Posted on

Puad Zarkashi should be sacked as JASA Director-General and be made to personally bear the costs of the JASA booklet “Uprising of the Red Shirts, Sept. 16” or he should be charged for CBT if the booklet is paid for from public funds

Datuk Mohd Puad Zarkashi should be sacked as Department of Special Affairs (JASA) Director-General and be made to personally bear the costs of the JASA booklet “Uprising of the Red Shirts, Sept. 16” distributed at the UMNO General Assembly or he should be charged for the offence of criminal breach of trust if the booklet is paid for from public funds.

UMNO Secretary-General Datuk Seri Tengku Adnan Tengku Mansor said Putrajaya does not support the Sept. 16 “Red Shirt” rally and if this is the case, how can JASA, a government department, be the publisher and distributor of the booklet, especially as JASA functions as a disseminator of government polices and propaganda?

Or is this another case of an increasingly fractured and schizophrenic UMNO/BN government, where the right hand does not know what the left hand is doing, or the right hand is not allowed to interfere with what the left hand is doing even if aware of what is happening? Continue reading “Puad Zarkashi should be sacked as JASA Director-General and be made to personally bear the costs of the JASA booklet “Uprising of the Red Shirts, Sept. 16” or he should be charged for CBT if the booklet is paid for from public funds”

Posted on

DAP does not regard the three million UMNO members and one million PAS members as “enemies” but only as Malaysians with different political inclinations and we are always prepared to engage with them for the common purpose to save the nation and not just to save individuals or political parties

DAP has become the favourite punching bag in the current UMNO General Assemblies, which is a reflection of the loss of direction and the sense of purpose of the UMNO leadership which have strayed far from the UMNO founding principles to serve the Malay community and the multi-ethnic country.

Today, we read of the UMNO representative from Terengganu declaring that PAS should not be perceived as the main enemy of UMNO, and that it is the DAP which is UMNO’s “main enemy” because PAS is an Islam-based party with the members comprising the Malays.

By this logic, UMNO should declare the majority of the parties in the Barisan Nasional, including MCA, Gerakan, MIC and the Sabah and Sarawak parties which are not exclusively restricted to Malays or Muslims also as UMNO’s “main enemies”.

Is this the direction UMNO is leading the country after some six decades of nation-building?

What has happened to the 1Malaysia concept which the Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Najib Razak had proclaimed on becoming Prime Minister in April 2008 and on which he spent so much public funds on 1Malaysia propaganda and gimmicry in the run-up to the 13th General Election in May 2013? Continue reading “DAP does not regard the three million UMNO members and one million PAS members as “enemies” but only as Malaysians with different political inclinations and we are always prepared to engage with them for the common purpose to save the nation and not just to save individuals or political parties”

Posted on

The fiction of a unified, harmonised Asean

David Pilling
Financial Times
December 9, 2015

The bloc favours consensus. Its lack of overarching ambition is a strength as well as its weakness

If you think European nations are having a hard time holding it together — strained by disputes over immigration, austerity and debt — spare a thought for the 10 countries that form the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.

True, compared with Europe, they face few fatally divisive problems. Most of Southeast Asia is contending with the impact of a slowing China and braced for the turbulence that could accompany the steady normalisation of US monetary policy. Yet there are no big financial transfers within Asean, a loose federation akin to the EU of the 1950s. No country is threatening to leave, nor are there fundamental differences over the direction of policy.

Still, as Asean prepares for an important milestone this month — the creation of a theoretically single market — it is worth reflecting on the incredible diversity of the “new bloc on the block”. Continue reading “The fiction of a unified, harmonised Asean”