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New BN, Umno faces but same old mindset

By Fikry Osman | APRIL 16, 2013
The Malaysian Insider

APRIL 16 — Barisan Nasional (BN) is putting out a refreshed and reshuffled list of candidates for the 13th general election, with a third new faces for Parliament and 49 per cent for the seats in 12 states.

Does it even matter if 100 per cent are new? Do the candidates matter more than the parties or coalition and the manifesto they put out days ago?

One has to understand something about BN and Umno. Their people subscribe to the same ideology and chauvinism as the old people they are replacing in the May 5 general election.

Is Rais Yatim’s replacement going to have an enlightened media policy or is he still going to offer a 10-minute slot to the opposition? What do you think?

All these new Umno candidates are products of the party mindset and thinking, the same thinking that gave us the Ibrahim Ali and Ridhuan Tee who blight our landscape.
Continue reading “New BN, Umno faces but same old mindset”

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In Kit Siang, Pakatan gets unexpected boost to leap over Johor’s Malay wall

BY DEBRA CHONG, ASSISTANT NEWS EDITOR | APRIL 21, 2013
The Malaysian Insider

JOHOR BARU, April 21 — As Lim Kit Siang captured the imagination of Johor’s Chinese at last night’s rally here, it was also clear that he meant to help warm the Umno birthplace’s Malay population towards Pakatan Rakyat (PR) in Election 2013.

Unlike some states to the north, the opposition parties have been repeatedly thwarted from gaining more than a toehold in Malaysia’s southernmost state.

“The Malay parties in the opposition have a tougher time trying to get support from the Malay community in Johor, so Kit Siang’s presence in southern Johor especially has tilted the situation,” said Ibrahim Suffian, the executive director of political research house Merdeka Center.

Johor’s resistance towards PAS and PKR, Ibrahim said, was historical. The highly-independent state had been used to running things its own way for a long time as it was among the last to be incorporated into colonial British rule.

It had built up a strong religious wall that did not give room for PR’s Islamist partner, PAS, to grow since Johor’s Islamic schools are well-funded and are state-run. In addition, PAS was seen as a northern influence, Ibrahim said.

But in the five years since Election 2008, a perceptible change has been felt in Johor.
Continue reading “In Kit Siang, Pakatan gets unexpected boost to leap over Johor’s Malay wall”

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Pengundi-pengundi perlu berhati-hati dengan kempen fitnah cybertroopers pro-UMNO/BN yang memburukkan DAP dan Pakatan Rakyat

Pengundi-pengundi perlu berhati-hati dengan kempen fitnah cybertroopers pro-UMNO/BN yang memburukkan DAP dan Pakatan Rakyat. Ini adalah kerana kempen rasmi pilihanraya umum ke-13 sudah pun bermula. DAP bersama PAS dan PKR yang membentuk Pakatan Rakyat telah memulakan kempen secara bersih, adil dan telus. Ini adalah prinsip bersama kami ke arah membentuk Malaysia baru yang bebas dari rasuah, salah guna kuasa dan penyelewengan.

Saya sedar ada kempen-kempen kotor yang terus dilakukan oleh pihak-pihak tertentu, terutamanya oleh cybertroopers pro-UMNO/BN, yang menyebarkan fitnah dan pembohongan. Ini adalah kempen yang tidak sihat dan bersifat hasutan.

Namun, walaupun golongan ini terus memfitnah dan menyebarkan berta palsu, saya bersama DAP dan Pakatan Rakyat tidak akan putus asa untuk terus berkempen dengan cara yang baik dan terhormat sebagaimana yang kami telah lakukan sejak beberapa dekad yang lalu.

Saya harap rakyat Malaysia, terutamanya orang Melayu, tidak mudah terpengaruh dengan fitnah dan pembohongan, sama ada yang disebarkan melalui internet atau melalui ceramah. Fitnah amat berbahaya kerana ia boleh menimbulkan ketegangan antara kaum di negara ini.

DAP telah difitnah sebagai perti perkauman, parti cauvinis, parti anti-Islam dan sebagainya. Semua ini tidak benar dan bohong belaka. DAP adalah parti politik yang sah yang menghormati Perlembagaan Persekutuan. DAP menolak segala bentuk politik perkauman dan diskriminasi kaum, agama dan gender.
Continue reading “Pengundi-pengundi perlu berhati-hati dengan kempen fitnah cybertroopers pro-UMNO/BN yang memburukkan DAP dan Pakatan Rakyat”

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14 Day Countdown to 13GE Polling Day – My chances in Gelang Patah have risen as a result of use of Rocket symbol but still an adverse 45:55 in favour of Ghani

The 13GE has proved to be the most historic of all general elections in the nation’s history, chalking up several new records on Nomination Day yesterday in including:

  • No parliamentary or state seat returned unopposed – first time in history;

  • A total of 1,900 candidates contesting parliamentary and state seats, highest ever;

  • 270 independents contesting, highest in history;

  • 132 parliamentary and 320 state seats see straight fights;

  • 90-multi-cornered fights for parliamentary seats and 185 for state seats;

  • A seven-cornered fight in a parliamentary and state state seat; and

  • There are 1,732 male and 168 female candidates contesting.

But the most historic dimension of the 13GE is that for the first time in the nation’s 56-year history, there could be a democratic transition of power with the establishment of a new Pakatan Rakyat federal government in Putrajaya, ending the 56-year rule of Umno/BN with Datuk Sdri Najib Razak as the last Umno/BN Prime Minister as predicted by the RAHMAN prophecy.

The first day of the 13GE has also highlighted certain political realities in Malaysian politics of 2013: Continue reading “14 Day Countdown to 13GE Polling Day – My chances in Gelang Patah have risen as a result of use of Rocket symbol but still an adverse 45:55 in favour of Ghani”

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Gelang Patah battle full of variables

By LIM MUN FAH | 2013-04-18 14:38
Translated by KHEI YOK MAN
MySinChew.com

MCA’s loan of Gelang Patah parliamentary constituency to Umno is an anomalous move as well as a gamble.

Terming it an anomaly because DAP strongman Lim Kit Siang will meet Abdul Ghani Othman which was never thought of.

Gelang Patah was under MCA for the past four terms and it was hailed as MCA’s stronghold with majority votes once in excess of 30,000, a record created by Tan Ah Eng in 2004. The dissenting gale in 2008 didn’t swallow her although the majority votes fell to 8,851.

No one anticipated that MCA would swallow its pride by loaning the constituency simply to topple Kit Siang. Neither would anyone foresee BN’s strategic move to put the menteri besar on the table for an embattled sparring.

Neither Kit Siang nor Abdul Ghani Othman reckoned this.

How would this “Fray of Kings” end up? Both sides claim confidence, but in reality they are unsure. It is a risk-taking move to both PR and BN.
Continue reading “Gelang Patah battle full of variables”

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Kit Siang wants to keep it clean

Terence Fernandez, Malay Mail
8:22AM Apr 21, 2013

“Ghani has brought a lot of achievement for Johor in the 18 years that he has been MB.”

That is not the kind of endorsement one would expect from a political rival on nomination day, but that was one of the first things Lim Kit Siang said at his first press conference yesterday as the official DAP candidate for the Gelang Patah parliamentary seat.

But it also set the tone of his ‘gentleman’s’ campaign in the next 15 days.

“No personal attacks and no dirty politics based on race and money,” he told The Malay Mail later when met at his ops centre here.

Lim said he had invited Ghani to form an accord that they will stick to the facts and avoid gutter politics. He’s still waiting for Ghani’s response.

“We just want to thrash out the facts, and I meant what I said that (his challenger) Datuk Abdul Ghani Othman had brought much progress to Johor.

So how is he supposed to expect voters to pick him over a proven candidate?
Continue reading “Kit Siang wants to keep it clean”

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Gerrymandering Malaysia

Written by Our Correspondent | Asia Sentinel
TUESDAY, 16 APRIL 2013

Home field advantage

The largest electoral district in Malaysia has 144,369 registered voters, according to the latest electoral roll. The smallest has only 37,390. They are both in Selangor, meaning the state’s largest seat is four times its smallest. The Kapar district, the biggest, was won by the opposition Parti Keadilan Rakyat in the 2008 elections. The smallest, Sabak Bernam, was won by the Barisan Nasional.

The disparity between these two districts fits with the practice of corralling the largest number of potential opposition voters into a single district – as opposed to keeping pro-government districts as small as possible to multiply the number of pro-government seats.

Critics are using such disparities as fuel to allege that the Barisan Nasional government is putting a wide range of other electoral misuses in place in the effort make sure the opposition Pakatan Rakyat doesn’t take power after May 5 elections.

Ong Kian Ming, the director of the Malaysian Electoral Roll Analysis Project and an official with the opposition Democratic Action Party, told a forum at a Kuala Lumpur suburban library Friday, reported by the website for the KL-based publication The Edge, that the government is also packing voter rolls in crucial pro-opposition districts with pro-Barisan Nasional voters. Voter numbers in Selangor, the country’s richest state, have increased by 660,000 since the 2008 elections.
Continue reading “Gerrymandering Malaysia”

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Crossing the lines – BN’s early strategic mistakes

Bridget Welsh | 1:35PM Apr 19, 2013
Malaysiakini

In assessing any electoral campaign, it is essential to review the assumptions and implications of different strategic moves.

Three decisions on the part of BN in the last two weeks are leading to tectonic shifts within the electorate, and thus strengthen the opposition’s position nationally.

These are:

  1. The use of sex videos against PAS and possibly other opposition politicians.

  2. The fielding of Perkasa leader Zulkifli Noordin in Shah Alam.

  3. The action by the Registrar of Societies (ROS) in not recognising DAP’s central executive committee (CEC).

The combined effect of these moves have strengthened the opposition coalition and negatively impact the BN’s position with the electorate in the lead up to the May 5 general election.

Let’s take each of these in turn:

1. Smut videos Continue reading “Crossing the lines – BN’s early strategic mistakes”

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DAP’s Johor campaign begins, with loud cheers from Chinese for PAS

By Leslie Lau
The Malaysian Insider
April 21, 2013

JOHOR BARU, April 21 — That 72-year-old DAP stalwart Lim Kit Siang was feted like a rock star by thousands of people cheering and blowing on air horns last night on the first day of campaigning here for Election 2013 was no surprise.

What was striking at a rally here for the Gelang Patah parliamentary constituency was the sight of the predominantly Chinese crowd holding aloft PAS flags along with those bearing DAP’s rocket logo.

And Kit Siang captured the mood of the thousands gathered here and perhaps that of the Chinese electorate throughout the country over the perceived fear of the Islamic agenda of PAS.

“They say a vote for DAP is a vote for PAS. Is that true? Yes it is. That is because a vote for DAP is a vote for PAS, PKR and Pakatan Rakyat.

“I say here tonight. This is the battle between the past and the future,” he said as the Chinese crowd cheered enthusiastically. Continue reading “DAP’s Johor campaign begins, with loud cheers from Chinese for PAS”