirafan dan tidak mampu menunjukkan ‘testimonial’ sendiri bagi meyakinkan rakyat.

Najib masih meminta rakyat memberikan sokongan kepada UMNO dan BN kerana memberikan sokongan kepada UMNO khususnya kepada beliau itu tidak akan menjejaskan pelan transformasi beliau yang telah beliau umumkan setiap bulan dan minggu itu. Jika memberikan sokongan kepada pihak lain ia akan menjejaskan pelan pembangunan dan kemajuan negara dan akan membantutkan usaha kerajaan pimpinan beliau untuk menjadikan negara ini sebagai negara yang berpendapatan tinggi dan sebuah negara maju menjelangnya tahun 2020 nanti.

Najib mengambil Amerika Syarikat (AS) sebagai contoh pandangannya itu. Rakyat AS telah memberikan ‘continuity’ kepada pentadbiran Barack Obama dari Demokrat dalam pilihanraya Presiden baru-baru ini dan rakyat Malaysia perlu mengikut contoh itu dan memberikan sambungan pentadbiran kepada Barisan Nasional. Mendengar ucapan beliau itu, ramai termasuk diri saya hampir jatuh dari kerusi kerana hendak menyamakan beliau sebagai Barack Obama dan beliau tidak nampak bagaimana AS telah melakukan perubahan acapkali dalam pilihanraya Presiden di negara itu. Continue reading “Najib tidak boleh samakan buah epal dengan bacang”

Presiden PAS, Datuk Seri Abdul Hadi Awang menyatakan dalam ucapan beliau ketika pembukaan Muktamar PAS ke-58 pagi ini bahawa PAS bersedia untuk mengambil alih kuasa persekutuan dengan teman-teman lain dalam Pakatan Rakyat.

Rakyat Malaysia kini dalam dilema pada Pilihan Raya Umum ke-13, untuk membuat keputusan sama ada Malaysia patut mempunyai sebuah permulaan baru dengan memilih Pakatan Rakyat sebagai kerajaan persekutuan yang baru di Putrajaya, atau sama ada rasuah, salahguna kuasa, ketidakadilan dan ketidaksamarataan Umno/Barisan Nasional perlu terus menggelapkan masa depan, harapan dan kehendak rakyat.

Terdapat dua prasyarat untuk Pakatan Rakyat menewaskan Umno/Barisan Nasional dalam pertembungan merebut Putrajaya pada Pilihan Raya Umum ke-13.

Perkiatan Pakatan Rakyat yang terdiri daripada PAS, PKR dan DAP mestilah mampu meyakinkan rakyat Malaysia kepada dua perbezaan penting antara Pakatan Rakyat dengan perikatan Umno/Barisan Nasional. Continue reading “Dua prasyarat untuk PR menewaskan Umno/BN dalam pertembungan merebut Putrajaya pada PRU13”

Dalam pusingan akhir menuju PRU13, pemimpin-pemimpin PR sepatutnya memberikan sepenuh fokus kepada memenangi sokongan majoriti rakyat Malaysia terhadap Dasar Bersama Pakatan Rakyat dan tidak jatuh ke dalam perangkap ‘Pecah dan Perintah’ Umno/Barisan Nasional.

Biarlah kita dipandu oleh Kenyataan Bersama pemimpin-pemimpin Pakatan Rakyat sewaktu Pakatan Rakyat ditubuhkan pada 2008 yang menegaskan semula landasan perpaduan, komitmen dan persetujuan PR untuk melaksanakan sebuah agenda bagi membangunkan negara dan mewujudkan masyarakat yang makmur berdasarkan keadilan, kebebasan, demokrasi dan tadbir urus yang baik, tanpa mengira kaum, agama dan budaya.

Kenyataan Bersama pemimpin-pemimpin PR bertarikh 12 April 2008, yang terpahat padanya tandatangan Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim, Datin Seri Dr. Wan Azizah Ismail, Datuk Seri Hadi Awang dan saya sendiri, menyatakan:

“Dasar-dasar Pakatan adalah berpaksikan kepada perkara-perkara yang telah dipersetujui dan disepakati oleh semua pemimpin tiga parti iaitu, KeADILan, DAP dan PAS. Antaranya ialah membina negara ini atas landasan keadilan, membuka peluang untuk semua rakyat menikmati kemakmuran negara dengan memberi keutamaan kepada mereka yang miskin dan terpinggir.” Continue reading “Pemimpin-pemimpin PR sepatutnya memberikan sepenuh fokus kepada memenangi sokongan majoriti rakyat Malaysia terhadap Dasar Bersama PR”

— Ong Kian Ming
The Malaysian Insider
Nov 22, 2012

NOV 22 — I had the opportunity to have lunch with Chua Tee Yong (CTY, hereafter) before I joined the DAP. I was grateful for this opportunity given that I had already written a few less-than-complementary articles about his father, Dr Chua Soi Lek, in his capacity as MCA president. I wanted to meet up with him because I had been somewhat impressed by the manner in which he handled himself in Parliament. He was articulate in his parliamentary replies and he responded coolly and calmly to the supplementary questions thrown his way. I thought that this MCA leader, in his capacity as the chairman of his party’s Young Professionals Bureau, could raise the overall level of political discourse by attracting more qualified young people to be engaged in the political landscape. I never thought that less than a year later he would instead drown in a puddle of his own making, snuffing out whatever little hope his party had of rejuvenation and regeneration.

The cause of CTY’s massive loss of what credibility he may have had is well known — the so-called RM1 billion Talam “scandal”. When he first announced this “scandal”, many of us in the opposition were worried that he had actually uncovered an issue that could potentially sink the Pakatan government in Selangor. He displayed tremendous confidence which we now know was actually ignorance masked by cockiness. The utter baselessness of his accusations has been exposed by my colleagues in Pakatan. I don’t need to go into the details here except to say that he has been faulting the Selangor Pakatan state government for trying to retrieve debts owed to the state, something which the BN federal government has failed to do time and again because of “obligations” to cronies such as those behind the PKFZ scandal, the NFC scandal, the MAS bailout, and a long list of other real scandals. The public at large, with access to alternative sources of information, have also figured out that CTY is barking and continues to bark up the wrong tree, especially after the recent release by the Selangor state government of the Talam White Paper.

What I will highlight is the utter disappointment that CTY has been to the young people of Malaysia. Continue reading “A disappointment to all young Malaysians”

— Boon Kia Meng
The Malaysian Insider
Nov 22, 2012

NOV 22 — Humans make history; but never in circumstances and situations of their own choosing. This insightful observation by Marx, as he watched over the social upheavals unfolding in Europe in the middle of the 19th century, is a timely expression on what is happening in Malaysia today.

Have Malaysians ever heard of a group of ordinary, fellow Malaysians — our fathers, mothers, sisters, brothers, our children — marching slowly but surely, on foot, all 300 kilometres of it, rain or shine, from Kuantan to Dataran Merdeka? All united in a common cause: to stop any further environmental degradation in Peninsular Malaysia and Sabah and Sarawak, where stopping the Lynas rare earth refinery in Gebeng, and the Murum and Baram dams in Sarawak, constitutes a fundamental demand.

These Malaysian citizens chose to embark on this journey (dubbed “Langkah Lestari”) because for far too long we have collectively as a nation allowed indiscriminate “development” and rapacious capitalistic resource extraction to go on, all in the name of economic growth and wealth creation.

Just witness the rapid decimation of our natural forestry and the displacement of our fellow indigenous Malaysian communities in Sabah/Sarawak and the peninsula. These have become common phenomena and Malaysians know deep inside that the present state of affairs cannot go on indefinitely without irreversible consequences to our common habitat. Continue reading “From Kuantan to Dataran Merdeka: The emancipatory journey for a green Malaysia”

Seumas Milne
The Guardian
20 November 2012

The US and Britain stand behind Israel’s onslaught on Gaza. Justice requires a change in the balance of forces on the ground

The way western politicians and media have pontificated about Israel’s onslaught on Gaza, you’d think it was facing an unprovoked attack from a well-armed foreign power. Israel had every “right to defend itself”, Barack Obama declared. “No country on earth would tolerate missiles raining down on its citizens from outside its borders.”

He was echoed by Britain’s foreign secretary, William Hague, who declared that the Palestinian Islamists of Hamas bore “principal responsibility” for Israel’s bombardment of the open-air prison that is the Gaza Strip. Meanwhile, most western media have echoed Israel’s claim that its assault is in retaliation for Hamas rocket attacks; the BBC speaks wearisomely of a conflict of “ancient hatreds”.

In fact, an examination of the sequence of events over the last month shows that Israel played the decisive role in the military escalation: from its attack on a Khartoum arms factory reportedly supplying arms to Hamas and the killing of 15 Palestinian fighters in late October, to the shooting of a mentally disabled Palestinian in early November, the killing of a 13 year-old in an Israeli incursion and, crucially, the assassination of the Hamas commander Ahmed Jabari last Wednesday during negotiations over a temporary truce. Continue reading “It’s Palestinians who have the right to defend themselves”

By P Ramakrishnan
Aliran
21 November 2012

My dear PM,

You sounded like a great statesman when you urged Malaysians “to disregard political difference and work toward nation-building”.
That was simply fantastic!

It was very heart-warming to hear you say, “We must build the nation together. Irrespective of the political differences that we have, at the end of the day this country is ours.”

That was simply unbelievable!

How we wish that you really meant what you said. If that was your philosophy, by now you would have been proclaimed as the greatest Prime Minister this country has ever had. If that had happened, you need not now scramble around the country desperately trying to get the Barisan Nasional returned to power. Continue reading “Nation-building or undermining? – Open Letter to PM”