for Malaysia
By Allan CF Goh
Stand Up, Be Counted
When those good men fail
to stand up against foulness,
they reduce themselves,
surrender their true greatness.
Let’s stand up against
the politics of evil,
that spawn policies,
in league with the foul devil.
Make Malaysia fair!
Free it from all corruptions;
let’s have a nation,
freed from racist erruptions.
Continue reading “Stand Up, Be Counted”
The Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Najib Razak, has presented me with a dilemma – is the Election Integrity Pledge proposed by Transparency International-Malaysia (TI-M) worth signing when Najib could sign it with such aplomb, contempt and cynicism after his four-year premiership witnessed corruption in Malaysia plunging to its worst depths in the nation’s 56-year history.
In Najib’s four years as Prime Minister, Malaysia’s Transparency International (TI) Corruption Perception Index (CPI) plunged to its lowest rankings in the past 18 years, i.e. No. 56 in 2009 and 2010, No. 60 in 2011 and No. 54 in 2012, as compared to Malaysia’s No. 23rd ranking in the first TI CPI in 1995, No. 37th placing in 2003 when Tun Dr. Mahathir stepped down as Prime Minister after 22 years of authoritarian and corrupt rule and No. 47 ranking in 2008 after five years of Tun Abdullah’s “Mr. Clean” premiership.
It is incontrovertible and undeniable that corruption under Najib’s four-year premiership is the worst under any Prime Minister in the nation’s 56-year history, as apart from being worse than the Mahathir and Abdullah eras, no one has ever suggested that corruption under the first three Prime Ministers, Tunku Abdul Rahman, Tun Razak and Tun Hussein were ever more serious than under their successors.
What makes a meaningful signing of the TI-M’s Election Integrity Pledge even more questionable is the presence of the Sarawak Chief Minister, Tan Sri Abdul Taib Mahmud, who had put Malaysia on the international radar of anti-corruption campaigns after the allegations in the ground-breaking and explosive report by the Swiss-based NGO Bruno Manser Fund (BMF) last September which estimated the assets of Taib Mahmud’s family at US$21 billion (RM64 billion), with the wealth of Taib himself put at a whopping US$15 billion (RM46 billion) making him Malaysia’s richest man outstripping tycoon Robert Kuok who has US$12.5 billion. Continue reading “49-Day Countdown to 13GE: Najib has presented me with a dilemma – is the Election Integrity Pledge worth signing when the Prime Minister can sign it with such aplomb, contempt and cynicism?”
Calvin Kabaron | February 21, 2013
Free Malaysia Today
If the current soft ‘handling’ of the incursions by armed Filipinos into Lahad Datu is any measure, then it is clear that Sabahans’ safety is inconsequential to the federal government.
COMMENT
It’s ironical how promptly Home Minister Hishammuddin Hussein ordered the arrest and deportation of Australian Senator Nick Xenophon while 100 armed Filipinos in military fatigue were being handled with kid gloves by the police and Special Branch officers because they had “links” in Sabah.
Xenophon arrived solo and unarmed but was considered a security threat. But in Lahad Datu, some 100 “soldiers” from the alleged Royal Sultanate of Sulu Army who were armed with “M-14, M-16, M203 and Armalite assault rifles” were considered friendly, “not militants” and “not a threat”.
These armed Filipino bandits landed in Sabah claiming ownership of the land on behalf of their Sulu Sultan.
In any other country, the Home or Internal Security Minister would have been at the site of the incursion the moment it was known. Continue reading “Where’s the logic, Hisham?”