Day: June 10, 2013

Stanley Koh | June 10, 2013
Free Malaysia Today

The consensus seems to be that the rot has gone too deep to be removed, at least in the foreseeable future.

COMMENT

Is it at all possible to arrest the rot in MCA so that it can begin nursing itself back to health in order to regain its standing as a political organisation capable of representing the interests of Malaysian Chinese?

As things stand today, there is little reason to be optimistic.

Even as it licks the wounds from the worst electoral beating it has suffered in its 64-year history, MCA appears to be inviting embarrassing questions about the quality of its current leadership. Of course, pundits were already asking similar questions long before the recent general election, but developments after the polls have intensified doubts about the leadership’s political maturity and its courage to institute reforms.

Commenting on deputy president Liow Tiong Lai’s announcement last week that the party was preparing a blueprint for reforms, internal critics told FMT it could be an attempt to whitewash a reversal of the pledge to reject appointments at all levels of the BN government.

They said such a U-turn seemed more and more likely now, with its proponents arguing that the party must heed the public call for it to abandon such a politically unwise pledge. Continue reading “Is there still hope for MCA?”

In Dr. Mahathir’s chequered career as a politician, he has always looked for ‘bogeymen’ in order to divert attention from his own shortcomings and that of UMNO as well as the Barisan Nasional coalition. It seems that he has now come full circle by once again blaming the Chinese and also the DAP for increasing racial polarization in Malaysia and for being ‘chauvinists’.

One can only guess if Dr. Mahathir’s post-GE13 barrage against the Chinese and the DAP is driven by his own blind prejudices or by fears that his true legacy will be revealed for all to see if Pakatan wins power in Putrajaya or by growing senility or perhaps all of the above.

What we do know is that his accusations that DAP is a chauvinist party that plays on racial sentiment to draw Chinese support away from the BN is nothing but a pack of lies that is totally divorced from reality.

The fact that Dr. Mahathir can say that ‘When it (DAP) held elections to its Central Committee recently other than Karpal Singh all the members elected were Chinese’ shows his utter disregard for facts in his crazed attempts to ‘brand’ DAP as a ‘chauvinist’ party.[1] A simple ‘google check’ would have shown Dr. Mahathir that M.Kulasegaran (current MP for Ipoh Barat), Gobind Singh Deo (current MP for Puchong) and Zairil Khir Johari (current MP for Bukit Bendera) were all elected into the Central Committee. The records will also show that DAP has had Indian and Malay leaders elected into the Central Executive Committee (CEC) in every single party elections since the formation of the party in 1966.

If Dr. Mahathir had bothered to examine the current DAP leadership line-up on our website[2], he would see that we have Malay, Chinese, Indian, Iban and Kadazan members in our Central Executive Committee. Rather than pointing the finger at the DAP, Dr. Mahathir should ask himself how many non-Malay leaders have been elected or appointed into the UMNO Supreme Council to answer the question of who the real racists are. Continue reading “Dr. Mahathir should look within himself and within his own party UMNO to discover who the real ‘racists’ are”

The prize for “Political Gaffe of the Month” or “Putting one’s foot in the mouth” will be a toss-up among three competitors this month – Datuk Wan Ahmad Wan Omar, Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin and Tun Mahathir, viz:

• Election Commission deputy chairman Datuk Wan Ahmad Wan Omar in asking why he and the Election Commission Chairman Tan Sri Abdul Aziz Mohd Yusof should resign when they have done their job of running an election, completely blissful of the national and international uproar over 13GE for failing to meet the most basic criteria of being a clean, free and fair elections as to cause for the first time in the nation’s 56-year history widespread doubt about the legitimacy of Datuk Seri Najib Razak as the Prime Minister.

• Deputy Prime Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin’s threat that the 47% BN minority government will penalize and discriminate against 51% majority of popular vote for supporting Pakatan Rakyat and Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim in contrast to the 47% popular vote for Barisan Nasional and Datuk Seri Najib Razak – starkly raising the question whether Najib and the BN Government are Prime Minister and Government for only 47% of Malaysians or for all Malaysians.

• Former Prime Minister Tun Dr. Mahathir Mohamad’s latest racist vituperation alleging that the 2013GE outcome is proof that the Chinese in Malaysia are out to oust the political power of the Malays and to dominate Malaysian politics highlighting the falsehoods and moral turpitude he is prepared to indulge in to perpetrate his racist objectives .

Continue reading “Prize for “Political Gaffe of the Month” or “Putting one’s foot in the mouth” will be a toss-up among three competitors, Wan Ahmad, Muhyiddin and Mahathir”

Deputy Prime Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin should stop his “double-speak” as his open threat on Saturday of 47% minority government penalizing 51% majority of voters is the latest subversion and not defence of national institutions in the country.

It is surprising that Muhyiddin could be guilty or such “double speak” uttering totally contradictory sentiments at the same function, i.e. the BN thanksgiving function in Kundang Ulu, Johor.

Although Muhyiddin claimed that Malaysian voters have conveyed a clear message in the 13GE that they want the government to be more stern and bold in defending the important institutions in the country, “enforcing the law, upholding the country’s Constitution, and fighting crime effectively as well as eradicating corruption”, Muhyiddin has completely nullified these high-sounding sentiments with his threat to discriminate and penalize 51% of the popular vote who supported Pakatan Rakyat and Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim in contrast to the 47% of the voters who supported Barisan Nasional and Datuk Seri Najib Razak.

Surely, Muhyiddin’s declaration that the BN administration will direct “greater assistance” towards the communities that backed it during the general election, implying a punitive policy of neglect and discrimination for the 51% majority of the popular vote, is the most powerful proof that Najib has a long way to go to prove that he is Prime Minister of all Malaysians and not just 47% of Malaysians!

Or do we have a situation where we have Najib who wants to be Prime Minister of all Malaysians but Muhyiddin only wants to the Deputy Prime Minister for 47% of Malaysians?

When Muhyddin talked about the people’s “clear message” in wanting the government to defend the important institutions in the country, he has missed the Elephant in the Room as it is UMNO/BN who must bear the full responsibility in the past three decades for undermining and subverting the key national institutions in the country. Continue reading “Muhyiddin’s should stop his “double-speak” as his open threat of 47% minority government penalizing 51% majority of voters is the latest subversion and not defence of national institutions of the country”

By Barton Gellman, Aaron Blake and Greg Miller
Washington Post
Monday, June 10

Edward Snowden, a 29-year-old former undercover CIA employee, unmasked himself Sunday as the principal source of recent Washington Post and Guardian disclosures about top-secret National Security Agency programs.

Snowden, who has contracted for the NSA and works for the consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton, denounced what he described as systematic surveillance of innocent citizens and said in an interview that “it’s important to send a message to government that people will not be intimidated.”

Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper Jr. said Saturday that the NSA had initiated a Justice Department investigation into who leaked the information — an investigation supported by intelligence officials in Congress.

Snowden, whose full name is Edward Joseph Snowden, said he understands the risks of disclosing the information but felt it was important to do.

“I’m not going to hide,” Snowden told The Post from Hong Kong, where he has been staying. The Guardian was the first to publicly identify Snowden, at his request. “Allowing the U.S. government to intimidate its people with threats of retaliation for revealing wrongdoing is contrary to the public interest.”

Asked whether he believed his disclosures would change anything, he said: “I think they already have. Everyone everywhere now understands how bad things have gotten — and they’re talking about it. They have the power to decide for themselves whether they are willing to sacrifice their privacy to the surveillance state.”

Snowden said nobody was aware of his actions, including those closest to him. He said there wasn’t a single event that spurred his decision to leak the information.

“It was more of a slow realization that presidents could openly lie to secure the office and then break public promises without consequence,” he said.

Snowden said President Obama hasn’t lived up to his pledges of transparency. He blamed a lack of accountability in the Bush administration for continued abuses. The White House did not respond to multiple e-mails seeking comment and spokesman Josh Earnest, who was traveling with the president, said the White House would have no comment Sunday.

“It set an example that when powerful figures are suspected of wrongdoing, releasing them from the accountability of law is ‘for our own good,’ ” Snowden said. “That’s corrosive to the basic fairness of society.” Continue reading “Edward Snowden identified as source of NSA leaks”

Andrew Sagayam
The Sun
9 June 2013

PETALING JAYA (June 9, 2013): Astonishing as it may seem, it is technically possible for a political party to win a simple majority in Parliament and form the government by garnering a mere 2.21 million votes (or 16.7%) of the total electorate.

Because of the imbalance of registered voters in the 222 parliamentary constituencies, there are currently only 4,408,975 voters or 33.22% of the total electorate of 13,268,110 in the 112 seats with smaller numbers of registered voters.

The 112 constituencies have a very much smaller number of registered voters, ranging from 15,791 (Putrajaya) to 56,280 (Kuantan), in contrast with the remaining 110 constituencies with more voters, some in excess of 100,000, with the highest being Kapar with 144,159 registered voters.

As such, a political party needs to just win by one vote in these 112 seats – a third of which are in Sabah and Sarawak – to obtain a simple majority and form the federal government.

Calculations by theSun show that if a party were to win 50.1% in each of these 112 seats, it would only need to get about 2,209,000 votes (or about 16.65% of the total electorate). Continue reading “Just 16.7% to win simple majority in Parliament”