Category: General

Ang Ngan Toh
Malaysiakini
May 20, 11

The Sarawak DAP has called on the police to issue immediately permits to allow the people of the state to hold street demonstrations to force long-serving Chief Minister Abdul Taib Mahmud to step down.

“They have their constitutional right to stage peaceful street demonstrations and the police should not stop them,” Sarawak DAP secretary Chong Chieng Jen said yesterday.

Peaceful street demonstrations should be allowed, he said, adding that DAP would consider joining the protesters if the police issued the permits allowing the people to assemble in the streets.

“We fully support the plans of the Movement for Change, Sarawak (MoCS) to hold peaceful street demonstrations to force Taib to step down,” the Bandar Kuching MP said. Continue reading “Cops urged to issue permit for anti-Taib demo”

By Melissa Chi
The Malaysian Insider
May 17, 2011

KUALA LUMPUR, May 17 — With the national subsidy bill expected to top RM20 billion this year, opposition leaders are bracing for snap polls before the ruling Barisan Nasional (BN) makes inevitable cuts that could prove unpopular among voters.

Several senior BN leaders had signalled the inevitability of price hikes yesterday, hours before the Najib administration announced it will cut the diesel super subsidy for nine categories of commercial vehicles from June 1.

At the same time, the government kept its January promise and abolished toll charges in the East-West Link between Cheras and Petaling Jaya, a key highway in the Klang Valley from midnight this morning.

Rural and Regional Development Minister Datuk Seri Mohd Shafie Apdal told The Malaysian Insider that it is important for the government to balance between cutting the country’s deficit and, at the same time, not dumping the burden on the citizens.

“How can the nation shoulder the burden? We are managing quite well despite the economic turmoil,” he said. Continue reading “As subsidies balloon, BN eyes cuts but foes expect snap polls”

Tweets @limkitsiang:-

Utusan Malaysia headlines: Hishammuddin “Isu Kristian: Ada kebenaran”.”Saya tahu apa yg sebenar berlaku” – Ahli DAP Mohd Razali Abdul Rahman

Hisham (nose-drag CSL) is single-handedly re-igniting Utusan Christian Msia bogey which Najib tried 2put 2rest though most one-sidedly.

What remedy when it is Home Minister who play politics n pose greatest threat 2national harmony security w irresponsible stmts actions?

AB Sulaiman | May 11, 11
Malaysiakini

A friend had lent me Mahathir Mohamad’s memoir ‘A Doctor in the House’ to read. This was followed with the request for me to review it. I have read it but would decline his request for its review.

I have a reason for this refusal. It is that Barry Wain (the author of ‘Malaysian Maverick: Mahathir Mohamad in Turbulent Times’) has already made one such authoritative and well-reasoned review in Malaysiakini (April 4, 2011). Any additional attempt on my part would be sheer duplication.

Instead I’d now highlight one major point raised by Wain in his review and use it to ‘review’ Mahathir’s memoir.

It is that Wain claims that Mahathir has used facts mixed with fiction in his writing to become a mixture of both, a ‘faction’. Wain cites the case of the construction of the North-South Expressway of a Mahathir faction and I quote: Continue reading “Mahathir’s thinking legacy”

Susan Loone | May 10, 11
Malaysiakini

Two Penang Umno assemblypersons said today they do not believe last Saturday’s front page report in Utusan Malaysia that DAP and a group of Christian pastors were plotting to establish the country as a Christian state.

During the tabling of a motion to bar the Umno-owned news daily from covering the next state assembly sittings, Penang Chief Minister Lim Guan Eng had asked Hilmi Yahya (BN-Teluk Bahang) if he believed the report.

Lim, who tabled the motion against Utusan over a report on Nov 11 last year on the renovation cost of his official residence, went on to condemn the Malay daily for frequently raising sensitive issues to cause divisions among the different races in the country.

Hilmi had earlier admitted that Umno may be Utusan’s biggest shareholder, but it may not necessarily condone everything the newspaper does.

He said Utusan, like any other newspaper, was a business entity and prone to sensationalising its articles to increase readership. Continue reading “Two Penang Umno reps don’t buy Utusan report”

Malaysiakini
May 9, 11

Beginning tomorrow, sugar will cost RM2.30 per kilo, up RM0.20, announced the Domestic Trade and Consumer Affairs Ministry today.

This is the fourth time sugar prices had increased since Jan 1 last year when it was priced at RM1.65 per kilo.

Prior to that, sugar prices were maintained at RM1.45 for a long period. This marks a 58.6 percent increase in less than one-and-a-half years.

According to the Domestic Trade and Consumer Affairs Ministry, by increasing the price of sugar by RM0.20 tomorrow, the government stands to make a saving of RM116.6 million. Continue reading “Sugar price up RM0.20”

By June Rubis
May 05, 2011

We stand separated by an iron gate.

Concerned villagers and relatives of Numpang Suntai are quietly gathered outside the gates of the Simunjan magistrate’s court. The rest of us, carefully picked by the police, are standing on the grounds of the court with his lawyers.

The day is February 16, 2011, and Numpang is on trial for criminal intimidation. He, along with five tuais rumah (Iban longhouse chiefs) and a prominent land rights activist, Nicholas Mujah, were previously arrested and detained a few months prior on suspicion of burning down a timber camp that stood on their native customary land.

The man of the hour stands quietly in the rain in solidarity with his supporters who came far and wide to be by his side. So does lawyer Edmund Bon who refused to step inside court grounds.

I had taken Datuk Ambiga Sreenevasan pass the iron gate because she wanted to discuss with the lawyers regarding Numpang’s case. My job was done, and I stood uncertainly with the heavily-armed police and lawyers, wanting to be on the other side of the gate. Continue reading “Behind the iron gates”

By Sholto Byrnes
Sunday, 24 April 2011
The Independent

Anwar Ibrahim, Malaysia’s opposition leader, tomorrow faces the resumption of one of the less edifying cases to have been heard amid the colonnaded formality of the Kuala Lumpur High Court: his trial for allegedly sodomising a 25-year-old aide named Saiful Bukhari.

It is not the only scandal with which the former deputy prime minister, whose dismissal and first trial for sodomy made world headlines more than a decade ago, is dealing.

The man once feted as Newsweek’s “Asian of the Year”, whose supporters include Al Gore, the former US vice-president, and Paul Wolfowitz, a former World Bank president, is also accused of being the star of a 21-minute sex tape featuring a Chinese prostitute (by way of variation, female), a clip of which was briefly posted on YouTube.

But these are only two instances of the sexually related incidents that fill the country’s papers and gossip sites every day. So numerous are stories of physical misdemeanours in this conservative, Muslim-majority but essentially easygoing country that the question is being asked: are Malaysians obsessed with sex?

Within the past few days, it has emerged that the education department in the eastern state of Terengganu has set up a boot camp to which it has sent 66 schoolboys to deal with their “effeminate tendencies”.

“The severity of the symptoms vary. We understand that some people end up as homosexual,” said the department’s director, Razali Daud, “but we will do our best to limit the number. If left unchecked, it could become a problem for them, their families and society.” Continue reading “Sex scandals obsess Malaysia: the country with a one-track mind”

by Martin Jalleh

Christians of Sarawak, your hour has come! May you have the courage to respond to the clarion call of leading the charge of change in your State and country.

May your vote convince the PM that the religious freedom of Christians and other faiths cannot rest merely on his sudden goodwill conveyed at cordial, congenial and courteous close-door meetings.

May your choice reflect the earnest prayer of Christians that the government honor and respect our basic constitutional rights, and not subject them to changes according to political expediency of the moment.

May your courage bring to the fore the problems related to religious harmony which the BN Government has created or is complicit to, its conceited responses and ad-hoc solutions which contradict its very own policies!

The challenge before you goes far beyond that of the recent Bible controversy. It is to express distinctly to the PM the deep disappointment and discontent of Christians being discriminated against over the years. Continue reading “Christians of Sarawak, be a Catalyst of Change!”

By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
New York Times
January 8 2011

If there’s a human face on Rising China, it belongs not to some Politburo chief, not to an Internet tycoon, but to a quiet, mild-mannered teenage girl named Hou Yifan.

Ms. Hou (whose name is pronounced Ho Ee-fahn) is an astonishing phenomenon: at 16, she is the new women’s world chess champion, the youngest person, male or female, ever to win a world championship. And she reflects the way China — by investing heavily in education and human capital, particularly in young women — is increasingly having an outsize impact on every aspect of the world.

Napoleon is famously said to have declared, “When China wakes, it will shake the world.” That is becoming true even in spheres that China historically has had little connection with, like chess, basketball, rare earth minerals, cyber warfare, space exploration and nuclear research. Continue reading “China Rises, and Checkmates”