Day: December 8, 2016

Malaysians send good wishes to the country’s stand-up comedian Harith Iskander to become the world’s funniest person in the final of the international competition, Laugh Factory Funniest Person in the World, in Helsinki tonight.

Although Harith, 50, will be facing stiff challenge from four others, Katerina Vrana (Greece), Mino Van Nassau (India), David Kilimnick (Israel) and Alex Calleja (Philippines), he stands a good chance of winning the final as he topped the chart among the 20 semi-finalists last Sunday.

It is fortunate that last year Harith survived the threat posed by UMNO/Barisan Nasional Ministers and Deputy Ministers to stand-up comedians, as UMNO/BN Ministers and Deputy Ministers at the time like Ahmad Maslan, Abdul Rahman Dahlan, Paul Low and even the Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Najib Razak, were competing with them to run them out of their jobs with their own comic and clownish statements and actions.

This was why I had occasion to remark last December that very soon, comedians like Harith would have to call it a day because Ministers and Deputy Ministers like Ahmad Maslan, Abdul Rahman Dahlan, Paul Low and even Najib would have taken over their jobs; leaving the professional comedians probably with the option of venturing into politics to encroach into the protected domains of the Ministers and deputy ministers! Continue reading “Good wishes to Harith Iskander to become the world’s funniest person in the final of the international competition, Laugh Factory Funniest Person in the World, in Helsinki tonight”

BY BHAVAN JAIPRAGAS
South China Morning Post
7 DEC 2016

China’s economic largesse to Malaysia was back in the spotlight on Wednesday following an apparent renewed effort by Beijing to bail out the Southeast Asian country’s beleaguered 1MDB state investment fund.

Political observers say such multibillion-dollar favours are likely to continue unabated as China seeks to bring a key trading partner closer into its strategic orbit and as Prime Minister Najib Razak turns away from the West, where he is accused of running a kleptocracy.

The Financial Times newspaper in a report on Wednesday said China “had been approached” to help 1MDB – embattled by a long-running money laundering scandal linked to Najib – pay off a US$6.5 billion (HK$50.4 billion) debt to an Abu Dhabi state investment arm. Continue reading “HAS CHINA OFFERED TO BAIL OUT MALAYSIA’S 1MDB? AT WHAT COST?”

The PISA 2015 results were supposed to be the coming-of-age of the Najib premiership, both nationally and internationally – to provide evidence that under Najib’s premiership, with his string of National Transformation Programmes, the Malaysia Education Blueprint 2013-2025, and most important of all, his forthcoming and most ambitious 2050 National Transformation (TN50) Plan to replace Vision 2020, Malaysia would not only be able to become a RM2 trillion economy in seven to eight years, but to become the Top 20 nation in the world.

But the PISA 2015 results were a major setback to Najib’s towering ambitions, in particular the Malaysian Education Blueprint 2013-2025 objective to achieve above global average and be in top one-third of countries in international educational standards in less than a decade by 2025.

This was why the Malaysian government was so quick off-the-mark to claim credit for good improvement in the OECD-organised PISA 2015 tests – announcing that Malaysia scored 446 in Mathematics, 431 in Reading and 443 in Science as compared to Malaysia’s PISA 2012 results of 421 in Mathematics, 414 in Reading and 422 in Science.

This will be quite creditable improvement if true, as the three sets of PISA results for Malaysia since 2009 would be as follows:

	PISA Score (Rank)
	2009	2012	2015
Maths	404(57)	421(52)	446(45)
Science	422(52)	420(53)	443(47)
Reading	414(55)	398(59)	431(50)

Continue reading “PISA 2015 a major setback for Malaysia Education Blueprint 2013-2025 to achieve above global average and be in top one-third of countries in international educational standards in less than a decade by 2025”